Rot & Ruin

31

THEY RODE HARD ALL MORNING, PUSHING THE HORSES TO THE EDGE OF endurance. Several times the thunder of their hooves attracted zoms, but all horses shied away from zoms and were trained to alert their riders. Besides, the shuffling zoms could not catch up to the fast mounts, and even if they did, the carpet coats each horse wore kept the animals safe while Tom and Benny used their swords to chop the monsters down.

It was all terrifying to Benny, but the dread of what could be happening to Nix was far worse, and he ground his teeth together and kept pace with Tom.

At first, in the coolness of dawn, the horses could manage the grueling pace, but as the sun rose, the temperature soared, and the horses began blowing and wheezing. Foam flecked their mouths, and under the lightweight carpet coats, their flanks were streaked with sweat. Finally Tom slowed their pace to a walk and then dismounted. Chief, the big Appaloosa, almost visibly sighed in relief.

“What are you doing?” demanded Benny. “We have to keep going.”

“If we keep this pace, we’ll kill these animals and then where will we be? We have to give them some water and then walk them for a while. Then they’ll be ready for another run.”

It was maddening to Benny, but he knew Tom was right. He slid from Apache’s saddle, secretly grateful, because his legs felt like they were stretched out of shape. With every step it felt like there was sandpaper on the inside of his pants. Riding ponies around town was no kind of preparation for riding a big horse. His hips felt like his thighs had been forcibly unscrewed, and after all the awkward bouncing in the saddle, he was pretty sure there was no chance he’d ever father children. He tried not to squeak when he spoke.

They took a bowl from Tom’s pack, filled it from one of the canteens, and let the horses drink. Then they walked on, the horses following along as the sun became an inferno overhead.

On foot it was easier to follow the trail, too. At first the footprints were easy to spot, since they ran in a line from the gate into the foothills, but the higher they climbed, the more obscure the prints became. At one point Tom dropped prostrate on the hard ground, and peered sideways at some marks that didn’t look like they were anything at all-at least not to Benny. Tom kept frowning and squinting and grunting.

Benny stared at him, annoyed. He was exhausted from total lack of sleep, and flies were threatening to pick him up and carry him off. And every time the wind blew through the trees, he swore he could hear Nix calling out to him.

“Are you actually doing anything down there?” Benny asked.

“No,” Tom muttered. “I’m just screwing around to piss you off.”

Benny gave that a minute, then said, “Sorry.”

Tom said, “I’m looking at the footprints to see if there’s a clear direction.”

Footprints? Benny thought. All he could see was dried mud and bare patches of rock. He looked from the ground, off into the direction they had been following; a twisted course through empty foothills that wandered south by southeast. The heavy rains of the previous night had soaked all of the ground, and Tom had been able to follow the foot trails leading from Mountainside. But as the morning wore on, Tom became less certain.

Tom got to his feet and slapped dust from his clothes. Even after the rains, the top dirt had dried to powder in a matter of hours.

“What’s wrong?” Benny asked.

“Here’s the problem,” Tom said. “The rain last night was really heavy, and it came down too fast for the soil to absorb it all, which means that there was runoff. This pass was probably like a small river for a while, with all the water coming down these slopes. Whoever passed this way came through just after the storm, but while there was still some runoff, and that runoff smeared the boot prints pretty thoroughly.”

“What’s that mean for us?”

Tom took a hefty swig of his canteen. “This isn’t just an accident, either. Charlie’s one slick, sneaky son of a gun. So far he’s doubled back on his trail three times, used brush to try and wipe out his tracks, crossed water, and now has deliberately gone out of his way to cross hardpan, because this kind of terrain doesn’t hold a print very long or very well.”

“So are we catching up or chasing our butts out here?”

“Little of both.” Tom was smiling when he said it.

“So you didn’t lose the trail?”

“Sure, I lost it. Several times… but every time he shakes us off his trail, it’s just where you think it’ll be again. Charlie has no respect for anyone’s intelligence other than his own. He must think Captain Strunk is after him.”

“Isn’t the captain smart?”

“Huh? Oh, sure… But Strunk’s not a tracker. Charlie’s confusing the trail for someone who doesn’t know the same tricks. Maybe he’d play it differently if he knew another bounty hunter was tracking him.”

“Are you sure he doesn’t?” Benny said, and for a moment Tom’s smile flickered.

Tom looked at his brother for a second, pursed his lips, and then turned in a slow circle, re-examining the trails. “We have three possible routes through these hills that are safe. And by that I mean that the zoms have been pretty well cleared out. This pass has become a kind of trade route, and the armed guards the traders use usually go through here and chop down any of the dead they find. They’re quiet about it, too, so as not to draw more zoms into the area. Follow me?”

Benny nodded.

“So the footprints we’re seeing here are almost certainly human. Question is whether these are older prints that were mostly, but not entirely, erased by runoff, or prints left by men moving fast but not carrying heavy loads. The last of the runoff blurred the edges and in this area here, the topsoil is thinner, because we’re coming to some rocky areas.”

“Okay, but if people came through here recently, then it has to be Charlie and the Hammer, right?”

Tom didn’t answer right away. “What bothers me most about it is that I’m not seeing small footprints.”

“Nix’s?”

He nodded. “We saw her prints earlier, but I haven’t seen one in the last hour. Not one.”

“What if one of them’s carrying her?”

Tom considered. “If the ground was softer, we could make that call, because one of the male footprints would be deeper. You might be right, but I’m not sure, because the footprints I’m seeing here look like they’re from several different pairs of shoes.”

“More than Charlie and the Hammer?”

“Yes.”

“The Mekong brothers?”

“Could be them, which means we’re hunting four men rather than two.” Tom started to say something else, but stopped himself. Benny caught it, though.

“What?”

“There are a couple of other options, Benny, and we have to be ready for them.”

“What are they?”

“The option I like is that Nix somehow escaped. If that’s the case, her trail could have split off at any time. If she’s free, let’s hope she continues to head for high ground instead of trying to go back to town.”

“Because there aren’t as many zoms high up, right?”

“That, and higher up, there’s always the chance of finding food and shelter. There are some monks out here. If she runs into one of them, she’ll be fine. They’ll take care of her and get word to me.”

“What’s the other option? The one you don’t like.”

Tom met his eyes. “There are a lot of places out here to hide a body, Benny.”

There was nothing Benny wanted to say to that. On some superstitious level, he felt that to respond to it would be to increase the chances that it might be possible, and he could not allow that thought to take hold in either his heart or head. Nix’s notebook was still in his back pocket, and he touched it like it was a talisman, to ward off any