The Drowned Cities (20 page)

There’d been a bit of resistance from the villagers, right at the beginning. Some of them had tried to run for the swamps, just as the lieutenant had planned, and Ocho heard gunfire and screaming as a bullet squad tore them apart with heavy weapons. After that, they had fewer
defectors. Ocho ordered an acid squad to round up stragglers, while he limped behind.

His rib splints were hurting him, but he wasn’t going to show anyone how bad it was. He wasn’t showing a bit of weakness, today. The LT had given him a second chance. By the time they finished this operation, he wanted to be back in Sayle’s good graces, solid. Ocho wasn’t drugged on painkillers now. He was ready for war. And by the end of the day everyone would know it: Sayle, soldiers, civvies. Every one of them.

Ocho gritted his teeth through the pain and soldiered on, ordering half-bar patrols up into abandoned buildings, trying to ferret out the last of the people who were still hiding in the ruins. Getting others organized to put the townspeople to work, burning their own town. He was just assigning a new squad when the doctor came back into town.

At first, Ocho couldn’t believe what he was seeing. While half the villagers were scheming to flee, slipping out through the LT’s security nets, or dashing off into the jungle when they got half a chance, here the doctor was, coming out of the jungle with his damn doctor bag.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Van said as he watched the doctor come on. “LT was right. We got ourselves a doctor. Bo-na-fide human-ee-tarian.”

Ocho spat, watching. The doctor was a fool. He’d kind of suspected it, the way he’d stood up to Lieutenant Sayle on their first night in Banyan Town, but here it was again.
The doctor, striding across the blackened field like he was the Rust Saint himself, coming to save everyone.

From the jungle, a bunch of gunfire opened up.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.

The doctor spun, and fell.

“Dammit!” Ocho waved his hand. “Make Hoopie stop shooting shit, will you?”

One of the licebiters was dispatched, running back across the sooty, uneven ground. Ocho headed across the fields toward the doctor, moving slowly. The man lay in the soot and muddy soil, facedown, but trying to sit up. He groaned as Ocho arrived.

“Whoa there, Doc.” Ocho knelt beside the man. Saw the blood. Sayle was going to be pissed.

Another bullet winged overhead.

“Blood and rust! Make that Hoopie stop with the shooting, or I’ll ram that rifle up his ass!”

“I got it, Sarge.”

Van took off running. A second later, the gunfire stopped and then Hoopie was making his way out of the forest. His skin was all torched and scarred up from the disaster with the castoff girl and the coywolv. He came and stood over the doctor.

Ocho scowled. “LT wanted this one alive.”

Hoopie looked down at the doctor. “He don’t look too good.”

“ ’Cause you shot his ass!” Ocho waved at Pook and Stork. “Get this one back to the command.”

He turned and caught sight of movement in the trees. “Dammit, Hoopie! You got your zone controlled or not?”

It was some little civvy licebiter, watching from the jungle. “Get that civvy. See if he knows anything about the half-man.” He grabbed Hoopie as he was about to go. “And if you bring him back like the doc, I’ll put a bullet in your head, personal.”

Hoopie’s bloodshot eyes regarded Ocho with total enmity, but he saluted and headed out. Ocho wondered if the armies up north, all those big corporate war bosses, had so much trouble keeping troops in line. Hoopie would need discipline, for sure, for tagging the doc. Maybe Ocho would bust him down to half-bar again. Give his rifle to someone who at least knew who to shoot.

Ocho stared down at the doctor. The old man was gasping and blood was coming out of his mouth, staining his salt-and-pepper beard. Already his eyes were glazing over.

Pook and Stork grabbed the doctor’s shoulders and got ready to drag him, but Ocho motioned them off. “Don’t bother. He’s already dying.” Ocho sighed as he looked down at the old guy.

“What were you thinking, old man?”

Maybe there was someone he wanted to save. But that doctor girl of his hadn’t been anywhere in the area. Maybe someone else, then. Ocho scanned the village. It didn’t make sense.

The man gasped again, and more blood came out of his mouth. It looked like he’d taken a couple in the chest.
Surprising that he was even breathing, but the blood and bubbles frothing his lips made Ocho think the man wouldn’t last long.

Ocho squatted down beside the dying man. “Hey,” he said. “You remember me?” The man’s hand came up. Ocho took it. “Yeah. You fixed me up.” He looked down at the man’s blood-bloomed shirt. “Sorry about that, right? None of these warboys got any discipline. Half the time, they don’t even know which way to point a gun.”

The doctor wasn’t looking at him. Ocho couldn’t tell if the man was hearing him, or if he was already gone to his dying place. It was a stupid way to die. Hoopie’s squad just pinging him for no reason. They were supposed to herd people back into town and put them on work gangs, but this had just been an execution. Hoopie had been pissed about how the girl had gotten him burned, and figured the doc deserved it.

No damn discipline.

The doctor’s breathing slowed. Stopped. His hand went limp, and Ocho let it fall. “Sorry, old man.” He straightened. “Get that licebiter out of the trees, and make sure Hoopie doesn’t smoke him before I get to ask some questions.”

He strode back across the muddy fields, leaving the dead doctor behind, still irritated at Hoopie.

Sayle talked a good game about unit discipline, but at the end of the day, they might as well have been coywolv for all the restraint they had.

Mahlia watched from the trees. There was a cluster of soldiers standing in the blackened fields and then one of them straightened, and she recognized him.

Ocho. The sergeant she’d saved. Her hand curled into a fist, and then she saw what he and his boys had been standing over, and she gasped.

Doctor Mahfouz. She recognized the green pants and dirty yellow-and-blue shirt he’d been wearing. Stupid clothes for running and hiding, but the man had liked bright things. And now he lay in the mud. Stupid. Too damn stupid.

Soldiers were jogging in her direction. Tool pulled her back deeper into the jungle. For a second, she thought she’d been seen, but then soldier boys dove into the trees a hundred meters off. Gunshots echoed, followed by shouts. A moment later, they reemerged with some licebiter—

Mouse.

Mahlia lurched forward, but Tool grabbed her. He brought his head close. “You cannot survive this fight.”

Mahlia watched, sick, as Mouse was dragged across the fields. Beyond, the town burned, buildings flaming like monumental torches. A roof crashed down, blazing bright, and a cheer went up from the soldier boys.

Somewhere far away, Mahlia could hear a girl screaming, but Mahlia only had eyes for Mouse. The skinny red-headed boy, small between the older soldier boys. Mahlia tried to shake Tool’s hand off her shoulder. “They’re going to cut his hands off,” she whispered. “It’s how they do.”

Tool’s grip tightened. “You cannot save him.”

“He saved me! I owe him.”

“I’m saving you,” Tool said. “I owe you.”

“There’s got to be a way.”

“Why? Because you wish it? Because you made offerings to the Fates or the Scavenge God? Because you repented to the Christians and drank their deep waters?” Tool shook his head. “As soon as you start crossing those fields, you will be spotted. There are fire teams to our left and right, still combing the trees, and they, too, watch the fields. That”—he pointed to the open land—“is nothing but a killing field.”

Mahlia gave him a withering look. “Don’t you care about anyone?”

Tool growled. To Mahlia’s surprise, he suddenly released her. “You wish to prove your love for the boy? Go, then. Prove it.” He gave her a rough shove. “Charge. Attack. Take your little knife and attack. Show your love and bravery, girl.”

Mahlia glared up at the half-man, hating him. “I’m not a half-man,” she said.

“And I am not your dog.”

Mahlia looked back at the village. The soldiers had dragged Mouse close to the torched buildings and forced him to his knees. A figure emerged from the sooty wreckage…

Sayle.

He had a pistol in his hands. Mahlia watched the man stalk around the boy, then step close. She squinted, trying
to see, not wanting to, afraid, but unable to look away. Sayle put his pistol in Mouse’s mouth.

Tool’s ears pricked up, cupping the wind.

“He wants to know where we are,” the half-man said. “They’re threatening him. It won’t be long until they know, and then they will pursue.”

The half-man’s hand fell on Mahlia’s shoulder, heavy and solid, even as the monster’s deep voice became soft. “Come,” he said. “It is best not to watch these things.”

Mahlia shook off his hand, still watching. Unable to pull away. She heard the half-man give a low growl of frustration. She was surprised he didn’t just grab her and drag her. Instead, he waited.

“They’re going to kill him,” she said, feeling sick.

When she had needed help, Mouse had stepped up for her. He’d thrown rocks, of all things. He’d done the brave and stupid thing, and saved her. And here she crouched amongst kudzu vines, unable to make her limbs move, terrified and a coward.

“They’re going to kill him,” she whispered again.

“It is their nature,” Tool said. “Come away. This will only make your nightmares worse.”

S
AYLE JAMMED HIS PISTOL
into the prisoner’s mouth. “You’re dead, licebiter.” The kid tried to speak, but he couldn’t get words out around Sayle’s 9mm. Little pale runt, all crying and begging.

Ocho stood by, watching the jungle, waiting for the bullet.

The kid kept on with his whimpering and begging, and Ocho tried not to listen. He’d learned long ago that if you treated maggots like people, it just ripped you up. Gutted you and made you weak when you needed to be strong.

The kid went on whining, though, pissing his pants.

Just get it over with
, Ocho thought.

But Sayle liked the maggots squirming.

It was another thing Ocho didn’t like about the LT. The
man was crazy. One of those bastards who’d grown up and found out that war was where he lived best. Sayle enjoyed suffering.

Sayle kept on, questioning the prisoner, making him think he had a chance. Like baiting a dog with meat and then pulling it out of reach again and again. Making the pathetic little licebiter stand up and bounce around on his hind legs, tongue hanging out.

Sayle offered freedom. He coaxed people to rat their relatives, to rat their food stores. He was good at it, the dangling. But it made Ocho ill, and he tried to be away from it when he could. Couldn’t pull it off every time, though. If the LT thought you were a weak link, bad things happened. So sometimes you just had to stand by while some war maggot begged.

“She ran! She went away. Her and the half-man. They headed out. She was going to leave. Go north.”

It made sense to Ocho. The doctor girl had seemed like the kind who had a plan. For sure, she’d ripped the hell out of the platoon.

“You’re covering for her,” Sayle said.

“No! I swear it! She told me not to come back here. Told me not to do it. She said the doctor was stupid. Said I was.” He spat blood and the despair in his voice made Ocho look over. Little war maggot looked like he’d lost her, all right. No hope there.

Sayle caught Ocho’s gaze. “What do you think?”

Ocho leaned against a flame-blackened wall, trying not
to show how much his ribs hurt. Wishing that Hoopie hadn’t shot the doctor. It would have been good to recruit a real pill pusher into the company. Now Ocho’s survival was pretty much up to the Fates; if he picked up an infection, he was done.

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Ocho said. “Doctor was crazy, for sure. I can see him coming back alone. Humanitarian, right? All kinds of do-gooder.”

“This one, too? And ditch the girl?” Sayle looked down at their prisoner.

Ocho shrugged. “Doctor was surprised when the coywolv came in. The girl’s pure Drowned Cities. Don’t matter if she’s a castoff or not. She’s got the war instinct.”

“Maggot was smart, all right.”

“Yeah. But the doctor?” Ocho shrugged.

The body in the field said it all. The old man had no survival instinct. Marching into a combat zone like he had a big old red cross on his back and a company of Chinese peacekeepers behind him. Stupid. They weren’t fighting that kind of war. Ocho wondered if maybe the doctor had just gone crazy. Sometimes it happened. Civvies went out of their head and did stupid stuff. Got themselves killed, even when they could’ve gotten away clean.

But not the castoff. That girl knew what was what. He’d seen it in her eyes, right when she brought the coywolv down on them. Killer instinct.

Ocho scanned the torched village again. A dog was picking
through the smoke, circling in on a body. Ocho wondered if it was coming back to its owner, or if it was looking for dinner.