“And one more thing,” said the soldier. “There has to be someone in this town who used to work on cars. Find them and see if they can figure out how to repair the quads.”
“Okay,” said Gutsy dubiously.
“Joe, what if there aren’t enough chemicals at Site B?” asked Nix. “Or you can’t get in?”
Ledger turned to Max Morton. The old soldier gave him a very cold and ugly smile. “The doc here is going to do his level best to make sure what we have lasts. That means he gets his pill last, after everyone else gets a dose.”
“That’s insane,” cried Morton. “If I’m sick, I can’t work—”
“Then make sure there’s enough drug to go around.”
The room was unnaturally quiet.
“Good,” said Ledger after a long moment. “You all have jobs to do, and I need you to do all of them.”
18
THE GROUP BROKE UP.
As they were filing out, Gutsy approached Benny and his friends. “Don’t any of you know how to fix those quad things?”
“Not me,” said Benny. “Never been handy with tools.”
Nix also shook her head. “We all know a little bit of routine maintenance, but…”
“But what?” demanded Gutsy, appalled. “You mean you came all this way and only one of you knew how to keep those quads working?”
Nix and Benny looked deeply embarrassed.
Gutsy wanted to scream at them. Stuff like this made her so mad. All it took was some common sense and a little planning. Why was it people so rarely thought ahead? With what she carried with her every day she could clean and dress a wound, start a fire, purify water, catch and clean a fish, sharpen sticks, build a small shelter, collect dew, and a dozen other useful things. And that was just her walking-around gear. If she was going to drive a machine all the way across the country, Gutsy would have made sure she knew how to take a quad apart down to the last bolt and washer and put it back together again. She’d have brought replacements for all of the key functions.
Now, though, did not seem the time to make a speech about preparedness.
Ledger overheard the conversation and came over. “Y’know, guys, Gutsy here makes a good point. You four are idiots.”
“Hey,” said Benny, but without emphasis. “Look, we left in kind of a hurry. We thought you were in trouble and came out to… you know…”
Ledger stared at Benny until he shut up and looked down at his shoes. Chong gave his friend a slow, ironic pat on the shoulder.
The old soldier glanced at Gutsy. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” she said, immediately defensive. “Why?”
He smiled. “Because this isn’t the first time I thought you were the smartest and most mature person in the room.”
Gutsy felt her cheeks burn, but somehow managed to keep normal. More or less. “Okay, well, I, um… I’m going to, um, start asking around to see if anyone used to be a mechanic.”
And with that, she fled.
19
TRÓCAIRE FOUND TÉNÈBRES ALONE, SITTING on a kitchen chair she’d pulled close to a window. He came up behind her and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and stood, watching.
Two men were pushing a quad along the alley between this street and the next. A big red mechanic’s toolbox jiggled on the seat. A young boy followed behind, pulling a wagon that was piled high with engine parts.
“Well,” said the young man, “isn’t that interesting?”
Ténèbres shivered. “I’m afraid,” she said.
Trócaire bent and kissed the top of her head. Her skin was cool. She reached up and took his hand and gave it a fierce squeeze.
“Now, come along,” he said. “We have work to do.”
20
ALL DAY AND WELL INTO the evening Gutsy looked for a mechanic. So far she’d asked a hundred people about fixing quads or motorcycles, and all she’d gotten were head shakes. Sombra trotted along, quiet but very much there for her.
It was close to nine at night when they headed toward the south side of town, where some of the older residents lived.
“Hey,” said a voice, and Gutsy turned to see Captain Ledger and Grimm walking across the street toward her. “Any luck?”
“Not yet.”
They walked together for a while, stopping to ask the same question, getting the same answer. Suddenly a voice cracked through the air.
“Captain Ledger!”
They turned to see Karen Peak come running toward them. She looked exhausted to the point of near fainting. And the look in her eyes made Gutsy want to cover her ears so she wouldn’t hear more bad news.
“I just came from the hospital,” Karen said in a quick, ragged voice. “Morton said he thought there might be some small amounts of the right chemicals at the hospital after all. He said that he just remembered. Whatever. There were some notes he wanted, too—step-by-step instructions for making the pills. He told Flores to get all of that from a locker in the maintenance room. Before you ask, no, we didn’t know that he had other hiding places. The locker was a dummy. Dial one combination and it opens like any other locker; dial a special combination and the whole thing swings out and there’s a safe built into the wall. Morton gave Flores the combination because there are special files in there. The most important stuff, actually.”
“And you’re going to break my heart and tell me that Collins got to the safe first,” said Ledger.
The wretched expression on Karen’s face was enough of an answer.
Ledger spent a few moments looking up into the nighttime sky. “Well, life is a juicy little peach, isn’t it,” the captain said after a while.
“How bad is all this?” asked Gutsy.
“Bad. With the formula, Morton thought he might be able to thin out the mixture to make the pills last longer without diluting the medicine’s effect. But it’s a really complex process. Dozens of steps, very precise measurements…” She shook her head in despair. “He said that without the formula it might take too much time, and…”
Her voice suddenly broke, and Karen’s facade of professional control dissolved into a mother’s terrified tears. She covered her face with her hands and leaned her head against Ledger. Gutsy stood by, feeling clumsy and helpless. She wasn’t all that close with Karen, but her heart broke for her. Sarah was an innocent in all of this, and Karen—as her mother—was helpless. The two dogs whined louder and nudged Karen with their wet noses.
Ledger gave Karen a gruff hug and then gently pushed her back. “Show me that safe,” he said. “Gutsy, you keep looking for a mechanic. I have a feeling that quad is just about our last, best hope.”
Ledger and Karen hurried off, Grimm trotting along behind.
“Well,” said Gutsy to Sombra, “I guess it’s up to us to perform an actual miracle here.”
Sombra wagged his tail. Gutsy smiled and gave him a piece of dried goat, which he chewed greedily.
Gutsy ran from house to house, from store to church to workshop, asking everyone she met in the hope of finding at least one person who still remembered how to fix motors.