Broken Lands Read online

  “Not going to hurt you if you don’t try and hurt me,” said Gutsy.

  The coydog looked at her warily. It moved nervously and she saw that it was a male.

  “You look like crap, boy,” said Gutsy. “You got any bites on you?”

  The dog cocked his head sideways as if considering those words. Gutsy saw that there was blood dried black around a deep cut on his neck below the thick leather collar. She tightened her grip on the machete. Dogs couldn’t become los muertos, as far as she knew, but the world kept changing and it never changed for the better. There were living-dead wild hogs and stories about other kinds of animals that had crossed over and crossed right back again. Father Esteban said he saw a donkey who was dead but walking around. Spider and his foster-sister, Alethea, swore they’d seen a dead puma chase down a deer and kill it. Old Mr. Urrea said that he’d seen a bunch of los muertos gibbons in the San Antonio Zoo. The world was broken, so nothing could be taken for granted.

  The coydog took a tentative step forward, wobbling and uncertain. He whimpered a little and stood there, trembling. Gutsy kept her weapon ready, even though the pitiful sight of the animal twisted a knife in her heart. The long scars on the dog’s back and sides looked like whip marks; and the marks on his face were from dog bites. No doubt about it. Spider used to have an old pit bull who had the same kind of scars, remnants from dogfights. It made Gutsy angry and confused to think that anyone would want to make dogs fight each other, sometimes to the death. Wasn’t there already enough pain and death in the world? People, she thought—and not for the first time—were often cruel and stupid.

  The coydog took another step, and Gutsy held her ground. The animal was maybe fifty pounds and she was ninety, and a lot of it was lean muscle. She knew how fast she was and how skilled she was with the machete.

  “Don’t make me do something bad here, dog,” she said.

  The coydog whined again.

  He took one more step . . . and then his eyes rolled high and white and he fell over and lay still.

  Gutsy squatted down, the machete across her knees, and waited. Patience and observation were important to her. She hated doing anything without thinking it through. Even mercy shouldn’t be allowed to run faster than common sense.

  She watched the dog’s ribs, saw the steady rise and fall, the slight shudder with each breath. The birds circled lower, their shadows drifting across the graves and across the dog’s body. Gutsy didn’t care about them, either. Birds wouldn’t attack her; and even if they did, she had her weapon.

  The dog continued to breathe—badly, with effort—but it was all he did.

  Gutsy straightened and walked in a big circle around the animal. Twice. The first time she looked outward, making sure that the dog was not part of some elaborate and nasty trick. The second time she looked at the dog, watching for signs of movement. Dogs didn’t play tricks as clever as this, not even smart dogs.

  Finally she went to the cart, fetched a bottle of water and her first aid kit, gave Gordo a reassuring pat on the neck, then went back and knelt by the dog. She put on a pair of canvas work gloves before she touched him, though. Then she checked him over. As soon as she touched him, the dusty gray color of his coat changed and she realized that he was actually a dark-haired dog covered in ash. She brushed a lot of it away, revealing a coat that was almost as black as shadows. The coat made him look heavier than he was.

  “You don’t have a lot of meat on you, do you?” she asked. “Los muertos wouldn’t get more than a snack off you.”

  A vulture shadow swept past again and Gutsy glanced up. They were close and hopeful and hungry.

  “Not today, Señor Buitre,” she said. There was no anger in her voice. Vultures were being vultures. This was what they did when they could. “Go find something else. Vete, vete.”

  The bird didn’t go away. He kept circling.

  It struck Gutsy that the shadow of the vulture was actually less dark than the coydog, as if he was more of a real shadow. Some of the lines came drifting to her from an old song her mother used to sing. “Sombra.” The shadow.

  “No,” she told herself firmly. “You are not going to name him. No way. That’s stupid. Don’t even think of getting attached.”

  Gutsy poured a little water on her gloved fingers and touched them to the dog’s mouth, moistening the lips and the lolling tongue. The animal twitched and, after a few moments, took a weak lick. If the coydog minded the roughness of the gloves, he didn’t seem to want to complain. Gutsy dribbled more water and the dog licked and licked. His eyes opened and looked at her with a mixture of fear, need, and a pathetic desperation.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s all okay, Sombra.”

  Then she heard her own words as if they were an echo. Sombra. She winced. But despite her firm decision to the contrary, Sombra he became.

  After a little more water she capped the bottle and set it aside, then continued her examination of the coydog’s injuries. There were a lot of them, and she wasn’t positive the animal had much life left in him. Maybe all he needed was a little kindness before death came whispering. Gutsy could understand that.

  What mattered most, though, was the fact that none of the many injuries seemed to be from human bites or boar bites. There was no evident fever, either. Sombra was hurt, but none of his wounds were infected. Which meant he wasn’t infected.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s something, anyway.”

  The leather collar was buckled on, but the fittings were rusty and it took Gutsy a few minutes to unfasten it. Removing it revealed a vicious red band of hairless skin, and it sickened her to realize that the dog had probably worn that collar all its life. She studied it, noting the workmanship to determine whether it was from before the End or something made in the after times.

  “After,” she murmured, talking to herself as she often did. “Good leatherwork, though.” It was two inches wide, a quarter-inch thick, and ringed by sharp studs that had been painted flat black. There was a name burned into the band between two studs. KILLER.

  She gave a dismissive snort. Stupid name. The kind of unimaginative name an actual killer would hang on a dog forced to fight for its life against other dogs, and she was pretty sure that’s what had happened. She thought of a few names she’d like to burn into a leather collar and cinch around the neck of whoever used to own this dog. None of them were nice names. Some of them might have gotten her slapped by . . .

  Mama.

  And just that fast it was all back.

  The reason Gutsy was here. The grief, the bottomless pain. She closed her eyes and clenched the collar in two strong brown fists. She heard a sound and whirled to see a vulture come fluttering down to land on the wooden side of her work cart.

  “No!” cried Gutsy, and without thinking about it flung the collar at the bird. She had a good arm, and both heartbreak and anger put velocity into the throw. The collar struck the bird and it squawked in pain and alarm and fled back to the sky. Gutsy ran to the cart and peered in, dreading what she might find; but the sheets were undamaged. The bird hadn’t had time to peck through.

  The figure inside the shroud twitched and struggled and moaned.

  Mama.

  Gutsy rested her forehead against the cart and tried not to cry again. She pounded the side of her fist against the wood slats. Once, twice. Again. The pain steadied her. Slowly, but it steadied her.

  She pushed off from the cart and looked down at the collar, which lay almost at her feet. Whoever had made it knew what they were doing. For all that, it disgusted her. She studied the rope. It had not been cut. The end was frayed and gnarled, and she figured the dog had chewed through it. For reasons she did not understand at the time, Gutsy picked it up and tossed it into the back of the wagon. Then she turned to see Sombra struggling to get up.

  She stood and watched it, offering no help at the moment.

  The coydog took a shaky step toward her, paused, and gave a few small, weak, hopeful wags of its tail
.

  “Um, no,” said Gutsy firmly, “don’t even try. I’ll give you some water and something to eat, but that’s it. We’re not doing this.”

  The dog continued to wag his tail.

  “Not a chance,” she insisted. “No way. Uh-uh.”

  6

  THE DOG SAT IN THE shade of the cottonwood, chewing on strips of beef jerky and taking sloppy drinks from water poured into a tin cup.

  Sombra watched as Gutsy slid her mother from the cart and dragged her clumsily her across the ground to the grave, swung her wrapped legs over the edge, jumped down, and pulled the struggling, thrashing body down into the hole. The dog watched with eyes that blinked with its own pain every time it moved. The gray eyes watched as Gutsy climbed out of the grave, got a shovel from the cart, and spent two hours filling it all in and tamping it down. The coydog watched as Gutsy gathered wildflowers, tied them into a bunch with a piece of twine, and placed them on the grave. She straightened the heavy wooden cross and touched the name LUISA GOMEZ, which she had carved across it with loving care. The coydog sat in silent vigil as Gutsy sat cross-legged on the ground, dirty face in her blistered hands, and wept as if the world was cracking apart.

  It was a long afternoon.

  7

  GUTSY WAS LESS THAN A hundred yards away from the cemetery when she had an idea.

  She hopped down and went around to the side of the wagon, where she had racks for long tools and a locked chest of supplies. Gutsy had remodeled the cart herself, just as she’d done throughout the house where she and Mama lived. Tools of all kinds, ready at hand; and lots of hacks—tricks that solved everyday problems. She reached under the side of the cart, located the lever that opened a small compartment, and removed a key, used it to unlock the chest, and replaced it. It was her habit to put her tools away in their proper places so they were always where she needed to find them again.

  The chest held many useful items, including several large spools of fishing line. She pocketed one spool, took a heavy-duty office stapler, and closed the chest. She emptied a pouch of some useful road trash she’d collected—plastic cups, a broken flashlight, and so on—then slung the empty pouch over her shoulder.

  She paused for a while, looking around, filing details away in her mind. There were only two entrances to the place that could accommodate a cart. The main gate faced southwest toward what was left of Laredo, and beyond that to the Rio Grande and Mexico. The rear gate looked northeast, toward San Antonio. Los muertos owned both cities. The cemetery was twenty miles from the outskirts of Laredo and more than one hundred fifty from San Antonio.

  Gutsy figured that whoever had dug up Mama would have used a cart or wagon to carry her back to town. The ground on the road and at the entrances was hardpan that took no impressions from hoof or wheel. If someone returned tonight, Gutsy wanted to know from which direction they came. The rear entrance was framed by sawed-off telephone poles and a high crossbar, which also had the name HOPE painted on it. Gutsy unspooled some of the fishing line and stapled the end to one side of the post at about six inches from the ground, then strung it across and fastened the other end. The line was thin and barely noticeable in daylight, so it would be invisible at night. Then she went to one of the more recent graves and filled the pouch with loose dirt from the small mound left over after the body had been interred. She spread this loosely across the road on both sides of the fishing line. Even if the wind blew some away, there would be enough left to take a print. She returned to the main gate and repeated the process.

  She trudged back to the cart, put the stapler and spool into the chest and locked it, shook the last bits of dirt from the pouch, and replaced the debris she’d collected. Gordo and the dog watched her with curious, patient eyes. She climbed up onto the seat and Gordo began walking without being told. The coydog jumped up onto the wagon and stood on the seat, his face inches from hers. He did not growl or whine or make any sound at all, but he stood there as if waiting for her to say something.

  “I can’t have a dog,” said Gutsy. “I’m sorry.”

  Sombra wagged his tail, and then he lay down at her feet and went straight to sleep. Or at least pretended to.

  “I can’t have a dog,” repeated Gutsy. Sombra began to snore.

  Gutsy sighed, and the three of them left the cemetery behind. The rocking of the wagon made the coydog sway back and forth, and on each pass his fur brushed against Gutsy’s leg. Every now and then he shivered as if caught in a dream of pain. A few times he whimpered softly and Gutsy reached down to pet him, though it was hard to find places to touch Sombra where it wouldn’t hurt. His injuries were dreadful.

  The dog woke once when the wagon wheels rumbled through a runoff wash. Recent rain had smeared the wash with mud, which had then dried hard beneath the Texas sun. When she’d come out this way from town, Gutsy had not paid much attention to the ground, but now she slowed to look at it. There were footprints in the damp earth. Human prints: all sizes, male and female, in shoes and bare feet. Not a few random prints like she often saw to mark where one of los muertos had passed. No, there were hundreds of sets of prints, overlapping one another in a chaotic pattern. Clearly a large number of people had passed this way, but the markings were confusing. First, why on earth would so many people go walking through muck like this? The rain had stopped in the middle of the night two days ago, which meant these marks were made right after that. Why would a crowd of people be walking through the desert at night or in the early morning?

  If, she thought, they were people. Gutsy got down and looked at the marks more closely, and found something else. On the fringes of the mass of prints were others. Boot prints. The spacing and angles told her that the people who’d left those were not staggering or shambling, but walking with a deliberate, controlled pace. Always to the outside of the main body. Strange.

  The footprints faded out completely as they left the muddy bottom of the wash and went up onto higher, firmer ground.

  Very strange. Something about it niggled at her, making her feel uneasy, though she couldn’t quite understand why. She climbed back onto the wagon and they moved on. Other thoughts pulled her attention away, and after a few miles she forgot about the prints.

  Instead Gutsy thought about who would have done something as intensely horrible and mean-spirited as digging up her mother. A few names occurred to her, but it seemed too weird, too extreme even for some of the jerks in town. So . . . what was the point?

  That speculation gave a few violent shoves in the direction of the memories of the last two nights. Gutsy was practical and strong, but she did not want to relive those memories. Not now and maybe not ever. No way.

  No way in the world.

  And yet that was what she thought about all the way home.

  8

  THE WAGON RUMBLED THROUGH SEVERAL abandoned settlements—Desert Rose, Cactus Flats, and Shelter, which was short for Field Shelter Station Eighteen. Nothing moved there but wind and dust and the slow shadows that chased the sun.

  There were forty other makeshift camps Gutsy knew about scattered around out here, and the ruins of abandoned towns and cities, too. Many of these camps had been thrown together hastily during the crisis, overpopulated and undersupplied, and eventually either overrun by the dead or consumed by disease from within. There were a few other camps along the Rio Grande that were still holding on, but none as big as New Alamo.

  Lately more and more of the settlements were being overrun by bigger and bigger swarms of the dead. There were also the ravagers—gangs of infected, savage men and women who were slowly becoming living dead but who retained enough of their intelligence to use weapons and organize attacks. Some people in town believed those ravagers could control the mindless dead.

  The Broken Lands were broken indeed.

  Some people even claimed there was a fully operational military base hidden underground, but Gutsy wasn’t sure if she believed that. Why would they hide? Maybe there were reasons before the End, back when
things like “politics,” “war,” and “national security” mattered, but why now? Why hide when people were in short supply and survival depended on working together, sharing the dwindling resources? It made no sense. Besides, Gutsy spent a lot of time out in the Broken Lands, and she’d never found a single trace of a military base. Nothing except dozens of abandoned Abrams tanks, rusting Bradley fighting vehicles, burned-out army Humvees, and a lot of skeletons. No, she concluded, the army and all the other branches of the military had died along with 99 percent of the people living in America.

  That was sad for a lot of reasons. Partly because it was proof that mankind, for all its technology, had managed to lose a war against an enemy that had no weapons, no organization, no strategies. All the dead had were numbers and the fact that they terrified everyone. They weren’t aliens from another planet or even enemies from a foreign land. Los muertos were us. That was the truth everyone had to face. The monsters those soldiers had to fight were neighbors, friends, civilians, fellow soldiers. They were anyone who died, no matter how they died. Gutsy had heard so many stories about soldiers who simply stopped being able to pull their triggers because they recognized the faces of the creatures coming to kill them.

  Before this week, Gutsy could sympathize. Now, after Mama, she could empathize. She could feel what those soldiers had felt. She could understand how the war was lost.

  She was still four miles from New Alamo when Sombra suddenly sat up and stared into the distance to the left of the road. He gave a low growl, and the hair stood up like a brush all along his spine.