The hallway leading to Morton’s office was empty.
“Where are the guards?” asked Karen, but from the note of despair in her voice she already knew. There was a splash of bright blood on the outside wall of the doctor’s office.
Everyone drew their weapons, but Sam and Lilah took the lead, each of them ready for anything. Ledger and Grimm were behind as they cautiously opened the office door, fading left and right to avoid possible gunfire.
There was none.
The two guards were inside. They turned toward the intruders, moaning piteously and reaching with dead hands.
“No… please, not again,” breathed Spider. He looked sick and turned his face away.
“I’ll do it,” said Lilah, hefting her spear. A moment later both of the los muertos lay still and forever silent. Alethea took two lab coats down from pegs on the wall and covered them.
Benny hurried to the big cabinet in the far corner. Gutsy followed, watching as Benny pulled the doors open, her crowbar raised, ready to strike if there were more los muertos in there. The cabinet was a fake, hiding the entrance to a flight of stairs leading down to an underground passage that ran beneath the walls and far out into the desert. Benny and his friends had come through that tunnel and hidden door during the assault on the town. Now, Collins, Dr. Morton, and the others who were part of their twisted research project used it to get in and out of New Alamo.
The doorway and the dark mouth of the stairway were empty. Both dogs, however, growled down into the shadows.
“She went that way,” said Benny, pointing to a few drops of blood on the top step. He started to follow, but Sam’s strong hand shot out and caught his arm.
“If she’s down there, she’ll kill you,” said the sniper.
Benny took half a pace back. “We can’t just stay here.”
“You can,” said Sam as he unslung his rifle. “Hunting is more my thing.”
Benny studied his half brother for a moment, then nodded.
“Okay, Sam, you take point,” said Ledger. He clicked his tongue for Grimm, and the three of them went down the stairs into the black mouth of the tunnel. Gutsy listened but didn’t hear them make a single sound. Not even the big armored dog.
They all waited, weapons ready. The office became unnaturally still and quiet. Time seemed to hold its breath as if in fear of the next moment. Karen Peak had her pistol out, but Gutsy could see her hands tremble. The woman was on that ragged edge between violent anger and total exhaustion.
“There’s one good thing,” said Nix, breaking the silence but speaking in a hushed voice. When the others looked at her in surprise, she said, “When we first came here, there were ravagers and zoms in that tunnel. We dealt with them. But since then there doesn’t seem to have been any more.”
“So?” asked Karen. “They dug a whole new tunnel under the barn.”
“Sure, but this is a bigger and better one, and yet the ravagers didn’t use it.”
“You’re right, Nix,” said Gutsy, brightening. “Maybe the Raggedy Man doesn’t know about this one. We might have lucked out here.”
“ ‘Luck’ is a weird word to use,” said Spider.
“With you on that,” agreed Benny.
“Luck’s relative, I guess,” said Gutsy. “Maybe we’ll never know the exact reason the whole horde didn’t try to use the tunnel. But we can be glad they didn’t.”
“No joke,” said Benny. Then he glanced in the general direction of the school. “Still don’t get how the ravagers got to the school without anyone seeing them in town.”
“Same for those ones Chong said were yelling,” said Nix. “The ones in street clothes. Where’d they come from?”
No one had an answer to that. Gutsy exchanged a look with Alethea, who raised her eyebrows.
“Gosh,” she said, “another mystery. Fun times.”
A few minutes later, Ledger, Sam, and Grimm returned, and they did not look happy.
“She’s gone,” said Ledger. “Killed both guards stationed at the far end of the tunnel. Head shots. Took their weapons and spare ammunition. At a guess I’d say she forced them to move the cases of canned goods we stacked to block the door. Maybe promising to let them go if they cooperated, but…”
Alethea snorted and leaned on the knob end of her baseball bat. “So what if she’s gone? Maybe the ravagers will get her. It’s not like she has anywhere else to go. The base was blown up, right? She can’t go there.”
“Where else is there?” asked Spider.
Ledger shook his head. “Not exactly sure. There are weapons caches out there somewhere. Sam’s been trying to figure out where. Or… who knows, she could be hoping to make it all the way to Asheville.”
“Isn’t that where you’re from?” asked Gutsy.
“Only kind of,” said Ledger. “It’s the capital of the American Nation, and there are lots of people there. No doubt Collins has some friends there too. If so, they’re keeping a low profile; I don’t who they might be, and that’s weird, because it’s the kind of thing I should know.” His mouth tightened, and his eyes seemed to go hard as polished stone. “If I ever get back to Asheville, I intend to find out who knew about what was going on down here. I’m going to pin some people to the wall and get some answers; you can count on that.”
“We don’t know if that’s where Collins is going, though,” said Sam.
“He’s right,” said Gutsy. “There could be another base somewhere else. Or another lab.”
“At this point, anything’s possible,” said Ledger darkly.
“Why are we talking about this?” asked Benny. “Let’s go get her.”
“I’m for that,” said Gutsy, and Alethea made a nasty sound of agreement.
“Well… that’s the other thing,” said Ledger heavily. “Collins took one of the quads and slashed the tires on the other machines. She smashed some stuff on each of them. Stuff I don’t know if we can repair.”
“Oh no…,” breathed Nix.
Benny gripped Sam’s arm with sudden desperation. “Which quad did she take? Did she take the blue one? God, please, please, please tell me she didn’t take the blue one.”
“Why?” asked Alethea. “What’s so special about the blue one?”
“That’s Chong’s bike,” said Nix in a very small voice.
“So?”
“It’s the one that had his extra medicine in the saddlebags.” Nix turned pleading eyes toward Sam. “Chong has some with him, but he left the rest down there for safety because… well… we weren’t planning on staying all that long. It wasn’t the blue one… was it?”
They all looked at Sam. He closed his eyes and nodded.
Interlude One The Hated
SIX YEARS AGO
THE BOY DIDN’T HAVE A name. Not really.
In his earliest memories he was always called “Boy.” If his parents had ever given him a name, it was lost when they vanished. The boy couldn’t recall a single detail about them. Not voices, not faces. He had been unloved forever, and only barely cared for. Less generously than a stray dog would have been treated, and usually much worse.