The Drowned Cities

  Ocho felt something tear as she pulled him away from the fire. “You set us up.”

  She didn’t answer, just dragged him into the darkness. Behind them, flames roared higher. Blazing heat. Ocho wished he had his gun, or a knife to stick her, anything at all, but the pain was too much and he was weak and she wasn’t stopping to let him catch his breath. “I’m going to kill you,” he panted. He tried to grab at her throat.

  “Cut it out, I’m saving your maggot ass.” She jabbed him in his stitches with the stump of her hand. He gasped and doubled over. He felt like a baby, he was so weak.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I’m too stupid to know better.” They reached a tree, and she shoved him up against it. “If you climb, you’ll make it.”

  Ocho wanted to turn back, to go to his boys, but she fought off his weak resistance and started lifting him up. “You can’t help them,” she grunted. She jammed him farther up into the tree. “I’m only doing this because you almost act human. Goes-around-comes-around, soldier boy. Now climb!”

  “I can’t!”

  “You climb or you’re coywolv bait.” She boosted him higher. “Get up there, you maggot!”

  Fire had spread to the rest of the building; it was all going up. Ammo started exploding. Rat-a-tat. Probably his rifle on fire. Ocho felt his stitches rip wide as the girl shoved him higher. He almost blacked out from the pain, but he went up.

  At last he made it into the crotch of the tree, gasping and sobbing. His side was full of flame, but he was up. Up and safe. Alive.

  He looked down for the girl, expecting her to be following him up, thinking maybe he could still pigstick her for doing this to them, but the girl was gone. Swallowed into the jungle. A ghost, just like the coywolv she’d summoned.

  Ocho let out a sigh and laid his cheek against the rough bark as the building went up in flames, feeling the knife burn of torn stitches all up and down his ribs. His whole body felt heavy. Maybe that doctor girl’s drugs were better than he’d thought.

  More gunfire lit the night. Soldier boys doing what they did best. Coywolv were howling, but now the squads had their number and were starting to mop up. Paying back, UPF-style. Ten times over.

  Ocho realized that blood was running down his side. He groped at his ribs, fingers clumsy. Too bad about that. It would have made a tidy scar. But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.

  The building torched higher, blazing. A bunch more ammo exploded. In his stupor, it was almost pretty. Ocho looked out at the darkness, wondering where the girl had gone.

  You better be running for the ends of the earth. If we catch up with you, that last hand of yours isn’t the only thing the lieutenant will take.

  The warboys opened up, full-auto. More coywolv yelped and died.

  Ocho let his cheek rest against the bark, feeling how comfortable it was. He wasn’t sure if it was the drugs or the blood loss, but he was fading. He almost smiled as the dark pit of unconsciousness swallowed him up.

  The girl had given them a grinding, all right. Gave them a grinding, and they never even saw it coming. He could respect that. Ocho’s eyes sagged closed.

  You better run, girl. Run hard, and don’t you ever come back. Next time, there won’t be coywolv to save you.

  12

  HUMAN BEINGS ALWAYS pretended to a toughness they didn’t possess. And perhaps, in their frail human way, they were tough. Places like the Drowned Cities made children strong because the weak ones died early. But whether it was Drowned Cities canals or Kolkata rice paddy, it didn’t matter—children were always the same. Lost and running, or feral and fighting. They were always around. Like mice.

  Always in the corners of bombed buildings, or splayed facedown in the mud of irrigation ditches. Flies crawling in and out of their noses and mouths and eyes. One mouse here. One mouse there. And stamping them out never filled you with even the smallest sense of victory.

  The sun moved across the sky and Tool dreamed of mice running hither and thither.

  I am dying.

  When Tool was young, his trainers had told him that if he and his pack fought well and honorably, they would ride in the war chariot of the sun. Tool would die and he would go to fields of meat and honey, and he would find his pack and they would hunt tigers with their bare hands.

  They would hunt.

  Soon.

  He remembered the electric prods the trainers used. Showering sparks as they struck his nose. Looming over him, making him cower as they struck him, all of his brothers and sisters pissing and scrambling over one another to get away from them.

  Trainers. Hard men and women with their discipline rods. The best of the best, straight from the boot camps of GenSec Military Solutions, Ltd. GenSec knew how to build obedience. Lessons of raw meat and cold electricity. Showering sparks.

  BAD dog!

  Tool remembered quivering and begging to do as he was told. Begging to fight and kill. To attack when told.

  To obey.

  And then, their general came. The kind and honorable man who rescued them from GenSec. The general who led their pack out of Hell. They climbed out of Hell together, and stood under the war chariot of the sun and they were born anew. In desperate thanks, they gave their loyalty to General Caroa, forever after.

  Rescued from Hell, Tool was meant to serve a lifetime, or however long he lasted. He would fight, but he would also know the pleasure and safety of belonging to something greater than himself. He belonged to army and pack.

  Good dog.

  The sun was sinking.

  Tool noticed a boy squatting beside him like a vulture, observing him with carrion interest.

  Tool had seen many of his packmates picked over by vultures. Torn at by lean dogs, ripped at by ravens. They had sailed for far shores, and they had died. When they fought the Tiger Guard in India, the vultures had been circling in the hazy blue skies before the army even waded ashore, anticipating the killing. Knowing that the open swamp waters at the Hooghly River mouth always provided feed. But that hadn’t stopped General Caroa.

  Tool and his packmates had charged forth at the general’s bidding, and they had slaughtered and died.

  And now, here, a vulture crouched, waiting.

  No, not a vulture… A boy.

  The mouse boy.

  Tool stared at the skinny redheaded creature, wondering why it didn’t scamper away. He had this mouse boy by the tail because… Tool searched his memory. It was hazy. The mouse was a prisoner, and prisoners had uses. Sometimes the general had wanted enemy troops taken alive. Wanted them whole instead of gutted…

  Tool couldn’t remember why he was keeping the boy. Decided he didn’t care. He was dying. Having a companion to watch over one’s death was not a bad thing. He himself had watched many of his brothers and sisters as they went from pain into peace. Listened to their recountings. It was good to go into death with someone to remember your passage.

  The boy tried to get away, but Tool still had enough strength to stop that, at least.

  “No,” he growled. “You stay with me.”

  “Why don’t you just let me go?”

  “Let you go? You’re begging?” Tool couldn’t help but growl in disgust. “Do you think the First Claw of Lagos offered me mercy when we met in single combat? You think I begged when he placed his blade upon my neck? You think he let me go?” Tool snorted. “You think my general offered to let me walk free of his own accord? You think Caroa ever let anyone go?” Tool stared at the boy. It was difficult not to despise weakness like this. “Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.”

  “Is that what you’re doing? Accepting that you’ve failed?”

  “You think I’ve failed?” Tool let his teeth show. “In my years of war, I have never been defeated. I have burned cities and destroyed armies, and the sky has wept flame because of me and mine. If you think I die defeated, you k
now nothing.”

  He lay back, exhausted from the exchange. He had never been so weak.

  Death is not defeat, Tool told himself. We all die. Every one of us. Rip and Blade and Fear and all the rest. We all die. So what if you are the last? You were designed to be destroyed.

  And yet still, some part of him rebelled at the thought. He alone had won free. He alone had survived. The bad dog who had turned upon his master. Tool almost smiled, wondering what Caroa would think of him now, lying in the mud, bleeding out. He stifled a snort. Caroa wouldn’t have cared at all. Generals never cared. They sent their packs to slaughter, and covered themselves in glory.

  Tool stared up at the sun, thinking of cities burned and hearts of enemies he had eaten. Remembering how he and his pack had run streets under fire, blades and machine guns held high. Remembering refugees running before him like a river in flood, tumbling and crashing over one another in their desperation to escape. He and his pack had laughed at their frothing terror, and when Kolkata fell, they roared triumph from the rooftops.

  They had done impossible things. They had dropped from great balloon airships, arrowing down from thirty thousand feet to land behind enemy lines and secure the coast of Niger. He had slaughtered the hyena men of Lagos in all their numbers, and had personally eaten the heart of the First Claw.

  When the hydrofoil clipper ships of General Caroa arrived to belch forth armies on the beach sands, Tool had been there to greet them, standing knee-deep and laughing in the bloody froth. Wherever he went, he conquered, and the general had rewarded him and his pack.

  He had done impossible things, surviving impossible odds. And yet here he lay, just like all his brothers and sisters before him, dying in the mud with flies buzzing around his wounds and not enough interest or energy to swat them away. Apparently it didn’t matter what path an augment chose, it always led to this.

  “Please.”

  Tool turned his gaze on the boy. He could barely open his eyes through the blur of fever.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  Tool’s eye followed the length of his arm, to his fist. Puzzled at what he saw.

  The little mouse was pinned by the tail.

  “Let me go,” the boy whispered. “I can still get you the medicine.”

  Medicine. Ah yes. That was it. The mouse was nothing. Medicine. That was the thing. But it was too late for medicine. The girl had taken too long. There was only a final bit of payment left. A final promise to keep.

  Tool slowly turned his head, his whole body stiff with infection, neck muscles congealed like taffy. Flies rose off his body in a cloud as he dipped his face to muddy water. He lapped, then lay back again, panting, his tongue thick in his mouth. The heat of the jungle felt like a great hand pressed upon him.

  “Your sister has left you,” he croaked.

  “She’ll come,” the boy insisted. “Just wait a little longer.”

  Tool almost laughed at that. He wondered how humans could go on trusting one another. Such a fickle species. They always said one thing and did another. It was why his kind had been created. Augments always followed through on their promises.

  “It’s time,” he said. Slowly Tool dragged the boy off the bank and into the swamp. He took the boy’s head in his huge hand.

  “Just a little longer!”

  “No. The girl has forsaken you. Your kind has always been garbage. Willing to run when you should stand. Willing to kill one another for nothing other than scraps. Your kind…” Pain racked him, left him panting. “Worse than hyenas. Lower than rust.”

  “She’s coming!” the boy insisted, but his voice had turned hysterical.

  “How long for her to reach this doctor and return?” Tool asked. “Half a day? Two?” He hauled the boy closer.

  “Why don’t you just let me go?” The boy was starting to struggle, the strength of a gnat against the strength of an ogre. “What difference does it make? You’re dead already. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do nothing to you.”

  Tool ignored him and started sinking the boy into the swamp’s embrace. Strength was pouring out of him, gushing out like water from a shattered dam, but still, he had enough for this. Pay the girl back. Make her pay for her treachery. Make her know that when the Fifth Regiment is betrayed, nothing is left standing. The general and the trainers, whispering in Tool’s ear, urging him on.

  The boy started to thrash and cry. A tiny bundle of bones and scars, freckles and red hair. Just another human who would grow up to become a monster.

  “Please,” the boy whispered. “Let me go.”

  Again with the mercy. Humans were always begging for mercy. So willing to do their worst to others, and always begging for mercy at the end.

  “Please.”

  Pathetic.

  13

  “MOUSE?”

  Mahlia eased into the swamp. It had taken her all night and part of the day to find her way back. First to rendezvous with the doctor without getting nailed by the many soldier patrols whom Lieutenant Sayle had sent out in search of them, and then to make her way back to this isolated place of moss-draped trees and stagnant green pools.

  Mosquitoes whined in her ears, but nothing else moved. Nothing at all.

  “Mouse?”

  “Do you see him?” the doctor asked.

  Was this the place? Mahlia thought so, but it was hard to—

  There. The gator.

  “This is it!” She dashed toward the dead reptile.

  “Wait!” the doctor called, but Mahlia plunged forward, heedless.

  “Mouse!”

  She skidded to a halt, scanning the swamps. It had taken too long. Too long to get away, too long to find her way. She fought down tears.

  “Mouse?”

  Too long to avoid the patrols of the lieutenant as he quartered the wilderness, hunting for her and the doctor, intent on revenge. And now there was nothing.

  Where was the half-man? It should have been there, at least.

  “Mahlia…”

  She turned at the doctor’s hesitant voice, and saw what he was looking at.

  A small form floated in the water. Arms spread out. Red hair fanned in the water. Floating quiet and still in the emerald pool.

  “Fates, please. Kali-Mary Mercy. Oh, Fates. Noooo!”

  Mahlia splashed to Mouse’s body and yanked it up, mindless and desperate. There were ways to breathe life into the drowned and dead. She could still save him. The doctor was good.

  But even as her mind told her stories, she knew that they were nothing but silly little licebiter prayers, wishes that would never be answered.

  Mouse’s head came up out of the water, and suddenly he spit a stream of mud in her face.

  Mahlia leaped back with a yelp, trying to understand how the dead spit, all her mother’s stories of war dead rising making her skin prickle, but suddenly Mouse was laughing, and now he was standing, and she finally understood that he wasn’t dead.

  The damn licebiter was laughing.

  Mahlia lunged for him and grabbed him and Mouse’s skin was warm with life and air, and still he was laughing. Mahlia sobbed with relief and then she slugged him.

  “Owww!”

  “You maggot! I’ll kill you for that!” She shoved him under the water. “You faked me?”

  Mouse was laughing and trying to fight her off. Tears blurred Mahlia’s sight. She was laughing and sobbing and hating him and loving him, and all her terror that she’d kept bottled up inside came flooding out.

  “You maggot!” She hugged him. “Don’t ever do that to me! I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you.” And as she said it, she knew it was true. She’d lost too many. She couldn’t take any more. Every part of her old life had been ripped away. In its place, there was only Mouse.

  Mouse was untouchable. He had the Fates Eye on him. Soldier boys didn’t see him. Bullets missed him. Food always found him. Mouse was a survivor. He had to survive. And Mahlia was terrified to realize that she would do anything to make sure of
it.

  “Damn, Mahlia,” Mouse said. “I think you really would miss me if I bit the bullet.” He was still laughing. Trying to shake her off, and then he started to hit her, pounding her with all his strength.

  “You were late!” he shouted as he beat on her. And then he started to cry. Sobs wracked his small frame.

  “You were late.”

  14

  IT TOOK A WHILE to get Mouse calmed down and get the story from him, as well as to tell the story of their own experiences with the UPF soldier boys. The half-man lay in a hollow not far away, huddled amongst banyan roots, like some kind of dead troll from a fairy tale.

  Mouse squatted on the swamp bank and stared across at the creature’s corpse. He pushed red hair off his freckled face.

  “It let me go,” he said. “I dunno why.”

  “Maybe it died too soon,” Mahlia suggested.

  “No. It let me go. And then it crawled over there and curled up. Could’ve done me, easy. Had plenty left to sink me and make sure I never came up.” He shrugged. “Didn’t do it.”

  The doctor was wading around the beast, staring. Even dead, the monster was imposing. Mahlia had known it before, but seeing the doctor standing next to the creature drove it home. The half-man had been huge. She thought of the three dead soldier boys and the wounded sergeant back at Doctor Mahfouz’s squat, and couldn’t help wondering what a monster like that could have done if it were healed and healthy.

  The doctor waded back to them, moving clumsily through the muck.

  “It’s not dead,” he said grimly.

  “What?”

  Mahlia found herself backing away, even though she was meters distant from the huge body.

  “The half-man is still breathing. These creatures are very difficult to kill entirely.”

  Mouse’s eyes had gone wide. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yes, I think that’s best.” The doctor climbed out of the swamp and wrung brackish water from his dripping trousers. “The soldiers will be searching for us. I’d like to be deeper in the swamps before they find this place.”