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  This is for George A. Romero (1940–2017).

  When I was a kid I saw your first film,

  Night of the Living Dead, on its world premiere.

  As an adult, I got to work with you on the last

  project you completed before you left us,

  the anthology we coedited, Nights of the Living Dead.

  You are the Godfather of the Living Dead, now and forever.

  I miss you, my friend.

  And—as always—for Sara Jo.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to some real-world people who were willing to enter the world of the living dead with me. Thanks to my literary agent, Sara Crowe of Pippin Properties; David Gale, Laurent Linn, and the whole team at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Thanks to my brilliant and talented assistant, Dana Fredsti. Thanks to Dr. John Cmar, Director, Division of Infectious Diseases, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore; Joe McKinney, San Antonio PD; Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex (Atria Books); ethnobotanist Dr. Wade Davis; comparative physiologist Mike Harris; Dr. Richard Tardell, specialist in emergency medicine (retired); Dr. Nancy Martin-Rickerhauser; thanks to Rhian Lockard, Gail Guth-Nichols, Carmen Elisa, Rachael Lavin, Nikki Guerlain, Chris Newton, Gabrielle Faust, Rachel Maleski, and Vinessa Olp; thanks to J. Dianne Dotson; thanks to Stacey Hood, Chris Wren, Dyer Wilk, Kelly W. Collier, and K. R. Chin; Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books); and thanks to some of my real-world friends for allowing me to write them into this odd little tale—Solomon Jones, Randy Kirsch, Alethea Kontis, Karen Peak, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Jamie Ford.

  PART ONE

  NEW ALAMO, TEXAS

  LATE AUGUST

  THE STILLNESS

  It is the secret of the world

  that all things subsist and do not die,

  but retire a little from sight

  and afterwards return again.

  —RALPH WALDO EMERSON, ESSAYS: SECOND SERIES

  1

  GABRIELLA “GUTSY” GOMEZ BURIED HER mother on wednesday. And again on Friday.

  This was the world and that’s how it was.

  2

  THE SIGN OVER THE CEMETERY read “Hope.”

  Gutsy kept trying to believe in the sign, but every day it was getting harder to understand what the word even meant. Hope for what? Hope for who? Hope for where?

  She stood in the road, one hand on the bridle of the weary, patient old horse; her other hand on the broad-bladed machete that hung from her belt. All the metal fittings on knife and bridle had been sanded down and painted in flat colors. There was nothing reflective on anything she wore, on the horse, or on the work cart. Reflections were dangerous this far from town. The wheels of the cart and the harness strapped to the horse were greased where they needed grease and padded where they needed padding. Reflection drew one kind of trouble and noise drew another.

  “Come on, Gordo,” she said, and the horse bobbed his head and followed, big hooves clomping softly on the dusty ground. He knew the way as well as she did. Maybe better, since he had taken his three previous owners here over the years. Gutsy’s neighbors, Old Henry and Jackie Darling, then her mother. Twice. Gutsy wondered if Gordo would pull her cold body here someday. The horse had maybe two or three years left. Gutsy doubted she had that much time herself.

  “Hope,” she said. “Right.”

  She turned and looked at the silent form that lay wrapped in sheets in the back of the wagon.

  “We’re here, Mama,” she murmured. “We’re back.”

  The grave was on the far side of the graveyard, in cool shadows beneath the sheltering arms of an ancient cottonwood tree. Gutsy had picked that spot because it was quiet and there were some wildflowers growing between the tree’s gnarled roots. As she approached, though, it was obvious that the tranquility had been torn apart. As the ground had been torn.

  She stopped and studied the scene, frowning.

  “What the . . . ?” she breathed, and a heartbeat later the machete was in her fist. Gordo gave a nervous whinny and stamped his feet.

  The grave was open, yawning like a black mouth in the dark soil.

  But it was wrong.

  When someone came back and somehow fought free of their shroud and clawed up through all that dirt, the scene was a mess. The surface would be chopped up, dirt thrown everywhere, long scratch marks to show where the cold fingers had pulled the body out of the grave. Gutsy had seen that many times.

  This was not like that.

  The dirt was heaped in two piles on either side of the hole. Neat piles. As Gutsy crept close, eyes flicking left and right across the cemetery, she knew that her mother had not done this. She stopped by the edge of the grave, at the end where she had laid her mother’s head down, and saw smooth patches on the sides of the hole. Shovel marks.

  Someone had dug her mother up.

  The soiled white shroud lay across one hump of dirt, and it had clearly been sliced open by a sharp knife. The rope Gutsy had tied around her mother’s ankles, knees, wrists, and arms lay like severed snakes, their ends showing clean cuts.

  Gutsy hefted her machete, the heavy blade offering only cold comfort. It would protect her—as it had many times—but not against everything. Not against a swarm of the dead. Not against a gang of the living. Not against a gun.

  She turned in a slow circle, eyes narrowed as she looked at everything, accepting nothing at face value, making no foolish assumptions. Ready.

  Inside her chest, Gutsy’s heart felt like it had already been attacked and gravely wounded. She had barely begun to grieve for her mother, had not even taken the first steps forward as an orphan, when her mama had shown up in the yard last night. That had been bad. So bad.

  If she thought Wednesday night had been the worst thing she had ever experienced or ever felt, she was wrong. Thursday night was so much worse.

  So much.

  And now, Friday morning was spinning out of control. A pretty morning here in south Texas had become a storm of ugliness, and it was only going to get worse. She had no doubt at all about that. So much worse.

  Someone had dug her mother up, had freed her from the shroud and ropes, and either set her on the road back to town, or brought her there. The former possibility was thin because there were gates and guards, but strange things happened sometimes. The dead, though mostly unable to think, occasionally found ways back into town. That was why so many people thought there was something unnatural going on. Demons, maybe. Or ghosts.

  Gutsy didn’t believe in those kinds of monsters. Never had. Last night, though, she had come dangerously close to believing in the supernatural. She’d convinced herself that Mama had somehow found her way back home; that, despite being dead, Mama had known where her home was. Gutsy knew it was wishful thinking, but she’d clung to it for as long as she could.

  Now, in the harsh light of day, the second possibility seemed far more likely. That someone alive had done this.

  Normally, having solid, common-sense ground to stand on would have been a comfort; it would have calmed her. Not now. No way.

  Who would do such a thing?

  Why would anyone do this?

  A hot breeze blew through the cemetery, picking up dust and pieces of dried weeds. It blew past her, rasping acro
ss her face and then moving on, howling its way into the Broken Lands beyond the wall. Gordo whinnied again.

  Nothing else moved.

  There was no one else there. It took a long time for Gutsy to accept and believe that, but after five long minutes she lowered her machete. The blade fell from her hand, landing with a dull thud. She squatted down beside the empty grave, wrapped her arms around her head, and began to cry.

  Some of the tears were bitter.

  Some were as hot as the rage that burned in her chest.

  The world was full of monsters. Gutsy knew that as well as anyone left alive. Not all those monsters were the living dead.

  That made it all so much worse.

  3

  THE MEMORIES CAME TO HER like a swarm of monsters. Grabbing at her, holding her down, biting her, making her bleed. Making her scream.

  Two days ago . . .

  “I’m sorry, Gabriella,” whispered her mother. “Please forgive me.”

  Her voice was so thin, so faint, as if she was already gone.

  Gutsy sat on the floor beside her mother’s cot. The air was thick with the smell of soaps and disinfectant and aromatic herbs, but the smell of dying was too strong to be pushed aside. Nothing could stop the infection. Nothing. Not alcohol, not what few antibiotics Gutsy and her friends could scavenge. It raged beneath her mother’s skin, set fire to her blood, and was taking her away, moment by moment.

  “It’s okay, Mama,” said Gutsy, careful not to squeeze too hard. Her mother’s hand was hot, but it was frail and felt like it could break at any second.

  Gutsy’s words were muffled by the mask she wore, and she hated that the doctor made her wear gloves. No skin-to-skin contact, and even with those precautions Gutsy had to take a scalding-hot shower afterward. Mama had insisted too, because she had been a nurse at the town hospital. Not before the End, but trained by Max Morton, the town doctor after the dead rose. She’d been part of a team of hastily trained nurses who tried to form a kind of wall between the people in the town and the constant wave of death that always seemed ready to crash down. Death never rested.

  In a weird, weird way, all this might have been easier to accept if Mama had been bitten by one of los muertos vivientes.

  The living dead.

  At least then Gutsy could have understood and even accepted it. Kind of. When los muertos rose and attacked the living, half the population on earth had died from bites.

  Not Mama. She was part of the other half. The ones who won their fights, protected their families, survived all the countless hardships, only to be dragged down by something too small to fight, too tiny to kill with a machete or club or any weapon you could hold. A disease. A bacterium.

  What was even worse was that it was a disease that had nearly been wiped out in the century before the End, before the world stopped. It had begun creeping back, Gutsy knew, because so many people used antibiotics the wrong way before the End—taking them for viruses even though they didn’t work for those kinds of sickness. And taking them only until symptoms went away, which wasn’t the same thing as being cured. The antibiotics weakened but did not kill bacteria, and then the bacteria mutated and came back stronger.

  Since the End, so many old diseases had come back in new and more terrible forms of smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, measles, so many others. And the one that was killing Mama . . . tuberculosis.

  Despite the presence of Dr. Morton and two other nurses—besides Mama—there wasn’t much in the way of useful medical equipment, no way to get in front of the disease. The old FEMA laboratory near Laredo was surrounded by tens of thousands of the living dead and had been overrun. The pharmacies in that town and in San Antonio had long since been stripped of drugs. The few antibiotics Dr. Morton gave Mama slowed the sickness for a while but didn’t stop it. The disease kept going, attacking with the unthinking, uncaring, brutal relentlessness of los muertos vivientes but without any of the living dead’s vulnerabilities.

  Night after night after night Gutsy sat with her mother, or sat in the next room, listening to endless fits of wet coughing. Listening to labored breathing. Praying to God. Praying to every saint she thought would listen. Sometimes burying her face in her pillow so her screams wouldn’t wake poor Mama.

  So often her delirious mother would come out of a coughing fit, or a fevered doze, and say the same thing. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what, Mama?” asked Gutsy, but she never got an answer. Her mother was too far gone by then and was almost never lucid. Gutsy could feel her drifting out of reach, going away.

  As often as she dared, Gutsy put on her gloves and mask and went in to sit, holding that frail hand. Feeling like a little child. Feeling old and used up.

  Feeling hopeless.

  That was almost the worst part. Gutsy was so good at so many things. She could fix anything, build anything, solve anything. She was a thinker and a fixer.

  She could not fix her mother.

  She could not think of anything to say. Or do.

  All that was left to her was to be there.

  To be a witness.

  Then there was that moment when Mama’s fingers tightened on Gutsy’s and she said, “I’m so sorry, Gabriella.” And this time, when Gutsy asked why, her mother seemed to swim back enough to answer, but the answer made no real sense. “The rat catchers are coming, mi corazón. Be careful. If they come for you . . . promise me you’ll run away and hide.”

  It was so clear, so complete a thought, and yet it made no sense to Gutsy.

  “What do you mean, Mama?” she begged.

  Mama blinked her eyes, and for a moment they were clear but filled with bad lights, with panic. “Ten cuidado. Mucho cuidado. Los cazadores de ratas vienen.”

  Take care, take great care . . . the hunters of rats are coming.

  The rat catchers.

  Gutsy tried to get her mother to explain what, if anything, that meant.

  Then the coughing started again. Worse than ever, as if her ruined throat was punishing her for speaking. The fit racked Mama and made her body thrash and arch. Gutsy held on, though.

  She held on.

  Held on.

  Even when Mama settled back down after the fit was over and did not cough again. Or gasp.

  Or anything.

  It took Gutsy a long time to understand.

  Then she pressed the hand to her chest and held it tight, hoping that she was somehow strong enough to hold Mama here, to keep her from going away.

  But Mama had already gone.

  Gutsy held on and on until the fingers of that fragile hand curled around hers again.

  “Mama . . . ?” she whispered.

  The answer was a moan.

  Not of pain. But of hunger. A deep and bottomless hunger.

  It was only then that Gutsy Gomez screamed.

  4

  MEMORIES WERE NOT GUTSY’S FRIENDS.

  As much as she wanted to remember all the things about her life that made her happy, the wound was too fresh, the hurt too raw. There was no real closure.

  Closure. That was a funny word. One she’d used so many times, just like everyone else, when death came to someone else’s house. Church sermons, graveside services, the hugs from friends and neighbors, they were supposed to help the grieving get their feet back on solid ground. They were intended to remind people who lost someone that it wasn’t them who died; it wasn’t their life that had ended. There was more living to come, and at the end of grief there would be healing, and even joy. Happiness, like all other emotions, lived on a long street, and it only required that a person walk far enough down it to find those old emotions. There would be laughter again, and peace. None of that stuff died. Sure, it had been wounded, but it endured.

  Gutsy had always understood that from a distance. She was part of the process for her friends and people on her block, and people in town.

  It was different when Mama died. The hurt seemed to live on both sides of the street, and that street was a dead end
.

  Over the last two days her best friends, Spider and Alethea, had tried to do for her what Gutsy had done for others: be there, be examples of normal life after the grieving time.

  The problem was that the memories of Mama being sick were all too new.

  Mama coming back as a monster last night tore the scab off any chance of healing. The shovel marks and the knowledge that someone had done this rubbed salt in the wounds.

  Now all Gutsy had were the memories of who and what she had lost.

  And the mysteries.

  Take great care . . . the hunters of rats are coming.

  The hunters of rats. The rat catchers.

  Rat catchers?

  Mama had said it with such force, such certainty, that it seemed to lift the words, crazy as they were, out of the well of sickness and delirium.

  The Rat Catchers. She made it definite, like it was the name of a gang or group.

  “Oh, Mama,” cried Gutsy, caving forward and hammering the mound of grave dirt with her fists. “I hate you for leaving me alone.”

  5

  IT WAS A DOG THAT snapped her out of it.

  Gutsy heard a single, short bark, and instantly she was back in the present, eyes snapping open, hand snatching up her machete as she rose, pivoting and dropping into a defensive crouch with the blade angled in front of her.

  The dog stood twenty feet away. Dusty gray, skinny, its body crisscrossed with scars old and new, with a studded leather collar around its neck and a length of frayed rope trailing a dozen feet behind it. The eyes were the color of wood smoke, and Gutsy could see that it was a coydog—a half-breed of coyote and German shepherd.

  It stared at her with frightened eyes. Its dry tongue licked at cracked lips.

  Gutsy used her free hand to wipe the tears away and clear her eyes. Behind her, Gordo struck the ground with his iron hooves and gave a shake of his big head. Gutsy heard the high, plaintive call of a carrion bird, and she glanced up to see a dozen vultures circling the spot where she and the dog stood. Whether they were drawn by the silent form wrapped in sheets in the back of the cart or by the dog, who looked more than three-quarters dead himself, Gutsy couldn’t tell. The moment stretched as she and the animal studied each other.