The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(31)

But Soa was past hearing. He stumbled about, ran into the ladder, and then it was on fire, too, flames leaping up toward the squat, catching plastics and paper, and then suddenly half the building was on fire.

Ocho gave up on his rifle and started trying to crawl away from the roaring flames. His chest felt like it was being stabbed by knives. His arms and legs felt heavy and clumsy.

Suddenly the castoff was there, grabbing him, hauling him upright. Ocho stared at her, stunned. “What the—?”

She slung his arm over her shoulder. “I didn’t spend all that time stitching you up just to watch you get killed. Can you lean on me?”

Ocho felt something tear as she pulled him away from the fire. “You set us up.”

She didn’t answer, just dragged him into the darkness. Behind them, flames roared higher. Blazing heat. Ocho wished he had his gun, or a knife to stick her, anything at all, but the pain was too much and he was weak and she wasn’t stopping to let him catch his breath. “I’m going to kill you,” he panted. He tried to grab at her throat.

“Cut it out, I’m saving your maggot ass.” She jabbed him in his stitches with the stump of her hand. He gasped and doubled over. He felt like a baby, he was so weak.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m too stupid to know better.” They reached a tree, and she shoved him up against it. “If you climb, you’ll make it.”

Ocho wanted to turn back, to go to his boys, but she fought off his weak resistance and started lifting him up. “You can’t help them,” she grunted. She jammed him farther up into the tree. “I’m only doing this because you almost act human. Goes-around-comes-around, soldier boy. Now climb!”

“I can’t!”

“You climb or you’re coywolv bait.” She boosted him higher. “Get up there, you maggot!”

Fire had spread to the rest of the building; it was all going up. Ammo started exploding. Rat-a-tat. Probably his rifle on fire. Ocho felt his stitches rip wide as the girl shoved him higher. He almost blacked out from the pain, but he went up.

At last he made it into the crotch of the tree, gasping and sobbing. His side was full of flame, but he was up. Up and safe. Alive.

He looked down for the girl, expecting her to be following him up, thinking maybe he could still pigstick her for doing this to them, but the girl was gone. Swallowed into the jungle. A ghost, just like the coywolv she’d summoned.

Ocho let out a sigh and laid his cheek against the rough bark as the building went up in flames, feeling the knife burn of torn stitches all up and down his ribs. His whole body felt heavy. Maybe that doctor girl’s drugs were better than he’d thought.

More gunfire lit the night. Soldier boys doing what they did best. Coywolv were howling, but now the squads had their number and were starting to mop up. Paying back, UPF-style. Ten times over.

Ocho realized that blood was running down his side. He groped at his ribs, fingers clumsy. Too bad about that. It would have made a tidy scar. But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.

The building torched higher, blazing. A bunch more ammo exploded. In his stupor, it was almost pretty. Ocho looked out at the darkness, wondering where the girl had gone.

You better be running for the ends of the earth. If we catch up with you, that last hand of yours isn’t the only thing the lieutenant will take.

The warboys opened up, full-auto. More coywolv yelped and died.

Ocho let his cheek rest against the bark, feeling how comfortable it was. He wasn’t sure if it was the drugs or the blood loss, but he was fading. He almost smiled as the dark pit of unconsciousness swallowed him up.

The girl had given them a grinding, all right. Gave them a grinding, and they never even saw it coming. He could respect that. Ocho’s eyes sagged closed.

You better run, girl. Run hard, and don’t you ever come back. Next time, there won’t be coywolv to save you.

12

HUMAN BEINGS ALWAYS pretended to a toughness they didn’t possess. And perhaps, in their frail human way, they were tough. Places like the Drowned Cities made children strong because the weak ones died early. But whether it was Drowned Cities canals or Kolkata rice paddy, it didn’t matter—children were always the same. Lost and running, or feral and fighting. They were always around. Like mice.

Always in the corners of bombed buildings, or splayed facedown in the mud of irrigation ditches. Flies crawling in and out of their noses and mouths and eyes. One mouse here. One mouse there. And stamping them out never filled you with even the smallest sense of victory.

The sun moved across the sky and Tool dreamed of mice running hither and thither.

I am dying.

When Tool was young, his trainers had told him that if he and his pack fought well and honorably, they would ride in the war chariot of the sun. Tool would die and he would go to fields of meat and honey, and he would find his pack and they would hunt tigers with their bare hands.

They would hunt.

Soon.

He remembered the electric prods the trainers used. Showering sparks as they struck his nose. Looming over him, making him cower as they struck him, all of his brothers and sisters pissing and scrambling over one another to get away from them.

Trainers. Hard men and women with their discipline rods. The best of the best, straight from the boot camps of GenSec Military Solutions, Ltd. GenSec knew how to build obedience. Lessons of raw meat and cold electricity. Showering sparks.