The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(59)

“After we get rid of these maggots, it’ll be better,” Ocho said. Then he gave a sort of laugh and said, “Well, it’ll be clearer, anyway. When you’re shooting at Freedom Militia or Army of God, you don’t got to feel sorry for them, ’cause you know they’ll do you the same.”

Mouse looked at the sergeant. “How come you don’t make me kill one of them? You make me do everything else.”

Ocho looked at him like he was crazy. “We ain’t animals! Not like the Army of God. Godboys, they shoot you for no reason at all. They shoot you if you ain’t wearing a patriotic shirt, or if they think you don’t sing loud enough for their general, or they think you got the wrong religion. We ain’t like that. These maggots are our prisoners, now. They try to run, or they hurt one of us, then they get themselves a bullet.”

He shrugged. “But we don’t just go around wasting people.” He nodded out at the prisoners, all lying flat on the ground, shadow lumps that might as well have been corpses for all that they moved. They’d learned that movement got them kicked, so they lay still like stones.

Ocho continued, “Dead maggots ain’t any good to us. They might not look like much, but all those maggots, they’re walking resupply. Every one of ’em. We start knocking them off, we hurt ourselves, too. We gotta keep them alive, get them earning. Maggots like that work scavenge for us, we sell the scrap to the blood buyers, we get bullets to fight the war. Without these maggots here, no way we can take this place back from all the traitors and collaborators and maggots who tore this country up…” He trailed off.

“You don’t get all this, cause you ain’t with us, yet. You don’t think you’re a soldier. Don’t got the feel of it.”

He patted his rifle, then nodded out at the troops. “You got to know that these boys here, they’ll back you up. Maybe they give you all kinds of hell right now, but when the bullets start flying and you got one in the leg, they’ll come get you. They’ll get you back to camp and doctor your ass, even if all they got is a bottle of Black Ling whiskey and a shoelace to do it. As long as you’re still yelling and flopping, they’ll put it all on the line to make sure AOG don’t get their knives on you. We’re brothers. You’re our brother.”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

Ocho laughed. “You only got half-bars, and you want them to treat you like a soldier?” He shook his head. “Nah. You got to earn that, little war maggot.

“We make the Drowned Cities, you see the real war—that’s when you show your boys that you’re worth calling a brother. You do that, and they’ll never let you down. The Colonel says it don’t matter where we come from before. Don’t matter what we did before. Here, we’re UPF. We back you up right.”

He clapped Mouse on the shoulder. “Don’t think you ain’t doing good, half-bar. Soon as we get a little blood on your prick, you’ll be golden.”

He flicked the brand that still throbbed on Mouse’s cheek. “We’ll give you some verticals to go with those horizontals. Burn you right. Let you stand tall.”

I don’t want this, Mouse thought. I don’t want to be golden with the boys. I don’t want blood on my prick. I don’t want them to burn me again.

It felt like some part of him was dying inside, but there were soldier boys all around, and wherever he turned, they were looking at him, making sure he followed the path they’d laid out.

Either he followed it, or he was dead.

Doctor Mahfouz used to talk about how everyone had choices, and when he said things like that, he made it seem so possible. And maybe for him, it had been. Mouse didn’t think the doctor would have whipped Auntie Selima or poured acid down Mr. Salvatore’s chest. He would have stood tall.

And the soldier boys would have shot his head right off and gone on to someone else without a second thought.

I don’t want to be a warboy.

But there was no escape. There was no other path that didn’t lead to death.

I’m a coward, he thought. I should stand up and fight them or run away, or something. But he was still afraid, and the soldier boys were always watching.

Three days later, they hit the Drowned Cities.

27

MAHLIA AND TOOL lived in the jungle, feeding off the dead coywolv for a week, while her torn-up arm healed and while the half-man gained back his strength.

Gradually their diet expanded. They caught fish and frogs. Mahlia ate ant eggs and grasshoppers and snared crawdads, and every day she improved.

She knew it was time to go when Tool came back with a wild pig slung over his shoulder, moving at a stride that would have made her jog to keep up. They were ready, as healthy as either of them could hope to be. That night, they roasted slabs of the pig over a fire of old cardboard boxes and timber chunks that she’d rooted out of one of the ruins.

She knew she needed to be on her way—Mouse was out there, trapped with those soldiers—but still she let days pass. It was like she was frozen in place. Here, she was safe. As long as she just lingered with the half-man, she was as safe as she had ever been since the peacekeepers left. Once she started pursuing Mouse, it would all be lost.

Memories of her escape from the Drowned Cities were flooding back. The mobs and the soldiers, the torches and dripping machetes. The cleansing of everything the peacekeepers had wrought during their years of trying to civilize the city and make the different warlords stop fighting, once and for all.