The Drowned Cities (41 page)
Read The Drowned Cities Online
Authors: Paolo Bacigalupi
Tags: #Genetics & Genomics, #Social Issues, #Action & Adventure, #Science, #Juvenile Fiction, #Violence, #JUV001000, #General, #Science Fiction, #Life Sciences
To Mahlia, it was so much like the last time the warlords came, when they’d swamped the place that she’d grown up in, that she couldn’t help but feel terror at the approaching violence. She remembered troops storming from building to building, hunting every single person who had collaborated. Dragging people out onto boardwalks and executing them. Her mother trying to help her hide before the soldier boys burst in on them.
And now it was going to happen again. Another wave of violence as the UPF collapsed and new warlords rushed to fill the vacuum.
Ahead, her old apartment came into view. Mahlia pointed. Ocho nodded. “Yeah. I thought so.”
The zodiacs slowed. Nearly two dozen soldier boys piled
out and dashed into the building. Mahlia pressed the hidden places in the wall, praying to the Fates…
It opened.
Before her, the warehouse lay waiting. Her mother’s collection. Her father’s hoarding. All of it still there. None of it looted yet. Stern hadn’t had a chance to do anything with this news. Or maybe the lieutenant had never reported it. It was all here. Paintings and statuary and ancient books. The treasure trove of a dead nation.
“Round it up,” Mahlia said. “Get as much as you can. Whatever fits.”
They grabbed great armfuls of scavenge. Old muskets. Uniforms of blue and gray. Banners with circlets of stars on blue backgrounds. Yellowed parchments. Everything that they could find that was light and could be loaded into the zodiacs.
“Is this going to work?” Ocho asked as they heaved more pieces of art and history into the zodiacs where they bobbed beside the boardwalk. “You think we can really buy out?”
Tool answered for Mahlia. “With your soldiers to escort, and Mahlia to bargain with the blood buyers, it will. You will win free.”
Mahlia looked over at Tool. Something in his tone worried her. “You will, too,” she said. “We can all get out like this. There’s plenty here to buy us all out.”
“No.” Tool shook his head. “They will not welcome my kind. I must go another way.”
“But…” Mahlia hesitated. “What will happen to you? You can’t stay here.”
Tool almost smiled. “Let me be the judge of that. The Drowned Cities may not be a place for you, but to me…” He paused and sniffed the air. “This smells like home.”
With a chill, Mahlia remembered what the Colonel had said when he had them trapped, about half-men not being able to live without a patron.
“You’re not going to try to die?” she asked. “Like that other one? Like that other half-man? Keep circling back until you die?”
Tool’s fangs showed in a feral smile, and he crouched beside her. When he brushed her cheek, it was surprisingly gentle.
“Do not fear,” he rumbled. “I am no victim of war. I am its master.” He glanced to the canal and the civilians. The soldiers rushing about like an ant’s nest, kicked and frantic. His ears twitched, and his nostrils flared.
“The UPF will die, but its soldiers will need safe haven. They will hunger for a leader.” Tool’s low growl sounded of satisfaction. He looked at Mahlia again. “I have fought on seven continents, but never for territory of my own.” He scanned the buildings. “Where you see terror, I see… sanctuary.”
He straightened. “Go. The Army of God is only blocks away, and other warlords are stirring as well. It will be a long time before you can return to this place.”
“What are you going to do?” Mahlia asked. “You’re going to die.”
Tool laughed. “I have never lost a war. I will not lose this one. These soldiers are wild and untrained, and they have never fought a true war. By the time I am finished with them, they will roar my name from the rooftops.” He gave another growl of satisfaction.
Mahlia stared up at Tool. For the first time she thought she saw him true: not a mix of creatures, but a singular whole, built entirely for war. Entirely at home.
Gunfire echoed down the canals. A few shots, then more. A cacophony of weaponry that broke her thoughts and sent the warboys all scrambling into the zodiacs.
“Go!” Tool said. “Quickly! Before you lose your last opportunity! Go!”
“Come on!” Ocho said frantically. “Come on!”
When she hesitated still, Tool simply lifted her into the zodiac and set her amongst the troops. The soldier named Stork gunned their engine, and then they were speeding away from the half-man.
Mahlia looked back. Tool held up a hand in farewell, and then he turned and plunged into the canal, disappearing entirely. Mahlia stared after his disappeared form, wishing him well.
T
HE ZODIACS RIPPED
down the canal, leaving frothing wake behind. Ahead, gunfire echoed.
“Here it comes,” Ocho muttered.
“We going to make it?” Mahlia asked.
“It’ll be close.” The zodiac’s engine whined higher as Stork ran the thing full out. Ocho pushed Mahlia down, covering her with his body. Bullets zipped and whined overhead. The UPF boys were all flopping down, lying low, returning fire. Shell casings rained down on Mahlia as guns chattered.
They shot across the leading edge of the AOG, running a gauntlet of bullets, firing all the while, and then they were past, and Ocho was shouting for his soldiers to report.
Mahlia straightened, trying to get her bearings. A soldier
boy with missing ears was frantically patching holes in the side of the zodiac, blocking the air loss. Mahlia leaned over to the kid. “How can I help?”
“Put your hand over this,” the boy said, showing her a hole. “Cover this one, too. I got tape somewhere.”
Mahlia awkwardly pressed her stump and her bandaged left hand over the tiny hissing holes while he rummaged through their treasures. He came up with a bag, stripped it open, and found tape.
“Last time we used this, I think it was on you,” he said, grinning. Mahlia stared at him, trying to figure out if he was a threat, but the kid was like a puppy that couldn’t control itself. He was practically bouncing up and down.
“I’m Van,” he said as he slapped tape over the holes. Bullets started wailing overhead again, but Van didn’t stop smiling. Just kept doing his job like it was the best thing in the world to be ripping down a canal with enemies closing in on them.
He was crazy, she decided.
But then, as she looked around at the other soldier boys, she realized they were all like Van. It was like they were alive with energy. Everything they did felt eager.
They were getting out. All of them. They were leaning into the wind, eyes brighter and more alive than anything she had ever seen. A whole pack of soldier boys, all pursuing a future that they thought they’d never be allowed to have.
Ahead, UPF sentries saw them coming. They lifted their rifles, but Ocho threw up UPF colors. The sentries lowered
their weapons and waved them on. Mahlia and the soldier boys shot past, three boats in a row.
Mahlia watched the checkpoint sentries, thinking how odd it was to simply whip past them like this. She wondered if any of them caught sight of her, and if they wondered what a castoff was doing, running with the UPF. And then they were past the final checkpoints, and they hit Potomac Harbor, and Mahlia stopped caring forever about what the UPF or any of the warlords thought.
Open water stretched before them, blue and wide, sunlight glittering on the waves. All across the harbor, clipper ships were readying their sails, preparing to flee. Some were already moving, their white sails billowing, filling with wind. She watched as one of ships rose on its hydrofoils and cut across the waters for the high seas.
It was beautiful, like a gull breaking into flight.
“Now what?” Ocho asked.
Mahlia scanned her choices. Pointed. “That one.”
It was rich. Sleek and fast. A shining white hull and sails that were only now unfurling. A wealthy blood buyer, glutted on scavenge and now escaping as the violence once again overcame the city.
“You sure?” Ocho asked.
“They’re just like the people my mom used to trade with.”
Ocho gave the order, and their raft angled across the waves, chasing for Mahlia’s chosen destination. She stared up at the gleaming ship as they approached, remembering
how she’d stood on the Potomac docks years before, begging and desperate for the peacekeeper ships to return.
You’re not begging this time
, she thought.
You’re buying.
“Is this going to work?” Ocho whispered as they closed on the clipper ship.
“Yeah, it’ll work. Put up that old flag. The one with the stars in a circle, and the red and white stripes.”
“That old burned thing?”
“Yeah. That’ll get their attention. They’ll want it, for sure.”
Their zodiac hurtled across the waves, flying its ragged banner. Sure enough, the clipper ship’s sails that had been unfurling halted, and started rolling themselves back up.
Mahlia could see people on deck, looking down on them with binoculars. Watching them. They’d want what she had to sell. Her heart beat faster. It was going to work. It was really going to work.
“Keep your guns down, boys,” Ocho said. “Try to smile and look friendly.”
Mahlia almost laughed at that. Ocho seemed to catch her humor, but his smile faded, almost as soon as it showed.
“You think they’ll take us? Really?”
“They already are.”
“No. I mean…” He touched his cheek and his brand. “They’ll know what we did, right? They’ll know what we are.”
Mahlia looked at him, and once again, saw that other part of him. The part that was other than a soldier. Some
part of whatever the sergeant had been, before the Drowned Cities had swallowed him up. The scared kid who’d been beaten and whipped and shoved around so long he’d almost lost every bit of his humanity. He was right there. A whole other person, trying to believe.
She started to answer, to try to tell him that everything would be okay. They could buy respect. They could go someplace where no one had even heard of the UPF or the Drowned Cities or the Army of God. Where none of it even existed. Beijing, maybe. Or Seascape Boston. Or farther even. They could disappear from everything that they’d been.
Somewhere they’d find a place, she wanted to say.
But then she looked down at her own hands, her missing right and the bandage on her left, and she wondered the same thing herself. What good was anyone going to find in a doctor girl who had only four fingers?
Finally she said, “One step at a time, soldier boy. We’ll take it one step at a time, and we’ll figure it out.”
They swept up beside the clipper ship and it loomed over them. Someone threw a rope ladder down, and then soldier boys were scrambling up the ladder and climbing aboard. They went up one by one, and then the ladder was in front of Mahlia.
She took a deep breath, then reached up and hooked her arms through the rungs. The soldier boys helped her, shoving her higher, and then she was lifting free of the zodiac, climbing.
M
ICHELLE
N
IJHUIS FOR TELLING
me about the coyote-wolf hybrids that became the basis for coywolv. Ruhan Zhao for some desperately needed language expertise when my rusty Chinese skills failed me. Rob Ziegler for talking me off the ledge and keeping me from throwing the book away, yet again. All the folks at Blue Heaven who read this book, when it wasn’t this book at all. My editors: Jennifer Hunt, who supported me and was willing to wait so that I could write the best book I could; and Andrea Spooner, for guiding me through the final miles to make it even better. My wife for having faith when it all took longer than it should have, and Arjun, because he makes this matter. Any errors or omissions are mine alone.