A god, or at least a patron saint. They all toasted the Colonel with their bottles, and then they all toasted Ghost, the hero of the day.
Reggie had bought three bottles of Triple Cross off the boys over in Charlie Company. They had a still that they worked, smuggling food downriver off their territory grant, and then distilling it. No one knew what went into the brew. For all they knew, Charlie Company was distilling fingernails and dogs, but they said it was all real grain. Things like ShenMi HiYield Rice, TopGro Wheat, whatever they could burn out of the fields and get away with before Army of God or Freedom Militia figured out that they’d gone raiding.
Ghost’s squad boys kept giving him shots, getting him drunker. He stared up at the image of Glenn Stern.
“You should hear him speak,” Ocho said. “He’s got fire in him. Make you believe you can walk through a wall of bullets for the cause.”
“You got the same eyes,” Ghost said.
Ocho glanced at the painting. “Nah. I don’t. You look into the Colonel’s eyes and you see it in a second. We got the same color, but our eyes ain’t nothing the same.” He shrugged. “Saved me, though.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I wasn’t Drowned Cities, originally. Not like most of these dumbass war maggots.”
A couple of the other soldiers hooted at the insult, but Ocho waved them silent, smiling. “My family were fishers. We all got blown in on a hurricane, couldn’t paddle out. UPF scooped us up.”
He shrugged. “Most of us—” He broke off. “Anyway, they thought my eyes looked like the Colonel’s, so they recruited me.” He held out his hand, waist high. “I was a maggot about this big. They liked me. Like a mascot, right? Little bit of Glenn Stern, to keep them lucky when the bullets started flying.”
“Those soldiers still around?”
“Nah. They’re dead, mostly. But the LT, he was the one that saved my ass. He likes it when he’s got a sign. There are days when all I can do is wake up and thank the Fates that I got the same colored eyes as the Colonel. If I didn’t—” He broke off, his expression turning dark.
Ghost hurried to change the subject. “How come he calls himself Colonel?”
“You think he should call himself something else?” Stork asked, an edge in his voice.
“Army of God has a general. General Sachs,” Ghost pointed out. “How come they got a general?”
“General Sachs.” Stork made a face of derision. “Hell. That man ain’t even a soldier. Never even went to war college. He’s just some crazy dude who talks fine and got a bunch of sorry-ass warboys to believe they’ll go to Heaven if they kill everyone who doesn’t bow down to him. He calls himself Supreme Eagle, too.”
Ocho broke in. “The Colonel says you can’t just give yourself a rank. That ain’t military.” He nodded across at the huge painting. “He says he won’t take a higher rank, because it’s not his place to take a rank. That ain’t patriotic. He’s fighting for the Drowned Cities, not for some kind of rank. He loves this place, for real. He’s not just here to scrape some scavenge out and run away like these other dogs.
“Someday, when we get rid of Army of God and Freedom Militia and Taylor’s Wolves and all the rest, he’s going to build it all back. Make it great again. Maybe then, he’ll be like in the Accelerated Age. A president or something, right?”
“President,” Stork laughed. “Don’t they got one of those in China? Peacekeepers were always going on about stuff like that.”
The conversation broke off abruptly as Lieutenant Sayle came up onto the roof. Everyone jumped to their feet.
“Soldiers!” The lieutenant smiled. “I’ve got good news. We’ve got a new hero in the platoon. Got to treat our boy Ghost right.” He waved to Ocho.
“Burn him in. Give him his verticals, and treat him good. We have twenty-four R-and-R before we go back out and teach the cross-kissers another lesson.”
“Burn me in?” Ghost asked.
Ocho and Stork had already grabbed Ghost’s arms.
“C’mon, Ghost. Be a man. Get your three.” Ghost started shaking at the thought of the iron again, but TamTam handed him a bottle of booze.
“Drink up, warboy. You don’t got to do this one clean.”
Lieutenant Sayle set a piece of iron in the fire. Ghost stared at it, and then he took a big swig of the booze.
The iron got hotter and hotter.
Ghost took another swig. Ocho tapped him on the shoulder. “All right, warboy, one last drink. Let’s get this done.”
The boys all grabbed him. Some of them were laughing. Ghost fought to keep himself from struggling.
“Sarge?”
“You know the drill, soldier.” Ocho took the brand from Sayle, and carried the red glowing bar over to Ghost. Knelt down in front of him, his own face fierce with its scars. “You’re one of us now, Ghost. UPF, until the sea rolls out.”
He pressed the metal against Ghost’s flesh and Ghost flailed and struggled. But they had his head and he didn’t scream even though he wanted to pass out from the pain, and then the bar was on him again. And again.
Three across, and now three up and down. His horizontals and his verticals. Full bars. A real soldier now. The triple hash of Glenn Stern’s United Patriot Front on his cheek.
The brand came away. Ghost lay on the rooftop, gasping. Someone pulled him up and then all the boys were slapping him on the back and cheering for him, every one of them with the same deep burn on their right cheek.
Ocho pulled him close. “We’re brothers now.”
The LT stood to one side, his hollow face smiling. “You did well out there, soldier. Real bravery. Even Colonel Stern has heard about how you turned the 999 back on the cross-kissers.”
He took out a glittering golden pin and placed it in Ghost’s hand. “The Star of the True Patriot. Your bravery under fire makes the UPF what it is. Keep it close.”
Ghost stared down at the gleaming pin. It was a blue star on UPF white, surrounded by gold. The other warboys crowded around, peering at it.
Got himself a star, they murmured. UPF Star.
The lieutenant clapped Ghost on the back. “Congratulations, soldier. Welcome to the brotherhood.”
And then Ocho shouted, “Who are we?”
“UPF.”
“Who we fight?”
“TRAITORS!”
“Where do we fight?”
“WHERE THEY HIDE!”
“What do we do with them?”
“KILL!”
“Who are we?”
“UPF! UPF! UPF!”
Everyone was shouting and high, and Ocho and the lieutenant were smiling. “What are you waiting for?” Ocho shouted. “Show our brother Ghost a good time!”
With a whoop, the boys all grabbed him, and lifted him to their shoulders and carried him off the roof, chanting, showing their new warboy off to the other units. Ghost was theirs.
Ghost rode with his brothers, his cheek blazing with fire that all his brothers had felt before him. One of them gave him some kind of powder to snort, and it was mixed with gunpowder and his head went wild with pleasure and insanity.
The night became a whirl of drinking and powders and celebratory gunfire, and then they were all leading him into another part of the building and there were girls there.
Ghost tried to focus, surprised. He hadn’t seen any girls since the village and he was confused by the reek of fear and sex and then his boys were pushing him forward. Someone shoved a bottle of Triple Cross into his hand, and Slim and TamTam grabbed a girl and shoved her at him, and they all were laughing and drinking while they made the girl do whatever they could think up, and Mouse felt sick but Ghost was high and burning and alive and crazed and Mouse was dead, anyway.
Mouse was just some war maggot. Ghost was a soldier, and he was alive. Even if he was dead tomorrow, he was alive tonight.
34
OCHO WATCHED HIS new warboy go into the nailshed. It was always shaky after you burned them. Sometimes they broke, rig
ht after, and you had to put them down. Sometimes they settled in.
He remembered when it had been his turn. He’d never felt anything like it in his life. Being burned in. The smell made him sick. He wasn’t like the LT or TamTam, who seemed to like the burning, but he was damned if he was going to show it.
He watched the curtain fall behind Ghost.
Sorry, warboy.
A nailshed girl came up to him, but he shook her off. “Not now.” She looked nice, but he didn’t want to be distracted. The booze and the red rippers were too much already, and they made it hard to concentrate on what was what.
He’d learned from Sayle that you needed a clear head. Sayle didn’t booze at all, straightedge warboy, but Ocho suspected that what got him high wasn’t any booze or drug or girl. It was the hurting. Sayle liked people hurt.
Sayle was the one who came up with the new way to deal with war prisoners. Chop off their hands and feet and dump them where their army could find them. Let them decide if they wanted the burden of taking care of someone who couldn’t walk or eat or crap without someone helping them.
That was Sayle.
Ocho had watched Sayle do it the first time and then Sayle had straightened and looked at the platoon and said, “That’s how we do, from now on.” And Ocho had looked at the dying boy with his bloody stumps and he’d seen the future, right there.
That was him.
Not that day, and maybe not the next, but eventually, it would all come boomeranging back at him. Fates coming howling in like a banshee. And sure enough, now everyone did it. Now you always made sure your new recruits killed their own when they got tossed back.
It taught you a lesson, Sayle said: Don’t let them catch your maggot ass.
Ocho pushed past the other troops and the girls, past the smell of coywolv roasting and headed down to the canals.
He didn’t have any place to go. Wasn’t even sure what he wanted, but he needed to think and with the R & R, he was going to take the time.
There was something that he’d been thinking about a lot, ever since the run-in with the 999.
The gun was banging away on them all the time, now.
They’d tightened security to keep spotters from getting deep in again like that. But it meant they needed to worry about more than a company of soldiers actually pushing the territory. Now a couple cross-kissers could sneak in and find a barracks tower and start raining death in on them. And that made Ocho start thinking about the endgame.
A pair of patrol soldiers called out to him. He held up his hands, careful not to make any moves while they came over. For a second he was afraid that he’d forgotten the call signs—but then they came to mind.
“Charlie Sweet Bogey.”
Tomorrow it would be something else. The call signs were coming down from above, changing fast and furious. They needed to keep switching up to keep out any more infiltrators. The order came straight from the Colonel.
Ocho doubted it would last. The Colonel would need something better to identify his own. Ocho couldn’t even get out to his own boys without almost getting his ass shot off.
It made it almost impossible, really. How were they supposed to let farmers in if they were looking for someone with a tiny little radio? They were used to looking for guns, but if it was just spotters now…
He made it to the company HQ, and checked in on the soldiers. He had downtime, but still, he couldn’t help checking in.
“About time,” someone said.
Ocho looked over at the boys. “Why?”
“Got something.”
“Another spotter?”
“You mean forward observer.”
“Right.” FO was the new term. Forward observers. Handed down from the Colonel, also. Stern had gone to war college. He knew about forward observers. Just no one expected to have to actually fight them.
“You got to see this.” One of the boys handed Ocho the squad’s binoculars.
“What am I looking at?” Ocho asked as he peered one-eyed through the single good lens.
“You’ll see. Just watch the water down there.”
And so they sat, taking turns.
Nothing moved for a long time, and then suddenly the water moved and a girl surfaced…
What the…?
Ocho squinted, looking at her.
At first, he thought she was just taking a bath, getting the sweat off, but he’d been watching that spot, and she hadn’t gone in. There was something about her…
Were the cross-kissers sneaking girls in as spotters?
Something was off. It wasn’t that she was a girl in a war zone. They were around. Here and there. If she had the kill instinct, she was in, just like any boy.
He’d commanded a killer of a girl with curly brown hair that she kept cropped real short. Pale skin and freckles, and crazy as any warboy he’d ever known. She’d gotten blown up working point for a patrol when the Army of God mined a building they’d taken and were trying to clear. Walked right into a wall of nails. But she’d been good. Smart…
Ocho froze. This girl didn’t have a hand. That was it. She was missing a hand.
You’re sliding, he thought. That’s all. Just a bad slide on the crystal ride. There’s no way. She couldn’t be here. She can’t. There’s no way.
The girl came out again, checking both ways.
Fates. It was the girl. He was sure of it. The one-handed castoff who’d stitched him up. Dark skin and Chinese eyes, and that look of a survivor. On her cheek, he could just make out the triple hash of Glenn Stern’s chosen. He had to give her credit. She was almost as sneaky as Army of God.
The girl made a motion toward the water. Ocho stopped breathing.
“Oh shit.”
“What is it?” his boys asked. “What you see?”
A huge shape was emerging from the still waters of the canal. Graceful despite its mass. The monster came out of the water and climbed onto the floating walkway. Whole and healthy. Not a sign of a war wound on it.
The half-man paused, crouched there on the edge, head swiveling left and right. Ocho couldn’t breathe. Suddenly he was right back in the jungle, the creature exploding from the leaves, slamming him with a clawed fist and sending him flying. It was huge. It was too close.
Ocho yanked the binoculars away from his face. Realized he was being stupid. They were far away. They had no idea he was here. He lifted the binoculars again.
The monster was gone.
“Dammit!”
“What?”
Ocho pointed at the distant building. “I want spotters on that tower. Every side. We know what’s in it?”
“Nothing. Old junk. Apartments.”
“Get spotters on it. And kick this up to the LT.”
“For some girl? You don’t want us to just go grab her?”
“No!” Ocho whirled. “Don’t go near her. Just watch. If you see her or the half-man come out, stay off them. Put two layers of spotters out, in case they slip by. And watch the water. They’re using the canals. Swimming under our lines or something.”
He turned and bolted for the stairs, galloping down flight after flight. The half-man was here. In the Drowned Cities. Inside their damn territory. The castoff and the dog-face.
Faster and faster. His trot turned into a flat-out run. The half-man was here. He slammed into a patrol.
“Hold!”
Their guns whipped up. Ocho skidded to a halt. “Don’t shoot!” He tried to remember the passwords. Finally remembered, dragging them from his panicked memory.
“You need help, Sergeant?” they asked.
Ocho shook his head. “No. I’m fine. Bad rippers, that’s all. Just a little shaky.”
“Don’t run like that.” They waved him past. “We got warnings to be on the lookout for infiltrators, right?”
“I look like I wave a green crucifix?” He gave them a dark look. “Get out there and patrol.”
He turned and kept going, but he was gripped with a sense of creeping h
orror. It was just dumb luck that his boys had picked a new pair of binoculars off the Army of God and were trying them out. Surveillance was at the edges, not this deep in.
What was that girl doing here? Every time Ocho had run into either of them, it had been bad news. And now they were here together, inside the perimeter, stealthy and deadly.
They had no reason to be here unless…
Unless they were hunting.
And if they were hunting, they either wanted revenge, or they wanted Ghost, and either way, it meant he needed to shut them down before they got any deeper.
35
CROSSING INTO UPF TERRITORY was harder than Mahlia had expected, but with Tool, it was at least possible. The half-man could sniff out the patrols, and sense them far away. After abandoning the boatman, they made slow progress across the city, moving at night.
When they reached the boundaries of the war between UPF and Army of God, where gunfire was traded every few minutes and buildings echoed with screams of soldiers trying to break through against one another, Mahlia nearly gave up. There was no way they could cross an active war line.
“We’re dead,” she said. “This ain’t going to work.”
Tool just smiled. “Do not be so easily discouraged.” He took her hand and led her into the bowels of a swamped building. “We will swim.”
“Swim where? They’ll see us.”
Tool’s teeth showed. “Come.” He drew her down into the water. “Trust me.”
He dragged her deeper into the water. Mahlia started to struggle. Tool said, “Breathe deep,” and she did, just as he pulled her down below the waterline. Warm seawater swallowed her. Distant waves and gunfire. Tool drew her onto his back, and then he was swimming.
He swam out through a broken window and into a canal, and still he swam. Water dragged at Mahlia as he accelerated, swimming hard. Mahlia clung to him and tried not to be torn loose by the pressure of the water streaming around her.
Her lungs began to heave with a need for air, but still Tool swam. She needed to breathe. Had to surface. Tool didn’t stop. The half-man didn’t seem to care. Still he swam. Mahlia started to panic. She tried to let go, to try to surface, but Tool seized her.
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