“Well, back at the …”
Nashara spun around.
Tiago glanced back where she looked off into the dark. The Ox-men around him were looking in the direction of the flare, down an alley. Into the same darkness.
Something moved.
“Fire!” Came a yell.
Up on the roof a shoulder-launched missile streaked downwards, over Tiago’s head, and into the alley.
It exploded. The fireball roiled and blinded Tiago, and the heat rushed toward them.
As his vision recovered and the crackle and pop of rifle fire from snipers on the roof opened up he saw what they’d seen.
The Doaq.
The seven-foot-tall, hooded figure moved with unnatural quickness. Tiago caught a glimpse, in the flicker of a gas lamp, of two large, catlike eyes under the cowl and a slit-like nose.
But it was the mouth that he noticed most. It yawned, the jaw dislocating and stretching like a snake’s: a two-foot gaping chasm of darkness.
The Doaq whipped across the street, slamming into a nearby Ox-man. The jaw dropped even lower and the Doaq rose taller, somehow, and then the gaping maw descended on the Ox-man who was firing rounds and rounds of bullets from a large machine gun at it.
Hundreds of pounds of rippling, Nesaru-engineered brute strength disappeared and the Doaq turned to face Tiago again.
“That looks like a damn wormhole in its mouth,” Nashara said, awe in her voice. Then she grabbed her side and stumbled. “And it’s generating an EMP field … powerful enough it’s messing with me.”
Tiago was looking everywhere for somewhere to run. But there were Ox-men everywhere. And everything was happening so damn quickly.
Did he grab June?
Or stay close to Nashara for protection?
But she was looking surprised, which meant she wasn’t as powerful as the Doaq.
The Doaq flowed forward, the robe rippling in the slight wind. The massive jaw gaped wider and wider as it got closer. It seemed all maw to Tiago, mesmerized by the black nothingness opening up, propelled by the creature’s feet.
“Tiago! Run!” Nashara pulled out a large shotgun, and the deafening discharge filled the tiny stone canyon of street and houses. The Doaq twitched to face the incoming shot and swallowed it all without any change in its approach.
“Take June,” Nashara said, and leapt forward. “Meet me back at the Streuner. If you can.” The Doaq ducked and grabbed her, redirecting the energy of the jump to throw her into the side of a house.
Nashara staggered back to her feet in the middle of a mess of rubble sliding down around her shoulders.
“Run Tiago!”
He grabbed June’s collar; the boy was as frozen as he had been, and yanked him into a run up the street as the battle intensified behind them.
Chapter Nine
Tiago didn’t get very far up the street before one of the nearest doors opened. The whip-lean shape of a Runner beckoned at him to get inside.
He needed no encouraging. He ran for the door.
Three explosions shook the street, and Tiago saw with a glance back that Nashara had flicked grenades at the Doaq. It swallowed several, but couldn’t be in more than one place at the same time. One of the grenades exploded to its side, and the Doaq faltered. It looked dizzied.
The Doaq could be harmed, Tiago thought, dazed. It could be harmed. He paused at the doorway. Maybe Nashara could face it down. Now that would be something to see.
And then it seemed like the Doaq paused, turned away from Nashara, and looked at Tiago.
That made no sense. Why would the Doaq care about him?
It slid up the street, completely ignoring Nashara, headed Tiago’s way.
“Oh shit.”
An Ox-man yanked Tiago into the house and barred the door shut. “This way,” the Ox-man grumbled, and shoved the two boys forward through the house.
A trapdoor underneath a table led them under the house into a hidden basement lit by a single bulb.
“Through here,” said another Runner, appearing out of the dark. The shadows made his ribs, visible under a thin shirt, look even more pronounced than normal.
There was a heavy, thick steel door a pair of Ox-men had opened. As they passed through that, they groaned as they labored to push it shut. Then they hit a switch, and large bars dropped into place with loud clangs. The smell of rank sewage took the breath away from Tiago, and he switched to breathing only out of his mouth.
In the distance an explosion of brick and screaming startled Tiago. The Doaq must have gotten into the house. With Nashara in pursuit.
They stood inside a tunnel, lit glancingly by the Runner’s flashlight. The center of the tunnel had a wide trench in it, currently dry.
The flickering light revealed Kay, waiting with a pair of Ox-men armed with more RPGs. They aimed the weapons at the thick door behind Tiago.
“So this is our quarry,” Kay said, turning on a small, expensive shielded penlight to check the boy. “Your name is June, right?”
The shell-shocked and very bewildered June nodded.
“Can you speak, June?”
“Yes.” It was no more than a faint whisper.
“Well June, this is Tiago, and we have to move quickly before the Doaq comes after us. Do you know about the Doaq?”
June’s eyes were bug-wide. He nodded.
“Well, it’s taken an interest in you. Probably since that man ran through your home while fighting it back on Palentar. But we will have time to talk about that later. Come on.”
“What about Nashara?” Tiago asked, looking back at the door.
“She’s a big girl,” Kay said, “she can take care of herself. Now, we have to move.”
Kay led them down the gentle slope of the tunnel at a brisk pace to a junction, where the sound of running water filled the air and the stench of sewage increased.
Five Ox-men stood in a trench full of dirty water holding onto a small metal boat with an old, dirty combustion engine on the back.
It sputtered to life with a pull of a handle.
An explosion from further up the tunnel echoed through the sewer tunnels as they clambered in.
Kay smiled. “That should slow the Doaq down.” She waved her hand at the Ox-men and they let go. She gunned the engine up to a brisk whine as the boat shot clear, bouncing off the sides of the trench.
Tiago looked around. “All this. You knew the Doaq was coming for June? How?”
“It was a guess,” Kay said. “I’ve been studying it a bit. It’s hard. I can’t even get a good picture of it because cameras fail around it. But like any other thinking creature it has habits. It has motivations. And with enough time, it betrays some of them.”
Tiago stared at her. Most people hid at night. Stayed low. That was when the Doaq prowled and did its unearthly business. When people disappeared, you didn’t dwell on it. You knocked on wood that you would never be the one to turn a corner and see the Doaq standing there.
But Kay. “You hunt the Doaq?” Tiago asked.
She heard the stunned disbelief in his voice and turned to him. “It’s an alien. It’s not some supernatural creature, Tiago. It’s like the Nesaru, just more powerful. We don’t know where it comes from, but just like the other aliens, it plays on human land as if it owns it. It thinks it rules us, but it does not!”
There was a hatred in Kay’s face. Open for the two of them to see. And she didn’t seem to care. She’d let her control slip. “I will destroy it. And then I will take the island. And after that, I will make the Nesaru leave, and the Gahe, and all the other stinking aliens that once kept us under their thumb before independence. They are not welcome here. Pepper may have failed to kill the Doaq for me. Nashara may fail yet. But I won’t.”
She turned down another tunnel as Tiago hugged himself. This was insane. Kay was starting an all-out war with the Doaq?
Tiago was a part of that war.
He wasn’t going to survive that.
He was dead
. Still up and walking. But dead, at some point in the near future.
“You did good, Tiago,” Kay said, now calm again. “You’ve gained Nashara’s trust, I think. That is not an easy thing. If she didn’t have a connection with you, she probably would just have grabbed June and made a run for her ship and left you for dead. Instead she’s battling the Doaq in place, which is fantastic. You have a place among my lieutenants and a place on this island, Tiago. You did very well.”
Tiago swallowed and said nothing.
That thing back there, it would keep tracking, and coming.
There was no stopping that.
And it didn’t matter if he were a lieutenant or just Tiago the pickpocket, none of that shit mattered if the Doaq swallowed him alive.
Chapter Ten
By the time they got out of the sewers and onto the streets, Tiago couldn’t tell where in Harbortown he was. They’d doubled back, and around, and it was so late it was now probably officially early. His eyes were scratchy and his movements felt like they were delayed by a half second.
Then he recognized the buildings around him. Market-square.
In the early morning hush the square looked otherworldly. Fishermen were putting out buckets and trays. Stalls were getting prepped.
Two Runners met them and guided them to a red brick two-story house by the edge of the Market-square.
“Don’t worry,” Kay told Tiago as she led him inside past two Ox-men who stood guard near the door. “You’ll be safe here. Lots of people and activity here. And if Nashara doesn’t make it back, we’ll keep the Doaq focused on other things. I’ll keep you both safe, believe me.”
She was reassuring, and calm.
But Tiago fought the calmness she projected onto him. This was the Doaq. It would find them. It would hunt them. It would end them. He believed that in the core of his bones.
Kay sensed that fight in her. She moved closer and rubbed his shoulder. “Tiago, believe me: you are both important.”
She remained there, close and intimate, keeping eye contact, until the fear in Tiago receded. Not completely gone, but enough that Tiago was manageable again. June was still in a state of shock, following them around. A few nudges from Kay was all it took to get his compliance.
There were Ox-men guarding the house everywhere, which should have reassured Tiago. But he’d seen the Doaq chew through them all so quickly in the night that it didn’t reassure him much at all.
“Okay, for tonight your room is upstairs,” Kay said. “Let me show you.”
They followed her up the polished wooden steps, Tiago not daring to touch the fine brass guardrail in case he left fingerprints or dirt on it, to the large double doors at the top of the stairs.
With a flourish Kay opened them.
Tiago stood at the threshold, something in him unwilling to take another step. There were two beds on each side of the room, plump with soft mattresses and pillows, draped with flowing sheets. The small couch under the window looked more comfortable than anything he’d ever sat on in his life.
A pitcher of water and several glasses sweated cold condensation on a corner board, and there were even expensive looking books on shelves on the left hand side.
Kay beckoned them into the room, and they both stepped into it as if it were a dream. “There’s a bathroom around the corner. A change of clothes for each of you. Clean yourselves up, I’ll have the steward come in with something to eat. You’re safe here. Rest. Both of you. And I will see you later.”
Some people lived every day like this, Tiago thought, as he stepped onto a purple rug with diamond patterns in the center of the room.
It smelled of flowers.
Kay swept past them and out the doors. They thudded shut behind her, and that was followed by the sound of a lock creaking as they were both locked in.
Tiago walked over to the doors and tugged at the handle. It didn’t budge.
He could see June stagger over to the foot of one of the beds and slump to the floor, curled into a ball and crying silently to himself.
Tiago prowled around the massive room. For one, as much as he was awed by the carpet and furniture, the massive beds, he couldn’t help shaking a feeling that there was so much wasted space. Why not cut the room into four little ones? Keep the luxurious comforts, but did there need to be all this wasted space between everything?
Maybe that was the point, he thought, as he looked into the bathroom.
No door out of that. No window either.
The only window was behind the couch. It had metal bars over it, but they were locked to each other and hinged, so that they could open. They were to guard against people trying to get in, not out.
Someone started unlocking the large doors, and Tiago slumped to sit on the couch casually. A tall man came in with fresh juices and cold meat sandwiches.
He seemed to expect Tiago to choose a few off the platter he held, but Tiago took the platter out of his hands and put it on the couch. “Thank you!” he said brightly.
The tall man stared at Tiago, and Tiago stared at the tall man until he finally relented and turned around and left, locking the doors again behind him.
Tiago took the platter over to June, still at the foot of the bed. “Eat,” Tiago insisted. “You’ll feel better.”
June wiped his cheeks with the cuff of his grimy shirt. “I’m sorry,” he said, deepening his voice and pulling himself together. “It all happened so fast.”
“I know,” Tiago muttered.
They ripped into the cold meat sandwiches with a brief sort of ferocity, and then drank. Then came in for more.
June paused after swallowing. “Do you trust her?”
Tiago looked up and wanted to say he did, but the words caught in his mouth. “Kay? You don’t trust her. You do what she says or you’ll pay. That’s how I understand it. You should too. You’re important to her, but she will hurt you to get her way. I’ve seen it. You understand? This is Placa del Fuego, not Palentar, or some poofy Xenowealth world.” Tiago waved around at the luxurious room.
June put the remains of his sandwich down, appetite apparently lost. “But, she’s just a girl …”
“All this, this is her doing,” Tiago said. “You’ll see, soon enough.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with her,” he said. “I’ve had enough. I just want to go back to Palentar …”
The boy looked exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” Tiago muttered. “I’m very sorry. I thought you would be going with Nashara. Then you’d be back in your easy world and in your good life.”
In another time, those words would have been said bitterly. But for now, Tiago actually wished all that for June.
“The woman who tore the door off the wagon? Wait, Nashara? From the Xenowealth? Is she one of The Nasharas?”
Tiago nodded. “Yes. One of them. Exactly. And she’s looking for Pepper. He fought the Doaq too, on Palentar.”
“That was Pepper? From New Anegada?” June pretty much whispered. He put his head in his hands. “I was home alone. Then the walls exploded, and he just stood there.”
Tiago leaned forward. “What did he say to you?” That, after all, was what this was all about. The great secret. The thing that Nashara and Kay were destroying neighborhoods over.
“Nothing,” June hissed. “He didn’t say anything at all. He stood there for a moment, tapping his foot, looking around. When the house started to fall in, he grabbed me, set me down on the street outside, and then took off.”
“That’s it?” Tiago said in shock. All this had been for nothing?
All this had been for nothing!
And what the hell would Kay do when she found out?
Tiago looked at June. He was probably dead. He was useless, and she wouldn’t need him causing more trouble.
Oh, poor kid, he thought.
“Kay isn’t going to like that story,” Tiago said slowly to June.
And to June’s credit, he got it right away. He looked f
rightened. “What do I do?”
He was asking Tiago. And Tiago realized that he was probably the only thing June had to cling to right now.
He thought about that. The Doaq was hunting them. Nashara might be dead, a victim of Kay’s machinations, just like Pepper. Tiago was going to have to run. Be on his own, again.
He thought of the contact, the compulsion he had to do what Kay wanted. It came from her voice, her posture, the way she could read him. And it wasn’t real. With her out of the room, he could struggle away, couldn’t he? All that was left was his fear. Fear of consequences.
Fear that she would track him down for betraying her.
But fear could be conquered.
“Nashara has a ship, an armed ship, she said, waiting for her. It’s called … the Strainer, or something like that,” Tiago said. Dock seventeen, he remembered Nashara saying. At the very end. But he wasn’t going to give that information up. And then he said something he never would have thought he could have dared. “Nashara came from the Xenowealth to rescue you. I think you should run for it and get aboard that ship, and get away from here.”
And maybe, just maybe, Tiago thought, he could get aboard with him.
“Can you help me? Can you help me get there?”
“I could be trying to trick you,” Tiago said.
“I don’t care. I’ll take the chance. Wouldn’t you want to be under the protection of a Nashara? That’s like being protected by the whole Xenowealth. She’s important. She’s famous for the things she did. She’s a hero of the independence. I don’t want to be trapped here; I don’t want to get eaten by the Doaq or killed by Kay.”
Tiago found himself nodding with June. That was true. If Nashara hadn’t been killed by the Doaq, of course. They might have to convince her crew who they were if she was dead.
They might even turn the two of them away. That would be a disaster. Kay would find them pretty quickly after that, if they didn’t get on board.
Still …
“I think I can pick the lock on the window bars,” Tiago said. The houses shoved up against each other tightly enough that they could jump down to the red-tiled roof of the house next door.
The Apocalypse Ocean Page 5