32
MIGHT BE ME
Mako yelled, letting off a burst of fire at the stand of spindly trees and thick underbrush. Tremaine vanished into its maw, and the rifter grabbed the back of Barko’s jacket, hauling him backward again. The bald scientist went down hard, the sound of his teeth clicking together almost audible over a rifle’s stuttering barks—projectile instead of plasma, because you couldn’t ever tell what plasma would do in a Rift. It wasn’t worth it, so the plas-switches on the Currago5K rifles had been disabled. The pin on the Suray Naga submachine the demo man carried had been fused, too.
“He’s gone!” she yelled. “Fucking forget it!”
Morov, his knees digging into the grass, swore viciously. “Cease fire! Cease fire, you fuckbuckle motherfucker! Hold your fire!” Behind him, Brood had prudently hit the ground, and bullets plowed into the shrubs and shaking, spindly trees. They were plo-rounds, and anything flammable should have gone up in seconds. Certainly anything woodlike should have burst into greasy orange flames.
Instead, the trees writhed with queer rubbery shivers and the shrubs ran like ink on an oiled plate, extending long thorn-liquid runners up the hill. Dust puffed up, the serrated grass whipping wildly, and the rifter uncoiled over Barko in an amazing leap. She hit Mako squarely, and even though she was much smaller the unexpected impact threw the man sideways, into Tolstoy, who went down hard as well. Bullets spattered overhead, and Brood punched Morov on the closest thing he could reach, to get his commander’s attention.
That just happened to be Morov’s left buttock. Which cramped, viciously, because Brood had a helluva windup.
“Motherfucker!” Morov howled, but he knew exactly why the sonofabitch had done it. When you were being drowned out by combat noise, you were forced to other measures.
The thing was heading up the hill, sending out its shrub-tentacles, clawing against grass and earth. The rifter screamed, a high hawklike cry, lost under the gunfire and hideous crunching. Mako stopped firing, and Brood was on his back, fumbling at his chest while the thing heaved itself another few feet up the slope.
It looked angry, and it was making a sound. A low grumbling roar, gathering strength. The trees were less trees now, and more spinelike, the greenery suddenly little fleshy pods and tabs crusting their edges. The “leaves” crawled over the spines, and as the thing scrabbled closer, Morov could swear he saw them scurrying along, nuzzling at the scars bullets had torn. Lapping at them, swarming like white blood cells gathering to form an angry pus-filled pocket.
Morov lurched to his feet. Mako was no longer making noise; Barko was, a hoarse cry of despair. Eschkov, his backpack left behind, stumbled down the slope toward them, hands outstretched and his spectacles askew. A lonely flash jetted off one lens, and he almost ran into Morov, his soft skinny hands closing with desperate strength on the officer’s pack straps. He began pulling, hauling Morov up the hill.
Brood’s hand finally came away from his chest, full of the sour metal apple of a barker.* “Clear!” he screamed, pulling the pin, and tossed it at the thing. He rolled over and scrabbled, getting his legs inelegantly but efficiently under him, and almost ran into Morov, who stared at the goddamn thing as the grenade bounced once, vanishing into its quivering depths.
You dumbass, Morov had time to think.
“Get down!” the rifter yelled, and kicked Senkin’s feet from under him. She threw herself on top of Barko, and Morov had a brief second to think oh shit before the grenade popped and the noise exploded outward.
A gigantic warm hand cupped every inch of his back, legs, head, neck, everything. He flew, weightless for a moment.
Crunch. The impact snapped something in his left leg and knocked all the sense out of him for a brief gentle second before the pain began. The world spun away, came back on a greased leav full of tearing edges. He hung between Senkin and Brood as they slid down the other side of the hill, and the rifter was bellowing at them to move you cocksuckers move! She had something in her hands—one of those queer opalescent rocks, and as she ran she twisted at it, tendons standing out under pale skin. It cracked, a thin thread of darkness appearing at its heart. She had another snot-rag, a faded red one, and popped the rock into it as she ran.
Then she whirled, digging her heels in, and skidded to a stop, the twin furrows plowed by her boots glaring against the matted grass. The noise behind them spiraled up into a boulder-rubbing screech.
The thing was fucking pissed.
Tolstoy was on his knee at the top of the hill, firing at the thing. It crested the rise in a humpback wave, shedding those fleshy leaf-bits, whatever wet sound they made lost in the roaring. They fell, bloodsick knobs of tissue, and when they hit the grass small puffs of caustic smoke belched up. The rifter raised the fist with the red snot-rag, and began to whirl the trapped rock inside.
The thing heaved itself fully atop the rise, tentacles shooting out and dragging Tolstoy into its maw, which closed with a wet crunch lost under the roaring. Brood was down on one knee, shooting at it too, wasting ammo. Morov tried to shake the noise out of his head, tried to think. The roar turned everything inside him to jelly, knocked his head back on the smallish stem his neck had become, and the pain came again, diamondtooth ants biting down his back and legs, red-hot iron shoved into his left thigh.
The rifter’s face was alive, bright color high on her cheeks. Her eyes weren’t bulging so much as shining, and she whirled the makeshift sling just like the illustration of King David Morov could remember in one of his battered childhood books. His mother would read them, if she wasn’t too bone-tired after a long day of slinging other people’s wet laundry, and she would tell him the stories behind the stories—how David even then was a king, and his bloodline would bring the Messiah when it was time for God to call His chosen people home. How King Solomon had built his palace with demons as his slaves, the great ring glinting on his finger, how the wise rebbes made massive men of clay and breathed life into them to protect the ghetto.
There were other stories, but all Morov was seeing was the Goliath coming down the hill, gaining speed, and Brood screaming as he emptied one clip, then another at it. The bullets tore into it without effect, and the rifter let out another high keening screech. A snap of her arm, and the white, faintly glowing rock described a high arc.
For a moment it looked like she’d miscalculated, but the impossible happened. The rock curved, and the dark thread along its middle peeled open, a single spark buried in its depths dilating.
The rifter turned on her heel and launched herself at Senkin, who was holding Morov up because Brood had gone fucking killcrazy. She hit with a crunch and yelled something he couldn’t hear. His head rang, and there was a soft, ridiculous whoosh before the flung rock exploded.
Fallen sideways, his head bouncing against the serrated grass, Morov stared.
The flame was blue, and it didn’t act like it should. It spread like liquid while it leapt and danced, and a cloying, feverish heat blasted down the hillside as the spine-backed thing writhed, throwing even more of those tiny gobbets everywhere. One landed near Morov’s nose. He watched, dreamily, as the round mouth on its end, ringed with concentric rows of inward-slanting, triangular teeth, opened and closed.
Fuck of a sphincter. The thought was very far away. Everything grayed out.
When he came back, touching down in his body like a dropped popper into a cenestat catch, he was on his back and Eschkov was finishing a very capable field-splint on his left lower leg. Senkin had an emergency kit open and Morov’s sleeve pushed up; he smoothed a red painpatch onto his commander’s biceps. The narcotic would begin spreading immediately. Senkin’s mouth moved, but the words were only a faint fuzzy faraway buzz.
Shock. I’m in shock.
Barko, on his other side, held up a field-syringe of amber liquid. He tapped it, twice, and cleared any air before bending over Morov’s arm, which had a tourniquet around it he couldn’t feel. Barko’s lips were moving, but maybe the man wasn
’t talking. It looked, instead, an awful lot like he was praying.
Morov’s head tipped back. There was Brood, at a weird angle because his field of vision was sliding, standing watch. Mako, his head wrapped in a bandage already bearing a spreading clusterpatch of blood leaking through, was watching the other way.
The rifter crouched in the middle distance, stubble slicked to her scalp with grime and blood. Had she run her hands back over her head, like Barko was always doing? Her hollow cheeks were striped with weird, greasy soot. She wasn’t looking at Morov.
Instead, she was studying Brood’s back, and her expression wasn’t quite unguarded, but it was … thoughtful.
She knows he’s Kopelund’s fail-safe. I wonder if she’ll …
The thought spun away, replaced by other slow-moving mental fish, a flock of them. It was dangerous in here. More dangerous than they had ever imagined. The thing had looked like trees, for fucksake. Had the rifter left them there knowing one of the scientists would be unable to resist the temptation? Or had Tremaine just been that stupid?
One more thought came circling back before the warmth of the painpatch crept up his shoulder to his neck and made everything seem just-fucking-fine-and-dandy.
Someone else is going to die.
I’m hurt bad.
It might be me.
33
RIDE THIS WITH ME
Fine.” Cabra’s jaw had set itself hard as chaxalloy. She had calmed down, and made the decision he’d known she would. “We ride it, then.”
Sabby, the left side of his face puffing already as his eye swelled shut, shook his head. His hair ground into the dirt, but at least she’d stopped hitting him. His arms, wrapped around her so tight they ached, hurt almost as much as his ribs. He settled his wrist against one of her backpack straps, his fist securely anchored in the tough material. “Ent gonna.” Not like it mattered.
“You say that all the damn time,” Cabra hissed. An angry flush suffused her dark cheeks, and her beaded braids glittered angrily as the sun westered. “Ent gonna, ent gonna, then you go ahead anyway.”
“How much longer, huh? How much longer ’fore you drop me ’cause I don’t wanna?”
“Don’ wanna what?” She spread her pink-palmed hands. Every line on her was a taut curve, from those much-in-demand hips to the sculpted division of her lips. Even her eyelashes were thick, matted arcs. She was a Rift all in herself, though Sabby would never have been able to articulate such a thing. He felt it, and that was enough. Sometimes being with her scratched the loneliness like driftburn.
Other times, it hurt. Like now. Deep in the guts where nothing but the worst hunger settled.
“We got enough,” he said, desperately. “Don’ need no shady, no bullets. Go back along our line, hit cache or two, and get out.” Oh, she wasn’t going to fall for that, but if this turned out bad he could say I told you so. Or not say it, but she’d know he was thinking it loudly.
“Then what?” Frustration made her sharp. Her chin was up, the pulse in her throat beating quick and hot. “You drink it up? No, Pooka. I want off.” A thin white line of evaporated sweat clung along the side of her neck, and his lips ached to brush it. Hangovers gave you the salt-craving.
“Off what? Off me?” Of course she would. Who wouldn’t? He tightened his arms, clinging. She was going to have to scrape harder to get him away.
“You fucking mipsik.” Her face crumpled. “Don’t.”
“We got enough,” he repeated. “I won’t drink it.” He was lying, she knew he was lying, the entire goddamn Rift probably knew he was lying. Her decision was already made, and he was just whistling at a wall.
Her temper was all spent. “Imma hang and see what Vetch’s line is.” Cabra went limp. Her knees braced on either side of his hips, her weight atop him the only thing holding him to the ground. “You wanna driftburn out, you go ahead. But I am done pennying, Pook. Imma go home, and if you ride this out you come with me.”
God damn it. Behind her head the sky was blue, and deep. The aching, marvelous blue you never saw outside, this was a sky stripped of pollution, of haze, of greed and wanting. When the pinchoks came back, they would drift like thoughts through a satisfied mind, barely flapping.
Up at the top of the hill, Vetch and Il Muto were probably ignoring them. It wouldn’t matter to Vetch one way or another. The bastard probably knew Sabby wouldn’t be going back to the wall alone. He never rifted solo anymore. Not since his shoulder, and the screaming, and the buffeting of huge dark wings.
Not since he’d felt the cold, loose, liquid relief of well, that’s over; don’t have to live anymore. Finding out he was still alive, stitched up, antibiotics and an expensive jolt of triphase fighting off the sepsis from pinchok claws, almost made him want to weep.
He’d thought he was done with all this. Of course, you were never done with the Rift. Like Cabra, it decided when things were over, not you, not a second before.
And not a split second after.
“You promise?” Christ, but he hated hearing himself whine. His shoulder was on fire, and his left eye was almost closed now. Maybe when they stopped tonight she’d regret whapping him with her elbow, and be soft again. Soft or furious, though, she was the only tenuous good thing he had left.
“I ent promising, Pook. I’m telling you. You ride this with me, and we get the fuckin’ payday and go home.”
“What if there ent no payday?” It had to be asked.
“There better be,” was all Cabra would say. She untangled herself from him, and Sabby let her. She was calm enough now. “What you drag me off for, huh?”
“Dunno.” But he did. Cabra liked to wrestle, and if she got her arms around Vetch, who knew? She might decide she liked being held down instead of doing the holding, and that would mean …
No, it was better if Sabby was the voice of reason, even if she roll-tangled on him like a scuttle taking down a grass-eater on the rim of the Rift. You could find the big swaying shaggy beasts in any bubble that had a little grass, though you could never get close enough to see their real shapes under the fur. They spooked easy.
Sabby didn’t blame them.
Cabra smoothed her braids, settled her backpack. Bent her knees and offered one pink-palmed hand, her cheeks and beads gleaming. Sabby took it, let her pull him up. She put her arms around him, and he leaned on her, resting his chin atop her head. She was soft under the flexarmor and the stiffness every woman had before they decided you weren’t going to hurt them, and the tension went out of her bit by bit. He couldn’t close his eyes—they were in the Rift.
But his vision blurred and he held her, the feeling that he had just barely escaped the abyss running through him again, scalp to toes. She hadn’t realized what a huge mistake he was. Not yet.
It was good enough.
34
WHAT WE’RE AFTER
How much longer do we have to haul this fucker?” Mako’s neck ached. His legs were sore. His fucking head had stopped bleeding, but the bandage was itching like fuck because of the crust of dried red human-juice. His back was singing the song of got-to-carry-your-buddy blues, because Morov hung between him and Senkin like wet laundry. It wasn’t the captain’s fault, he was high on painpatch and stuffed full of antibiotics and warmers to stave off shock. The old man had been the last one down, probably making sure all his boys were under cover, and wasn’t that just like him? One of these days Captain Zus Petrovitch Morov was going to end up a dead hero, and Mako was going to lose the only motherfucker at Institute QR-715 he actually respected.
On either side, warehouses loomed. The rifter had taken them onto a road for a bit, working steadily uphill, then through a network of alleys in what had been industrial-zoned before the Event. The burnt shells of warehouses alternated with flattened husks, and she turned east again to plunge them through a wilderness of rusting pre-Event junkyard. The cranes and crushers rearing overhead were corkscrew-twisted, as if dipped in some unimaginable heat.
“If
it was you I woulda dropped you a klick and a half ago.” Senkin, from the sound of it, wasn’t feeling too fresh either. “Yo, rifter! How much longer?”
“Stop yelling.” She barely turned her head. Behind her, Eschkov pressed close and Barko limped; Brood was on rearguard again.
“How much longer?” Senkin persisted. “He’s not getting any lighter, or any better.”
Her small fuzzy scalp bobbed a bit, a soft nod. “Maybe another hour.”
“Shit.” Mako’s patience was at the fast end of the fuse. “Can’t we just camp?” There was plenty of cover here, for Chrissake. Maybe even something to burn.
“If you want to lose another half of the group by morning, sure.” She stopped, and Eschkov nearly ran into her. The rifter paid no attention, just dug in her hipbag and produced another one of those heavy washers with a strip of cloth slipknotted on. Whirled it once, twice, testing, then tossed it in the general direction they were going, down a long hallway with stacks of cars crushed into jagged metal cubes on either side. The washer hit its apex—then there was a crackling sound, a pop, and the washer exploded, the cloth tail shredding itself violently from prow to stern. “Fuck.” She let out a long, frustrated breath.
She hadn’t flinched, but Eschkov damn sure had.
“Where the fuck we going, anyway?” Senkin wanted to know. He was pale, sucking at his bottom lip while he took most of the captain’s weight to give Mako a rest.