Gutsy knew the rest of the story. All that contamination, radiation, and pollution mingled together and drove Mother Nature to madness. That was how Mama had once described it, and the image stuck in Gutsy’s mind. Mother Nature gone mad.
Mutations were everywhere. There was a new species of malformed cactus in the desert from which sprouted perfect yellow roses. There was grass that turned bright orange on rainy days. Strawberry plants that had mutated into towering trees, and a kind of milkweed whose sap was the color of fresh blood. Gutsy had once come upon a creeper vine that could detach itself and move like an octopus across the ground. And the scavengers who went deeper into the Broken Lands than she did said there were brand-new species of plants and flowers no one had put a name to yet.
Some of the birds had gone strange too, especially the crows, each generation of which had nearly doubled in size so that some were as big as eagles. When they cried, it sounded like someone screaming in pain. Flocks of those crows attacked cattle and could bring down a good-size calf and strip it to bones in half an hour. And yet there was a speckled mutant species of mountain lion that ate only flowers and made sounds like a mourning dove.
Strange. Dreamlike in its way; often nightmarish, sometimes quite beautiful. Always unsettling.
The location for New Alamo was picked because Mr. Urrea and Mr. Ford—who had emerged as leaders in the early days following the End—liked the isolated location, the fact that it already had a sturdy fence around it and plenty of housing. It was also far away from the worst disaster areas and had the least amount of visible pollution.
“Least amount,” though, wasn’t the same as “none.”
The diseases in town proved that. The rates of cancer among refugees proved it. The fact that some crops grew into strangeness, yielding plants that caused new kinds of sickness.
And the living dead, in all their terrifying variety.
The breeze blew toward her, carrying the scent of bad meat from the shamblers. Had it been blowing the other way, los muertos would have smelled her.
Sombra followed Gutsy and crouched beside her, teeth bared in a silent growl.
“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “They can’t see us.”
Surprisingly, the coydog stopped snarling and looked up at her, searching her face. She smiled and touched his shoulder. Not a pat, exactly. A communication of some kind. Her instincts told her that small actions were how to deal with this battered, frightened, confused animal.
Time moved even slower than the shamblers. The ravager—if that’s what he was—stood for a while watching the dead file past, and every now and then one would start heading in the wrong direction and the man would shove it back into line with the others. The shamblers did not seem to mind the roughness and occasional kicks the man used. They did not care about anything, Gutsy knew, except feeding.
Of all the species of living dead, the shamblers were by far the most common. Ninety-nine out of every hundred were that kind. In towns like San Antonio to the northeast, it was said to be a different mix, more of the wilder mutations and smarter dead. However, this close to Laredo, right on the border, nearly all los muertos were shamblers.
They scared her enough, though.
An insect buzzed past her, circled and flew back, landing on the stem of a six-headed mutant daisy. It was a bee. Kind of. Instead of two bulbous eyes, its head was covered with dozens of smaller eyes. Most of those eyes were milky and sightless, and it groped its way toward the flowers with stunted forelegs. If it was aware of Gutsy and Sombra, it gave no notice. It moved with trembling slowness as if uncertain where to go despite the flowers above it.
Gutsy held out a finger and the bee crawled onto it as if it were part of the stem. She lifted her hand very slowly and held it close to the biggest of the flowers. The bee’s wings fluttered and it immediately began feeding on nectar and pollen. It made Gutsy smile because despite mutation and everything, the bee was still essentially a bee, and it went about its work as bees had for millions of years. They adapted and survived. Gutsy appreciated that.
One of the living dead had the distinctive swollen belly of a late-term pregnancy. That was a kind of horror Gutsy had heard about but never seen before. Dead mother, dead baby, wandering hungry forever.
The world was indeed insane. The shambling dead people continued to cross the road. It took nearly an hour before she was sure they were all gone, and she was very glad she’d waited. There had been twenty-seven of them, including five children.
Gutsy watched them go, and her heart did not slow to a normal pace until they had dwindled to nothing in the distance. Sombra kept vigil too, and when neither of them could see anything moving, the coydog simply lay down again. She sat for a few seconds longer, considering her new friend. He had saved her from a difficult situation.
The fact that she had found him at her mother’s grave seemed somehow significant. She reached down to pet the dog, but before she did, Gutsy crossed herself and said, “Gracias, Mama.”
Then she drove home.
10
A TALL, SKINNY BOY WITH dark brown skin, short black hair, and mint-green eyes stood in the middle of the street, watching her approach. He wore scruffy jeans, ancient sneakers, and a long-sleeved cotton shirt that had been hand-stitched by one of the ladies at the orphanage. There were flowers embroidered across the front and down the sleeves, and elaborate spiderwebs had been stitched between the blossoms. A single black spider dangled from a slender thread that slipped out from beneath the fold of the left front collar. His shirt was buttoned at the cuffs and all the way to the throat.
“Hey, Gutsy,” he called.
“Hey, Spider,” she called back.
There was a spider of one kind or another embroidered or hand-drawn on every shirt he owned. He would have gotten one tattooed on his cheek, but none of the tattoo artists in town would do it. Not until he was at least sixteen, and that was eleven months away.
Gordo angled in toward the water trough outside the big Quonset hut that had been converted to a stable and plunged his head in, gulping and splashing noisily. The sound made Sombra stand up, and Spider arched an eyebrow as he studied the scarred, battered coydog.
“Picking up roadkill now?” he drawled.
“Something like that,” said Gutsy, climbing down. She stretched so hard her joints popped. Her friend held out a canteen and she drank. As she handed it back, she caught Spider searching her eyes with his.
“Here’s the world’s stupidest question,” he said quietly, “but how are you?”
Gutsy wiped her mouth and looked over her shoulder at the dusty road behind her. “It’s been a day, y’know?”
“Wish you’d let me come with you,” said Spider.
She shook her head.
Spider sighed and helped her unbuckle and unbridle Gordo. They pulled the cart into the stable, allowing Gordo to follow at his own pace. The Quonset hut was vast and there were more than enough stalls for everyone. The Gomez stall was a double because they had a cart, and because the owner of the adjoining one had been killed by the dead while on a scavenging run. As he had no relatives, there was no objection when Gutsy knocked down the thin barrier wall and expanded her own. She’d built shelves and cabinets to accommodate all her gear, and cut several ventilation holes in the walls. People were so impressed by her design and skills that she earned food credits to revamp a dozen others.