The Drowned Cities sb-2
Page 15
Tool’s grip tightened. “You cannot save him.”
“He saved me! I owe him.”
“I’m saving you,” Tool said. “I owe you.”
“There’s got to be a way.”
“Why? Because you wish it? Because you made offerings to the Fates or the Scavenge God? Because you repented to the Christians and drank their deep waters?” Tool shook his head. “As soon as you start crossing those fields, you will be spotted. There are fire teams to our left and right, still combing the trees, and they, too, watch the fields. That”—he pointed to the open land—“is nothing but a killing field.”
Mahlia gave him a withering look. “Don’t you care about anyone?”
Tool growled. To Mahlia’s surprise, he suddenly released her. “You wish to prove your love for the boy? Go, then. Prove it.” He gave her a rough shove. “Charge. Attack. Take your little knife and attack. Show your love and bravery, girl.”
Mahlia glared up at the half-man, hating him. “I’m not a half-man,” she said.
“And I am not your dog.”
Mahlia looked back at the village. The soldiers had dragged Mouse close to the torched buildings and forced him to his knees. A figure emerged from the sooty wreckage…
Sayle.
He had a pistol in his hands. Mahlia watched the man stalk around the boy, then step close. She squinted, trying to see, not wanting to, afraid, but unable to look away. Sayle put his pistol in Mouse’s mouth.
Tool’s ears pricked up, cupping the wind.
“He wants to know where we are,” the half-man said. “They’re threatening him. It won’t be long until they know, and then they will pursue.”
The half-man’s hand fell on Mahlia’s shoulder, heavy and solid, even as the monster’s deep voice became soft. “Come,” he said. “It is best not to watch these things.”
Mahlia shook off his hand, still watching. Unable to pull away. She heard the half-man give a low growl of frustration. She was surprised he didn’t just grab her and drag her. Instead, he waited.
“They’re going to kill him,” she said, feeling sick.
When she had needed help, Mouse had stepped up for her. He’d thrown rocks, of all things. He’d done the brave and stupid thing, and saved her. And here she crouched amongst kudzu vines, unable to make her limbs move, terrified and a coward.
“They’re going to kill him,” she whispered again.
“It is their nature,” Tool said. “Come away. This will only make your nightmares worse.”
22
SAYLE JAMMED HIS PISTOL into the prisoner’s mouth. “You’re dead, licebiter.” The kid tried to speak, but he couldn’t get words out around Sayle’s 9mm. Little pale runt, all crying and begging.
Ocho stood by, watching the jungle, waiting for the bullet.
The kid kept on with his whimpering and begging, and Ocho tried not to listen. He’d learned long ago that if you treated maggots like people, it just ripped you up. Gutted you and made you weak when you needed to be strong.
The kid went on whining, though, pissing his pants.
Just get it over with, Ocho thought.
But Sayle liked the maggots squirming.
It was another thing Ocho didn’t like about the LT. The man was crazy. One of those bastards who’d grown up and found out that war was where he lived best. Sayle enjoyed suffering.
Sayle kept on, questioning the prisoner, making him think he had a chance. Like baiting a dog with meat and then pulling it out of reach again and again. Making the pathetic little licebiter stand up and bounce around on his hind legs, tongue hanging out.
Sayle offered freedom. He coaxed people to rat their relatives, to rat their food stores. He was good at it, the dangling. But it made Ocho ill, and he tried to be away from it when he could. Couldn’t pull it off every time, though. If the LT thought you were a weak link, bad things happened. So sometimes you just had to stand by while some war maggot begged.
“She ran! She went away. Her and the half-man. They headed out. She was going to leave. Go north.”
It made sense to Ocho. The doctor girl had seemed like the kind who had a plan. For sure, she’d ripped the hell out of the platoon.
“You’re covering for her,” Sayle said.
“No! I swear it! She told me not to come back here. Told me not to do it. She said the doctor was stupid. Said I was.” He spat blood and the despair in his voice made Ocho look over. Little war maggot looked like he’d lost her, all right. No hope there.
Sayle caught Ocho’s gaze. “What do you think?”
Ocho leaned against a flame-blackened wall, trying not to show how much his ribs hurt. Wishing that Hoopie hadn’t shot the doctor. It would have been good to recruit a real pill pusher into the company. Now Ocho’s survival was pretty much up to the Fates; if he picked up an infection, he was done.
“I think he’s telling the truth,” Ocho said. “Doctor was crazy, for sure. I can see him coming back alone. Humanitarian, right? All kinds of do-gooder.”
“This one, too? And ditch the girl?” Sayle looked down at their prisoner.
Ocho shrugged. “Doctor was surprised when the coywolv came in. The girl’s pure Drowned Cities. Don’t matter if she’s a castoff or not. She’s got the war instinct.”
“Maggot was smart, all right.”
“Yeah. But the doctor?” Ocho shrugged.
The body in the field said it all. The old man had no survival instinct. Marching into a combat zone like he had a big old red cross on his back and a company of Chinese peacekeepers behind him. Stupid. They weren’t fighting that kind of war. Ocho wondered if maybe the doctor had just gone crazy. Sometimes it happened. Civvies went out of their head and did stupid stuff. Got themselves killed, even when they could’ve gotten away clean.
But not the castoff. That girl knew what was what. He’d seen it in her eyes, right when she brought the coywolv down on them. Killer instinct.
Ocho scanned the torched village again. A dog was picking through the smoke, circling in on a body. Ocho wondered if it was coming back to its owner, or if it was looking for dinner.
“Got to figure the castoff headed north with the half-man.” He spat. “I would’ve.”
“Yeah.” The lieutenant stared down at their prisoner. “That how it went? She just left you to die, huh? Headed north and ditched your maggot ass?”
The kid looked like he was about to cry again. Ocho wished the LT would just hurry up and do the job. He stared out at the jungle.
“It’s going to be hell trying to pick up their trail,” Ocho said. “All those civvies out there, running around, trampling things down?” He shook his head. “Lot of jungle to search.”
“Missed our chance, you think?”
Ocho glanced over at Sayle, trying to tell if he wanted an honest answer or if he was trying to trick Ocho into showing weakness. Showing he wasn’t all in for the cause. But the lieutenant was just staring out at the jungle, too.
Finally Ocho said, “I don’t see how we’re going to pick up its trail. If that girl did a doctor job on the dog-face, that means it’s mobile now. It was just dumb luck that we even got close to it before, and it ripped us up.” Ocho touched his ribs. “Did four of us, and that was when it was down and out.”
“It’s still wounded,” the LT said. “It isn’t made of magic.”
“Yeah, but it sounds like it’s doing a hell of a lot better than the last time we tangled with it.”
Lieutenant Sayle snorted. “You may be right, Sergeant.” He turned and headed into the village, waved back at Ocho. “Get rid of the maggot.”
Ocho looked down at the kid. He had snot all over his face from crying and his eyes were red.
“Sorry, maggot.” He waved for his boys. Tweek and Gutty grabbed the maggot and scooped up a machete. Good soldiers. They knew better than to waste a bullet.
“Put his neck over some wood,” Tweek was saying. “I don’t wanna dent the blade.”
Gutty got the kid l
aid over a log, and then the maggot seemed to snap to awareness. Like he finally realized what was up. He started struggling and screaming, while Tweek and Gutty tried to control him. For a skinny bastard, he sure fought.
And then, all of sudden, the boy stopped fighting. His chest heaved and he was covered with sweat, but his fight was gone. He looked up at Ocho, as Gutty and Tweek knelt on his back. Ocho had the unnerving feeling the licebiter was putting some kind of Deepwater hex on him, but the kid didn’t say anything.
Ocho turned away and headed into the burning town.
Sorry, maggot. Wrong place, right time.
It was the same problem all the time. Sometimes you got lucky, ended up recruited instead of dead. Got a machete and a bottle of acid, and you ran around trying to show everyone how you were worth keeping. Putting as much blood on you as you could, so that Sayle wouldn’t dump your body in a ditch. Sometimes you just got your head chopped off.
Behind him, he could hear the kid start struggling again.
“Dammit! Would you hold him, Gutty?”
“I am! Licebiter’s strong.”
Ocho turned back. He limped over to the licebiter and squatted down in front of him. Waved his boys to leave off trying to chop him.
“You want to live?” he asked.
The kid didn’t know how to answer. The way he’d been pushed over the log, his face was all red and puffy with tears and fear. Ocho waited, then prodded him.
“Speak up, maggot. You want to live?”
The kid nodded hesitantly.
“You think you got some soldier in you? Wanna fight for the UPF? Sign on? Fight the patriotic fight?”
The kid sort of grunted, still held down by Tweek and Gutty.
Ocho grinned and slapped the kid on the back of the head. “Sure you do.” He glanced over at Tweek. “Go get me some hot metal.”
“You gonna brand him?”
“Sure. Born out of fire, right?” He stared into the war maggot’s eyes. “It’s how we all are.”
A minute later, Tweek came back with a hunk of rebar, glowing and smoking from a burned building. He held it in one hand, by smoking cloth.
Ocho took the metal bar. Even with a cloth wrapping, it was hot in his hand. He squatted down by the small shivering boy. It was hot. Good and hot.
“What’s your name?”
“Mouse.”
Ocho shook his head. “Not anymore. We got to give you a new name. You ain’t Mouse, anymore.” He studied the village and destruction, hunting for a soldier name.
The place reminded him of his own town, a long time ago. He was surprised this place had lasted as long as it had. You couldn’t live close to war and not have it grab you eventually. His own family had always been sure that war was going to stay down in the Drowned Cities, where all the fools were, but war was like the sea. It just kept rising, until one day the tide rolled in and you were up to your neck in it.
The wind shifted and smoke poured over them. Was that this boy’s name? Smoke?
Ocho scanned the blackened place, considering. The trees guttered with flame, some of them half-burned, twisted into spooky shapes by the fires. Stones sizzled with heat. Ocho thought he smelled meat burning. Pig or human. One or the other.
He considered names as he studied the kid. You were dead, Ocho thought. And now you’re not.
Raised up from the dead. Got a mission, still. Yeah. That was all right.
Ocho smacked the kid on the back of the head again. “Your name’s Ghost.”
He crouched down with the brand. “This is gonna hurt, little buddy. You better not cry. You cry, Tweek here will chop your head off. UPF’s tough, right? We don’t flinch, we never surrender. You’re Ghost. And you’re UPF, forever, warboy. Forever.”
He stared into the face of the sniveling war maggot, all pale and sooty with his wide scared eyes. “You ain’t going to thank me, maggot. But it’s better than dead.” And then he pressed the brand into the little war maggot’s face, three horizontal lines.
The cooking smell of pig curled up from the brand. The boy shook and fought, but he held on and rode through the pain, just like they all had.
When Ocho straightened, the warboy was gasping, but he hadn’t cried and he hadn’t begged.
He slapped the kid on the back. “Good job, soldier.” He waved at Tweek and Gutty. “Go get our brother drunk.”
“You going soft on me, Sergeant?”
Ocho stiffened. The lieutenant’s voice was soft, but there was a warning there. Like the movement of a cottonmouth in the swamp, coming at you, and then you were bit and poisoned and dying.
Ocho turned. The boys had found a bunch of antique furniture that they’d hacked up and piled into a bonfire, and everyone who wasn’t standing patrol against civvies coming back and looking for revenge was drunk off their asses. One of the soldiers had put the head of an old civvy lady on a stick and was running around saying, “But I don’t even like castoffs!” while everybody laughed.
And now Sayle was standing beside him. “You going soft?”
Ocho drank from his bottle. It was some bottle that had used to hold… what? He studied the label. Some kind of cleaning fluid, if the bleached-out picture on the plastic was right. Showed a Chinese lady with a floor that was sparkling bright as the sun. Ocho drank again.
Van had found the liquor store in the back of the old lady’s sundries shop, hidden. She’d tucked all the booze away as soon as UPF showed up, but Van had that nose for liquor. Ocho drank while he considered his answer.
“Soft?” he asked, and handed the bottle up to the man who controlled his world.
Sayle snorted. “Soft?” he mimicked. “You know what I’m talking about.” He waved the bottle over at the company. “You recruited that war maggot?”
Ocho followed the man’s gesture to the bonfire, where the new recruit stood surrounded by soldier boys. At their command, Ghost was taking drinks from a bottle that they were passing around the fire. He was scared. Eyes like a rabbit, looking for a way out. The half-bars Ocho had laid on his cheek stood out, red and blistered.
“He’s tough,” Ocho said. “And he’s loyal.”
“How you figure?”
“Followed the doctor into hell.”
“That’s not loyal. That’s just stupid.”
“There’s a difference?” Ocho deadpanned, making Sayle snort his alcohol. “I figure if he’s fool enough to follow that crazy doctor, he might be smart enough to follow someone who saves his maggot ass.”
He took another swig of burning liquor. It was trash. Nowhere near as good as the stuff that got smuggled in on Lawson & Carlson ships when the recycling went out, but that was what you got with the homegrown stuff. Probably make him blind if he drank enough of it. His old man used to say you could drink homemade hooch and go blind.
“What you going to do when that little pup turns and tries to bite you?” Sayle asked. “Maybe puts a bullet in the back of your head?”
Ocho shook his head. “He won’t.”
“Big bet, Sergeant.”
“Nah. I’d put a million Red Chinese on that boy.” Ocho studied the recruit. “We’re all he’s got.”
When you were alone in the rising ocean, you grabbed whatever raft passed by.
23
COWARD.
COWARD. Coward coward cowardcowardcoward…
The word kept running through Mahlia’s head, and with every step away from the village, the accusation echoed louder.
I tried to tell them. I tried to save their dumb asses. They would have been fine, if they’d just listened to me.
Doctor Mahfouz was always talking about places where kids grew up without worrying about bolt holes and what to do if soldier boys came. Places where you lived past twenty. Mouse should have been born there. He just didn’t have the Drowned Cities instinct. He was too nice for his own damn good. Just a sad-sack farm kid who didn’t know how to stay alive.
Yeah. He was so dumb, he saved you, right?
Why didn’t you do the same for him? You owe him. If it had been you in that village, he would have done something.
And that was why he’d gone back for the doctor, and all the townspeople, and how he’d gotten himself killed.
Coward.
The word kept running through her head as she stumbled through the jungle, accompanied by the silent, shambling half-man.
Coward.
The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself amongst the boughs of a tree to sleep. And in the morning, it woke with her and clung to her back, riding on her shoulders as she climbed down, hungry and exhausted from nightmares.
She was a coward.
Yellow dawn light filtered through the jungle, highlighting misty humidity. Mahlia looked around at the greenery, feeling sick, knowing she would feel this way until she died. She would never escape it. She’d run away instead of helping the only family she had left.
She was just like her father.
When the peacekeepers finally gave up on their fifteen-year attempt to civilize the Drowned Cities, the man hadn’t even looked back. He’d just run for his troop transport with the rest of his soldiers as the warlords flooded back into the city.
Mahlia remembered the gunfire and explosions. Remembered how she and her mother had run frantically for the docks, sure that the peacekeepers had saved berths for them. She remembered people leaping into Potomac Harbor as the last peacekeeping troop transports and corporate trading ships set sail without them. Remembered those huge white sails unfurling, clipper ships rising on hydrofoils as winds caught canvas.
Mahlia and her mother had stood on the docks and waved and waved, begging for the ships to come back, begging for her father to care, and then they’d been shoved forward into the ocean by the desperate press of others behind, all of them begging for the same thing.