The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(77)

The half-man paused, crouched there on the edge, head swiveling left and right. Ocho couldn’t breathe. Suddenly he was right back in the jungle, the creature exploding from the leaves, slamming him with a clawed fist and sending him flying. It was huge. It was too close.

Ocho yanked the binoculars away from his face. Realized he was being stupid. They were far away. They had no idea he was here. He lifted the binoculars again.

The monster was gone.

“Dammit!”

“What?”

Ocho pointed at the distant building. “I want spotters on that tower. Every side. We know what’s in it?”

“Nothing. Old junk. Apartments.”

“Get spotters on it. And kick this up to the LT.”

“For some girl? You don’t want us to just go grab her?”

“No!” Ocho whirled. “Don’t go near her. Just watch. If you see her or the half-man come out, stay off them. Put two layers of spotters out, in case they slip by. And watch the water. They’re using the canals. Swimming under our lines or something.”

He turned and bolted for the stairs, galloping down flight after flight. The half-man was here. In the Drowned Cities. Inside their damn territory. The castoff and the dog-face.

Faster and faster. His trot turned into a flat-out run. The half-man was here. He slammed into a patrol.

“Hold!”

Their guns whipped up. Ocho skidded to a halt. “Don’t shoot!” He tried to remember the passwords. Finally remembered, dragging them from his panicked memory.

“You need help, Sergeant?” they asked.

Ocho shook his head. “No. I’m fine. Bad rippers, that’s all. Just a little shaky.”

“Don’t run like that.” They waved him past. “We got warnings to be on the lookout for infiltrators, right?”

“I look like I wave a green crucifix?” He gave them a dark look. “Get out there and patrol.”

He turned and kept going, but he was gripped with a sense of creeping horror. It was just dumb luck that his boys had picked a new pair of binoculars off the Army of God and were trying them out. Surveillance was at the edges, not this deep in.

What was that girl doing here? Every time Ocho had run into either of them, it had been bad news. And now they were here together, inside the perimeter, stealthy and deadly.

They had no reason to be here unless…

Unless they were hunting.

And if they were hunting, they either wanted revenge, or they wanted Ghost, and either way, it meant he needed to shut them down before they got any deeper.

35

CROSSING INTO UPF TERRITORY was harder than Mahlia had expected, but with Tool, it was at least possible. The half-man could sniff out the patrols, and sense them far away. After abandoning the boatman, they made slow progress across the city, moving at night.

When they reached the boundaries of the war between UPF and Army of God, where gunfire was traded every few minutes and buildings echoed with screams of soldiers trying to break through against one another, Mahlia nearly gave up. There was no way they could cross an active war line.

“We’re dead,” she said. “This ain’t going to work.”

Tool just smiled. “Do not be so easily discouraged.” He took her hand and led her into the bowels of a swamped building. “We will swim.”

“Swim where? They’ll see us.”

Tool’s teeth showed. “Come.” He drew her down into the water. “Trust me.”

He dragged her deeper into the water. Mahlia started to struggle. Tool said, “Breathe deep,” and she did, just as he pulled her down below the waterline. Warm seawater swallowed her. Distant waves and gunfire. Tool drew her onto his back, and then he was swimming.

He swam out through a broken window and into a canal, and still he swam. Water dragged at Mahlia as he accelerated, swimming hard. Mahlia clung to him and tried not to be torn loose by the pressure of the water streaming around her.

Her lungs began to heave with a need for air, but still Tool swam. She needed to breathe. Had to surface. Tool didn’t stop. The half-man didn’t seem to care. Still he swam. Mahlia started to panic. She tried to let go, to try to surface, but Tool seized her.

I’m going to drown.

She fought to surface, but the half-man pinned her arms, and kept her down. He pulled her close. His great face loomed before her. Blew a stream of bubbles in her face.

For a second, Mahlia was so surprised that she almost drowned herself. And then she understood. Tool had more than enough air for both of them. She steeled herself, and let herself exhale. Nodded to him, knowing the half-man’s plan.

Tool’s maw gaped wide, showing teeth. He pressed his mouth over hers. Breathed. Mahlia inhaled. Oxygen and carrion. Life and death, all at once. Mahlia’s lungs filled to bursting with the half-man’s breath.

Tool drew away, and motioned for her to hold on once again.

They swam.

Above them a firefight raged, but down deep in the water, they passed unnoticed. Canal after canal. Block after drowned block. They slipped through the city like fish, unremarked by the warfare that raged above.

At last, they had crossed the final battle lines, and Tool found shelter. He swam into a new building, and they surfaced to the sound of sloshing, salty waves and distant remote gunfire. Mahlia sucked clean air, desperately grateful to be breathing something that hadn’t come out of the lungs of the killer. Clean oxygen. She gulped at it, coughed, and gulped air again.