The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi Read Free Book Online

Mahlia made a face. “Anyway. She was stupid. She didn’t think strategic, either. And now there’s no way out of here.”
    “You ever think about just trying to go north? Sneak across the border?”
    Mahlia glanced at Mouse. “Coywolv, panthers, warlords, and then all those half-men up there to hold the line? They’d be picking our bones before we even got close to the Jersey Orleans. We’re stuck; that’s the fact. Like a bunch of crabs boiling in a pot.”
    “That’s Mahfouz talking.”
    “ ‘Crabs in a pot, pulling each other down while we all boil alive.’ ”
    Mouse laughed. “You got to say it like he does, though. All disappointed.”
    “You should have seen how he looked after I pushed upon Amaya. Talk about disappointed.” Mahlia waved the stump of her hand with irritation. “Like if I was nice and polite, they’d think I was some kind of gift from the Scavenge God.” She snorted.
    Mouse laughed. “You going to sit there feeling sorry for yourself, or you going to tell me something I don’t know?”
    “Is there something to say? Some fish jump out of a basement and I miss it?” Mahlia poked Mouse. “What’s the news, maggot? Why don’t
you
tell
me
something I don’t know?”
    Mouse looked sly; then he nodded toward the Drowned Cities. “They’re fighting again.”
    Mahlia burst out laughing. “That’s like saying the cities are drowning.”
    “I’m serious! They’re shooting something different. Something big. I was wondering if you knew it. It’s a big old gun.”
    “I don’t hear anything.”
    “Well, maybe you should listen, right? Show some patience. They been blowing it off all morning. It’ll come again.”
    Mahlia turned her attention to the horizon, studying the wreckage of the Drowned Cities where it poked up above the jungle. Distant iron spires, stabbing the sky. In some of them, beacon fires burned. A haze of smoke hung over the city center, brown and heavy. She listened.
    A far-off rat-a-tat of gunfire, but nothing interesting. Couple of AKs. Maybe a heavy hunting rifle. Backgroundnoise, that. Skirmishers in the jungle or maybe target practices. Nothing—
    The explosion rocked outward. The iron girder of Mahlia and Mouse’s perch shivered with its force.
    Mahlia gaped. “Damn, maggot! That’s a
gun
.”
    “I told you!” Mouse was grinning. “At first, I thought they were just dynamiting, right? But they keep going. Hammering away. Some kind of big old army shells or something.”
    As if to underline his words, the explosion came again, and this time there was a flare and a rising cloud in the far distance. Lot of smoke and explosion for such a distance. They were looking out fifteen miles, maybe more, and there it was.
    “It’s a 999,” Mahlia said.
    “What’s that?”
    “Big old gun. Serious artillery. Peacekeepers used to keep them. Dropped shells on all the warlords. Used some kind of spy eye to target it, then they’d drop a big old shell right down on Army of God, UPF, Freedom Militia, whoever. Peacekeepers spiked them all when they rabbited, so the warlords couldn’t use them, but that’s a 999 for sure.”
    “You think China’s sending in peacekeepers again?” Mouse asked. “Maybe rolling up the warlords for good?”
    The idea made Mahlia’s chest tighten. It was her own fantasy, the secret one she sometimes curled up to when she went to bed, knowing that it was stupid, but still wanting it, wanting it to somehow all make sense.
    Her father would return from China. He’d come back with all his soldiers. He’d pick her up in his strong arms and say that he’d never meant to leave, that he hadn’t meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who’d ever trafficked with the peacekeepers.
    A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes