Flood City

by Daniel José Older

  “Even if they were there,” Max said, “you can’t trust those guys. You know that.”

  They buzzed along in silence, looped around a corner, and came out of the alley right at the edge of the ocean. In the distance, Max could hear the crackling ghosts in their yard. A little farther along were the Tumbled Together Towers. All around them, the gray sea thrashed like an angry god. “I’m sorry,” Ato said. “I should’ve told you.”

  Max made a face. “Yeah. I don’t know what good it would’ve done. But yeah. It was in the engine room?”

  “They’ve probably been trying to get it since the crash. I’m sure that’s what my brother was after just now.”

  “But they couldn’t because the Star Guard was watching it.” Max frowned. “And for some reason they weren’t tonight. I don’t like this at all. We should tell someone.”

  “Who? Who do we really trust? And even if someone knew, they’d have to get past the Star Guard to get to it.”

  Max nodded. “That’s probably true.”

  “And if you did tell them, how would you explain how you found out about it?”

  There was no way around it. They couldn’t alert anyone to the nuke without giving up Ato. And as long as the Star Guard were around, no one would be getting to the thing anyway. Still, something seemed very wrong about the whole situation. Max growled by way of a reply, and the two friends sputtered off toward home.

  Dear Max,

  I wish I could write you and say everything is fine, I’m doing great, training camp is a blast, blah blah blah, but I can’t.

  Everything is not fine.

  Training camp is a mess. I’m scared, Max. And you know I don’t even really get scared, and when I do, I don’t tell anybody. And the last thing I want is to worry you, believe me, but I need to tell someone and I don’t know who to trust anymore.

  Commander Uk. Yeah, he definitely hates Flood City with a passion. Like we collectively flushed his life down the toilet somehow. I dunno. There’s a rumor that it all has something to do with the original invasion/defeat of the Chemical Barons-Uk was an attack fleet commander back then and I think our guys mighta stolen some of his glory in the fallout.

  Either way, now he’s taking it out on us, and it’s gone way past your average everyday power-hungry jerk with a grudge stuff. First it was just extra workouts for all of us humans, and you know, we all kinda laughed about it and put up with it, especially because none of us want to let it show that he’s getting to us, you know? All except Splink, that is. He’s the only Flood City kid that Uk has taken a liking to, so he gets away with anything and never ends up with the same punishments as us. I wish you could see how hard I’m rolling my eyes at this kid right now. And to think he tried to holler at me last year. Ugh.

  Eventually though, our people started getting exhausted. It’s just been too much, Max. I’m alright cuz you know I worked out all the time back home anyway, so it hasn’t been too too bad, but Telly and Etienne are both sick, dehydrated I think, and can barely get out of bed. Delta was doing fine but then a few days ago she fell from one of the high-rise climbing traps and fractured her shoulder, but of course they won’t treat her cuz they say that’s part of training-recovering from injuries and survival. Ugh, I could scream …

  The night she got hurt one of the tarashids showed up in our barracks. It was Osen-remember, the one I told you about that seemed like their leader and seemed somehow trustworthy? Well, he didn’t say anything, just lumbered across the floor toward her. At first we all kinda freaked out, like, what this big-shelled space creature bouta do to Delta, right? Osen musta realized what it looked like cuz he stopped just beside her and looked around.

  He raised two of those great big arm things. They say tarashids have telepathic powers and I always woulda scoffed at them but Max, if you coulda felt/heard what I felt/heard that night. It was like the most soothing voice in the world. There were no words, but somehow it was still saying, “I mean you no harm, I come to heal the girl.” I swear to you, it was the most amazing thing. At first I thought I was making it up, but then I looked around and I could tell all the others had heard it too.

  It was a good thing he said it too, cuz what happened next looked like anything but healing. Osen leaned over Delta and gathered her up in those big arms. She was knocked out from some medications we’d smuggled out of the first aid office, so she just hung their limply while all those tiny alien legs started swarming over her injured shoulder. I don’t think any of us breathed the whole time it was happening. I don’t even know how much time passed. Eventually he put her down and trudged off and the next day she was completely recovered. Not even sore or anything.

  The Flood City Rebel Guerrilla Squad is on everyone’s minds. The Star Guard guys keep whispering about it to each other, and then the other day Uk actually brought it up in a class, and the way they talk about it, Old Man Cortinas and them are like a hundred times worse than the Chemical Barons. At this point though, it’s hard to imagine anything worse than Uk and his stinking calisthenics.

  Commander Joola is still the saving grace of this place (there go another rhyme for ya). You can tell she’s not impressed with Uk’s grandstanding and actually wants us to be better soldiers-even us Floodites, as they been calling us. She monitored a flight simulator exercise I did and it was the first time I’d been alone with her.

  Maybe I was bristling, I dunno. You know I never been able to hide my feelings. Commander Joola goes, “You don’t like the Star Guard much, do you, Cadet Salazar?”

  And I’m like: “Not really, no.”

  And her: “Can I ask you why not?”

  And I mean, I dunno, I just launch into it, the whole thing, why we hate the Star Guard, and she’s just nodding, her face deadpan. When I was done it dawned on me how much I’d just let out and I’m sure my eyes went wide but whatever, what’s said can’t be unsaid, right?

  Commander Joola takes a long breath and then says: “Then why are you here?”

  And I tell her because I want to help fight the Barons and learn skills and this the best way I know how.

  Then she smiles very slightly and says: “Me too.”

  And I gape and go, “Really?”

  Turns out Commander Joola is no big fan of the Star Guard either, even though she’s a ranking commander and all that, but she says at their heart they’re a good organization, just complicated and sometimes corrupt like any group of beings. They really just want to bring order to the universe, and that’s cool I guess. The problem is, they’re always understaffed and getting into messy intergalactic conflicts, and the Barons, while they don’t have that many fighters on their side (and everyone kinda hates them for jacking up Earth), they have all the coolest weapons and technology and they’re hiring mercenaries and sending drone ships against anyone that opposes them. So the Star Guard see a place like Flood City, where we ain’t got much going for us and need help, honestly, and they think hey, we help you, you help us. Kick out the Barons and do some recruiting, everyone’s happy.

  In theory. Of course: no, no no and no, but I get the idea. And at least there are some good ones (or apparently good ones, because you can’t really trust anyone) like Joola out there to counterbalance hovering trash bags like Uk.

  Alright bro, I love you, take care of yaself, don’t do nothing too reckless and give Mom a kiss and a hug …

  Y

  The men chatted incessantly into the night and Dante waited. He’d gotten very good at waiting in the past week. Every day the terror would rise up inside of him, almost choke him from within, and then he’d breathe as deeply as he could and remember little Effie. She was still alive. Her tiny rasping snores came to him from across the room (six o’clock, to be exact—that one he had memorized perfectly in case he ever had to get to her quickly). Eventually the frantic beating of his heart would slow, his breath would stop coming in short, choppy gasps, and his mind would stop playing out all the horrible things that might happen.

  When
the terror simmered down to a low boil, his senses would come back and the world became crisp around him again. There were the familiar smells of his family, lingering like ghosts even though their bodies had been dragged away days ago. There was the friendly buzzing of jetboots past the window, the murmur of conversation out on the street, and somewhere, way past all that, the sound of crashing waves. All sounds that used to bring him a certain joy when he’d pause from his exercises or studies and consider the world around him.

  Now they only made him sad.

  The men in the kitchen broke into another loud chorus of laughter and one-upmanship. Soon they would try to make it back to their spacecraft and Dante and Effie would become useless to them. Most of the men had settled in, drowning their fears of being trapped in their ruckus games and shouting matches, but one—the Quiet One, Dante called him—was biding his time, plotting when to leave. And he was getting restless. Dante could tell by the incessant shuffle-shuffle of his feet and the tiny flicking of his fingers against one another. On the rare occasions he did speak, there was a growing rage evident in his raspy voice.

  Effie stirred in her sleep. Hush, Dante whispered inside himself. Be peaceful in your sleep, little one. Soon our time will come …

  This would never do.

  Mephim watched as Get slapped down his cards on the kitchen table and then reached across and smashed his fist into Tog’s face. The men let out a chorus of exaggerated Ohhhhs designed to egg on the violence.

  “That’s the best you got?” Tog growled.

  More laughter. Blood trickled from his left nostril and wound its way around his mouth and down his stubbly chin.

  Mephim cringed inwardly. Why couldn’t he have been marooned with disciplined men? True warriors who could stay quiet and maneuver tactically, ruthlessly. Survivors. Just about anyone would’ve been better than this reckless group of hooligans.

  “Hit him again!” Sak yelled.

  Get wound up for another punch.

  “Enough.” Mephim said it quietly, but it immediately silenced the room. Get glanced at him. Mephim narrowed his eyes at the boy.

  “But, Baron …” Sak said.

  “Enough of these games. This stupidity. We must be preparing our escape, not getting comfortable and drunk on our own idiocy.” The five men looked back at him with empty stares. Tog wiped blood off his face. Mephim crossed his arms. “We leave in three days. Make yourselves ready.”

  “How?” Get asked, that childish whine still edging his voice. “The Star Guard is—”

  Mephim silenced him with a glare. “You really want to know,” he said, “do you?”

  Get nodded with a gulp.

  “Very well, young Baron. Come with me.”

  Get had never been on the roof before. Mephim led him up a dark stairwell and then out a metal door. Gray clouds drifted like fat ghosts in the dark sky around them. Flood City spread to either side, twinkling streetlights and illuminated windows. Families would be settling in for the night. Get felt a twinge of guilt. Families like the one Mephim had slain in their own home. Much as he tried, Get couldn’t get the image of those crumpled, bleeding bodies out of his head. Seeing death and destruction in battle was one thing, but that single, sudden massacre had been something else entirely.

  Mephim held a tiny holowand up and opened its beam into the sky once, twice, a third time.

  “What’re you doing?” Get asked, shaking off the memories of death.

  Mephim didn’t answer, flashed the holobeam again, then twice more.

  “Is that code? Are you signaling the ba—?”

  “Silence,” Mephim said.

  Get shut up.

  A few moments of quiet passed. Get heard the shush of the ocean, the buzz of some jetboots. Somewhere, way, way above them, the Barons’ base fleet waited. Home. Funny how Get was standing on the very ground every Baron worshipped and dreamed of and called home, and he’d never felt so lonely, so alien, so lost. Home was his small barracks on Starcharger 79X, with his mom and dad right down the hall and Ato in the bottom bunk.

  Ato.

  He’d tried to banish his twin brother entirely from his thoughts since they’d crashed. Mephim said he’d betrayed them all, caused the crash, and was a traitor to Barons everywhere.

  “Good evening, ArchBaron,” a low voice boomed, startling Get from his memories. A giant blue head peered over the rooftop at them. The snell’s face almost looked human, except those huge eyes were so far apart and his nose was just a slight bulge between them.

  “Not so loud, you fool!” Mephim snarled. “Do you want the whole of Flood City to— Never mind. This is my mentee, the young Baron Get. We seek audience with your supervisor immediately, Captain Gorus. There is no more time to wait.”

  The captain nodded at Get. “Hey there, young Baron.”

  Get nodded back, unsure what to say.

  “I’m afraid that can’t be arranged at the moment,” the captain said. “He’s indisposed and has to—”

  Mephim pulled a small hand cannon out of his robes and pointed it right between Captain Gorus’s eyes. “Allow me to repeat myself,” Mephim said. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me correctly the first time. We seek audience with your supervisor. Immediately.”

  Gorus started to say something, then thought better of it.

  “No more runaround,” Mephim said. “No more delays.”

  Gorus raised a giant blue hand to his face and pushed a button on the blinking band wrapped around his wrist. “Gorus to base, Gorus to base.”

  A pause, and then the wristcom responded in a crackling voice: “Proceed, Captain.”

  “Have the regional commander holomessage me immediately.”

  Mephim smiled.

  Finally alone in his room, Max took a deep breath and collapsed on the bed. He missed Yala, who always knew what to do and how to do it; at least she knew how to act like she did so everyone around her felt safe. Even when Max was doing something right, he cringed with the feeling that it could all collapse at any second.

  He eyed his horn.

  Except music.

  That was the only exception to the “Max messes up” rule. Those notes turned to gold when they came out of his horn, and best of all it was effortless, like the music was playing itself and Max just had to exhale all the emotion he felt into it.

  Max picked up his horn. It felt good in his hands, an old friend. Outside the window, the sprinkled lights of Flood City rose and fell beneath the crescent moon. The ocean was all around; Max could hear it raging through the night. He put his lips on the mouthpiece, closed his eyes, and blew.

  A single note slid into another. Max walked up and down the scale one time and then burst into a sullen free form, allowing each phrase to lead him to the next, circling melodies around one another, echoing himself, teasing forward and dancing back. It felt so good. He was pretty sure it sounded great too. He brought the spontaneous song to a close and opened his eyes.

  An iguanagull sat perched on the window, not ten inches from Max, staring at him. It was close enough that Max could make out each glittering scale on its face, the shiny reflections in its black, black eyes, those razor-sharp, spaceship-eating claws.

  “Um,” Max said. It took all his self-control not to get up and run out of the room. Any sudden movement would spook the thing, and if there was one thing worse than an iguanagull on your windowsill, it was a freaked-out iguanagull trying to eat through your skull. Which it could easily do if the notion occurred to it.

  Max tried to smile but was pretty sure it came out more like a grimace. The bird-reptile thing shifted its weight from one foot to the other and flapped its great, feathered wings a few times.

  “Ato,” Max hissed. “Ato!”

  The iguanagull turned its head from side to side, regarding Max suspiciously with one eye and then the other.

  “Ato!”

  “What?” Ato poked his head into Max’s room and rubbed his eyes. “I was watching the holodeck and it’s bad enough
that you wanna practice at all hours of the night but now— Oh!” He gaped at the visitor. “How the … Where did … Wow.” Ato took a slow, cautious step toward the window. “Where’d it come from?” he said quietly.

  “I don’t know. I was practicing, had my eyes closed, and when I opened them, there it was.”

  “Play,” Ato said.

  “What?”

  “Keep playing your horn, Max.”

  “Ato—”

  “Just try it.”

  Max sighed and picked up his horn. He started back in on the melody he’d been tooling around with, this time keeping one eye open and glued to the creature. The iguanagull closed its eyes.

  “Ato!” Max whispered. “It closed its eyes!”

  “I know,” Ato said, still slo-mo walking toward the window. “Keep playing!”

  Max took his melody off into some uncharted territory, bending notes and accenting each line with graceful pauses. The iguanagull swayed gently back and forth on the windowsill.

  “It’s listening,” Ato whispered. “It’s really listening.”

  Max finished. The iguanagull opened its eyes, favored Max with a piercing stare, and then flapped its wings twice and took off into the night.

  Max poked his head into the big, empty Music Hall. Some of the chairs still lay scattered and tipped over from the mad escape the week before. The gaping hole in the ceiling showed a tattered square of gray sky and sent a shimmering corridor of daylight down to the much larger hole in the auditorium floor. No one was around, not even the iguanagulls. Max walked up to the edge of the Hole and took in that deep darkness. Somewhere down there, life had once been normal on the surface of this planet. People went about their days and started families and fell in love. They played music and got into fights and worked things out. And now they were all gone. It was impossible to comprehend, that much life, that much death.