The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(58)

He hefted the water bottles. Last chance to run. It won’t get any better. But he didn’t move.

Why was he so scared?

The boys back there weren’t supernatural. They were just thugs with guns. That was all. They couldn’t watch him all the time. They weren’t watching him now.

So why did he feel so afraid?

With a sick feeling, Mouse turned and started back toward the voices of the soldiers’ camp. Knowing that he was chickenshit. Knowing that he should run for it, but too afraid to risk it.

He came into the clearing and dropped the water bottles in a pile. The camp was just as he’d left it. Soldiers joking. One of them, a blond kid with an acid-burned face who he thought was called Slick, was kicking the villagers every time they looked like they were lifting their heads or looking around. Other soldiers were squatting down, eating smoked jerky. Sergeant Ocho sat against a tree, looking sleepy, holding his side where he’d been ripped up by the half-man. Nothing out of place—

Mouse froze. Lieutenant Sayle stood on the far side of the clearing, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. And he was watching him. Cold gray eyes, watching. They didn’t show a thought or a feeling, his gaunt face was expressionless, but the man’s eyes lingered.

Mouse made a hesitant salute as his skin prickled, aping what he’d seen the other warboys do. The lieutenant’s lips quirked into something like a smile, mocking, but he gave a lazy return to Mouse’s gesture of respect.

“Ghost!” someone shouted. “Hey, half-bar!” Mouse finally realized that he was being called and turned away from the lieutenant.

Gutty, the slack kid with the flappy skin on his arms and legs and belly.

“Go get us some firewood!” he ordered. “On the double, boy! We don’t keep no lazy maggots! You’re elite! Let’s see the sweat! UPF ain’t afraid to sweat! Get on it, warboy!”

Mouse tried another salute. He was as exhausted as everyone else, but he stumbled for the forest again.

Maybe this time, he’d get free.

As he headed into the jungle, he saw a pair of soldier boys emerge from the trees, liquid shadows, from the direction of the swamps where he’d just been, gathering water.

For the barest instant, they glanced at Mouse, and his gut tightened into a knot of fear as they crossed the camp, headed for Lieutenant Sayle.

They were all around, Mouse realized.

It was all a test. Every bit of it. He wasn’t crazy. There really were eyes on him.

“Make sure it’s dry!” Gutty shouted. “I don’t want no damn green wood smoking and going out!”

The jungle travel continued, warboys joking and talking themselves up, kicking the prisoners when they didn’t move fast enough. They put Mouse on guard duty, standing over people who had been kind to him.

Sometimes one of the soldiers would come over to him and tell him that one of the prisoners had disobeyed.

Mouse was supposed to kick them in the ribs, or else pour acid on their backs, to make their skin smoke. He called them maggots and worse.

He kicked them to stand up when they lay on the ground.

Made them put their faces in the dirt, when they were standing tall.

Mouse kept expecting someone to give him a gun and order him to kill one of them. He’d heard stories about how the warlords recruited. He knew what was coming, and he dreaded it.

He kicked and beat and burned the townspeople, waiting for the next horror, and the people of Banyan Town looked at him with all the hatred that they used to reserve for soldier boys.

The warboys laughed and encouraged him.

Mouse wanted to cry, to make it all stop, to just refuse, but the one time he flinched, they made him do more. They made him hit harder. He hesitated to thrash Auntie Selima with a bamboo cane the way they wanted, and so they made him do it again and again, until her back was bloody ribbons. And then they made him salt the wounds.

Mouse wanted to vomit, but he learned the lesson.

Once, he apologized to Mr. Donato after he’d kicked the man in the ribs, for being too slow getting up, but he couldn’t tell if the man was even listening.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to. I’m sorry.”

But he was too much of a coward to stop doing what Lieutenant Sayle and the others ordered him to do.

One night, in the darkness by a campfire, Mouse finally just gave up and asked when it would happen. When would they make him kill these people who had taken him in?

Sergeant Ocho had plopped down beside him and asked, “How you doing, soldier?”

Mouse stared at the prisoners, but didn’t answer.

Keep silent. Ride through. Don’t let them know what you’re thinking.

He thought of Mahlia, who tried so hard to never let her feelings show on her face. To never let anyone know what was going on inside her head. No weakness. The only way to survive amongst these coywolv was to hide all your fear and weakness. Never show anything.

But Ocho saw right through. He followed Mouse’s gaze to the prisoners.

“It’s hard to get broke in, no doubt. This is the hardest part.”

Mouse kept his mouth shut, not daring to say anything. It was another test. If he said what he was thinking, they’d come up with some new way to hurt the townspeople and him. If he showed where he was vulnerable, they’d put a knife right there and twist and twist, and then after he’d cried and hurt enough and given away another weakness, they might just decide to blow his head off.