Earth Thirst (37 page)

He staggers out of our embrace, clutching at his head which is no longer as perfectly shaped as it was. Foam is bubbling around his hand.

My knuckles are covered with foam.

Alberto comes at me again, and I sweep his strike aside, popping him in the face with my left hand, breaking his nose. He retreats a couple of steps, bumping up against the wall separating the basins, and I stay where I am. Keeping my distance.

Alberto leans against the wall, breathing heavily and noisily. His wounds continue to foam, white bubbles dripping down his face. He exhales heavily, and foam spatters from his lips.

I continue to wait for him, even though every cell in my body is screaming at me to run. To get to ground and dig as deep as I can. I stand my ground and wait. Which of us is going to break first?

“Is this hurt worse than when I took your head off?” I ask, goading him.

He shows me his teeth, his hands closing into fists, and I think he's going to charge me again, but then he spins on his heel and darts for the wall behind him. I'm taken aback that he's going to try to run, and before I can respond, he goes over the wall into the basin on the next level.

I dance along the ridges of the basin to the wall and look over. The upper basin isn't nearly as full—mid-thigh—and Alberto is splashing through to the far side. Leaping to the top of the wall, which isn't much wider than the width of my foot, I race around the perimeter of the basin. In a purely mathematical world, I'd be taking the longer—and slower—route, but conditions being what they are, I make up ground staying out of the salt water.

Alberto gets to the next wall, and opts to stay out of the water too. He hoists himself up onto the wall and starts running along the rim of the next basin. I change my course, running parallel to him on my own track toward the top of the salt farm cascade.

I can see where this is going, and I'm not interested in a foot race to the top of the hill, and as I'm running after Alberto, I start looking for something I can throw. At a nexus of four basins, I find a jumble of stones. Selecting a suitably heavy rock, I gauge Alberto's speed and route, and then throw my rock.

The missile hits him in the hip, knocking him off-balance, and he falls into a basin. When he surfaces, I'm ready with another rock—a third in my other hand. He stands in the basin, the water up to his waist, and stares at me, his forehead steaming and squirming with foam.

“Did your grandfather ever tell you what happened to Jacinta?” I ask. “How she died?”

Deliberately, he wipes the white foam off his face. His entire body is quivering from the salt water bath he's taking, but when he looks at me, all I see in his expression is how much he wants to kill me.

“I dumped her body in the ocean,” I tell him. “That's why she never came back.”

He leaps out of the basin, trailing salt water, and I throw my rock. His body contorts and he falls into the basin next to me with a splash. My skin burns and twitches where the salt water hits it, but I don't move.

He bobs up slowly, floating on his back. His head is even more deformed, and the foam spurting out of his skull starts to cover the surface of the basin with a web of sticky bubbles. He stares at me, still alive. Still wanting to kill me.

“I'm sorry, for what that may be worth,” I say as I transfer my last rock to my right hand. My fingers are stiffening up, and it takes me a little while to get a good grip on the rock.

Alberto isn't going anywhere.

“If there is life after this one,” I say, “at least you'll be with her.”

He blinks.

My aim is good, and his head snaps back from the impact of my rock. He slips underwater—bobs up once, his face squirming as if it was covered with albino worms—and then he goes under again. This time he doesn't come up.

FORTY-TWO

T
he sun beats down on the open deck of the warship. Most of the men are huddled beneath makeshift shelters strung along the starboard rail. The less able are below deck, squatting in ankle-deep water. An eerie emptiness flowed in the wake of the storm which had blown us west from Troy, and our ship was trapped in the endless calm. We have not felt a breath of wind for many days.

“Do you ever regret not staying and fighting?” Aeneas and I are sitting in the rear of the boat, keeping an eye on the unmoving tiller.

“In which battle?” I ask.

He makes a noise in his chest that might have been the start of a chuckle. He fumbles for his water skin, takes a tiny sip, and then offers it to me. I am not thirsty, but I take it nonetheless and pretend to drink. We have to conserve what little water we have.

Our boat is leaking, and too many of the men have fallen prey to sun sickness. Our vessel is a warship, not a transport, and it was never meant to be the home for the number of men it currently carries. Though, in a few more weeks, our company might number so few that we won't have enough strong men to work the oars.

“The Achaeans were inside the gate,” I say as I hand the skin back. “Priam's spirit broke when Hector died. What would our deaths have accomplished? Killing a few hundred more Achaeans?”

“What else is there for fighting men such as ourselves?” Aeneas asks.

This is not the first time he has asked this question, and I have tried to discern the answer that he seeks, but I fear my responses have never been suitable enough.

I hesitate before answering this time, glancing over at Aeneas. His skin is much darker after weeks at sea—as is mine—and our bodies are thin and wiry. We have stopped wearing our armor. It fits poorly now, and carrying the extra weight on board the boat is a foolish proposition. Very few of the men have shown any aptitude for swimming.

“I don't know,” I say, unable to muster the enthusiasm to craft different rhetoric.

“Nor do I,” he admits. “We have always turned to the gods for our answers, haven't we? When do we plant the crops this year? Let's ask the gods. Is tomorrow an auspicious day to smite our enemies? Why, yes, the gods think so. Shall I marry this buxom wench? The gods appreciate the offering her dowry will afford.”

“The gods always appreciate a
bountiful
marriage,” I point out.

“But we have no temple out here,” he says, waving a hand at the sky.

I remain silent, already anticipating where this conversation is going.

“Before the men grow too weak to row, we should ask for a sign,” he says.

“And how would we find this sign?” I ask. “We have no goats or pigs to offer as a sacrifice.”

“We have no hope either,” he says, looking at me.

“If I do this, we stray from the path we have known. We will no longer be the men we were.”

He laughs, a sick wheeze hiccuping out of his chest. “We are strangers already.”

“Who are we then?” I press him, seeking some sign that he was not gripped by the madness that came from too much sun.

“That is the question I want you to ask of the gods, my friend. Who are we destined to be?”

He offers me his knife and, on unsteady legs, I clamber down into the damp hold. The men, instinctively sensing I am on an errand none wish to witness, make way for me. Many of them flee for the upper deck even though they are too weak to withstand the sun's heat for long. In the darkest corner of the hold, I find the few men who have tried to crawl as far away from the others in preparation of dying. Only one of them is conscious enough to be aware of my approach.

“What is your name?” I ask.

“Tymmaeus, my lord,” the sick man responds. His shoulder is festering with a foul blackness. I remember him. He had taken an arrow in the shoulder as we were boarding the boat. We had tried to get the tip out, but hadn't been successful. His wound hadn't closed, turning red and then black as rot set in. Tymmaeus tries to sit up, but he hasn't enough strength to do much more than breathe shallowly. His body is hot with fever, and his skin is slick with sweat. He was a young man when he came aboard the boat, but he looks much older now.

I show him Aeneas's knife, and he squints at the blade.

“It is a warrior's death,” I tell him.

Licking his lips, he nods and tries to arrange his body to make my task easier.

“Close your eyes, brave Tymmaeus,” I instruct him. “You do not need to see this death coming.”

“I already—”

I don't let him finish, sliding the knife into his heart so that he dies as quickly as possible. I withdraw the knife and slit his belly.

His guts burn my hands, and I root through his viscera until I cannot withstand the pain any longer.

Aeneas has ordered the men to the oars, and when I emerge, red-handed, from the darkness of the under deck, he shouts to me. “Which direction?” He is standing beside the tiller, leaning toward me, eager to hear my augury. Eager to know that the gods have not abandoned him.

I raise my hands, puffy and swollen. Red with Tymmaeus's blood. The sun beats down, its rays inflaming my hands. I don't know how I can feel anything through the pain, but I do. It is the gentlest of caresses, the light touch of a zephyr's kiss.

“That way,” I say, letting the wind stroke the back of my burning hands.

* * *

At the top of the cascade of salt farms is a row of white-walled huts, nestled against the base of another hill that rises much more steeply. There are people wandering back and forth along the upper edge of the farms. They've been watching since I started my rambling run along the brick-lined edges of the basins. When I reach the last few rows, the watchers scatter. It is one thing to spot a monster; it is another thing entirely to meet it face-to-face. The only thing moving along the rim when I arrive is a tiny wind, blowing dust along the walls of the huts. A zephyr.

I've been thinking while I clambered up the hill, letting my brain get lost in my history as a distraction from the waves of pain coursing through my body. My skin is still raw and the weight of my clothing is a fierce torment, but my strength has not been sapped by the sun as I had expected. I have been burned by the sun numerous times during the twentieth century—a growing concern brought about by the vicissitudes of the modern world—but this time, I can live with the pain. I do not entirely know the source of my willpower; perhaps it is a reaction to seeing Phoebe survive sunlight or a facet of my conversations with Escobar or even strength drawn from my memory of the last augury I did for Aeneas.

I have lost my fear of the sun.

And with it, so too has my fear of abandonment vanished. I have turned my back on Arcadia, even as Arcadia has exiled me. I have nowhere to go. No home that I can return to. But my exile is not a yoke about my shoulders. The salt and the sun have stripped away all that dead weight.

The huts are tiny little domiciles, transitory living quarters for the farmers as they tend to their basins. I find little in the few that I break into. Most have tiny refrigerators that aren't very well stocked. What fruit I find I eat without reservation, replenishing my depleted cells. I can feel my body relax, no longer crippled by the desiccating salt of the basins. I'm a long way from being whole, but I'm strong enough to keep fighting.

Tucked between two of the huts, I find a worn bicycle. It is covered in dust and might have been green once upon a time. Wire baskets have been welded between the handlebars and on either side of the back wheel. The nut holding the seat in place is stiff, but I manage to get it started so that I can raise the seat. It has a metal bell, and I flick the ringer with my thumb as I ride toward the dirt road that runs past the edge of the farms and heads further uphill.

Ding! Ding!

Moray, the farming site where the Incans experimented with seeds, is only a few kilometers away. That's where the helicopter was going. Hyacinth Worldwide is building something there, and I suspect it is Escobar's great secret. The place where he is building the chimerae.

Ding! Ding!

The ringing of the bell is both a tribute to the dead and a warning to Escobar.

I'm not done yet.

FORTY-THREE

A
long a flat stretch of road that runs along a ridge, I stop and look back toward Cusco. There's a haze of dirt stretching back toward the city, and sunlight glints off the metal bodies of a line of cars. There's too much dust to be sure, but it looks like a couple of Mercedes G-class wagons.

Secutores won the fight at the plaza. That doesn't bode well for Arcadia. When was the last time we lost a fight with humans?

Ahead of the caravan, weaving wildly around the sharp turns of the switchback up the side of the ridge, is a dark blue sedan. I watch it approach. I can't outrun it on my bike, and I'm more than a little curious as to who is leading this charge. The sedan roars over the top of the ridge, catching a little air, and slews dangerously close to me before it comes to a stop. The passenger side window comes down and I look in.

“We really don't have time for you to stand there and gawk at me,” Mere says.

“It's just good to see you,” I say, and I mean it. Her face and neck are streaked with dirt and blood, and there's a gleam in her eye that speaks of too much adrenaline in the last hour, but it's definitely Mere, vibrant and alive. On the passenger seat is a handgun, a model I've seen Secutores carry. I leave the bike by the side of the road—ringing the bell one last time—and climb into the car.

“What's with the bell?” she asks as I move the gun out of the way and settle into the seat.

“When was the last time you rode a bike with a bell?” I ask.

“Fair point.” She drops the car back into drive and puts her foot down on the accelerator. She watches the road while I examine her more closely. Some of the blood is coming from a gash in her neck, and there's a couple of bruises forming under her right eye. Her knuckles are scraped, and there's another gash along the outside of her right forearm.

“What's the other guy look like?” I ask.

She glances over at me. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“I killed Alberto Montoya.”

“What? I thought you said you killed him in Santiago?”

“I did. I took his head off, Mere. That should have done it. But he was on the helicopter, almost as if he was waiting for me. And he looked, well, he looked perfect. As if nothing had happened to him.”