It can’t be.
“Hank?” I ask. “Hank Cotton?”
“Howdy, Cormac,” he says. “Cherrah.”
Tension evaporates off me, but the spooky feeling doesn’t. The old Hank Cotton was chubby and quick to smile. This guy is different. Cherrah lets go of my neck and I can still feel the crescent stings of her fingernails.
Hank rotates his great head until he is looking down at his sergeant. “Do you know who this man is?” he asks.
“S-sir, no.”
“This is Cormac Wallace, son. Sergeant Wallace. Bright Boy squad. Brother to Sergeant Jack Wallace. Author of The Hero Archive. While you were patching up the back line on the eve of V Day, this young man was marching to the lip of the hole. It was his squad that poured fire down the throat of Archos R-14.”
“Then he’s the one who allied with freeborn? In secret—” says the man. But Hank waves a long, dark-veined hand at him.
“He did what he had to do to win the New War,” says Hank. “We’ll figure out the rest later. Plenty of time for folks to make amends for the exigencies of battle.”
“Sure, General,” says the sergeant. His eyes never leave me.
Hank cranes to look back up at us, the sun at his back, wreathing his half-smiling face in darkness. His long teeth glint in the shadow. Somehow, this is the same man I fought alongside in the war. He’s lost too much weight. The skin around his neck is loose. His cheeks hang slack under dull gray eyes. And his walnut skin looks reddish and irritated, like he’s been spending time in a tanning bed.
“Don’t mind these boys, Sergeant Wallace,” he calls. “They’re just nervous. We’ve had a . . . readjustment, recently.”
“Did he call you General?” I ask. “Where’s Lonnie Wayne?”
Hank’s hands go to his hips, sharp elbows sprouting like wings.
“Lonnie is re-tired, as it happens. If you need anything, I’m your man. Happy to help out, but I’m getting a crick in my neck talking to you like this. How about y’all come down off that beat-up old walker? We can hold off on requisitions a little while.”
“Houdini?” I ask, urgency under my voice.
No response. Then the intention light goes to yellow. After a long second, the machine’s legs tremble into motion. It drops down onto its knees, belly kissing the ground. Freezes in a vulnerable boarding pose, not bunkered. The intention light ticks all the way back to green.
The tank is overprotective and I wonder again how smart Houdini really is.
Cherrah and I share a look of relief, and Hank notices. As I slide off the tank’s back, he puts a rough hand on Houdini’s leg. Rubs his fingers over the ridged, plasticlike muscles. His head is cocked to the side like he’s listening to a creaky old house.
“Lot of modifications,” he says to himself, musing. “Late-war stuff.”
He talks to a soldier without looking back. “Check the identification on this ST. Get me everything. There’s something . . . funny about this vehicle.”
The nearest soldier squints up at Houdini’s name, then turns and runs, straight-backed, toward a wooden shed.
Hank looms over me now and I think I can feel a prickling heat on my face. It’s impossible, but I can’t shake the feeling that Hank is radiating. Some deep instinct inside me is shouting to attack him. I get the urge to pull my trench knife and jam it into his belly. Rip out his guts, then run for it.
Instead, I help Cherrah off the spider tank. The curve of her belly is obvious under the abbreviated upper chest plate of her battle armor. Hank notices her stomach and Cherrah winces involuntarily.
“Oh my, my, my,” says Hank, turning away from inspecting Houdini’s leg armor. Cherrah backs away, hands up defensively. Her eyes are small and dark and she is breathing hard, nostrils flaring like a panicked horse. Something is bad wrong with Hank and I can feel it, too. I put an arm around her, pull her tight to my side.
“That is interesting,” says Hank. “Let’s get you to the hospital, mama.”
I’m told I can find former general Lonnie Wayne Blanton quartered in the old barracks. We built row after row of these shacks in the months before Gray Horse Army marched out for Alaska. Each leaning wooden cabin was thrown together in a few hours by sweating, grinning soldiers who still had hope in them. I tromp over tall grass that’s grown up between the slanting, splintery walls.
Cherrah is at the hospital, safe for now. She’s Osage and pregnant and not pulling the same scowls as me and my pale, stubbled face. We parked Houdini out alongside the arbor, bunkered with instructions to come find me if he is touched.
I let my fingertips lightly scratch over rough wood. I remember the day these shacks were built—hundreds of living trees ripped into boards by screaming, diesel-powered saws. The air smelled like sawdust and exhaust. All of us worked as one that day. Now the boards are moldering, warping away from each other.
Lonnie’s shack is leaning, squatting bowlegged on four posts, belly tickled by thick weeds. It’s the best preserved of the group and the only one occupied. A lot more soldiers left than came back.
“Lonnie?” I call.
I hear a thump from inside. The front door shivers on its hinges. The sound of a lock engaging.
“Cormac Wallace,” he says. It’s a quiet, sad voice from behind the door. Blurred on the edges and fading like an old painting. “I didn’t think you’d make it. Figured you were dead.”
“Well, I did. Make it. And so did Cherrah. Open up.”
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” he says.
“What happened, Lonnie?” I ask. “What’s the matter?”
I hear a thump that might be a forehead being pressed against the door. Lonnie’s words are slurred and hollow-sounding as they echo out of the shack.
“It’s all ruined. We hoped for some peace, but there isn’t any. Never will be. Everything went wrong. Awful things. Nothing’s left but darkness. Pain, Cormac. Pain and the things we lost.”
I think he’s crying.
“Are you drunk?”
A long pause.
“Yeah,” says Lonnie. “What’s the use? It’s time to give up. Give right up. We were doomed from the start. Never had a—”
“Cherrah is pregnant,” I say, my face inches from the door. For a long time I stand there, looking at hairy splinters and listening to rabbit noises as Lonnie swallows his tears. “Did you hear me? She wants to see you. I want to see you.”
Nothing.
“Lonnie?” I ask. I rattle the door and find it locked tight. I’m just about to kick it down when the old cowboy finally speaks. What he says next is like a splash of ice water over my neck.
“Run,” he says. “The both of you. Run from this place while you still can.”
In the old world, I was a photojournalist. Every photograph I took had a meaning. It was some shred of proof—evidence as to why I existed. People would pay for the moment I had captured, then share it with others. Even out in the wild with my camera, I knew I still fit into the larger world like a puzzle piece.
These days, there is no puzzle to complete. It’s just the vast empty world and violence and . . . nothing. I’ve got Cherrah, but I don’t know if one person is enough. Not when you have the whole empty meaningless universe pressing down on you.
It’s easier to let go if you’re alone. Lonnie is proof enough of that.
“Houdini,” I whisper to the darkness. “It’s Cormac.”
Crickets are singing out here near the grassline. Campfires dot the parade grounds, leaving Houdini a monstrous shadow on the perimeter. With a quiet whir, the diagnostic screen unfolds from under his armored sternum. The intention light clicks on and I wince, shading my face from the green glow.
“Lights out,” I hiss.
The light clicks off.
“Move out in twenty,” I whisper, poking my finger at a map on his screen. “Rally point alpha. Alternate rally point beta. Otherwise, search and reunite along this trajectory.”
The big machine clicks at me. A
ffirmative. The little screen folds back up under a layer of armor. With a glance, I make sure that my pack is still secured under Houdini. Then I reach in and haul Cherrah’s pack out. Shrug it on and walk away toward the hospital without looking back.
She’ll be safe here, without me. The baby will be delivered in a hospital. That’s the important thing. These are her people and they’ll take care of her, no matter what has happened to this place.
It’s only a short walk to the clinic. The brick building is tan and squat, built before the war. The glass front door is locked, and I have to knock.
A heavy Osage woman in flower-print scrubs peeks out. She refuses to open up until I tell her who I’m there to see. I follow her down a short hallway. Hearing the squeak of her sneakers on the gleaming floor, I’m almost overcome with the feeling that things have gone back to normal. That I just woke up in the real world again.
“Cormac?”
Cherrah calls for me as I round the corner. The nurse shoots a wary glance to where Cherrah lies in a hospital bed under crisp white sheets.
“He okay?” the nurse asks.
“Cormac,” says Cherrah again, smiling.
At her bedside, we wrap our fingers together. Her stomach is a round lump under the blankets. She’s had a bath and the skin of her face is clean and smooth except for that thin scar down her cheek. Her hair is like spilled ink on the pillow.
“They cleaned you up,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“How’s the baby?”
“Perfect, as far as they can tell.”
“Good,” I say, letting her hands go. “Good.”
Cherrah isn’t going to like this part. Right about now, Houdini is making his way down a steep hillside just as quiet as he can. Headed on a beeline toward a rally point at an abandoned farm about half a klick from here. The deal is done.
“Look,” I say. “I have to—”
“I think a lot of people were killed here,” Cherrah says quietly.
“What?” I ask, derailed.
Cherrah cranes her neck to see the nurse. The woman watches us silently from her desk across the hall with a wide, impassive face. She is as strong and blank as a stone bluff.
“The nurse didn’t tell me many details. But Hank Cotton took control of the tribal council,” says Cherrah. “He made up new rules for non-Indians. Sent some soldiers back north to hunt down and kill parasites—”
“Parasites?”
“They lived,” she says. “The soldiers the parasites mounted. They can still think. Some of them followed Gray Horse Army home, Cormac.”
“Who? Which ones?” I ask.
“Lark Iron Cloud,” she says.
A flash of memory hits me: an ice-cold rifle stock bucking against my shoulder. My bullet snapping Lark’s jaw off his face. Staggering zombies strobed in muzzle flashes. How on earth could he have survived?
“He was a good kid,” I say. “He’d do anything for Gray Horse. And Hank tried to kill him?”
“Lark ran,” says Cherrah. “Maybe he lived.”
Now I’m beginning to understand Lonnie. The old cowboy had two sons, a natural-born one deployed to Afghanistan before the New War and another one he found in the ruins of our civilization.
He’s lost them both.
“I found Lonnie,” I say. “He’s not good. He wouldn’t tell me what happened to all the people, but . . . he said I should run.”
Cherrah doesn’t respond. She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a long, shuddering breath. Blows air out of pursed lips.
“The best I can tell, Cormac, is that there was a purge.”
“Jesus” is all I can get out.
“Nonnatives were told to evacuate. A lot of people, Indians and not, just grabbed whatever they could and hit the road. It happened a few weeks ago. The ones who didn’t take the warning seriously . . . Well, there are some violent-minded people around here. They’re calling themselves the Cotton Army.”
“Has Hank gone crazy?”
“I don’t know. But he’s in charge of the military now. And the city elders. If you’re not Indian, then you’re pretty much not welcome here anymore.”
“What about the soldiers? I saw—”
“Fighters have amnesty. The tribal council promised to give all the property that’s been left behind to the veterans. He’s got them convinced that the outsiders were stealing from us while we fought. Even so, most of the nonnative soldiers are gone already. A lot of native ones, too. They made it out with a few spider tank platoons and some exos. Now they’re protecting the refugees who were thrown out. Cotton Army is gearing up to go after them. Hank is going to finish the job, like he did with the parasites.”
“Where are they going?”
“I don’t know, but the lady said there were rumors that a little girl was helping them. A little girl with no eyes.”
“Mathilda,” I say, “I can still catch up.”
“Not without me,” she says.
“You’ll be safe here.”
“No.”
“Look,” I say. “If we’d had a chance to plan—”
“We don’t plan to breathe, Cormac. We don’t plan to eat. This is what we do.”
“You want to go to a place with no hospital? To more fighting? If something goes wrong, anything, then you’ll die. The baby will . . .”
I can’t finish that sentence.
“Die,” says Cherrah. Speaking in a soft voice, she pulls my face closer to hers. I can smell her warm skin and hair. Feel her breath on my cheek. “It’s a risk, and it’s nothing new. People have been doing this for a long time.”
“Stay here. They’ll help you deliver. Then we can meet—”
“Our little boy is half-blood, Cormac. Don’t you think they already know? Why do you think the nurse told me all this?”
I glance over my shoulder and the nurse pretends to look at some papers.
“I can make it another couple of weeks,” says Cherrah. “We’ll reach the other group, find shelter, and deal with the birth then. But we have to go now. You’ve already got Houdini headed toward a rally point, right?”
My fear has turned to a sadness that wells up in the back of my throat. Brave words aren’t going to save her life. I lay her backpack down next to the hospital bed. Leaving her is not a choice. But neither is losing her.
I take a step toward the door.
“It’s okay to be afraid,” she says, and the expression on her face is familiar. She had this look when my brother, Jack, went down with a plugger in his calf. I held him down while she sawed off his leg with her bayonet. Those delicate fingers of hers locked on the frozen hilt of the blade and that same look in her eyes.
“We just keep losing,” I say, and I think of how Jack closed his eyes at the end. When they opened again they were full of blood.
“You’re going to lose me,” she says. “I am going to lose you. We can hold on as tight as we want. One day the music stops.”
“Except that I promised you we were going to live. Not just survive.”
“What’s the difference, Bright Boy?” asks Cherrah, breaking into a smile, eyes wet. “Step up, soldier. We’re having a baby. We’re going to protect it and keep it safe so that it will grow up and make babies of its own. The world sucks. So fucking what? What else is there?”
She kicks off her covers. Under them, she wears her battle armor, modified for the pregnancy. Sitting up, she slides her legs over the edge of the bed. Stifling a sudden smile, I move my body to block the sight of her from the hallway. Just in case it matters.
“Read me?” she asks.
Now I can’t fight my smile. Size has so little to do with strength.
“Houdini is waiting, Private Ridge,” I say.
“Roger that, Sergeant,” she says. “There’s a bag of medical supplies under the bed. We’ll need them soon enough.”
6. A SINKING FEELING
Post New War: 10 Months, 12 Days
The deep mind discovered outs
ide Tokyo Harbor, known as Ryujin, was too complex for human understanding. The entity had a desire to create new life-forms, but its motivations were never clear. Perhaps this urge to make is why it demanded to meet the originator of the freeborn Awakening. It must have seen in Mikiko a fellow architect of life—a kindred spirit to be taken apart and examined. It was an unfortunate circumstance for Mr. Nomura. His long-feared moment of parting had finally arrived.
—ARAYT SHAH
NEURONAL ID: MIKIKO
Takeo is letting me go.
The little old man stands bent, his gnarled brown hands clasped in front of him. He is wearing a ceremonial kimono, dyed black and folded around his body in stark shadowed angles. A thin brown obi is wrapped tight around his waist, a folded black fan tucked inside. His short legs are steady, even as he leans under the glaring sun in the nodding bow of this container ship.
My royal escort flanks me. Two large Wardens tending to the Kame Maru as the ship trundles to a stop here, two hundred miles east of Tokyo. Beneath these gentle, slate-colored swells is the thing that Takeo calls the “voice of the sea.” A variety of thinking machine beyond our reckoning. A deep mind with the power to change humanity’s fate.
The dragon god of the sea: Ryujin.
Half a world away, my children are in danger. A thing called Arayt is hunting the freeborn and hopes to take their minds to use for its own twisted purposes. Ryujin has promised us nothing but a chance. It is a risk I must treat as an opportunity. I will take a trip into the abyss for the sake of my kind.
It will be a one-way journey.
Takeo stands, knuckles white as he clasps his hands together. The old man is steeling himself. His bravery and strength come from some hidden place inside his frail, creased frame. I stand before him in a traditional cherry-blossom dress, a final, tender pretension for Takeo. My head is bowed as he speaks the words that he has been practicing since descending from the shinboku. The words that he has never been able to say before.
I have chosen not to cry.
“Mikiko,” he says, his voice rising over lapping waves. “I have loved you for a very long time. Longer than you can know. For many years, you carried the echo of a person that I lost. You allowed me to play out the rituals of a life . . . that I lost.”
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