The Drowned Cities (24 page)

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

M
OUSE’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?

The boys back there weren’t supernatural. They were just thugs with guns. That was all. They couldn’t watch him all the time. They weren’t watching him now.

So why did he feel so afraid?

With a sick feeling, Mouse turned and started back toward the voices of the soldiers’ camp. Knowing that he was chickenshit. Knowing that he should run for it, but too afraid to risk it.

He came into the clearing and dropped the water bottles in a pile. The camp was just as he’d left it. Soldiers joking. One of them, a blond kid with an acid-burned face who he thought was called Slick, was kicking the villagers every time they looked like they were lifting their heads or looking around. Other soldiers were squatting down, eating smoked jerky. Sergeant Ocho sat against a tree, looking sleepy, holding his side where he’d been ripped up by the half-man. Nothing out of place—

Mouse froze. Lieutenant Sayle stood on the far side of the clearing, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. And he
was
watching him. Cold gray eyes, watching. They didn’t show a thought or a feeling, his gaunt face was expressionless, but the man’s eyes lingered.

Mouse made a hesitant salute as his skin prickled, aping what he’d seen the other warboys do. The lieutenant’s lips quirked into something like a smile, mocking, but he gave a lazy return to Mouse’s gesture of respect.