“You know that isn’t true,” Abdiel said. “Nasheen has strict protocol around body disposal, as you said. I had no choice but to come out here and take unclaimed dead—”
“Of course they were fucking unclaimed,” Nyx said, “everybody they ever fucking knew is dead here! You came in before Nasheenian body crews could retrieve and decontaminate these people. You’re a fucking body snatcher. That’s fucked up.”
“You, too, collect bodies for a living,” Abdiel said, and sniffed. “I don’t see what we do as being terribly different.”
“She has a point,” Taite said.
“It’s different,” Nyx said.
“I dunno, boss,” Anneke said. For the first time, Nyx noticed that Anneke had brought the whisky bottle with her. Anneke chugged at it now and returned it to a loop at her belt. Was Nyx the only one taking this shit seriously?
“Oh, shut up,” Nyx said. “Taite, help me dig through these. You remember the marks?”
Taite wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Stay on watch, Anneke,” Nyx said. She pointed up to a far dune. “I want you on point up there. Something happens to us, you go back to town and get reinforcements.”
“Uh . . . like who, boss?” Anneke said.
“Anyone not drunk,” Nyx said.
Nyx yanked off her burnous, got to work as Anneke trudged up behind a far dune and settled in. The bodies had been there awhile, dead as long as the one back at the morgue, but these had been out in the sun longer. Skin sloughed off bone. Scalps were starting to pool out behind the heads they’d once been attached to. And the bugs—so many writhing, chittering masses of bugs that Nyx was surprised there was any flesh left at all. How long had they been there? A couple days, more? There were maggots, so it had to be a few days, at least. She knew far more about the lifecycle of most bugs than she cared to admit. If Rhys had been here he could have waved the bugs away and told them to go eat each other or something.
“Got one,” Taite said. He pushed over a corpse and hauled out another one beneath it.
Nyx waded over and checked the tattoos. “Yeah, that’s one,” Nyx said.
“Can I open it first?” Abdiel said. Her eagerness creeped Nyx out, but she nodded.
“Just don’t spray any of that black goo on us.”
Abdiel knelt next to the body. She unrolled a mat of tools that Nyx had taken to be a bedroll, revealing incredibly expensive metal scalpels and saws.
“Your parents rich?” Nyx said.
“My work pays well,” she said.
“So you do sell off the bodies when you’re done,” Nyx said.
“We all have to make a living.”
Nyx snorted and went back to work. Could all four really have ended up here? “The fuck they doing out here?” she muttered, and shook her head. This was a retrieval, nothing more. Whatever these death magicians had cooked up, it wasn’t her job to solve it. Some days that fact couldn’t dissuade her from peering into it, but today she didn’t find the mystery that tantalizing. She just wanted the bodies and a bath. Instead, her old bel dame training kept pulling at her, long after they had thrown her out. But butchers didn’t need to know the reasons behind things. Butchers just needed to do their jobs.
“This fucking job,” Nyx muttered.
“Isn’t two enough?” Taite said.
Abdiel slit open the body in front of her. Nyx was breathing through her mouth already, but gagged all the same. She turned back to the pile, and gagged again. Shit, she was going soft.
A heavy masculine voice barked from behind her, “Put your trust in God.”
The accent was Chenjan.
Nyx slowly raised her hands. She spread her fingers, to show she had nothing concealed between them, and turned.
Abdiel squealed and dropped her scalpel. Her hands came up a lot faster. Taite popped his head up over the pile and froze.
A six-person Chenjan squad had come up behind them from the direction of one of the mortared houses. Nyx cursed herself for not clearing any of the remaining structures before they started on the bodies. Rookie mistake. She blamed liquor and dead bodies and Rhys. Always blame Rhys. The squad members were dressed in organic suits that blended with the sand. If Nyx looked too close, the bodies blurred with the scenery and made her eyes hurt.
“State your purpose,” the man said. Chenjan man. Nyx wanted to bash in his face and make him bleed. She’d done the same to hundreds of men just like him. Anneke had a rifle, which would have been useful for taking out one or two targets, but she wasn’t going to be able to snipe six of them before they blew Nyx and Taite and Abdiel away. Nyx hoped Anneke was already crawling back toward the road.
“Just a little friendly grave robbing,” Nyx said.
The Chenjan men advanced. “On your knees,” the man said again. As he got closer, Nyx could see some of his face. Young kids, all, not more than twenty if a day.
“Gotta ask nice,” Nyx said.
He tried to butt her in the head with his gun, but she dodged it. He swept her legs out from under her instead, and she let him, because fighting him when his friends were all out of her range with guns trained on her wasn’t smart even for her.
Taite had his hands in the air now, too. He looked like he might shit his pants. He may already have. Stupid kid to bring to the front. This was among her stupidest ideas, and she was paying for it now.
“We’re going to disarm you,” the man said.
“Sure thing,” Nyx said. They could certainly try.
The men removed all of Nyx’s visible weapons, even the poisoned needles in her hair, which impressed her. But they missed the razorblades hidden in her sandals. Only bel dames ever found those, and occasionally some of the palace security techs.
The men marched Nyx, Taite, and Abdiel to a bunker back out behind a mass of ruined structures. The ceiling was caving in the back, and the whole thing was riddled with bullet holes. Nyx thought it might have been an old munitions storage building. Now it smelled like this lot had been pissing and shitting in it for days.
“Stay quiet,” the Chenjan man said. He was still the only one who had spoken to them. The others could be golems, for all Nyx knew.
They shut them up in the back in a closet or smaller storage area of some kind. The air was warm and close. The darkness was shot through with light from stray bullet holes that had penetrated the mud-brick exterior.
“Will they kill us?” Abdiel whispered.
Nyx ignored her. She paced the cramped space—six paces by four paces—looking for a way out. “Here,” she said, pointing to a crumbled bit of the wall at the back. “This place was hit a couple of times. It’s not structurally sound here.”
“So?” Taite said.
“Dig,” Nyx said.
He did, and so did Abdiel. When they had a bit cleared away, Nyx crouched down to help. But there were two big solid beams of bug secretions that framed the mud-brick filling, and the narrow opening was only big enough for Taite. By then it was full dark, and Nyx was sweating over how long it would take the Chenjans to realize who the fuck she was and come out and kill her. Or, worse, take her back into Chenja with them. All this trouble over a couple months’ worth of rent. Shit.
“Go,” Nyx told Taite. “Two kilometers further west, there’s usually a Nasheenian station.”
“Everything is dead out here,” Taite said. “You don’t know they’re out there. When was the last time you were at the front?”
“There’s always a Nasheenian post nearby,” Nyx said, which was mostly true. “You just tell them ‘my life for a thousand,’ and you tell them where to make the strike.”
“A strike? Are you kidding?” Taite said. “They’re as likely to kill you as save you!”
Abdiel grabbed at her arm. “Don’t call a strike,” she said. “The bodies. They will ruin the bodies.”
“Fuck the bodies,” Nyx said. “We’re all going to be fucking bodies unless we get out of here. You need to know when to cut your
losses in a run like this. We’re cutting our losses.” Then, to Taite, “Go before they come back.”
She only had to ask twice more. Taite squeezed through the opening and lit off across the dark desert.
Flare away, Nyx thought. That was it. That was all she had to play. Nyx slumped against the side of the bunker and put her head in her hands. Rhys should have been out here with them. She should have insisted. No magician, no shifter, just her and this dumb bedazzled academic and Taite, who couldn’t slap his ass with both hands outside a com room.
Abdiel said, “You think they’ll listen to him, if he finds them? The Nasheenians?”
“Who knows?” Nyx said. “He’s a foreign man. I wouldn’t listen to him.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“One of us lives,” Nyx said.
Abdiel narrowed her eyes. “You care about that? Other people living?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“The way you treated that other man . . . The Mhorian man.”
“I had a job to do then. Now I’m just cutting losses.”
Abdiel didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. Nyx settled in to get some sleep. The Chenjan squad would need to get orders on what to do with them, torture or hold them, so they had some time.
“Do you think,” Abdiel said, and Nyx sighed because shit, this might be her last night to get any sleep ever at all, “that Mhorian man . . . what’s his name?”
“Khos,” Nyx said.
“He’s part of your team?”
“Yeah.”
“You are not bound to him?’
“No.”
“You don’t care for him?”
“No, clearly.”
“You—”
“You seriously want to try and hook up with the man you probably killed?”
“Are you certain—”
“Listen, woman, you can fuck him and eat him for all I care,” Nyx said. As if this whole job could get any stranger. “I’ve got shit to do. Let’s stay focused, get some sleep. They’ll most likely torture and kill us after morning prayer.”
“This was all my idea,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest. “It’s my fault we’re all going to die here.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Nyx said. “Stop making this all about you again. I needed what I needed. You needed what you needed. That’s it.”
“There was no sin in that body,” Abdiel said.
“What?”
“The one I looked at before the Chenjans came. No bag of sin.”
“I told you it was just a toxin.”
“I’ll find the luz,” Abdiel said.
“I’m sure Khos can help you find it,” Nyx said. “He knows where plenty of things are.” If he was still alive. She rubbed her eyes. She was thinking about fucking him again, which wasn’t productive. She tried to think about fucking somebody else, but it always ended up being someone on her team, so she thought of Radeyah, dear sweet Radeyah, her lover from back in Mushirah, and her nimble tongue, and that was enough to take her off to sleep.
The thumping of heavy burst fire outside was enough to take her right back out of it.
Abdiel hugged the ground. She was talking in Mhorian, reciting something like a prayer.
Nyx jumped up and went to the door. Tried to listen. Nothing. She put herself flat against the wall beside it and waited.
One of the Chenjans burst in, gun already drawn, more rookie moves, shit, and Nyx hammered the gun from his hands and beat him in the face with it. She shot the man behind him and pushed her way topside.
Abdiel squealed behind her, but Nyx wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t need Abdiel anymore and she could fall over and die for all Nyx cared. Nyx had the bodies and the shit inside of them. She didn’t need answers. She was a fucking mercenary, and it was time to act the part.
Nyx fought her way up, shooting the two Chenjan officers at the top of the formation in rapid succession. Above her, the sky was alive with red and yellow and violet bursts, great sparkling streamers of light that cast dangerous gases and contagions all around the field. Nyx had been inoculated against all Nasheenian contagions. The likelihood that any of them would slow her down was very low, but she couldn’t say that about anybody else on the field. When the magicians put her back together again, they cured a lot of shit. Maybe even cured her of a soul. Who knew?
She scrambled back down the formation and sprinted across the debris of the town streets toward the bakkie. The light from the bursts was enough to maneuver by. She heard screaming behind her, but she did not turn. She ran. She ran and she ran while the sky exploded behind her. She was heedless of everything but her own breath, the pounding of her feet, heedless of mines or other squads or even her own team. Let it all burn behind her.
Nyx slid to a halt near the bakkie and tore open the door. The trunk had been rifled, but she didn’t bother checking it to see what was left. Speed was more important than firepower right now. She started the bakkie up and hit the juice, and powered it up to the pile of bodies, not caring about the mines anymore. Just the bodies. Always, the bodies.
By the time she staggered out of the cab, Abdiel had reached the body pile. She was huffing her guts out, coughing great foamy gouts of spit and bile and other, less savory things.
“Nyx,” she huffed. “Nyx . . .”
Nyx hauled the partially autopsied body into the trunk, smearing mortifying flesh and bugs. She went for the next one just as Abdiel fell over next to the bakkie. Nyx grabbed the other body and stuffed it into the trunk. Pair that with the live one back at the storefront with Rhys and the one in the morgue and that wasn’t a bad day’s work. She could pay the rent and move on to the next job. Might not be clean, but it was a living.
Nyx yanked open the door to the bakkie and then slid inside.
Abdiel reached a hand to her. Her face was illuminated in a brilliant blue burst of light. Nyx gazed down at her and for one searing moment Abdiel was not some stranger, but her sister, Kine, grasping for her hand after falling into an abandoned well. How long ago had that been? Twenty-five years? Longer. Her mind was dredging it all up now at the worst possible moment. She needed action. She couldn’t stay stuck in some dead past.
“You aren’t my sister!” Nyx screamed at Abdiel. The bursts pounded overhead. “You aren’t real! You aren’t a person!”
“Nyx!” Abdiel gasped.
Nyx pounded on the steering wheel and screamed in frustration. She screamed at Abdiel, and Rhys, and Chenjans in general. Most of all, she screamed at the war, and what it had turned them all into.
“Goddammit!” Nyx yelled. She opened the door, grabbed Abdiel under the arms, and pulled her into the bakkie beside her.
Then Nyx hit the juice again and powered away from the contaminated village, heading out toward the west, the front, and the Nasheenian squad she had promised Taite would be out there.
She found Taite four kilometers later, huffing his way along the road, sweaty and exhausted. Nyx unlocked the back door.
“Good job,” she said.
“What?” he said, heaving himself inside. He fumbled under the seat for a water bulb.
“The bursts,” she said.
“I didn’t find anyone,” Taite said. “I was coming back to try and rescue you myself.”
“Well,” Nyx said, “glad that wasn’t how it went down.”
She spun the bakkie into reverse and did a wide turn. She slammed two of the four pedals, filling the cistern with so much juice that a lot of live bugs spit out the back end along with the dead ones. It had been Nyx’s lucky day—bursts from some other raid had given her the cover she needed to bag her catch.
They drove in near silence for some time, listening only to the whir of the bugs in the cistern and Abdiel’s hacking.
Nyx leaned out the window and yelled for Anneke as they wound closer to the border. Anneke would stay out of sight of the road, but not far from it.
A figure leapt out of a dune ahead of them, and N
yx slammed on the brakes.
Taite opened the door, and Anneke got in. She was dusty and thirsty. Her bottle was empty. She dug around in the back for water. “Fuck of a run, boss,” Anneke said.
Nyx powered the bakkie down the road. “Got lucky,” she said.
“Good thing,” Anneke said. “Shit, I was making shit time. You’d be dead.”
“I know,” Nyx said. She wondered if that’d be better.
Abdiel spit up blood and shrieked.
“She all right?” Taite asked.
“No,” Nyx said. “She’ll need a magician.”
“Can Rhys do it?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“That’s a long drive,” Taite said.
“It’s a long night,” Nyx said.
Nyx drove and drove, until the light in the sky was only a memory, a flashing at the edges of her vision, like every other piece of her past.
“I don’t understand,” Abdiel said.
They sat in the back of Nyx’s storefront back in Mushmura. Khos was still healing up with real magicians, and they wouldn’t be able to pick him up for another day or two. The bodies they’d recovered from the little shit town were laid out on the floor. Abdiel was sitting upright on a cot, holding a foamy cup of green bug juice in her hand. She had gotten some color back in her face, but her hands still shook. Rhys leaned in the doorway at the front of the store, arms crossed, pistols visible. Nyx liked it when she could see the bone hilts of those pistols. It reminded her he was only completely useless when it pleased him. As it was, she wanted to slap the shit out of him.
Abdiel stared across the floor at the open chest cavity of the body she had partially autopsied. “I wanted it to be more than that,” she said. “There needs to be more than this, doesn’t there? But all these spines are clean. No luz. How could so many get it all so wrong?”
“Maybe the soul’s just somewhere else,” Nyx said.
Rhys tried to catch her eye, but Nyx turned away from him and pulled on her burnous.
“I need some air,” Nyx said, but Rhys followed her out to the porch. They had settled in here for another night and a day, and it was dusk again. She hadn’t slept in all that time. Two days now, without sleeping? She’d lost count. Maybe that was what all the hallucinating was about. Why the past was clawing at her more than usual.
Apocalypse Nyx Page 16