River of Teeth Series, Book 1
Page 11
“Archie,” he said slowly, “I think she’s got the right idea. Getting onto land.”
As he spoke, a small bull with gleaming tusks just a few meters in front of them tore into its neighbor, then cast its head around, hungry for a fight.
“You are both right,” Archie replied. “We ’ave to get to ’igh land.”
The bull seemed to hear her voice. With incredible speed, it detached itself from the frenzy of fighting, roaring hippos and turned on them. Houndstooth felt at his pocket—the only knife he had left was his ivory-handled switchblade. Archie’s hammer hung at her waist, useless in the melee. They looked to each other, exhausted, out of options—but then, in a final, miraculous rescue, four bobbing shapes slapped into the furious little bull and toppled it.
The buoys.
Archie and Houndstooth stared at the buoys as they bobbed by, knocking the feral bull under the water each time he attempted to surface. Archie turned to Houndstooth.
“I thought they all blew? I thought . . . I thought Travers moved all of them to the dam?”
Houndstooth gaped. “Oh, my God, Archie. No. He found sixteen of them.” A smile began to spread across his face. “But Hero made twenty. ‘Always have a backup plan.’ I told them we didn’t need a backup plan, but . . . they knew better. And they made twenty, and they put four of them on a separate . . . thing. Frequency. So they wouldn’t go off right away.” He was a little out of breath from pain and the explanation. “They made twenty. And those are the last four.”
Archie let out a whoop. “Twenty! Twenty, goddamn it, ’ero, twenty!” She laughed, full-throated and gleeful. “Come on, ’oundstooth, while the ferals are still fighting each other! If you ever want to thank ’ero in person we’ll ’ave to follow our Betsy and get out of this mess!”
Together, with Abigail tucked between them, Archie and Winslow struggled across the narrow, feral-infested passage. They dodged teeth and pushed past battling pairs of grey, bloodied hippos. Pressing forward, always forward, they finally scrambled up onto the land alongside the Gate.
“Inland?” Archie shouted over the rushing water and the bellowing ferals.
“No,” Houndstooth yelled back, wheeling Ruby around by her harness and pointing to where Betsy was waiting for them. “Upstream!”
They rode alongside the water, watching as more and more ferals swept past, carried by the current. They rode until they weren’t deafened by the ferals’ fighting anymore. Archie immediately dismounted and helped Houndstooth to slide off of Ruby. He sat on the ground, his hand pressed to his still-bleeding side.
“’Oundstooth, you’re so pale—how much blood ’ave you lost?” Archie said.
“Never mind, now, Archie. I’ll be fine. Where’s—” He gasped as a fresh wave of pain overtook him. “—where’s Abigail?”
Archie looked around. Betsy stood a ways off, farther inland, panting; there were a few new cuts marring her flank, fresh battle scars to join the old ones.
“Je suis désolé, ’oundstooth, I don’t know, she was right there between us, I don’t know ’ow she could ’ave slipped away.” She scanned the water, but it was a froth of feral hippos, and she knew there was no use—but then, there she was. Abigail, surging her way up the current toward them. She scrabbled up the slope toward them, slipped; Archie grabbed her harness and gave a mighty heave. Between the two of them, Abigail made it onto the bank. Ruby nosed at her, and the two hippos wandered toward Betsy, who had sprawled, exhausted, on the ground.
Archie gave Rosa a nudge. “Go on,” she said. The hippo snorted at her, unmoving; Archie rubbed her bristly nose and murmured to her. “You ’ave done so well, my Rosa. Go on. Go and rest. You ’ave earned it.”
Rosa lumbered off to join the other three hippos where they lay in the shade, exhausted from the battle. Archie settled herself next to Houndstooth on the muddy riverbank.
“Well,” she said. “We are trapped, mon ami. We cannot get overland with the ladies over there—the Gate extends too far inland for Rosa and Abigail to cover the distance, and I think Ruby might not be in good enough shape right now for the journey anyway. We cannot take them through the ruins of the dam, not safely—and we certainly cannot take them into that,” she said, gesturing to the roiling mass of furious ferals. “So. What do we do now? Smoke a cigar and call it quits?”
Houndstooth was still out of breath, his face very pale; but when Archie eased his shirt away from his side, she saw that he had nearly stopped bleeding. He gave a little laugh and considered her.
“Hero was too smart for me, you know. They had so many plans; so many contingencies. ‘Just in case,’ they kept saying; and I kept asking ‘in case of what?’”
Archie watched Houndstooth, frowning. “Are you alright, friend? You seem—”
“Ah, I’m fine,” he said, waving her off. “I’m telling you what we do next.” He patted at his vest, then reached to an inside pocket. He pulled out a little leather pouch, sealed with wax; then, he handed her his ivory-handled knife.
“Miracle I managed to hang on to both of these after that fall. But then, it’s a bit of a day for miracles. Be a love and open this, won’t you, Archie? My hands aren’t too steady.”
Archie slit open the wax and tipped the contents of the pouch into Houndstooth’s waiting hand.
“‘Just in case,’ they said. ‘Just in case.’” He held up the little black detonator. “Just in case the charges don’t blow, let’s have a backup, they said. Just a few buoys that could start the chain, in case things go wrong. But of course the first round of bombs worked perfectly,” he laughed thinly.
Archie looked from the detonator to the Gate; to the swarm of ferals that frothed against the Sturgess Queen, pressing the buoys right up against the riverboat. She looked up at the tower, where Travers leaned against the railing, watching the chaos below, still laughing with his hand pressed to his mangled face.
“Four buoys left undetonated, Archie,” he said with a weak smile. “How many sticks of dynamite is that equivalent to?”
Archie grinned. “I ’ave no idea, ’oundstooth.”
“Shall we find out?”
Archie put her hand over his. They pressed the button together, and sat back, side by side, as the four backup buoys exploded in a glorious display of fire and fury.
A few moments later, the flames from the buoys reached the half-saddlebag of madre del Diablo that had been left unused. The Sturgess Queen cracked open in a thunderous explosion of fire and splinters. Archie and Houndstooth toppled over under the force of the shockwave. The Gate blew back in a gust of shrapnel. The blast sent feral hippos flying—several of them bowled into the ranger’s tower. The tower gave a mighty groan.
It creaked.
It tipped.
It fell.
Archie and Houndstooth watched as Travers, tiny at such a distance, clung to the railing of the sentry post for a long moment before dropping into the water. They watched as the ferals that had survived the explosion, recovering but shaken, swarmed him.
They were too far distant to hear his screams, but they could see his body flying through the air as the furious feral hippos tossed him between each other.
“I told you,” Houndstooth gasped. “I told you that he would suffer.”
“That you did,” Archie replied. They couldn’t hear his screams over the sounds of the ferals, but it was enough for both of them to simply watch as the ferals destroyed him in the water next to the wreckage of the Harriet Gate.
“Well, ’oundstooth. I would say this caper was a raging success, no?” Archie asked.
“It wasn’t a caper,” Houndstooth mumbled just before he blacked out.
Archie patted his chest as he lay on the ground beside her. “I know,” she murmured. “It was an operation.”
She sat next to him as the water calmed. When he woke, she knew, he would want to go after Adelia. He would want to beat Gran Carter to her. He would want to go find Hero, and together with them, he would want to
see justice served. But for now—just for a few hours—she decided to let him rest. He would need it.
The sun rose higher in the sky overhead, and the day grew hot. Houndstooth and the hippos slept; and Archie watched as the ferals, unconstrained by dam or Gate or raging current, took the Mississippi.
Epilogue
Gran Carter rode up to the dock of a little clapboard house a mile outside the Harriet Gate astride a borrowed Arnesian Brown hippo named Pauline. Hero was in front of him, tied at the waist to keep them upright.
He dismounted and hauled Hero up to the back door of the house, leaving Pauline beside the other hippos at the gated dock. Carter’s nostrils flared. He smelled the air and shook his head—by some miracle, Hero was not putting out the familiar septic battlefield stench of a gut wound. There was only the clean, hot smell of blood in the air.
A miracle.
Or was it? Carter rapped hard on the door and waited for the doctor to answer, hoping he’d be at home. While he waited, Carter reflected on the facts.
Fact number one: Adelia Reyes was, without question, the deadliest, most ruthless contract killer of the day—possibly of all time.
Fact number two: Adelia Reyes had hit Hero with two knives. The first had been aimed at Hero’s heart, but had struck their sternum just softly enough to lodge there.
Fact number three: The second knife had been aimed at Hero’s gut, but had managed to avoid nicking their bowel, their liver, their gallbladder. Carter touched Hero’s forehead lightly—it was only slightly warm. Feverish, sure, but not frightening. Infection hadn’t even begun to set in yet.
It didn’t add up. Either Adelia was losing her touch—impossible—or she had let Hero live on purpose—even more impossible.
Before he could try to resolve the matter, the door swung open. A tall, dark-haired man stood in the doorway, wiping blood from his bare hands.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking at Hero’s limp form. “What’s happened here?”
“Stabbed. Twice. Gut and chest.” Carter watched the doctor’s face begin to set into a practiced bad-news expression, and hurried on. “But the woman who stabbed them missed. She missed . . . everything, doc. Please, can you help them?”
The doctor leaned inside and called for help. A young white woman, stout and muscle-bound, appeared in the doorway to carry Hero inside.
“One more thing, doctor, please—” Carter pulled a photo out of his pocket. “Have you seen this woman? She may have come through with minor wounds from a feral fight?”
The doctor smiled broadly, revealing carved-ivory teeth, straight and white and shining. He did not look at the photo. Carter sighed, and pulled a small bag out of the same pocket, handing it to the doctor. The doctor weighed it in his hand before looking at the photo.
“No, can’t say as I’ve ever seen her. I’d remember that tattoo, I reckon.”
Gran tucked the photograph away. “Worth a try. I’d best be going, but your patient will have people coming along for them shortly.” He tipped his hat and sprinted back down the dock to Pauline.
The doctor watched Gran go, then eased inside, shutting the door behind him and turning the dead bolt. He rested his back against the door for a moment, his eyes closed. When he opened them, she was standing there, waiting for him. Her eyes glittered in the half dark of the room.
“You’d best tend to your patient, Doctor,” Adelia Reyes said with a small smile. “It’s as Agent Carter said: they’ll have people coming along shortly.”
Appendix: Timeline of Events
March 1857: Congressman Albert Broussard proposes the Hippo Act, seeking $25,000 to import hippopotami into the United States in an attempt to solve the nationwide meat shortage.
July 1857: The Hippo Act is signed into law by an enthusiastic President James Buchanan.
August 4, 1857: President Buchanan cuts the ribbon on the United States of America’s first hippo ranch in Alabama; declares the hippo ranching industry “open for business.”
November 1857: The Federal Marsh Expansion Project begins, employing 40,000 men to dam sections of the Mississippi, creating a series of marshes so as to meet the great demand for “lake pig.” The series of marshes are named “the Harriet” after Buchanan’s favorite pet cow.
December 1857: The territory encompassing the Harriet and the hippo marshes are declared neutral, free territory in the Great Hippo Compromise. The Great Louisiana Hippo Rush begins. Ranchers stake their claims.
January 1858: Quentin Houlihan, a hired hopper on Samuel F. Greenlay’s hippo ranch just outside of Baton Rouge, falls asleep on the job. His lantern falls onto a pile of rushes. The fire is put out, but not before the hastily erected fencing that surrounds the ranch is compromised. All 97 hippos escape into the bayou. None are recovered.
May 1859: During the Great Hippo Bust, ranches throughout the Harriet are plagued by feral hippo attacks and disease.
February 1861: President Buchanan, nearing the end of his term, signs off on the construction and staffing of the Harriet Gate, a measure intended to trap feral hippos in the Harriet proper and to save the remaining hippo ranches in the South.
March 1861: President Abraham Lincoln enters his office, declaring that he will fix Buchanan’s mistakes. During his inaugural address, he promises that “the Bayou will belong to the hippos and the criminals and the cutthroats no longer!” Unfortunately, some things come up.
March 1865: President Andrew Johnson declares in his inaugural address that he will fix the one problem Lincoln couldn’t. “The Wild South days are over!”
March 1869: The newly inaugurated President Ulysses S. Grant promises to clear the feral hippos out of the Mississippi “once and for all!”
March 1889: President Grover Cleveland declares the Southern United States under martial law, calling it “an unresolvable den of thieves, mercenaries, hoppers, and scoundrels”—but promising to maintain a steady flow of subsidies to the hippo ranches that feed the rest of the country.
About the Author
SARAH GAILEY is a Bay Area native and an unabashed bibliophile. She lives and works in beautiful Oakland, California. She enjoys painting, baking, vulgar embroidery, and writing stories about murder and monsters. Her fiction has been published internationally; her most recent credits include Mothership Zeta, Fireside Magazine, The Colored Lens, and The Speculative Book. Her nonfiction has been published by Mashable, Fantasy Literature Magazine, and The Boston Globe. You can find links to her work at www.sarahgailey.com. She tweets about dogs and makes dad jokes @gaileyfrey.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Foreword
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Appendix: Timeline of Events
About the Author
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
RIVER OF TEETH
Copyright © 2017 by Sarah Gailey
All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Richard Anderson
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Justin Landon
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark ofMacmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9522-1 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9523-8 (trade paperback)
First Edition: May 2017
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