The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(40)

Leaves crushing. Someone coming through the forest.

Tool listened to the approach, accumulating friend/foe data. The dull flip of sandals, stealthy. Another jungle dweller, smaller than the girl. Closer. Closer. Stalking. No scent of metal or gunpowder or gun oil or acid. Not stalking, then—just careful.

“We got soldiers all over,” the new arrival said as he came close and squatted. “I covered the trails with all kinds of kudzu and thorns, so it looks like nothing comes this way, but eventually, those soldier boys are going to zero in on this patch, and when they do, we’re sitting ducks. You got any idea how much longer we got to stick here?”

A boy. Something familiar about the voice and the scent. Tool tried to recall, but his memories were blotted with fever dreams and nightmare. What was it that he remembered about this boy? About this scent?

“How many soldiers?” the girl’s voice asked.

“Forty? Fifty? More?” The boy paused. “They call it a platoon, but there’s more soldiers around than Army of God uses for its platoons.”

The girl snorted. “Yeah. My old man used to say they didn’t know squat about organizing armies around here. You catch sight of that lieutenant?”

“Yeah. And those soldier boys you sicced the coywolv on are pissed. They had Tua up against a wall when I was there, and just kept asking him questions. Even Auntie Selima was up on me, asking about where you’d gone, and what I knew. Thought she was going to turn me over to them.”

“Figures.”

“Stop it, Mahlia,” the doctor said. “Your actions are costing others. Right now, innocent people are paying a price for your rashness. You’re the one who stirred that hornet’s nest, and now everyone but you is getting stung.”

“You mean because I saved you?” the girl answered testily.

The man didn’t answer, but Tool could smell the tension between the two. The boy broke the impasse.

“I told people I hadn’t seen you, or the doctor. Said you must have bailed, ’cause you’re castoff and got no loyalty, but they barely let me off even so. You made a big stir with that coywolv stunt.” A pause. “The soldiers are looking for the dog-face, too. They don’t say it outright, but they’re asking if people have seen any big kills out in the jungle. Pigs. Panthers. Coywolv. Bet they’d be real interested if I said I’d found a huge dead gator out here.”

Of course.

It was all coming back now. Tool knew this boy’s scent, and the girl’s as well. Pieces were clicking together in his mind. The castoff girl, the boy called Mouse, and a doctor with medicines.

The young ones hadn’t been liars after all. They really did have medicines and a trained physician. And now, close by, the reek of rotting lizard made sense as well. Another piece fitting into place. Tool’s last opponent. That massive reptile, now dead and bloating, six days gone judging by the stench and frenetic buzzing of flies around it. It was dead, and Tool was still alive.

Astonishing.

“So? How much longer we got to stick?” Mouse asked.

An uncertain pause followed.

“Don’t look to me, Mahlia,” the man said. “You chose this path. Don’t look to others to save you from your rashness.”

“Maybe a couple more days,” Mahlia said finally.

The boy let out a slow hiss of breath. “Dunno if we can keep hidden that long.”

“We just need a little longer,” Mahlia said. “It should wake up soon.”

The doctor broke in, exasperated. “You can’t be certain it will ever wake up, Mahlia. At least be decent enough to Mouse to speak honestly to him.”

“I thought you weren’t going to say what you thought.”

“Be realistic. Even monsters like this one die. They are powerful, but not immortal. Even if its flesh heals, perhaps its mind was burned in fever. You don’t know all the injuries it has sustained, and it’s disingenuous to involve Mouse in your plans. Perhaps it’s time for you to pursue another path, one that doesn’t involve fantasies of war and killing.”

“No,” Mahlia insisted. “I already got a plan. If we’re going to rabbit, we’re getting all the way out. All the way to Seascape Boston.”

“You speak with certainty about things you don’t understand,” the doctor said. “Even if the half-man returns to fighting strength, you will have to cover hundreds of miles infested with warlords and their armies. And after that? You still have to get past the border. No one in Manhattan Orleans or Seascape Boston wants this war flooding north. They protect their borders with more than a single half-man. If you think the UPF or the Army of God is dangerous, then you have no idea what a real army, well-equipped, can do.”

“So we’re supposed to just keep running around like chickens while the soldier boys try to chop off our heads? Pray to the Fates and God while they pick us off?” The girl’s voice was angry. “If anything can get us out, it’s a half-man. I don’t know about you, but as soon as it heals up, I’m going. I’m done with running and hiding. This monster is my ticket out of here.”

Tool stifled a growl as he finally understood the terrain around him. He knew his physical surroundings by scent and touch and hearing, and now he understood the human landscape as well.

The girl sought to chain him to her. To make him into her loyal fighting dog.