The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(85)

He fished a hand roll out of his pocket and lit it. Took a deep drag and handed it over to Mouse. “After a while, you figure out the only people who got your back is your squad. We got you safe. We’re your brothers. We’re your family now.”

He took the hand roll back and puffed again, before nodding down the canal. “Looks like the LT found us a barge. Time to get to work.” He jerked his head toward the building. “That girl, she’s just some civvy. If she knew what you done… how much you killed… the girls you done, the bad shit you been up to…” He shrugged. “She’d rather puke than look at you.”

“But she was coming for me,” Mouse said. “She said she was coming for me.”

“Nah. She was coming for some civvy she called Mouse.” He flicked the last bit of cigarette into the green waters of the canal.

“She don’t give a damn about Ghost.”

Loading the half-man into the barge took ten of them working in concert. The bastard was dense. Like its muscles were made of concrete. As soon as they started dragging it, Ocho realized they probably should have improvised some kind of stretcher, but it was too late then, with the LT standing over them and swearing that they needed to hurry up.

So they dragged and grunted and hauled and sweated and cursed and finally got the monster dumped into the barge.

The barge was half-full of iron I beams and sharp chunks of copper tubing from some building’s plumbing, which meant the LT must have just grabbed the first barge he’d found. The sullen looks on the faces of all the bond labor seemed to confirm that. They’d probably get hell from their overseers for coming back light, but that was the way of it.

Ocho made a mental note to at least send some kind of report along with them that it wasn’t their fault. Sometimes the overseers could smuggle meds and booze and cigarettes and drugs in from the docks, and if you stayed on their good side, it was better than if you didn’t. Kept them a little content, at least.

The barge rode slowly through the water. The half-man didn’t move. It might as well have been dead, they’d loaded it with so many drugs.

The barge was slow. Ocho hated how slow it was. He split his time between keeping an eye on Ghost, the half-man, and the castoff, who looked like she was starting to wake up.

He looked from her to Ghost, not liking what he saw there. She’d been insane to follow her boy. But she’d come anyway. And it pissed Ocho off.

For a little while, he couldn’t decide why it made him so mad, but he kept wanting to hit her. To punch her and shake her.

Stupid-ass doctor girl. Dumb castoff. Didn’t she know this was no place for war maggots like her? Nobody wanted a castoff reminding them how China had taken everything over for more than a decade, telling everyone what to do and how to live. Swaggering around with their guns and their half-men and their biodiesel attack boats.

She was stupid. Too stupid to breathe. And now she lay like a dead fish atop a pile of copper. Her eyes were open, watching him. Her hand looked like it had started bleeding again.

You’re just parts, he told her in his mind. Just a bunch of blood and kidneys. Maybe they pop your eyes out and give them to someone else. Harvesters are always buying. You’re just parts.

She deserved it.

So why did it bother him so much?

Ocho was smart enough to know that when you got crazy about something, you needed to think it through. Being crazy meant you did things by reflex, and it meant you made mistakes.

Sayle had been that way with the girl. Going after her, being all over her like that, threatening her. Sayle liked to hurt people, but this was more. This was all about his getting ambushed by a civvy. Pissed off about being embarrassed by a one-handed castoff.

She’d jammed them all good with her coywolv trick, and none of them had seen it coming. But then, Army of God had ambushed them last week with that 999, and that wasn’t personal. Sure, they’d chop up the next bunch of cross-kissers and dump them in a canal if they found them, but it wasn’t personal.

But the lieutenant was really stewed about the girl. This was crazy stuff coming from the LT, and it made Ocho nervous. He didn’t like being on this slow barge, with a drugged-out dog-face and an angry LT, because it meant the LT wasn’t thinking straight. Wasn’t looking at the big picture. All because of that girl.

Ocho stared at her. He couldn’t decide if he was pissed off at her because she’d tried to act like he owed her for saving him from the coywolv—which was a load of crap no matter how you sliced it. She’d sicced the coywolv on them, so saving him wasn’t anything other than bringing the scales back to even.

No… It was because she’d come all the way into the Drowned Cities, to get her boy back.

Mouse, she’d called him. She’d come all the way in. And it made Ocho want to shoot her right then and there.

No one ever tried to come for you.

Ocho sucked in his breath at the thought. He coughed, and it almost came out as a sob.

Reggie and Van looked over. Ocho stared them down, face like stone, but inside, it felt like someone had a handsaw and was cutting up his guts, ripping away.

No one had ever come for him. They’d blown into trouble, him and his uncle. And not his mom, not his dad, not his brother, not a dozen people who he’d called his friends back in his town on the coast, not a one of them had ever come looking for him, trying to get him back. They’d just let him go. That was the difference. But this castoff cripple-hand civvy girl had come all the way in.