Cormorant Run

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Further in. It’s near the center.” Her lips bulged—running her tongue over her teeth. Oddly, it didn’t make her look any uglier, maybe because she was the only woman around. She tossed another washer, this time to her left, and that one fell normally. She set off again, and Eschkov hurried behind her like a waddling cygnet after its mama. The stacks of mutilated metal drew away, and she scooped up the washer, wrapping the cloth tail with quick habitual motions before plunging her hand back into her bag and bringing out yet another. This one fell normally too, and she aimed them for a squatting, deformed building and—thank whatever god you prayed to—a gap in the cyclone fencing barely keeping the junkyard contained.

  “The center? Of the Rift?” Mako heard the disbelieving bafflement in his own voice, and heaved his side of Morov up over a shattered window. The entire thing, frame and glass, had been blown out of the building to their right, which proclaimed, in faded signage, the name of the company owning the junkyard. It could have had an apartment up top for whoever had to watch the damn place during the day, back before the Event. You couldn’t tell for sure because a helicopter had smashed into it from the top and the thing’s back rotor poked up from the roof, a rusted flower.

  Tremaine and Tolstoy, both eaten by something that looked like overgrown bushes. It was going to be a long time, Mako suspected, before he could look at even a ruthlessly clipped ornamental shrubbery and not feel queasy.

  “This just gets better.” Senkin coughed. “Shit, at least let us stop for a second.”

  She shrugged and froze, her boots fixed as if nailed to the ground. Eschkov was near enough to smell her nonexistent hair. “Fine. But be ready to jump.”

  “Sure, I’ll jump,” Mako grumbled. “Carrying five hundred pounds of Morov. Uh-huh.”

  “Cormorant’s in the center.” Her chin dropped, slid from side to side as she scanned in front of them. The gap in the fence led out into an alley, or what had been one. About two meters away from the fence, it opened onto two square blocks of wasteland—something had flattened the buildings, reducing them to splinters and shivers. The damage was confined to just those blocks, and the crack-starred streets at the boundary were curiously free of weeds. Come to think of it, the junkyard had no plant life, either. Not even hexmoss, which Barko told him grew on metal.

  That probably meant some new danger. Mako almost shuddered as he and Senkin lowered Morov carefully. At least their commander wasn’t complete deadweight, he was soupy-conscious enough to try to help his carriers.

  Mako straightened with a sigh his grandmother would have been proud of, peering at their surroundings. The cloud cover had not eased, but the weird throat-burning fume had gone away by degrees. He stripped his rag away from his face with a grateful sigh, mopping at the sweat on his forehead and the back of his neck. It was always too warm here, except in the winter. Did it ever snow in the Rift? At home, they would call a treacherous stretch of wilderness by its proper name.

  That halted him for a full thirty seconds. He couldn’t remember the right word. He could see his grandmother’s round face, her eyes crinkled with fans of both severity and laughter at the edges, and the fur-lined hood of her ancient sheepskin coat glazed with ice. But he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember the right word.

  She’d told him not to sign up with the military. Stay here and hunt, she said. Well, it was all hunting, wherever you were. Tracks in snow or litter on a township street, blood on ice or barbed wire, it was all the same. All you had to do was shut your blowhole and open your eyes, and everything was clear as day.

  Right now he was looking at the wreckage, and at how the rifter moved—or didn’t move. Some of the traditional hunters would do that—stay in one position, tensing and releasing muscles to keep them fresh, eating snow to keep their breath from showing. She disappeared at mealtimes, like one or two of the old folks who remembered the Thin Days, after the Event had fucked up everything and they had fallen back on the old ways for two generations. The elders absented themselves at mealtimes once they grew too frail, so as not to drag the rest of the family down.

  How much was lost, his grandmother had sung, staring into the fire. But the rifter had stuffed her face in the canteen just like the rest of them. It would be a mistake to think of her, however grudgingly, as one of the People.

  How many were left, anyway? When the infrastructure contracted, nobody wanted to take a vacation in Siberia, for fuck’s sake. Mining wasn’t as goddamn important when you couldn’t truck out what you dug up, and there was failing need for it anyway because the population still hadn’t reached pre-Event levels. Single mothers even got government pay for producing new little consumers in all the ILAC countries. In the warlord territories, harems and rape were endemic. It was a wonder any women survived at all.

  Mako had been on the front lines twice. He had no desire to ever go back. Institute duty was way better. Then Kope got a burr up his ass about this bird in the middle of the Rift. What the fuck was he going to do? Put it in a cage and sell tickets?

  Captain Morov, breathing shallowly, blinked several times. He looked like he wanted to get up, moving a little and wincing as his splinted leg tried to bend and was arrested. His color was bad, his dark buzzcut wet with sweat. He’d taken a nasty hit, a hole in the thigh from either shrapnel or a ricochet, and his shin was probably cracked from the grenade blast. He looked younger without half a cigar stuck in his mouth, or maybe it was just that his eyes were at low mast and his damp cheeks were slack.

  “Fucking Cormorant.” Mako said it a little louder than he probably should have. “Don’t even know what the fuck it is, only that someone wants it.”

  “Welcome to rifting.” The rifter made a small, unamused sound. “You don’t even know what it is?”

  “Someone has to know, or they wouldn’t have sent our asses in. Can we smoke now?” Senkin yanked out his makhorka pouch, which reminded Mako it was time for a smoke, too.

  “Should be okay.” She still didn’t move.

  “Hey, Esch.” Barko, his head gleaming where soot had been wiped or sweated away, took the thinner scientist’s arm. “Come on. Sit down for a bit.”

  “He was gone just like that,” Eschkov said in a thin querulous tone. The scientist’s loose eye was drifting everywhere but in front of him. It was a wonder the motherfucker could walk in a straight line. “The thergo. We should have rescued the thergo.”

  “I know.” Barko guided the little guy down to perch on a small flat patch of bare dirt. “Science has setbacks, Igor.”

  The rifter finally moved a bit, folding down increment by increment until she rested in an easy crouch. She must have been doing it for years, to look so comfortable all doubled up like that. Mako’s grandmother had crouched like that, before her hips got bad.

  “Maybe we should know exactly what we’re after.” Mako rolled his own cigarette. For a moment he wished he were back in the township, maybe in Molly’s chintzy, overstuffed bedroom. He never fucks me right, she would say, and Mako would only grunt. She was an excellent little piece, but with Tremaine eaten by a bunch of fucking trees—and he was not going to be the one to break that to her, no sir—she was likely to get … clingy.

  His lighter refused to snap on the first try, or the second. Finally, on the third, it caught, and he inhaled with relief.

  It was a bad omen, for it to take more than three. The new popper lighters were supposed to catch even during a hurricane, but this was an ancient one full of flammable liquid; the wicks were getting harder and harder to find. He’d picked it up during his second tour, in Colombia. Or what used to be Colombia. The motherfucking warboys there cut out your internal organs while you were still breathing if they caught you. No prisoners taken. Not like in Romania.

  Romania had been almost goddamn civilized, in comparison.

  “Maybe you should shut your fucknozzle, soldier.” Brood’s pleasant tone was all the warning in the world. “If they wanted us to know what, they would have told us.” Appa
rently, he was taking his single-stripe-higher-than seriously.

  Senkin surprised them both, weighing in with a series of flat, unimpressed words. “I don’t even think Morov knows.”

  That put an end to discussion. The rough reek of makhorka rose in veils, and the familiar nicotine hit soothed Mako’s nerves.

  There weren’t even any real stories. Just the name. The Cormorant. It was a type of bird, but what kind of fucked-up avian would live here? The rifter said nothing, her face set but somehow avid. Maybe she didn’t know, either. But she had to know something, for Kope to pull her halfway across the world and into this.

  Pretty soon it was time to go again. Morov, breathing shallowly, was heaved up—not ungently—and the rifter moved out into the wasteland, tossing another one of her metal-and-cloth tails. Mako eyed the clouds overhead. The sun was going to set soon, and goddammit, he hadn’t taken a crap since they’d come through the slugwall. He didn’t feel like he could now, either, but when he eventually wanted to, what were the chances something was going to bite his ass while he squatted?

  Mako sighed, hitched his belt with his free hand, and lifted Captain Morov a little higher.

  35

  HIS BUSINESS

  An hour after dusk found them in another rancid, hunchback building—an apartment complex before the Event, now a collection of listing two-story hulks peppered with irregular, star-pointed holes. One or two seemed structurally sound, though, and the rifter had selected a ground-floor apartment near the center, with a view of what had been a circular driveway in front of what used to be the rental office. There was even a bone-dry fountain crawling with hexmoss and long, clinging, silvery strands of something that fluttered in the uncertain, flirting breeze.

  Morov wasn’t doing so well—he’d gone even paler, and his breathing had turned shallow and labored. He’d sweated through his uniform, and soon they were going to have to divide his gear up for carrying. The rifter stood near a shattered window, peering out into the bruise-purple dimness. Brood approached her, stepping deliberately hard on the squeaking, rotting floorboard, but she didn’t even turn her head. Her hair-stubble had turned to soft dark babyfuzz, and her swelling lips, stretched over those horseteeth, were a straight line.

  Barko, swabbing a skinstrip across Morov’s forehead, kept an ear perked. The strip absorbed beaded sweat on the commander’s skin, and Barko was hoping it wouldn’t turn bright red. Blue would be best. Yellow he could work with. Even deep yellow with red specks would be okay.

  He wasn’t a religious man, but the longer he was in here, the more he thought praying might be an option. It probably couldn’t hurt.

  “We can light a fire, right?” Brood stopped a respectful distance from her, but he kept a callused, dirty hand near his sidearm. His blond tips glowed, and for a moment he looked ridiculous, dirty-faced with his well-cared-for hair standing up in spikes.

  “Yeah. Holes in the roof.” Her voice was no longer a toneless mumble, or maybe Barko had just gotten used to it. She sounded a little tired, and faintly irritated.

  Barko took a deep breath. It was fine. They were relatively safe if she said so. The floor was a little squishy, but not bad, and this building wasn’t festooned with the weird silver strands, either.

  “How come nothing attacks us at night?” Brood scratched at his grimy neck with blunt fingers. His right hand, resting on the butt of his Galprin semiautomatic, tapped its longest finger once, twice. One of his nails was torn, a semicircle of dried blood capping it.

  “Because I pick places that smell bad to whatever might jump us.” Just the faintest edge of disdain coloring the sentence, maybe. Or maybe it was just tiredness. “You got any ammo left?”

  “Some. Not that it does any good.”

  “Not against the shit you waste it on.”

  Amazingly, Brood let that pass. That middle finger, tapping on his gun, sped up a little. “What was that? The tree-thing.”

  “Thornback. They make black dirt.” She shrugged, thin shoulders rising, dropping with a small jerk. “Just know not to go near it. Looks wrong, smells worse.” In three-quarter profile, her eyes were merely large and oddly luminous, her long nose was almost regal, and that mouth looked determined and resolutely lush, instead of misshapen.

  “But what was it?” There wasn’t a tremor in Brood’s stance. He wasn’t a querulous child asking an adult after a scare.

  But, Barko thought, it was damn close. The skinstrip was deepening in color, and Barko didn’t like that. He couldn’t quite see what color; he’d have to use a lamper or bring it to the fire. If it was blue, well and good. If it was yellow, okay, he could work with that. He had to, he was the closest thing to a medic they had. He’d only taken the field training because it meant a raise, for God’s sake.

  Red meant infection had taken hold. What kind of antibiotics did they have? Just a field kit’s worth. Christ. Was anything else in there, anything more useful?

  Brood’s finger kept up its steady tapping. One, two, three, one two, three, one two three, one, two, three.

  The rifter was staring out the window, but Barko would have bet everything in his pack and his hope of getting back home too that she was paying a lot of attention to Brood’s tiptapping phalanx.

  “Rift’s got a mind of its own,” she said, finally. “Sometimes things that were before get a mind, too. Each one’s like a body, and we’re invading. It’s gotta ID us.”

  Barko peered at the strip. Now it was fading. They were supposed to be proof against industrial contamination. In here, though … was that caustic fume earlier part of the Rift’s defense mechanism? Then what were the Rift equivalent of white blood cells? Things like the tree-creature, or the silvery goo that had … eaten … Aleks?

  Now he knew what a virus felt like, hunted through the body’s secret chambers.

  “Shit.” The pale-eyed sardie’s finger slowed. After a short while, he finally said what everyone in here was likely to be thinking. “Can you get us back to the insertion point?”

  That made her head turn a fraction. The attractiveness of her almost-profile vanished as the angle made her nose too bony again, her mouth too wide for the rest of her, the skin under her eyes discolored by dusk or exhaustion. “With a limper, who knows? Plus the goggles, he’s about to crack.”

  Barko couldn’t help himself. He glanced at Eschkov, who was in the corner furthest from the window. Only his spectacles glinted, betraying his position. Had he shuddered?

  Senkin and Mako hunched at a ring of those strange opalescent stones, Mako flicking his lighter now that they had the go-ahead for a fire. When it caught, they were all going to look like cavemen. Huddling, dirty, and afraid of the dark.

  An orange flower bloomed, danced into yellow at the edges. Senkin gave a relieved sigh, and Mako muttered something in what had to be his native tongue. Maybe it was even a prayer. Did Siberians pray? What a research question. He should have gone into social sciences, studying the effects of Rift dislocation. History and dusty stacks of primary sources would be so much better than this.

  Brood turned, a little awkwardly. Or maybe it just seemed that way, because he kept his right side—the side with the holstered gun—pointed at her. He glanced at the newborn fire, those pale eyes slitted and the shadows turning his face into a skull-grimace for a moment.

  The rifter eyed him, and Barko could have sworn her own thin face momentarily leered. It wasn’t anger, or even sadness. It was the face of a person who knew she was going to have to kill to get out of this alive, and who didn’t mind the thought much.

  Barko rubbed at his bald skull with his left hand, polishing the dome with a grit-dirty palm. His head should have been cold, but all he felt was damp, uncomfortable, and slightly constipated. He made sure Morov was propped up well enough on the stack of moldering carpets covered by the commander’s own bedroll, and settled a crackle-thin foiler* over the man.

  The rifter turned sharply, strode away from the window. Brood almost twitched, and
Barko braced himself. But she just took the few strides to reach Morov’s side and dropped into her habitual crouch—her hip joints had to have adapted to that from an early age. Maybe she took dance? He tried to imagine her in a leotard. Failed miserably, tried to imagine her as a child, and failed again.

  He couldn’t imagine Kopelund as a kid either. Or himself, anymore.

  “What’s it say?” She studied Morov’s sweat-shining face, with the same set thoughtfulness she used outside.

  Barko looked down at the skinstrip. “Don’t know yet. Got a lamper?”

  She shook her head. He hauled himself up and headed for the fire. Brood trailed in his wake. He’d stopped tapping at his gun, but whether that was a good sign or not Barko found himself too tired to care.

  Uncertain firelight didn’t help, but Mako had a lamper, and shone it directly on the strip. It lingered somewhere between deep yellow with pink spots, and a band of bright crimson in the center along the crease from its packaging. At least, Barko was going to blame it on the packaging.

  Barko cleared his throat. “He needs rest, and another antibiotic jump. How long can we stay here?”

  All eyes on the rifter. She had the back of one small pale hand to Morov’s wet forehead, her long thin capable fingers close together. It was an unexpectedly feminine movement from such a thin, homely specimen. She looked up, those protuberant, dark eyes moving from one of them to the next. Armed sardies and scientists, all looking to her—a civilian, a felon—for an answer.

  Barko didn’t like the way that chain of thought was tending. Had she guessed Tremaine—or someone else—would be incapable of leaving the goddamn bushes alone? Or had she just, simply, gone off to eat in private, like a half-domesticated animal? She was never around at mealtimes in here, though she’d eaten in the canteen with the rest of them.

  The most chilling prospect was that she had gone off to lunch somewhere safer, serene in the knowledge that someone, sooner or later, would be stupid enough to trigger some kind of immune response in the Rift. It was dangerous in here. All it took was a single misstep. Everything happened so fucking fast.