That was fine with Gutsy. She was fifteen, and while she understood the whole puberty process and the biochemical imperative to procreate, blah blah blah, she preferred to put thoughts of romance and sex aside for now. And that worked most of the time. There were dreams, of course; just as there were some of her classmates—Alice Chung, for example, and Corey Hale—who were sometimes incredible distractions. Not that either of them knew it, of course. Not that Gutsy herself obsessed on them. Much. There were more important things to focus on.
After a few minutes of silent stillness inside the barn, Sombra got up, went outside to the trough, drank, and came back inside. He lay down with his head between his paws and watched them with his smoky eyes.
“About last night,” Spider began. “It was really close. If the town guards found out that your mom came back, they’d have—”
“I know,” she said tightly. “It’s the law. If someone comes back like that, they have to use a sp-spike.” She tripped over the word.
Luckily—if luck was even a word that applied—no one but Gutsy and her friends knew that Mama had returned. Spider and Alethea had been over, sitting with her through the hours of emptiness in the Gomez house. When the two of them kissed her good night, and went outside, they’d all seen the nightmare figure in the front yard. It took all three of them to wrestle Mama to the ground, gag her, drag her inside, and tie her up again. And put a new shroud around her.
It was awful. As a thing to have to do, and as a memory that persisted with brutal clarity.
Gutsy knew Spider was reliving it too. He didn’t have any blood relations, and Mama had loved Gutsy’s friends, as they loved her.
Silence owned them both for a while. It was broken only by the slow, rhythmic crunching of horse teeth on hay.
“It’s my fault,” said Spider.
Gutsy glanced at him. “What? What’s your fault?”
“Your mom,” he said in a small voice. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. I think it’s my fault. When we were getting her ready, you know? Doing her shroud and all. I was never good at knots. I—”
“No,” said Gutsy firmly.
“Really, I think—”
“Listen, it’s not your fault and it’s not my fault. Someone dug her up,” she said, and it stopped Spider’s words as surely as if she’d slapped him. His mouth worked but no words came out. Gutsy nodded. “I saw the shovel marks.” She described what she’d found at the cemetery. Spider gaped at her.
“That’s insane. Who would do that? I mean . . . why?”
The heat of rage that had burned in Gutsy all day had changed. It did not go out but was instead replaced by a coldness that ran so deep it vanished into blackness.
“That,” she said, “is what I’m going to find out.”
As she said that, her fingers gripped the handle of her machete. Spider swallowed hard, but Sombra gave a single, sharp whuff. In that moment, he looked less like either a coyote or dog and more like a wolf.
PART TWO
RECLAMATION, CALIFORNIA
ONE WEEK EARLIER . . .
THE VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAINS
Sweet is the memory of distant friends!
Like the mellow rays of the departing sun,
it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.
—WASHINGTON IRVING
12
THE ONLY THING ABOUT BEING sixteen that felt different to Benny Imura was that fewer people—living or dead—tried to kill him. He put that in the win category.
He sat in the shadow of a massive black oak with his best friend, Lou Chong. They both had bottles of root beer, and the remains of a big lunch were scattered around them like the leavings of hungry wolves. Chong held up a finger and Benny, attentive, listened to a very long, complicated, and deeply noxious belch. Benny nodded approval. They said nothing for a long time.
The tree stood in a corner of one of the newer fields in the town of Reclamation. The tree was nice, the town itself was nice, the name of the town was stupid. Benny and Chong agreed on that, as did pretty much everyone they knew. Sure, sure, it had all sorts of meaning because the people who lived here, in fact, had reclaimed all this land from what had once been called the Rot and Ruin. Now, instead of the cramped old town of Mountainside—which had been burned down after a war with the Reaper army—with its population of eight thousand people, the new town was home to twice that many, and more came in all the time. There was room for all the newcomers, too, and that had been part of the plan, to not only reclaim the land, but reclaim the concept of civilization.
Benny was cool with the concept. He’d fought very hard to make that a possibility. He’d sacrificed a lot, and Chong had sacrificed more. All his friends had.
But the name was still stupid.
“How about Kingstown?” suggested Chong, coming back to the topic they had been discussing off and on since breakfast.
“Why?” asked Benny. There were a few crumbs of hamburger meat on the plate and he was on a search-and-destroy mission, leaving no bite behind.
“ ’Cause we saved the town and maybe the whole freaking world, man. We’re kings. There wouldn’t even be a town if it wasn’t for us.”
“Yeah,” said Benny, “no. I pretty much don’t see anyone going for that.”
Chong gave a philosophical sigh. “Small minds.”
They watched their girlfriends, Nix Riley—she of the countless freckles, devious green eyes, and fiery red hair—and Lilah—the snowy-haired killer with a to-die-for smile. When she smiled, at least, which was rare, but always like a burst of sunlight on a cloudy day. They were throwing a Frisbee back and forth. Benny and Chong had bailed out of the game to eat, but the girls never seemed to tire. They whipped the flying disk at each other with incredible force, and it always looked like they were trying to commit murder. Benny’s hand still stung like crazy from catching—or trying to catch—the throws.
The game was typical of the way those two always were, whether it was Frisbee, softball, touch football, or recreational sparring with bamboo swords. They were friends, but there was some kind of weird tension always bubbling below the surface that neither Benny nor Chong could figure out. Maybe it was competitiveness, or maybe they were both a little crazy. Chong said a case could be made either way. No one who watched the intensity of the game ever asked to join. The fun was likely outweighed by potential crippling injuries.
Benny looked for more scraps of food, found none, made a disgusted noise, and sipped his pop. “Boringsville,” he said. “Tell me that isn’t the best name for this place.”
Chong thought about it, lips pursed judiciously, then nodded. “I like it.”
“Or, how ’bout Mindnumbinglydullistan?”
“That could work,” agreed Chong.
A few sun-drowsy bees flew past, buzzing close to the pop bottles, then flew off in disappointment.
“What I don’t get,” said Benny, “is why, or even how, we’re bored. I mean . . . wasn’t peace and tranquility and all that stuff why we went out into the Ruin in the first place?”
“ ‘All that stuff,’ ” echoed Chong, a half smile on his lips.