Outside, a spiral staircase led to a crow’s nest on the rooftop. Mort(e) went up first. Sheba took cover behind the steps. The sun rose behind them, spreading a shadow from the cabin to the edge of the woods. To her left, the Alphas milled about the pen.
The plan for dealing with intruders called for her to wait at the bottom of the staircase until Mort(e) gave the signal. But then the strange scent drifted by once again, a thick smell. Definitely a meat-eater, a predator. The dread she felt leaked into her legs, making them go weak. In a panic, but still drawn to the scent, she climbed the steps and joined Mort(e) in the crow’s nest. He glared at her.
“What’s that smell?” she whispered.
Mort(e) kept his rifle on the wooden railing.
“Mort(e).”
“It’s another dog,” he said, still aiming at an invisible target in the forest.
It hurt him to say it. It was another way he had failed her, another compromise he made to keep them safe. They were so sheltered here, so isolated, that Sheba had never seen another dog before.
“Are you sure it’s not a wolf?” she asked.
“No. I’m not.”
The herd broke its formation, with half the ants running away from the house in a stampede, spooked by some movement near the tree line. Mort(e) aimed in that direction. Sheba propped her rifle beside his. She spotted someone slinking along the far side of the fence, trying to hide behind the grazing Alphas. Sheba pointed at the dark shape. Mort(e) nodded.
They lifted their rifles from the railing, hopped onto the roof, and ran across it toward the pen. At the edge, they jumped, landing hard enough to scare the intruder. The creature ran, a little bouncing ball of fur. Had to be a beaver. Mort(e) and Sheba turned the corner of the fence to find the rodent waddling away as fast as he could. Sheba trained her sights on him.
“Stop!” someone shouted. “Don’t shoot! We surrender!”
The beaver froze. Meanwhile, a dog popped out from behind the trees. White belly and face, with black hair on his shoulders, spine, and tail. Sheba recognized the breed from one of her nature books—a husky. The dog shrugged off a backpack and tossed it to the side. He dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his head.
“If you’re going to shoot someone, shoot me,” the dog said. “This was my idea.”
The beaver cowered. Sheba recognized him. The matriarch’s son, Castor. The one who would lead Lodge City into a golden age. If she didn’t kill him.
Mort(e) signaled to Sheba to keep an eye on the beaver. As she got closer, Castor curled into the fetal position, shaking. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered. He posed no threat. Sheba stayed fixated on this strange wolf-dog with the light blue eyes.
“We’ll shoot whomever we want,” Mort(e) said.
“Would you like to know what we’re doing here?” the husky asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“We need your help,” the husky said. “And we want to help you.”
“We don’t need your help.”
“Just give me a chance to explain.”
“You’re still alive, and you’re asking for another favor?”
“Old Man,” Sheba said. “I want to hear what this dog has to say for himself.”
Husky and beaver exhaled. “If we don’t like what he has to tell us, we’ll feed him to the ants,” she said, unsheathing her sword. “Piece by piece. The beaver, too.”
Mort(e) grinned.
Sheba turned to the dog, her anger tempered by sheer fascination.
“This had better be good,” she said.
CHAPTER 5
Hosanna
The morgue smelled as bad as Wawa remembered. The rubbing alcohol and antiseptic spray could not mask the putrid gasses swelling the abdomens of the dead. Several people told her that she would get used to it eventually, but they were all humans, with a sense of smell so weak it was a wonder why they had snouts at all. As soon as she entered, Wawa could feel the stink latching onto her fur, becoming encrusted in it, as if the deceased needed this last reminder of their presence on Earth. The odor contrasted sharply with the immaculate linoleum floors, aqua-colored wall tiles, fresh sheets on the stretchers, and gleaming, polished steel cabinets. They could hose this place with bleach and it would still reek for a thousand years.
The pathologist on hand when she arrived—a human named Marquez with salt-and-pepper hair—greeted her in his lab coat and tennis shoes. “Good morning, Chief,” he said, emphasizing the word morning. It was 5:00 a.m., and only the Chief of Tranquility had the authority to get him out of bed for an unscheduled visit.
Marquez spoke with an accent different from most of the humans here. He came from Venezuela, one of the countries overrun by the Colony in the early days of the war. He’s seen some things, the humans often said. He once witnessed a horde of Alphas attacking an oil refinery. The ants tore open the wells, incinerating themselves in great geysers of flame. Marquez knew then that he couldn’t fight them. He could only run.
Wawa stood in the corner while Marquez opened one of the cabinets. A slab glided out. The body of a dog lay under a white tarp. The head leaned to the side, allowing the fabric to mold around the face, the matted black fur visible through the covering. Marquez yanked the tarp away. The dog’s brown eyes were sunken into the skull. The mouth had petrified into a grin of blackish-gray gums and yellow teeth. A line of stitches crisscrossed the belly. And above the dog’s eye, a hole crusted over with dried blood, the obvious cause of death now resembling a minor scrape.
“You wait here,” Marquez said. He went to the cold storage locker to retrieve the other body that Wawa had requested.
Wawa placed her hand on the dog’s snout and rolled the head in the opposite direction, taking note of the surprising weight of it. The desiccated eyeball watched her with a dilated pupil. Whatever pierced the skull failed to leave an exit wound on the other side. Yet the autopsy could find no projectile, nor any fragments. The wound did not match the weapons typically used for stabbing. Even after Marquez assured her that they found nothing, Wawa ordered multiple X-rays. None yielded the magic bullet. Marquez cursed in Spanish each time.
Wawa saw plenty of dead dogs in the war. Too many to cry over. In this windowless room, however, the corpse reminded her of the cages in which she was raised. In those days, her master brought in smaller pups for her to kill, so that she could build her strength for the arena. She left them in a similar state to this murder victim, with a face frozen in death. In Wawa’s dreams, her master put her in the arena to fight Cyrus, her only friend, long gone. Some nights, Wawa would crawl to a corner and wait for Cyrus to maul her to death. Other nights, she would attack, and would watch him die all over again. No matter what she chose, Cyrus never seemed to recognize her.
In the hallway, a pair of boots stamped on the linoleum. Marquez wore sneakers, so someone else must have entered the building. When Wawa caught a whiff of hazelnut coffee, she knew that Strator Grace Braga had arrived. Unannounced, of course.
Grace entered the room with one hand gripping an open thermos. She took a sip, screwed on the cap, and set it on the counter. The strator had an olive complexion with a pockmarked face. Probably an ugly child who grew into something more fierce than beautiful—a bird of prey rather than a swan. Grace wore a khaki vest over a black T-shirt, with camouflage pants and tan boots. A handgun hung from her hip, alongside extra magazines on her belt. Thus, she resembled many of the human soldiers in Hosanna—except for the rings. Grace belonged to an all-human unit known as the Sons of Adam. They protected the Prophet Michael, and every strator wore circular tattoos symbolizing their devotion and obedience. The ring around her neck represented the yoke she took on. The one on her finger meant that she would never marry. The one on her wrist had something to do with her pulse, to show that she offered her very blood to the cause. Yet another ring circled Grace’s heel. As with the le
gendary Achilles, this one reminded the strators that they were human, plagued with weaknesses that their enemies could exploit. It must have been the most painful one, given that it went around the sole of the foot. No wonder Grace was rarely in a good mood.
While male strators wore a tattoo on their side, a reference to the story of God fashioning Eve from Adam’s rib, Grace wore a tattoo around her left breast to show that she would not have children, that her milk would stay in her body. Grace, however, already had a daughter, a girl named Maddie born shortly after the war began. Wawa could imagine Grace stealing food for her daughter, telling those around her that they would keep her alive no matter what. It was a testament to Grace’s reputation that the Sons of Adam let her join, and chose her to lead, despite her status as a mother. But Grace earned it, having once killed a canine soldier with her bare hands. At least, that’s what the strators said. And besides, Maddie would one day fight alongside her.
“Are you going to explain what you’re doing here, Chief?” Grace said.
“Good morning, Strator. I’m just following up on a hunch.”
“You know that the Sons of Adam need to be informed of your investigation.”
“I planned to give you a report in the morning.”
“You planned to do this without me. But here I am, bright and early.”
The rusty wheels of a stretcher squeaked in the hallway. The body entered first, covered with a sheet, with the doctor pushing from behind. The presence of the strator startled Marquez, but he quickly composed himself and wished her a good morning.
The corpse barely fit on the stretcher. Unnatural bumps poked the sheet, making the body resemble a pile of meat rather than a creature that had once walked and breathed. A powerful stench of ammonia and rotten fish leaked from under the covering.
“Bring it closer to the dog,” Wawa said. She took a pair of rubber gloves from a cardboard box and snapped them on.
Marquez lifted the sheet to reveal the monster underneath. Part fish, part crab, part cephalopod. A bulbous head. Black eyes. Segmented armor on the spine, with four tentacles unfurling from within. Two jointed claws extending from the shoulders, with longer ones at the pelvis that could be used for walking. A long tail with spikes on the end of it. Wawa had seen it only once, a day or two after it had been found dead in the river, near the new dam. A bullet had struck it in the neck, probably fired from a fishing boat. Already weakened by illness and starvation, the beast apparently bled to death and drifted to the riverbank. Wawa noticed Grace’s reluctance to get closer. This abomination scared even the Sons of Adam.
Wawa gripped one of the tentacles and lifted it to her face to examine the barbed suckers. Her palms went numb from the coldness of the flesh. A clear, icy slime collected on her glove as she slid her hand along the appendage to the tip. A bony spike protruded from the end. Wawa extended it to the hole in the dog’s head.
“What do you think you’re doing, Chief?” Grace asked.
“Trying to find a murder weapon.”
She could tell right away that the spike was too thick to match the wound. Grace leaned in to watch as Wawa tried the other tentacles, along with the tips of the claws. Nothing fit.
“Hmm,” Grace said. She took a sip of her coffee. “You do realize that Mr. Fish here died long before the dog was killed.”
“I do. And it’s Miss Fish to you. My guess is that she’s laid eggs before.”
“Either way, she couldn’t have done it.”
“No. But there are others out there. I don’t think all those reported sightings are wrong.”
“Surely you must have some suspected motive in mind if you’re here this early.”
“To be honest, I thought that if we could link the murders to the fish-heads, the motive would become apparent.” Wawa let the tentacle drop, annoyed with herself for even trying to explain. Regardless of the strator’s authority, Wawa was the Chief of Tranquility, and she would investigate as she saw fit.
“Marquez, I’d like to see the records on all the murder victims,” Wawa said.
“Chief.”
“—I want to know the measurements on the wounds—”
“Chief,” Grace repeated. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve already done all of that.”
“Who’s done what?”
“The Sons of Adam looked into this a week ago. There is no reason to suspect that these creatures are behind the murders.” She took another slurp of coffee.
It took a moment for the smug tone to settle in, and another for the words to make sense. The Sons of Adam had gone behind Wawa’s back again, acting as if they ran everything and reported to no one. They spoke for Michael now, and claimed that the Prophet could intercede on their behalf. Each of them told their own wild tales of miraculous healings, visions, speaking in tongues, communing with the dead. Grace’s daughter suffered from epileptic seizures, sometimes so bad that they required Grace to hold the child down and let her bite on the fleshy part of her hand. Michael supposedly pleaded to God on Maddie’s behalf, and the girl had not experienced an episode in years. The Prophet favored these warriors, and thus they could get away with whatever they wanted.
With her feet growing cold on the morgue floor, Wawa had a sudden desire to take the day off, go home, and sleep under a comforter. “Marquez, put all of this away,” she said. She refused to acknowledge Grace on her way out.
Outside, the sky turned pink. The morgue was located at the southern end of the city, in a concrete government building close to the old navy yard. Still grumbling, Wawa trudged across the cracked asphalt, heading for the open space on the waterfront where she could gather her thoughts. To the north, the broken skyscrapers stood watch. The giant airship Vesuvius was tethered to a temporary platform on the thirty-third floor of the Liberty One building. Her sister ship, the Upheaval, formed a tiny dot on the horizon as it hovered on patrol. One day, Wawa thought, the strators might get tired of this place and hop in their ships and fly away. Two lifeboats to take them to safety, so they could start over. With a new god, if need be.
Northeast of the navy yard, a suspension bridge once known as the Walt Whitman had been sheared in the middle, creating a gap between its two towers. The steel cables hung like untied shoelaces. Beyond that, the new dam formed a monolith that connected both sides of the river. On the other side, the Camden waterfront moldered, a ruin of burned-out husks. The battleship USS New Jersey rested partially submerged, its cannons rusting and its name peeling off.
Wawa parked herself on a bench by the river. A full day still awaited her. Her subordinates owed her a report on the latest crop of refugees requesting asylum. Apparently, some cats were demanding a feline-only housing unit, a form of species segregation explicitly banned in Hosanna. Elsewhere, a group of rodents balked at helping with the cleanup of the quarantined neighborhoods, which was understood as the price of admission to the city. After dealing with all that, Wawa would have to speak at an initiation ceremony for a new class of cadets, where she would shake their hands and tell them that they would make a difference.
“Chief,” Grace said, somewhere behind her. The strator was a little out of breath after running, thermos in hand.
“What can I do for you, Strator?”
“We’re not done catching up.”
Grace removed the cap from the thermos and poured some of the coffee into it. “Would you care for some?”
“No.” Grace knew damn well that Wawa preferred tea, and drank it so often that her subordinates sometimes played jokes by hanging tea bags on her office doorknob.
“I tried to quit this stuff years ago,” Grace said. “Three days later, the Alphas took Boston. I never stopped drinking it since. Bad things happen without it.”A pause followed. “You needed to see that creature again, didn’t you?” Grace said.
“Yes.
”
“Ugly little bitch, isn’t she? Those eyes, my God.”
“I think she’s beautiful. Marquez tells me she’s adapted in extraordinary ways.”
“They’re abominations, same as the Alphas. And once people realize that, we’re going to have a panic on our hands far worse than any quarantine.”
“I’ve survived a quarantine,” Wawa said.
“I know.”
The sun burst over the rubble of Camden, forcing Wawa to squint.
“I’m putting in a request with the Archon,” Grace said. “The Sons of Adam will be handling the investigation from here on. I wanted to tell you to your face.”
Wawa knew it was coming. Grace had already demanded resources from Tranquility, invoking the name of the Prophet. She even had the gall to suggest that all Special Operations agents in the field be summoned to Hosanna.
“You don’t have the authority to do that,” Wawa said.
“Not yet. But we will. Don’t fight me on this, Chief. You’ll lose.”
“Are you threatening me, Strator?” Her fangs protruded when she said it.
“If that’s what it takes to get you to listen, then yes.”
If Culdesac were here, he would have chided Wawa for letting this human live so long.
“I was at Golgotha,” Wawa said. “I shed blood right next to the humans.”
“I don’t care about the past. Ask the Archon for a medal if you need one.”
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