The Drowned Cities (23 page)

Mahlia knew that Doctor Mahfouz would have disagreed with everything Tool said. She could practically see the doctor shaking his head at the creature’s words.

Tool seemed to wall himself off from any responsibility at all. Like nothing he did mattered. Doctor Mahfouz would have said that every action connected to every other action, and that was why the Drowned Cities was the way it was.

The Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken. People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and it kept going, because people always responded, and pretty soon the place was a roaring hell because no one took responsibility for what they did, and how it would drive others to respond. Mahlia wanted to argue with the half-man, but he suddenly stiffened. His ears pricked up and he sniffed the air.

“It’s time we were on our way,” he said. “I smell more villagers returning.”

“I still can’t find Mouse,” Mahlia objected.

“No. And you will not.” The half-man paused, regarding her. Seeming to consider his words. “There are tracks on the far side of the village. Not just the boots of soldiers. Bare feet, too. Sandals. All sizes. They took prisoners.”

Mahlia felt a sudden rush of hope. “So you think they took Mouse? You know where they went?”

“He is an ideal age. Big enough to carry a gun and use it well, young enough to train and fanaticize.”

Understanding dawned on Mahlia. “You think he’s recruited? You think he’s gone soldier boy?”

“With the proper stimuli, anyone can be turned into killer.”

“A killer like you?” Mahlia asked, but Tool didn’t seem offended; he just nodded. “Very much like me. I was bred to kill, but I was
trained
to do it well.”

“But Mouse isn’t a soldier boy,” she said. “He’s not like that. He’s good. He’s kind. He…”

He likes dumb jokes, and he likes to catch snakes and eggs, and he’s always up for a trip into the jungle, and he can’t read books for the life of him, and he’s scared of sleeping inside at night, and when you’re feeling like hell because you’re a castoff, he comes around and sits with you. And when the Army of God’s got you by the hair, and you got one hand already lying on the ground, he steps up and saves you.

“He’s not that kind of person.”

“Soon, though. These armies are experienced in recruiting the young. They will bind him to his comrades, and they will mold him to their needs.”

“He’s not like that!”

Tool shrugged. “Then they will kill him and find someone who is.”

The half-man spoke with infuriating detachment. Mahlia wanted to punch him in his giant doglike face. “We’ve got to save him.”

Tool just looked at her. She could almost see the smile
there, the joke of her saying it, but she pressed. “We can’t just let them have him. We got to go after him.”

“You will fail.”

“Not if you help me.”

The half-man’s lips curled back, revealing teeth. “You presume too much, girl. My debt to you is more than paid.”

“So why are you still here?” she asked. “Why come back here? Why help me at all?”

Tool growled. “I balance my debts. If you wish my help in escaping from this place, that is fair. You saved my life when those others would have let me die. But those soldiers take their prisoners into the heart of the Drowned Cities. It was difficult enough for me to escape Colonel Stern last time. To do it again would be impossible. Suicide is not something I owe you or yours.”

“What if we saved Mouse before they get there?”

“You overestimate my health and abilities.”

“When you jumped me and Mouse, you were scary fast.”

“Even I cannot destroy a company of trained soldiers, not without weapons or support.”

“We could stalk them.”

“We?” Tool raised his eyebrows, looking down on her. “You think you are some fine predator? A swamp panther or coywolv?” He pretended to inspect her. “Where are your teeth and claws, girl?” He bared his teeth. “Where is your bite?”

Mahlia glared up at him, hating him. Hating how he
dismissed her. She turned and stormed into the ruins, hunting. She found a burned machete, sooty and blackened, but with metal still sound. Tool watched her with a bemused expression as she returned. She held it up.

“I got teeth.”

“Do you?” Tool’s features turned predatory. “They have guns and acid and training.” He leaned close, his monstrous gaze blazing with promise of hell. “They will break you bit by bit, and then, when they have turned you into a cowering, begging animal, they will kill you. Don’t tell me you have teeth. You are a rabbit attacking coywolv.”

Part of her knew he was right. If a half-man wouldn’t face all those soldiers, what made her think she could? It was stupid. The kind of war maggot fantasy that got you killed.

“I go north now. If you are wise, you will accompany me.”

Mahlia wanted to listen to him. Hadn’t she already lost enough here? She had a way out. With the half-man to help, she could make it past all the armies and war lines. She could get away from the Drowned Cities for good.

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?

P
URSUING 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.