The Water Knife

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  More city. More life. Refugees squatting at traffic intersections, watching cars rush by. Cardboard with scrawled messages begging for work or cash, taking coins from Californians who had made the run across the border to play whatever games rich people played when a city was falling apart.

  “This is just a natural cycle. It’ll get wet again. Ten thousand years ago it was a jungle here.”

  “Newsflash for that last asshole. It was never wet. Even when we had swimming pools, it was never wet.”

  Angel’s Tesla eased through crowds, sliding down the Golden Mile, another of the Phoenix Development Board’s attempts to draw tourism: a mini-Vegas, sad and tawdry and small in comparison.

  Ahead the jumbled lines of the Taiyang Arcology glowed, attempting the magic that Case had accomplished up north with her Cypress designs. Foreign-owned, built by Chinese solar investment cash, and probably standing a better chance of survival than anything the locals had created.

  Everything looked worse than the last time Angel had been here. More dilapidated, dust-covered businesses. More broken glass. More abandoned shopping plazas and strip malls: PetSmart, Parties-to-Go, Walmart, Ford dealerships, all standing empty, glass-shattered, and gutted. Women on the corners. Boys in tight pants waving down cars at intersections, leaning in, doing whatever they needed to get a little money, to buy a little water, to keep going for another day.

  If Angel wanted, he guessed he could pick someone up for the cost of a meal, a bath, maybe a chance to clean their clothes in his hotel tub.

  Ten dollars? Twenty to tip?

  Ahead, the Hilton 6’s red logo glowed on high, a beacon shining dimly through haze, calling from the cluster of towers and businesses that still functioned amid the implosion. High ground for the apocalypse. The place to flee when it came lapping at your doorstep.

  Angel eased into the Hilton’s roundabout. The Tesla slipped through a curtain of jetted air designed to keep the dust away from the patrons. Handed the valet his key, walked through the doors.

  A blast of filtered A/C hit him, an icy wall so clean and cold that he almost stopped short at the shock of it. Angel had to force himself to keep walking, to catalog the faces of the men and women around him. Relief agency workers, drilling speculators, borderland contractors with gold teeth, smiling, the men and women who prospered in the heart of disaster.

  The Hilton 6’s interior was almost reverent in its silence. The muffled click of high heels. Italian leather wingtips. The low thrum of music coming from the bar on the far side of the atrium.

  But even here the apocalypse was taking its toll. The central fountain had been turned off since he’d last stayed. Someone had propped a stuffed camel in the dry fountain.

  A sign hung around its neck:

  I’D RATHER DRINK TEQUILA.

  A false ID and credit card later, Angel was inside his room, barricaded from the outside world by humidifiers and HEPA filters and argon-filled insulating glass.

  He stared down at the disaster of the city while local news blathered on the TV. Most of the city center was still intact, PHOENIX RISING trying not to put the lie to itself. But just across the street, an entire office tower had gone dark since he’d last been in the city. Some real estate company just giving up on being able to get the occupancy it needed, tired of paying the heating and cooling and police protection that would keep it from getting gutted.

  Inside the darkened tower Angel spied the furtive flash of a few Petzl headlamps, people working through its interior, hunting raw materials. The rats of the apocalypse, chewing into the guts of development boosterism.

  He unlocked his phone and ran his finger over the screen a second time, cracking open SNWA’s WatDev interface, a hidden and encrypted operating system within. He sent out an arrival message.

  Behind him the TV switched to national news. A bunch of crazy-ass Colorado farmers were up on top of the Blue Mesa Dam with their guns out, threatening to do whatever the hell Colorado farmers threatened to do when they were shit out of luck.

  Angel changed the channel.

  “Río de Sangre says there could be more than a hundred bodies—”

  News anchors looking flushed and interested. Camera images of a bunch of corpses found out in the desert.

  “Now I’m hearing it as more than two hundred—”

  Image of a state cop, cowboy hat and a badge on his belt.

  “All we know right now is that it was a husband-and-wife team. We don’t know how many people they promised they could get across the border.” He shrugged helplessly. “We’re still digging.”

  A knock on the door.

  Angel pulled his SIG and stepped behind the door. Unlatched it and let it open. Nobody entered.

  He stepped back, waiting. At last a man slipped into the room, bit of a gut but skinny in the legs and arms, older than when Angel had last seen him. Julio, holding a gun as well.

  “Boom,” Angel whispered.

  Julio startled, then broke into a wide smile. He dropped his gun hand, and his shoulders slumped with relief.

  “God damn, ése, it’s good to see you,” he said. “God damn.” He shoved the pistol back into his coat and shut the door. He grabbed Angel in a bear hug. “God damn, it’s good to see you.”

  “I hear it’s been rough,” Angel said as they separated.

  Julio blew out his breath. “This place…” He shook his head. “You know when we worked together, it was easy, right?” He waved at Angel. “I mean, look at you. You took a knife in the neck, but at least you knew exactly which rancher we pissed off. Down here? It ain’t like that. Down here you get your throat cut because someone thinks you got a Lone Star flag on your belt buckle. It’s fucking random.”

  “When I heard you were posted down here, I figured you had it nice and easy.”

  “It ain’t all Texas hookers and hard currency. I mean, sure, Phoenix is almost decent if you got a condo in Taiyang. You know, nice splashing waterfall to drink espresso next to; lots of Chinese office girls walking around in their short skirts.” He shook his head. “But out in the dark zone? That place? That place is a fucking mess. Every time I go out to check one of our safe houses, I think I’m going to get me some plomo in the back of my skull.”

  “Phoenix not rising the way they say it is?”

  Julio shot him a dark look. He went and started rummaging through the minibar. “Phoenix down the tubes, more like. This place is circling the goddamn drain. If this all wasn’t such a clusterfuck, I’d actually thank Vos for giving Case a reason to yank me back across the river.”

  “Vos?”

  “Vosovich. Alexander Vosovich. Zoner I recruited. Motherfucker kicked over a whole mess of ants.”

  “What did you have him doing?”

  Julio came up from the minibar with a Corona. “The usual shit.” He pressed the bottle against his neck, savoring the chill. “He was perfect, because he was a hydrologic engineer inside the Salt River Project. So I had him making friends. Passing out money when people needed help with their Golden Mile gambling bills, shit like that. Sometimes he’d put me in touch with a new friend he made. We had people inside the CAP, and Phoenix Water. Bureau of Reclamation. But I’m telling you, nothing he did was worth dying over.”

  Julio stopped using the bottle as an ice pack. Started gesturing with it. “I mean, maybe he digs up the SRP’s strategy for buying out some of their farmers. Or he tabs on how much Arizona is paying to dry up some Indian tribe’s water rights. That kind of thing. But then he got on something else.” He knelt and started rummaging in the fridge again. Pulling out bottles of Five Star and Yanjing and Corona. “A guy inside Phoenix Water started feeling him out. Saying he’s got something Vos might want to buy. Something valuable.”

  “And who was that?”

  Julio came up from his casing of the fridge, made a face. “Vos was cagey. ‘Water lawyer’ was all he said. Wouldn’t give me any more details.”

  “And you let him get away with that?”


  “I just figured the pendejo was going to put the squeeze on me. Add a broker fee, that kind of shit. Zoners are always looking for an angle. It’s the fucking culture down here. They’re corrupt as shit.”

  “So what was getting brokered?”

  “Might not have been anything. Me? I’m starting to think it was Arizona counterintelligence, trolling us. Whole thing feels like a sting.” He came up with a can of Tecate. Cracked the can. Sipped, eyes closed. Let out a sigh. “God damn, that’s good. Spend enough time out in the dark zone, you think a cold drink is a fucking mirage.” He glanced over at Angel. “You want one?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You sure?” He jerked his head toward the fridge. “They still got one more. After this it’s all Coronas and Chinese stuff.”

  “Do you think your guy Vosovich gave you up?”

  Julio gave Angel a look. “Well, since I seen his morgue video, I’m pretty sure he gave up something.”

  “And you think you’re vulnerable?”

  “If it had been anyone else, I wouldn’t have been worried.” Julio shrugged. “Most of the people I use, I keep real arm’s length. Anonymous drops. Encrypted front e-mails. All that good stuff. But with Vos? Shit.” He shook his head. “We been working together for, like, almost ten years.”

  “So you’re compromised.”

  “People questioned Vos for sure. Fucker looks like one of those Zoners that your Desert Dogs like to string up on the river for warnings. Fucking hamburger. He talked, and if they were asking the right questions, it’s not just me in the crosshairs. He was helping me recruit, you understand?”

  “How many people?”

  “Are vulnerable? At least twenty. Plus whoever he might have used who wasn’t on my payroll. I feel bad for whoever gets handed this shitstorm. That motherfucker’s going to be blind for years.”

  “So you’re out of here, just like that?”

  Julio gave him a look. “The cops ID’d my man by his fillings. That’s how I even heard about him. His name pinged on the sniffers we installed on Phoenix PD’s servers. Couple teeth were pretty much all Vos had left.” Julio took another gulp from his beer can. “This place brings out the worst in people.”

  “Any chance your guy Vosovich was in some other business?” Angel asked. “Maybe narco? Cartel States are moving in. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with our thing.”

  “All I know is, I don’t make bets on shit I don’t know.” Julio gestured at Angel significantly with his beer. “And that, my friend, is why I’m still alive in this game.”

  “Anyone else moving? Anything shaking up? Some sign about who did him?”

  “Nah, man.” He took another swallow. “It’s quiet like a fucking mouse. No chatter at all. My guy is on the front page of the blood rags, looking like a pile of shit, and everything’s fucking silent. It freaks me the fuck out—” Julio broke off, his gaze caught by images on the TV.

  “You see this shit?”

  He went over and turned up the sound.

  The TV flashed perp-walk footage of the trafficking pair being brought out of their house in the burbs, a strange castle surrounded by barbed-wire fences with its own generators and cisterns. Camera interior images of the lavish life the husband-and-wife team had lived as they baited sad-sack Texans and Zoners into making the run north.

  “That’s a fuckton of bodies,” Julio said, “even for this hellhole. Threw off the odds on the lotería big time. I thought I was betting big when I put three hundred yuan on a count over one-fifty for the week. Now I’m wishing I went higher.”

  “Have you seen him yet?” Angel pressed.

  “Who, Vos?”

  “Yeah, Vosovich,” Angel said, exasperated. “Your hamburger man.”

  “You mean seen him seen him? In the flesh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Julio looked up from the TV. “I saw him on the police server. That was more than close enough for me.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Fuck yes, I’m afraid. Why you think I moved out of my sweet-ass condo in the Taiyang in the middle of the night? If someone squeezed Vos like that, fuck knows how bad they’d squeeze me—” He broke off, seeing the expression on Angel’s face. “Aw, shit.” He started shaking his head. “You seriously want to go see him?”

  “Got to be thorough.”

  Julio made a face. “Smart people spend their time staying out of the morgue, just so you know.”

  “Fillings, huh?”

  “It’s bad,” Julio said. “I mean, Phoenix is one barbaric shithole, but I ain’t seen nothing like this.”

  “You came out of Juárez.”

  Julio gulped the rest of his beer and crimped the can. “That’s what scares the shit out of me. I already made it out of one apocalypse. I don’t need another.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Lucy forged through the morgue’s jumbled crowds. Shouting EMTs and Phoenix PD, FBI and state troopers. Hysterical victims’ families, morgue techs, and medical examiners.

  It looked like the city of Phoenix had called up its entire overtime roster to process the corpses lining the hallways. Bodies were stacked on gurneys and dumped outside the morgue proper. Everywhere she looked, there were more bodies. Flashbulbs strobed in the corridors, journos working the blood rags, capturing the chaos.

  A new rush of bodies poured in, wheeled on stretchers, shoving Lucy aside. She flung out an arm against the wall, bridging a desiccated corpse that was barely covered by a sheet. The stink of rotten meat boiled up, mingling with the sweat and reek of the emergency workers. Lucy fought an urge to gag.

  “Lucy!”

  The shout echoed above the general din.

  Timo, skinny and grinning, waved to her as he clawed through the crowds, clutching his camera. A familiar face. A friendly face.

  Timo had been one of the first locals to take her under his wing when she’d come to Phoenix. Ray Torres had introduced them when Lucy asked about how the blood rags did their business, and she and Timo had formed a wary working relationship that eventually strengthened into something more.

  Now when Lucy had a story assignment and needed stunningly executed art, she got Timo onto the project. When he had exclusive art that needed words and access to the big-name mags and news feeds, he called her.

  Symbiosis.

  Friendship.

  A bit of bedrock in the shifting sands of Phoenix’s many disasters.

  Timo plunged between sobbing victims’ families and grabbed Lucy’s arm, dragging her deeper into the chaos.

  “Didn’t know you’d be covering this! Last time we talked, you said you were done chasing bodies!”

  “What the hell is going on?” she shouted.

  “You don’t know? They found half of Texas buried out there in the desert! Bodies just keep coming!”

  The photographer showed her his camera, shoving aside his amulet for La Santa Muerte when it blocked the screen, thumbing through shots as people jostled around them. “Take a look at these babies!”

  Photos of corpses being excavated, body after body after body.

  “Coyotes were taking people’s money and just burying them out there in the desert,” Timo said. “Nobody knows how many they’re going to find.”

  Lucy glanced around at the chaos, shocked. “I had no idea it was this big.”

  “I know, right? And I thought it was good when I first got tipped! This sucker’s going viral,” Timo gloated. “Half the world’s sending journos in to cover this, and I got all the best pics. Paid for exclusives out at the dig. Cops aren’t letting anyone else in except me. La Santa Muerte’s paying off big for me this year.” He kissed his amulet. “Skinny Lady’s taking care of her own.” He jostled Lucy. “So? You want in? I got the art.”

  “Looks like you do.”

  “I’m serious, lady! My phone’s off the hook, I’m supersexy to all the biggies right now, but I’ll give you first crack. I’m not handing these over to some wet asshole who just jumped off a plane.
Locals get first pick!”

  “Thanks. I’ll let you know.”

  “What’s up? There something else you need here?”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s personal.”

  “Okay.” Timo looked doubtful. “But call me about the art. We got things no one else is going to have for weeks.” He raised his voice as more EMTs came shoving through, pushing more bodies on gurneys, pressing them apart. “We can blow this up!”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll call you.”

  “Don’t wait!”

  She waved acknowledgment and pressed on through the crowds following the EMTs. She found a cop. “Do you know where Christine Ma is?”

  “What’s your business?”

  “I’m supposed to ID someone,” she lied. “Christine called me down!”

  The cop looked around, harried. “You better come back! This thing’s blowing up!”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She pushed past him. “I’ll find her.”

  The cop didn’t even hear. He was plunging through the crowds, shouting, “Sir! Sir! You can’t touch evidence!” as some old Texan howled and hugged a dirt-encrusted corpse.

  Lucy shoved her way farther down the corridor and into the chill of the morgue. More bodies. Every open space. Lucy recognized the medical examiner and waved.

  Christine Ma was gesturing sharply to some EMTs. “I don’t have room for them!” she was saying. “I don’t know who the idiot was who authorized all these bodies to be moved! They should have been left at the site!”

  “Well, we can’t take them back,” an EMT was saying, “not unless someone’s paying us for the return trip.”

  “But I didn’t authorize these!”

  “Like I said, we’ll take ’em back if you pay.”

  “Goddammit, who’s in charge of this?”

  No one, Lucy realized. No one is in charge.

  Staring at the bodies and frantic emergency personnel, she felt as if the whole world was collapsing. It had been slow at first, but now it felt fast. Too fast to get free. Lucy was having a hard time wrapping her head around the number of bodies she was seeing. She’d written enough stories about populations on the move to know that refugees numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and yet still, how had a single pair of predatory human traffickers managed to get their hands on so many?