THE GIRL’S VOICE slowed and went blurry as the meds hit her. Opiates. Good stuff that put them all into a dream state, let them ride out the pain. Ocho looked down on her. Waved at Van. “Bandage that hand.”
“But—”
“LT wants to torture her, not bleed her out. Not yet, at least.”
He turned away. It was better not to look at her. Better not to put himself in her shoes. That was for sad-sack half-bars who hadn’t burned in. You didn’t want to overthink. It just got you confused, and it got you killed.
Ocho turned his attention to the half-man. “Get me some more ropes. I want that dog-face looking like a damn mummy. Wrists. Elbows. Ankles. Knees. Upper body. And then double it up.”
A couple of the soldiers groaned, but Ocho snapped his fingers and they made salutes and got to work. They were lazy, but they were good boys, when it came down to it. They showed respect when it mattered.
Ocho looked at the unconscious half-man. The monster was stuffed to the eyeballs with tranquilizers. Huge amounts, and Ocho still wasn’t sure it would be enough.
Even now, it almost looked as if the creature’s one open eye was following him, even if it didn’t move, it looked like it was still there, caged by tranquilizers but entirely aware of them. Watching.
Ocho shivered, remembering how deadly it had been when it came after him in the swamps. Then, it had been underfed and wounded. Now, though? Fighting it would be like fighting a hurricane. When they’d first sprayed it with the tranqs, he hadn’t even been sure they were going to hit, it had been moving so fast.
“You serious about all this rope?” Stork asked.
“If I had my way, I’d kill it right now,” Ocho said. “If it starts to move, stick it with some more of that tranquilizer.”
“Don’t got any left.”
Ocho’s skin crawled. “We used it all?”
It was like they were tying up some kind of demon. No way this could turn out well. LT wanted it alive, but he was crazy. Always trying to climb too high and impress too many people.
Kill it now.
Ocho knew that was the best way to take care of his boys. Get rid of the thing. Chop its head off. Burn it until there wasn’t anything but ash. He felt an almost superstitious dread.
“Wrap it good, then. If it wakes up, we’re all dead.”
He turned and walked down the hall, wanting to get away. Ahead, he saw the open door, the hidden place in the wall that the castoff had been trying to get into. He peered inside. Whistled.
“Nice bolt hole.”
Paintings, statues, all kinds of stuff. Ocho eased inside, awed at the amount of loot that he was looking at, overwhelmed by the feeling that he was looking at something rare.
There were things here that Glenn Stern revered. The faces of true patriots. Images that the Colonel handed out to his boys as luck charms. Old soldiers. Fighters who’d fought the good fight over centuries for the sake of the country.
A scrape of movement behind him. Ocho whirled, his hand going to his fighting knife, and then he relaxed. Ghost.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Is it true?” the boy asked.
“Is what true?”
“Yeah, there’s treasure.” Ocho pushed him out and pulled the door shut. Was surprised that it disappeared so completely. He marked the place in his mind.
Another thing to deal with.
He took Ghost and guided him away from the hidden vault. As they passed the castoff girl, Ghost stared. She lay still, eyes glazing with the drugs Ocho had fed her, trussed and bleeding.
Ocho felt him falter and gripped his arm harder, dragging him past. “Don’t look at her. She’s not your business.”
“But—”
Ocho spun Ghost to face him. Looked him in the eye. “I’m trying to keep you alive, soldier. If people think you’re unreliable, they’ll kill your ass. Won’t even think twice. That castoff ain’t anything. Just a piece of meat. Like a cow or a pig or a goat. We all got past lives. Things you might want to think about. Things you might pretend you can get back to.”
He gripped Ghost’s shoulders tighter. Got his face in close. “Don’t you think about any of that! You focus on your job, soldier. You think about your brothers. You think about us. About keeping all of us alive to fight. You think about Army of God and how they’ll do us all if we lose focus.
“Now get out there and stand patrol. We got a war on.” He shoved Ghost out the door. Nodded at Stork.
“Keep an eye on your warboy. Make sure he don’t forget who he is.”
Mouse stood outside, shaking. Mahlia was there. Right there. If he was brave, he could just walk in and—
And what? Shoot everyone? Kill Stork and Ocho and TamTam and everyone?
Stork came outside. He took Mouse’s elbow and tugged him down the floating boardwalk. “Let’s walk, soldier.”
“I—”
“You can’t go back, you know.”
“I wasn’t…”
“Sure you were.” The tall black boy smiled slightly. “Everyone thinks about it sometimes. I even tried.” He glanced at Mouse. “After I went full-bar, I tried. You can’t go back, because they know. They know what you are now. They know what you done.”
He spat into the canal. “They don’t want you. It’s like you’re bad meat. Civvies smell you a mile away, and the only thing they want to do is bury you. You might not like it, but without your squad, you’re nothing.”
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.
Ocho scowled down at her limp body. See what loyalty gets you? See?
Stupid bitch. She didn’t have any survival instinct at all.
She deserved what she got.