Morte (37 page)

Mort(e) gripped the cloth seat, his body sickeningly weightless. The gun levitated and bounced off his nose. He brushed it away, and it floated above him, its strap still attached to his shoulder. The torpedo began to spin and wobble. Thankfully, it did not tumble end over end. The force of the revolutions pinned Mort(e)’s head to the hull.

“Come on,” he growled at the parachute.

He imagined the torpedo piercing the clouds. He thought of his body shattering when the device struck the water without a parachute.

Finally, the mechanism kicked:
shunk, zzzzz, tick-tick-tick-tick
.

The chute released with a loud pop. His body jerked downward, and the gun hit him on the crown of the head. The device stabilized. The descent was slower now, and the spinning subsided. Mort(e) was grateful that he was a cat. Few other species could have done this without covering the inside of the torpedo with vomit. Mort(e) breathed again. His watch showed that a mere fifty-six seconds had passed.

Two and a half minutes later, the torpedo splashed down. The sounds changed. Sloshing water replaced the wind. The high-pitched whirring of the propeller began, followed by a series of clicks—the sound of the fins redirecting the torpedo toward the Island. The intrepid little machine was on its way.

Reclining on the makeshift seat, Mort(e) settled the gun
onto his chest and checked his watch. Only seven minutes until impact, if the humans’ calculations were right. He fumbled for the St. Jude medal, only to recall that it was no longer there. Wawa was probably wearing it now as she prepared to parachute in with her newfound pack. Despite what he had said earlier, he suddenly missed her. Maybe, he thought, he could try to find her when this was all over, let her make fun of him for trying to be the tough guy. Ever since the Change, he had tried to be left alone, and had gone to extraordinary lengths to carve out a little spot for himself. There was no happiness in this. Only freedom.

And then the torpedo hit its mark, rocking the tiny capsule. All around him, the sound of grinding metal and crunching stone made Mort(e) feel as if his own body were being mashed to a pulp along with everything else. The canister slowed and came to a stop. Mort(e) readied his gun and took a deep breath.

The hatch opened.

The troops lined up on the rocky shores of the Island. Fresh off the Colony’s ships, the new recruits had spent the day establishing a beachhead to defend the Island against a human attack. Tents sprang up, trenches were carved into the earth. Culdesac had been waiting a long time for a straight-up fight that would involve both the ants and the surface animals. It would be like the old days of the war. No more of this administrative nonsense, no more politics, no more wiping civilian asses, no more smiling at Council members who had never picked up a gun or faced down a rabid human. It would be him and his soldiers, and the Queen’s song in his head, guiding him forward.

Culdesac told the troops that the Queen desired witnesses for this battle. The last time the humans came here, not a single one was left alive. Every inch of the Island had been scrubbed clean. Even the craters had been smoothed over. This time, the surfacers would see the power of the Colony firsthand and spread the word to their comrades on the mainland. A new legend would arise, telling the final destruction of the human rebels.

The quarantine was behind him. Destroying an entire settlement never got easier. And this one was different—even more unforgiving. The first quarantine when he had to leave behind his soldiers. The Queen showed him the carnage in brief
flashing images and shouting voices that cut out before Culdesac could decipher what they were saying. She stayed with him through the moments of despair, holding his hand, whispering,
Walk through this with me. Suffer with me. Bleed with me
. He trusted her. She was the only one he could trust. No matter how difficult the last days of this war proved to be, he would follow her orders. Her pain gave her wisdom. If she chose to kill everyone who showed symptoms—even if those people were his loyal soldiers—so be it. He knew better than anyone how destructive the syndrome was. He knew it would take even more lives to stamp it out. The god of the humans was stubborn, with long claws that sank into the hearts of even the bravest warriors. As for the Red Sphinx, there were others who could be trained. If he could replace Socks and Mort(e), then he could replace Wawa, Bonaparte, Archer, and the others. Maybe some of these shitheels standing before him had the abilities he needed.

Now, with preparations complete and the soldiers formed into ranks, Culdesac stared them down and concluded that they were too damn young. This was the best the army could do on such short notice, so soon after the quarantine of the closest settlement. These recruits had barely jogged a few miles, let alone faced delirious and suicidal humans in battle. They didn’t
smell
right. Too much soap and detergent where there should have been mud and grime. Those who were still woozy with seasickness had slowly drying pools of tan vomit at their feet, which contrasted sharply with the purplish-brown stone of the landscape. Others nervously peeked at the legions of Alpha soldiers waiting perfectly still on the crest of a hill nearby. Beyond them rose the sphere of the great tower, along with the entrance to the great tunnel that led into the heart of the Colony.

“Do any of you realize how lucky you are to be standing
here?” Culdesac asked them. This was the stronghold of the Colony, he said. The nerve center of the greatest empire in history. Though it was crazy for the humans and the animals they had brainwashed to attack this place, they had already succeeded in contaminating another settlement with their plague. They were emboldened and ready to strike.

“The humans are going to mount a suicide mission here,” Culdesac said. “We are here to make sure it remains a suicide mission.” An approving grumble rose up from the soldiers.

“I know that many of you are from the countryside and may have come across stories of the most recent quarantine,” Culdesac went on. “I am a survivor of it. I am a survivor of many things. Aren’t we all since this war began?”

He caught a few of them nodding. If this were boot camp, he would have disciplined them for it, but he was glad to see that they were listening. “If you think that the quarantine is an extreme response, you are dead wrong,” he said.

It was time to tell them the story.

“I had no slave name,” he said. “I am not ashamed of what I was called before the war, but the name is unpronounceable. And the ones who could speak it are dead.”

He told them everything, from the hunt, to the conflict with the humans, to the war with no name, to the Change. He described the church he came across in the early days of the war. Many of the soldiers were so horrified by it that they didn’t even blink.

“This is the logical, inevitable conclusion of EMSAH,” Culdesac told the soldiers. “Don’t let your friends tell you otherwise. Even the worst legends are true. Even the—”

“Sir?” came a voice at his side.

She was an officer assigned from another settlement. A coyote of some sort, or maybe a half-breed wolf-dog. Beautiful eyes
resting above a menacing jaw. Almost certainly a good fighter.

“What is it?” he said. Someone spoke in the ranks, and Culdesac turned toward the disturbance. The new recruits stared straight ahead, some biting their lips.

“We have a call coming in over the radio channels,” she said. “We ignored it at first, but the user relayed a confirmed authorization code.”

She handed him a printed transcript of the conversation with the radio operator. At the bottom of the page, it read,
AUTHORIZATION CODE NINE-FOUR-NINE
.

“I’ve already alerted the envoy from the Colony,” the coyote said. “We think the person on the other end is a human.”

Nine-four-nine
, he thought. That was Wawa’s most recent code for their conversations, right before the quarantine. His heart pumped a little faster. Had they beaten it out of her? Did she hand it over willingly? He didn’t want her to suffer—she had earned a quick and noble death. The quarantine should have provided it. But if these humans had gotten to her, infected her, then her suffering would go on indefinitely.

An Alpha soldier approached from the hilltop. Culdesac unhooked his new translator from his belt and put it on his head, fixing the earpiece and antenna. “Give the word to the soldiers,” he said to the coyote. “We’re about to fight.”

THE
VESUVIUS
HAD
no formal parachuting bay, so the crew had to build one. And the best place to do it was in the lowest level of the ship, the chapel. The other paratroopers told Wawa that there had been some controversy over this. Would they be offending God and his bloodied son and his righteous prophet by blowing out a wall of his house? Once the plan had been set in motion, however, the Archon put their minds at ease. “I think God understands that we didn’t build this ship for an airborne
invasion,” she said.

So the night before the attack, after the prayer service, the troopers spent the night whacking away at the stern-side wall with sledgehammers. These “Black Hats,” as they called themselves, were fighters from many different countries, separated by language in the same way that the animals were separated by species. Everyone was in good spirits. This constructive act of destruction brought them together. They laughed, sang songs, poked fun at those who had clearly never wielded heavy tools before. Even the bitter cold from the high-atmosphere winds did not dampen their mood. Whenever a great piece of the wall fell away, the soldiers would cheer. Once the hole got big enough, the officers decided that it was too dangerous to have all the men and women swinging wildly. One slip would send them tumbling to their deaths. So each one took turns while others held him or her with a rope tied at the waist. The banter continued, with people from rival countries yelling playful insults at one another. Each person on the end of the rope had to endure heckling from the peanut gallery.

No one made any comments when it was Wawa’s turn. They were too awed by her strength. Two Americans and a Canadian had spent several minutes hitting a reinforced section of the wall. Wawa knocked it out in one swing. By this time, a few soldiers were lying flat on their stomachs beside the newly made hole, watching the debris tumble away and vanish into the clouds. The moon was out, and its light reflected off the thick cirrus. Someone came up with the idea of shutting out the lights so that only the silvery glow of the moon came through, casting its eerie shadows and making everything resemble a black-and-white movie.

Citing safety concerns, an officer ordered that the lights be turned back on. A few people groaned in protest. But in that
surreal moment, Wawa knew that she had made the right decision to join with these people. For the first time, she was in the presence of humans without being reminded of her master. She did not share in their beliefs—she did not have EMSAH yet—but even the most absurd things about Bloody Jesus and his son Muhammad seemed plausible if they brought all these people together to jump out of a zeppelin. The belief would come to her in its own time, the Archon had told her. This gathering of souls was more than a pack, carving out a brutal existence for no other reason than to eat for another day. These people shared something that went beyond blood or circumstances or mutual enemies.

Wawa’s newfound joy was strong enough to last through the early morning hours, when Mort(e) dropped his medallion in her outstretched hands as though it were contaminated with a virus.

Moments later, as the Archon entered the
Golgotha
for the last time, she assured Wawa that the medallion had found its true owner. The Archon told her that she already saw in Wawa the hope that her former masters—both human and animal—had taught her to extinguish. They passed through her life for a reason. They made her who she was, leading her to this moment. If she didn’t forgive them, if she wasn’t grateful for them, if she didn’t learn to love them, then she had made it this far for nothing. An enormous weight slid from Wawa, allowing her to stand upright and expand her chest. She told the Archon that she understood now.

Soon after that, when Wawa lined up in the chapel-turned-drop-point, she squeezed the medallion so hard her fingertips throbbed. She was so eager to join the attack that she neglected to mention until now that she did not know the first thing about parachuting. The humans’ response was simple:
“Neither do we.” This would be the first and only drop of the Black Hats. Where could they have possibly tested their skills? On top of that, the officers warned everyone that the old chutes—stolen from an abandoned military base in Utah—might not even work. “We predict a one-to-five-percent failure rate,” the major said. He was a humorless, pale man with a flat head—or maybe that was simply the shape of his hair. Wawa couldn’t tell. The major said that there was still a chance that a trooper could survive the fall, if he or she landed in the water. “Tuck and roll,” he added, although he did not elaborate. No one seemed comfortable with this until another officer added, “God will decide who floats and who falls.”