Mahlia tried the idea out in her mind, trying to imagine a safe life in a place like Seascape Boston. Maybe she could doctor there. Maybe she could just not wake up in the middle of the night, having a nightmare that the Army of God was coming for her.
But even as she tried to imagine some better life, all she could really think of was Mouse, jumping up and hollering and throwing rocks at soldiers, like the Rust Saint rising up, blessing her with a second chance at life.
“You do what you do,” she said finally. “Mouse would come for me, and I’m not leaving him. Not again. I’m done with that. I’m done with running.”
“You will die.”
“I guess. I don’t know.” She shook her head, trying to pick through her feelings. “I used to think I was alive just because I kept getting away. If someone didn’t put a bullet in my head, I was winning. I was still breathing, right?” She looked at the blackened land around her, feeling tired and sad and alone.
“But now I’m thinking it ain’t like that. Now I’m thinking that once you got enough dead looking over your shoulder, you’re dead anyway. Don’t matter if you’re still walking and talking, they weigh you down.” She looked up at Tool, hoping against hope. “You sure you don’t want to help me?”
The half-man didn’t say anything at all.
Tool watched as the girl departed from the far side of the village. She crisscrossed the ground, trying to pick up the trail, and then headed into the jungle. One small and determined girl, stalking into the teeth of war.
Tool could respect the stubbornness, but it was difficult to respect the stupidity. A lone girl with a broken blade against an army. Tool had faced terrible odds in his life, but the girl faced worse.
What honor was there in suicide?
The boy is her pack.
Not mine, though.
With a growl, he turned in the opposite direction and started walking north to safety. He would need to be clever, but it was more than possible to penetrate the borders that Manhattan Orleans and Seascape Boston had thrown up to contain the chaos of the Drowned Cities. Though they might patrol their borders with armies full of his brethren, there were always weak points, and Tool was very good at exploiting others’ weaknesses.
Tool glanced over his shoulder, looking to see if the girl might have changed her mind, but she was gone. Swallowed up by the land.
The Drowned Cities ate its children.
You fight for yourself now. Do not mind that girl.
But still it rankled that a one-handed girl had the temerity to demand his loyalty, just as Caroa always had. People were all the same. Always demanding that others do their killing for them. Tool had slaughtered tiger guards and hyena men, but it was the humans who were most frightening. Humans had created generals and colonels and majors, people who kept their hands clean while they ordered others to cover themselves in blood.
Tool wondered if it was his loyal nature, bred and trained into him, that made him feel guilty for leaving her to her fate. Some vestige of the training that had made him so obedient to his original masters. Was that why he kept following her, trying to persuade her to leave this doomed land? Had he simply been reverting to his original conditioning? The loyal dog who would not leave its master?
Is she your master, then?
Tool bared his teeth at the thought.
But still he heard the girl’s taunting voice: How come if you’re so strong, you’re so afraid of everything?
He didn’t fear death. But he would never throw himself into pointless battle again. That was what the generals and their war machines demanded. He was not that sort of dog. Not anymore. He had fought too long, at too much cost, to allow anyone such power over him.
Are you afraid? a sly voice insinuated.
Tool snarled at the thought. I have never lost a battle.
But have you ever won?
25
PURSUING THE SOLDIERS was easy. Between them and their captives, they left a wide trail.
Mahlia slipped through the jungle, following.
The trail wound along one of the old roads, made of concrete and now carpeted with soil and leaves and vines. New trees punctured the way, poking up through cracks in its tortured surface, but still, the way was wider and more open, and the vegetation wasn’t as thick as the true forest. At times, the trail leaped into the air, arching high on concrete pylons, following the ancient expressways and byways from the time when everyone had had gasoline to burn and cars to drive.
Up high, Mahlia would pause and look ahead, seeking signs of the soldiers, but for all her speed, they seemed to move faster. And she had to slow and forage as she went.
Her feet became sore. She became thirsty. She drank from brackish water, pushing aside slime and water skippers, and always she kept alert. At times, she could hear the boom of the 999 off in the distance, the far roaring of the Drowned Cities, and it frightened her to think of what she was walking into.
But she kept going, knowing she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t. Knowing that she was doing exactly what her father had always scorned about Drowned Cities people. They were stupid and never thought strategically. They rushed pell-mell into revenge and bloodshed and war and death, even if it made no sense.
Mahlia remembered her father kicking off combat boots and cursing the Drowned Cities and its thirst for conflict. Stripping off body armor as her mother had clucked around him, cleansing wounds.
“They’re animals. Nothing but dogs, tearing at each other.”
“Not all of us,” her mother said soothingly as she helped him into a steaming bath. “Just because you’ve been here a few years doesn’t mean you know everything about us.”
“Animals,” he repeated. “You only defend this place because you don’t know how good life can be. If you’d seen Beijing, or Island Shanghai, you’d know. In China we aren’t like this. We aren’t dogs tearing at one another’s throats. We plan. We think ahead. We cooperate. But you people?” He snorted. “If you had any sense, you’d spend less time shooting at one another and calling each other traitors, and more time building seawalls.” He closed his eyes in the steaming bath. “Sha. Stupid. All of you. Too stupid to drink water even when it’s given.”
On the second day, the coywolv caught her.
She’d found a new ruin of a town, and amongst its rubble had found some sun-cracked sandals lying in the junk of the place. She remembered the wire and glass and rubble of the city. Her feet were tough, but she doubted she could walk over raw glass.
She sat on the ground and slipped the sandals onto her feet, but their plastic cracked as she walked on them, so she tossed them aside. They were too old, and too sun-broken to be any good. But she spied a plastic jug that looked good for carrying water, and there was some rope as well, and then she’d straightened.
The coywolv was staring at her, eyes like lamps. Yellow eyes as predatory as the half-man’s.
Mahlia’s skin prickled. She slowly retreated, looking left and right. Sure enough, she saw other shadows flitting through the ruins.
Fates. Who knew how long they’d been stalking her? If they were revealing themselves, it meant that they’d already set up their kill.
Coywolv were smart like that. Liked to follow and circle and evaluate, and then they came in on you and you were dead. Sun Tzu would have approved, but all Mahlia felt was a sick fear as she realized the beasts had chosen to attack her in an area of ruins that had nothing but weedy little trees no more than the width of her wrist, and few rubble-pile walls. Nothing to climb up on. No place easy to flee.
She hefted her rusty machete. The coywolv before her seemed to understand the challenge. Its lips drew back, showing fangs, and it started to growl. But it wasn’t the one she needed to worry about. Behind her, the wind rushed.
Mahlia spun and swung. The second coywolv twisted aside, easy and nimble. Her blade whistled harmlessly through empty air. The coywolv lunged again, snapping, baring teeth and growling, circling as its
partner nipped at her heels.
Mahlia spun again, swinging, warding off the pair. She needed to get to a tree. If she could get up high, they’d trap her for a while, but they weren’t hunting dogs. They’d eventually move on to easier prey after a few hours or a day. But the closest tree that looked climbable was more than a hundred yards away.
Don’t panic. Don’t run. Just get moving.
If she panicked and ran, they’d bring her down just like a small forest deer. They’d rip her legs out and pile on top of her, and she’d never stand up again.
Claws scrabbled on rubble behind her.
Mahlia turned and swung. She hit fur with the flat of her machete. The coywolv snarled, leaped back, then lunged again. Mahlia screamed and charged it, swinging again and this time the blade cut across the coywolv’s mouth.
Turn! TURN!
There would be a third attacking now. They always coordinated. They worked together. She spun, swinging the machete, and slashed it away. It snarled. The first one circled her, nipping in, faking an attack. She feinted at it, trying to run it off, but it bared its teeth and hardly backed off at all.
She spun, swinging, expecting another attack from behind, but the other coywolv were out of reach. She was starting to panic, jumping and turning at imagined sounds.
The coywolv all circled, darting in on her, growling and snapping and then twisting away.
Fates, she needed her back against something. But the weedy trees offered no cover, and now a fourth coywolv joined its brethren. Ears flat back, head low, stalking.
She’d been so busy worrying about soldier boys and villagers she’d forgotten the jungle had hunters of its own, and now she was going to die for it.
Behind her, a whisper of motion. She whipped her machete about and caught the coywolv in midleap. The blade bit deep but the coywolv crashed into her and she went tumbling. The other coywolv leaped for her. Teeth slashed at her face. Another went for her legs, teeth tearing.
Mahlia threw up the stump of her arm. A coywolv bit deep. She screamed. Suddenly, a roaring filled the air. The coywolv was jerked off her and blood rained down. Howling and yelping. A hurricane of movement. The coywolv that had been attacking her legs evaporated into a whirl of fur and showering blood. Mahlia curled into a ball as the roaring increased, shaking the world, louder then war.
Suddenly everything went silent. Mahlia scrambled to her feet. All around, torn and twisted coywolv bodies lay scattered.
Amid the carnage, Tool stood tall. Battered but vital, covered in blood. His machete dripped with gore. Mahlia clutched at her wounded arm, staring at the transformed battleground. All the coywolv were torn apart. One of them lay against a tree, broken and whimpering. One was ripped in half. Another had its head cleaved open.
Tool knelt down over the carcass of the last.
With his machete, he pried into its body, then set the blade aside and punched his fist through the coywolv’s ribcage. A second later, his hand emerged gripping the heart of the beast, and Tool bent his head to feed.
Mahlia felt a chill. As quickly as the place had become a battlefield, now it was nothing but a slaughterhouse. They were all dead. Every single one of them. In seconds, Tool had torn them all apart. The carnage was astounding. Worse than what soldier boys did, and a thousand times as fast. She’d never seen anything like it.
She must have made a sound, for Tool looked up at her, blood dripping from his muzzle. He eyed her wounds. She could see him evaluating her.
Doctor Mahfouz would have rushed to her and clucked and worried after every scratch and bit of blood. Tool simply glanced at her shredded arm, scraped face, and clawed body, and dismissed it all.
“You truly believe you can reenter the city?” he asked.
It took a second for the half-man’s words to sink in, and then Mahlia got it. She wasn’t alone. This warrior monster was with her. Her heart leaped. She wasn’t alone. She wasn’t powerless. She had a chance.
“Can you do it?” the half-man asked again.
Mahlia hesitated, remembering the terrors of her previous escape, the panic, the huddled hiding places, the nights spent in murky drowned buildings, then nodded. “I got out, didn’t I?”
“It will have changed.”
“I can get us back in. My mother, she had places where she hid her antiques, before she sold them. There’s places we can hide. And there’s ways through the buildings, if you can swim.”
Tool nodded. “So.”
He straightened and went over to the coywolv Mahlia had chopped with her machete. It still writhed on the ground, whimpering and baring its teeth. With a swift motion, Tool snapped its neck, then set his grip on the animal’s body. His muscles bulged.
The coywolv’s ribcage shattered like matchsticks.
“If we are pack, then conquest is our sustenance, sister.”
He plunged his hand into the coywolv’s frame. With a wet tearing, the heart came out, glistening and full of blood, veins and arteries torn. The muscle of life. Tool held it out to her. “Our enemies give us strength.”
Blood ran from his fist. Mahlia saw the challenge in the half-man’s eye.
She limped over to the battle-scarred monster and held out her hand. The heart was surprisingly heavy as Tool poured it into her palm. She lifted the muscle to her lips and bit deep.
Blood ran down her chin.
Tool nodded his approval.
PART TWO
THE
DROWNED
CITIES
26
MOUSE’S FACE BURNED, a constant reminder of his new associates: Slim and Gutty, Stork and Van. TamTam and Boots and Alil, and dozens more.
They stood around and laughed and pointed their guns at the prisoners where they lay flat on the ground with their hands on the backs of their heads, and every one of the soldiers carried the same burned brand on his cheek that Mouse carried on his own.
“You’re Glenn Stern’s now, warboy,” Gutty said, holding a pistol up to Mouse’s head. “Elite! Best of the best.”
Mouse held still, not sure what he was supposed to do. The barrel of the gun pressed behind his ear.
“Half-bar like you, there’s only one question…” Gutty went on. “Do you got what it takes?”
Mouse hesitated.
Gutty jammed the gun hard into his head, and Mouse finally understood.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes, what?” Again the pistol jab.
“Yes, I got what it takes?”
“Then say it!” Gutty shouted. “I want to hear my warboy say it proud!”
“I got it!”
“GOT WHAT?”
“I got what it takes!”
“WHAT?”
“I GOT WHAT IT TAKES!” Mouse shouted as loud as he could, sure Gutty was going to blow his brains out.
“I CAN’T HEAR YOU, SOLDIER!”
“I GOT WHAT IT TAKES!”
“YOU A SOLDIER?”
“YES!”
“YOU CALL ME SIR, HALF-BAR! YOU CALL ME SIR!”
“YES, SIR!”
“THAT’S RIGHT, HALF-BAR! SING IT OUT!”
“I GOT WHAT IT TAKES, SIR!”
Mouse was shouting so loud his voice cracked. Gutty started laughing, doubled over with hilarity. Some of the other warboys were laughing with him.
“Damn,” Gutty said. “You got what it takes, huh?”
Mouse wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, so he shouted again, “YES, SIR!”
Gutty slapped him upside the head, hard. “Shut up, maggot. You keep shouting like that, you’ll bring Army of God down on us, get us all killed.” He slapped Mouse again. “Now go get us some water. Fill our canteens.”
He tossed a bunch of plastic bottles over to Mouse, a big pile of them, all covered with pictures of Accelerated Age cars. One of them said MOTOR OIL on the side. A big yellow one read ANTIFREEZE.
“Move, soldier!”
Smoldering with fear and humiliation and adrenaline, Mouse gathered up
all the bottles.
Every minute with the UPF soldiers felt like he was balancing on a slime-slick swamp log, always about to slip and drown. He clutched all the bottles to his chest, and then, with a surge of hope, he realized that he was being sent away from the camp.
Just himself.
He was a dog sent to fetch, and they didn’t take him seriously. But if he was quick about it, he could simply slip away. Disappear into the swamp, make like a lizard and disappear into the greenery.
Mouse glanced around, gauging the soldiers. They were all busy guarding prisoners. Talking with one another. Kicking back after their march. He gathered up the bottles and started off, forcing himself not to glance back, not to give away his intentions.
Don’t look sneaky, he told himself. Pretend like you’re a good soldier boy.
He walked quietly, listening to the jungle. No one was following. He was sure of it. He moved on through the jungle to where swamp water turned the ground squashy. Just a little farther. He reached the water.
Now, he thought. Run.
It was his chance. He needed to do it while they were distracted setting up camp. But something stilled him. Instead, Mouse crouched down and started filling bottles, listening to the jungle around him. Something didn’t sound right. He listened to water gurgling into the jugs, and to the jungle, trying to figure it out. It was too quiet.
With a chill, he realized that he wasn’t alone. Someone was watching him. He filled another canteen and casually let his eyes wander the greenery, as if he were simply bored and watching butterflies.
Nothing. But he was almost sure that he was being watched.
He finished filling the bottles. Straightened. Still nothing. But he couldn’t get rid of the fear that he was being watched. Mouse knew the jungle. He’d lived in it and hunted it, and foraged it, and there was someone out there.
He hefted the water bottles. Last chance to run. It won’t get any better. But he didn’t move.
Why was he so scared?