The Drowned Cities (27 page)

Gutty came up behind him and clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon, Ghost,” he said. “We’re doing patrol. Guess who walks point?” and then he laughed, because to him, it was funny.

M
AHLIA AND
T
OOL
reached Moss Landing in the afternoon of the second day. Twice they had to double back and work their way around patrols that Tool sensed, and so their route was circuitous, but eventually the broad muddy swathe of the Potomac River opened before them.

Mahlia had been to Moss Landing twice before with the doctor, but each time she had remained on its fringes while the doctor went into its heart to bargain for medicines from the troops who smuggled black market goods in from the coast.

As long as there was a river, there was transport, the doctor had said. Medicines were smuggled upriver from where the big scavenge companies and their corrupt workers
would sell to the troops, and guns moved downriver, magically penetrating the war lines, even though armies and refugees could not.

More guns and bullets for the struggle.

“Why do they keep fighting?” Mouse had asked once. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just stop? Everyone would make more money.”

Mahlia had almost laughed at that. He was basically repeating what her own father had said every night for years.

“They’re stupid and crazy,” she’d said.

But Doctor Mahfouz had shaken his head. “Not crazy. More like… rationally insane. When people fight for ideals, no price is too high, and no fight can be surrendered. They aren’t fighting for money, or power, or control. Not really. They’re fighting to destroy their enemies. So even if they destroy everything around them, it’s worth it, because they know that they’ll have destroyed the traitors.”

“But they all call each other traitors,” Mouse had said.

“Indeed. It’s a long tradition here. I’m sure whoever first started questioning their political opponents’ patriotism thought they were being quite clever.”

Now, Mahlia and Tool crouched in the jungle on the outskirts of town. It looked much as she remembered it. Troops on R & R. Nailshed girls. Guns and booze and drugs and laughter and screaming. Guns firing randomly, like Spring Festival fireworks going off, but all the time. The place seethed with ring fights and red rippers and
white dust and bloodshot eyes watching from the shadows. Mahfouz had never wanted her to go into it, and she’d been glad to stay out.

Beyond, on the river, she could make out a few sails. Smugglers, probably, with their little skiffs. No rich ones, though. The last time she’d been here, there had also been the buzz of biodiesel zodiacs, running upriver on behalf of Glenn Stern and his UPF soldiers.

She watched the soldiers and the nailshed girls. Suddenly gasped as she caught a better glimpse of a soldier. He had a green cross tattooed on his bare chest, and now that she looked, she caught sight of a glinting amulet of aluminum strung around his neck. They were all like that. All of them with their crosses and their amulets.

“Army of God,” she whispered. She started worming backward, trying to escape. “It’s Army of God.”

Tool gripped her arm, stopping her flight. “This is a change?” he asked.

“Used to be United Patriot Front.”

“War is fluid.” Tool studied the town. “There are still soldiers on the river, and crates being unloaded on the dock. Black market goods still move on the waterway. The players have changed, but the business of smuggling remains the same.”

“Yeah, except if we have to cross back into UPF territory downriver, we’re dead.” She looked out again at Moss Landing. Rough-cut buildings scabbed inside older fallen-down and overgrown concrete and brick. The troops were
singing some patriotic song about how their general would never die until the last God-haters were swept away.

“That is not why you try to flee now,” Tool observed.

Mahlia’s heart was pounding. She swallowed. “They’re the ones that caught me. Last time. The ones that took my hand.”

Tool nodded slowly. “Still, you must go down. See if the route remains open.”

“Not me.” Mahlia shook her head violently, fighting down memories of trying to break free. The soldier boys laughing as they laid her hand across the log. “They got no love for castoffs.”

A shout went up. Mahlia flinched. A couple of soldier boys stumbled out into the middle of the street, leaning on nailshed girls. They were all drunk or high. Crazy and mindless because they weren’t on the front.

UPF had been the same way, when they owned the town. Moss Landing was safe territory. R & R ground. Safe upriver from the Drowned Cities. Easy duty.

Unconsciously, Mahlia found herself reaching for a rock, prying it up, preparing to defend herself if they came her way.

She looked down and almost yelped. Her hand gripped a skull, lying buried, meat still on the face. It was past stinking, but she could make out the triple hash of Glenn Stern on the warboy’s cheek. With a chill, she realized that she and Tool were lying on a graveyard of bodies, UPF soldiers shallow-buried all around.

“Fates,” she whispered.

Tool’s bestial face showed amusement. “I thought you knew.”

Mahlia dropped the skull, wiping her hand on her hip, trying to make it feel clean, knowing it wouldn’t work.

“It’s why I chose this vantage,” Tool said. “The soldiers down there will avoid their killing ground. They will detour around the history they have made in this place.”

“You smelled it?”

“Of course.”

It made sense, but still, Mahlia felt nauseated, knowing she was lying atop piles of bodies. Her skin crawled with a superstitious need to get away, but she forced it down. She’d seen plenty of bodies. This was just a few more. And a good reminder of what the Army of God was capable of.

As if she didn’t know already.

“We got to find another way,” she said.

Tool looked at her. “Afraid?”

“Damn straight. Army of God…” She shook her head. “You can’t argue with fanatics. They’ll just cut us down.”

“How is this different from the UPF?” Tool asked. “Your plan was sound. Go to the banks. Seek a guide.”

But now Mahlia saw how risky her plan had been. Even with UPF around, it had always been Mahfouz who had gone down into Moss Landing and come back alive.

She watched the people standing around bonfires. Girls laughing in that way that made you know they were trying to keep soldiers happy but that they were scared.

A man wandered to the edge of the jungle and pulled down his shorts. Urinated. A grown-up. How many actual adults had she seen since the war started up again? The ones in Banyan Town, sure, but out of the Drowned Cities? Just the big names. The ones who ran things. Lieutenant Sayle. The face of Colonel Glenn Stern, head of the UPF. And yet here was a man. Full-grown.

Behind him, a couple of his troops stood waiting. War maggots. Didn’t even have hair on their upper lips. Mean-ass licebiters with guns, probably high on red rippers, probably crazy. One had a shotgun, the other a hunting rifle, not just machetes or acid, which meant they were probably bloodthirsty, especially if they were standing bodyguard on the grown-up. Boys with guns scared her. Guns gave them swagger, and swagger made them vicious.

Somewhere inside the town, someone was sobbing, begging and in pain. She couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. It didn’t even sound like person, hardly. Mahlia realized she was shaking. She knew that sound. She’d made exactly that sound once, when they got hold of her hand.

“I ain’t going down there. We got to find a different way.”

Tool’s huge head turned to regard her. “There is no other way, and you are the one who must go.” He nodded toward the town. “Augments like me are blood enemies to soldiers like that. They will shoot me on sight. I am their greatest nightmare. They fight my kind in the North, where the war lines bottle them up. If they see me here, they will assume I am a scout or an attacker, and they will shoot.”

“What if you were just passing through?”

“Half-men do not simply ‘pass through.’ I learned that to my cost the last time I tried,” Tool said. “Those soldiers believe that we always have masters, and we always work to our master’s purpose. My kind would have no business here, other than war with them.”

He nodded at the town. “You must go down to the waterfront, and you must find us a smuggler.”

“What do I do if someone comes at me?”

“We need a skiff and we need a person who knows how to move into the Drowned Cities. Without an alliance, we have nothing.”

“We don’t got anything to pay them.”

“Bring them to me.” Tool bared his teeth. “I will arrange the payment.”

Mahlia shook her head. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“Be strong, wargirl. It will only get worse.”

Mahlia stared out at the town, hating what she had to do. “In the morning,” she decided. “I’ll go when they’re all hungover and sleepy and stupid. Not while they’re all sliding and crazy and looking for someone to hurt.”

Tool smiled. “A decision worthy of Sun Tzu.”

T
HE PROBLEM DIDN’T
develop right away.

Mouse’s squad was deep inside UPF territory, so they should have been safe. The only things to keep an eye on were chain gangs and farmers. Mouse and all the other soldiers were standing around joking and watching as big old barges eased through K Canal, and they had no idea what was coming.

The barges were massive things, ironclad and rusty. A whole long line of them clogged the canal, with a webwork of ropes leading to the boardwalks on the sides, where people were harnessed to the ropes in long lines, leaning forward, dragging.

A few people had mules that they urged forward, but
mostly, it was stringy people with dirty matted hair and torn skin, white and brown and black and tan and all of it whipped and torn by labor.

The braying and complaining of the mules and the groaning of the prisoners filled the canal and echoed off the buildings. The stink of them as they passed was almost overwhelming. Mouse stepped back as the haulers leaned against the weight of the filled barges.

The first barge just had a bunch of green logos and a Lawson & Carlson stamp. The second one, though…

“Is that Chinese?” Mouse asked.

The side of the barge had a big old logo with writing on the side, just like on the packs of medicines that Doctor Mahfouz used to dole out.

Gutty looked over. “Sure.”

The warboy went back to shaking a bottle of his acid. He squirted a little out and it smoked and hissed as it hit the boardwalk. “Bunch of the blood buyers come from over there. We got ’em all.”

He pointed at the succession of barges and logos. “Lawson & Carlson, they’re out of the Seascape. GE… dunno where. Stone-Ailixin, I think that’s from over in Europe. Patel Global, they’re Seascape Boston, too.”

“I thought the warlords—” Mouse paused, adjusting his words. “I mean, I thought we kicked the Chinese out.”

“Just the peacekeepers. If buyers got cash for bullets, we let ’em have scrap, just like everyone else. Long as they don’t
try no more invading or telling us how to run a democracy or whatever, they can have as much marble and steel and copper as they want.”

Mouse frowned, thinking. Remembering Mahlia, and how everyone treated her as a castoff. And here everyone was happy to take bullets from the same kinds of people as who’d left her behind. All that patriotic talk about kicking China out of the country, and taking the country back, but they were happy to trade with Chinese companies. They’d kill castoff peacekeeper kids, but were willing to take China’s bullets?

The air whistled.

Mouse looked about, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.

Beside him, a barge exploded. Debris screamed past.

The blast threw Mouse and Gutty into a wall. A chunk of granite rained off the building above them and shattered on the barge iron. More stone showered Mouse, cutting flesh. A granite slab slammed down beside him, shattering the boardwalk and leaving a hole down to the canal waters. He stared dumbly at the hole.

Where was Gutty?

Another whistling sound. Another barge exploded. The thing started to keel over, dragging mules and workers into the water. Screams echoed as the sinking barge dragged people under.

Chaos was erupting all around. People running, diving
into the water, or crawling out of it. Everyone trying to escape the kill zone. Workers thrashed in water, tangled in their harnesses. Mouse’s ears rang with the explosions. The screams seemed distant. He’d lost his hearing, he realized. Another explosion dropped into the canal, sending up a spray of water.

The 999, he realized. It had to be. The Army of God had a 999, and they were dropping shells right onto him. He stared around himself, shell-shocked. Watching all the people thrashing and frothing and drowning.

A bunch of his squad were waving him at him from a window alcove.

Cover.

He dove for them as another shell hit. Somewhere behind, rifle fire opened up. Bright red blood stained the boardwalk before him. He started to panic, checking his body, but he had all his arms and legs. Where was the blood coming from?