The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(16)

She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.

All the other castoffs like her were dead and gone. The kids who went to the peacekeeper schools, all those almond-eyed kids… Amy Ma and Louis Hsu and Ping Li and all those others… They’d been too civilized to know what to do when the hammer came down. Mahlia had survived because she’d been nothing like Mouse. And then she’d survived again because Mouse was nothing like her.

Mahlia was pretty sure Doctor Mahfouz would have said that Mouse was right to stand up and she was wrong to duck down, but Mahlia was certain that if she’d been like Mouse, she would have had her head on a stick.

There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it. No balancing of the scales. No reward, unless it was in some afterlife like the Deepwater Christians talked about.

Ahead, Mouse lifted a hand in warning.

Mahlia froze, then crouched. “What we got?” she whispered.

“Dunno.”

Ahead, the swamps opened into a clearing, and then into more swamp, waters covered with cattails and lily pads. Mahlia listened, trying to discern what triggered Mouse’s concern. The buzz of insects. Nothing seemed wrong. Mouse pointed. Mahlia craned her neck, trying to see—

There.

In the swamp, amongst the cattails, something floated. It didn’t move.

After waiting awhile longer, Mouse finally said, “It’s clear.”

As one, they slipped forward, then separated, scanning the rest of the jungle and swamp, but keeping their eyes on the mass of fur and leathery skin that lay in the water.

The land around the edge of the pool was disturbed, muddy banks torn, grasses trampled. Blood spattered the dirt, blackened with age. Many tracks clawed the ground.

“Coywolv?” Mouse whispered.

Mahlia shook her head. “Too small, right?”

“Yeah.” He squatted. “But they’re doggy, for sure, not cat. You can see the scrapes where their nails dug in.”

He sucked his teeth, thoughtful. Stood up and circled the muddy ground. “Uh-huh.” Nodding. “Doggy. Right.” He looked up. “War dogs. Hunters, for sure.”

“How the hell would you know?”

He waved her over. On the ground before him, another track marked the mud, from another kind of predator. A boot print. A good heavy boot, with a solid waffle tread.

Thick soles might make you noisy, but it also meant you could run over anything. Run over broken glass and rusty wire in the Drowned Cities without slowing down, for instance.

“Soldiers,” Mouse said. “Boots like that, it’s got to be.”

“So we got rich soldiers and their dogs?” She felt a chill of fear. Soldiers. Here in the jungle. Close to town. “UPF, you think?”

“Can’t say. But they got boots. If they’re that rich, they probably got guns, too. Not just some wannabe warboys with acid and machetes.”

“But there’s nothing out here. No scavenge. No enemy.”

“Maybe they’re recruiting.”

If that was true, they all needed to run. Everyone in the village. If the soldier boys wanted you, they took you, and Mahlia had never heard of anyone coming back after they got recruited.

“So what’s that thing out there?” Mouse asked.

Mahlia followed his gaze to the huge alien mass, floating in the swamp. “Hell if I know. Looks like a gator.”

“Not with fur.”

Mahlia didn’t want to stick around anymore. The jungle was making her skin crawl. “We got to get back to the doc, tell him about the soldiers. Let people know there’s military around.”

“In a minute.”

“Mouse…”

But the licebiter was already wading in, headstrong and crazy.

“Mouse!” Mahlia whispered. “Get back here!”

Mouse ignored her, wading deeper, pushing aside cattails. He prodded the floating mass with the machete. Flies lifted off the dead thing, buzzing and humming. Matted hair and grime, clots of blackened blood, leathery hard skin.

In the light of day, crawdads were in it, and beetles feeding on ragged putrid wounds. Mahlia saw a centipede-like thing come out of a gash and drop into the water, slither-swimming through the water like a cottonmouth.

Mouse leaned against the thing with his blade.

“Damn,” he grunted. “It’s big.”

Huge, more like. Meters and meters of meat, fur, and rough armored skin. It rocked sullenly, so big that it barely moved, even when Mouse leaned hard. Green mossy scum water rippled around it. Rafts of tiny lilies bobbed up and down. Water skippers fled.

“I do believe we’ve found dinner,” Mouse announced.

“Don’t be gross.”

“It ain’t spoiled. And there’s enough here for us to smoke. Better than scraping for crawdads and trying to snare lizards and rabbits. Plenty to give to Amaya and her new baby.”

“No way the doctor will eat something like that.”

“Just because he don’t eat pig, don’t mean he won’t eat this.” Mouse spat into the water, irritated. “Anyway, we don’t have to tell him what it is.”