Flood

71

The rebels were numerous, but they were a mob, ill-trained, most of them lacking any sense of formation and discipline. And now that the Quechua leaders were falling, choking as the yellow gas filled their lungs, panic was setting in even amongst those who must be immune to the ethnic-specific toxin.

The AxysCorp squad cut through this rabble like an arrow-head burrowing into flesh, leaving a trail of dead and wounded. Lily, hurrying behind the squad, could see how many of the fallen wore remnants of western clothing, even battered AxysCorp-mark garments. They must have been the citizens of Walker City, Americans like her own father’s family, stranded as far from home as she was, and dying here today.

It wasn’t hard to find Ollantay in his golden helmet, his proud Inca plumage. As those around him fell, choking, their swollen tongues sticking out of their mouths, he stood unaffected with his AK47 raised and spitting fire, until the AxysCorp squad overwhelmed him and got his weapon out of his hands. A couple of the AxysCorp guards dragged Hammond Lammockson to his feet. He had been trying to hide among the Quechua corpses.

And here was Kristie, kneeling on the ground, her boy clasped to her chest. Lily hurried to her with the mask.“Put this on him, Kristie-do it!”

Kristie stared at her, eyes wide with shock. But she took the mask and, with trembling hands, looped it over the boy’s head and pulled its elastic tight. “Lily, what is this? People just started dying.”

“Nathan’s genomic weapons,” Lily said grimly. “An ethnic-specific toxin, targeted at the Quechua. Supposed to be lethal even to a quarter ancestry. You and I should be OK, but your boy-”

“That’s monstrous,” Kristie flared.

“More so than an AK47? Look, you need to come back with me. Your mother-”

“To hell with her.” She looked up at Ollantay, who stood between two guards, his hands behind his back in plastic cuffs.“Why isn’t Ollantay hurt by the gas?”

Piers, his gun pointing square at Ollantay’s face, sneered at him. “Maybe because this Inca hero isn’t the pureblood he’d have liked you to believe, Kristie. As I tried to tell you long ago.” The muscles of Ollantay’s arms bunched against the tension of the cuffs. “Maybe because you’ve thrown away your life on a lie-”

“Enough,” Lily said, putting a hand on Piers’s arm.

“I won’t go,” Kristie said.

“Oh yes you will,” Lily snapped, and she hauled her niece to her feet by main force.

“Lily…”

She turned. It was Gary Boyle, standing there in plastic cuffs like Ollantay. Beside him was an older woman, short, tough-looking, likewise cuffed.

Despite the bedlam around her, Lily ran to Gary and embraced him. He smelled of dirt, cordite, blood. “Jesus, it’s good to see you. Even in circumstances like this. When the spotters warned us Walker Okies were coming-I didn’t know if you were still with them. They wouldn’t let me try to contact you.”

“Lily, this is Mayor Thorson. Of Walker City.”

Lily eyed the woman, who met her gaze proudly. “I’m ashamed we didn’t welcome you here.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Thorson said dismissively. “You don’t call the shots, do you? Besides, the game’s up for you.”

“That it is,” Piers said. He ordered the AxysCorp troopers to remove the cuffs from Thorson and Gary. “Look, Lammockson is abandoning Project City. I think he always intended to if, when, the sea reached his Ark. The city served its purpose in building the Ark for him. I don’t know what kind of order will emerge here now. Lammockson doesn’t care anymore, I suspect. But we know about you people, Walker City. I believe you would make a responsible contribution to-”

“You don’t know anything about us,” Thorson sneered at him. “Go on. Run away with your feudal master. We’ll sort this mess out.”

Piers’s face worked, but he backed off. “Whatever you say. Lily, we must go. We have Hammond. That chopper’s going to lift in a few minutes whether we’re there or not. Gary-”

Gary shook his head. “These are my people now. The walkers. I’ll stay. But take Grace.” He glanced around.

Lily said, “Who? Grace?”

A young woman emerged from a crowd of rebel prisoners, cuffed as the others had been. She was the image of Helen Gray. She stared at Lily, wide-eyed. Lily’s heart melted. She had had no idea Grace was here.

Gary said, “She’ll be safe with you-safer, anyhow, if she’s close to Lammockson. He’s a bastard, but a smart, surviving sort of bastard.”

“Gary-”

“Just go.”

“Come on,” Piers said. He raised his weapon and led the way to Nathan and the helicopter.

Lily took Grace’s arm. She was reluctant, but, numbed, she followed. Kristie was more resistant, but Lily didn’t give her the choice; she simply dragged her away.

The AxysCorp troops followed, making a fighting withdrawal, pushing Ollantay and Hammond along with them. As they ran Kristie sheltered her son’s head with her arm. Lily reminded herself that Kristie still didn’t know about her mother.

Lily looked back. Gary was already lost in the confusion. She’d spent only minutes in his presence, the first time she’d seen him in years and years.

They were almost back at the chopper, its clattering rotors adding to the roar of noise in the stadium, when Sanjay came blundering up to Lily.

“Lily! I have to tell you-Nathan didn’t give me a chance-”

“What is it, Sanj?”

“When Thandie called-she spoke about the sea levels-and about the Ark.”

“What Ark? Ark Three, Nathan’s ship?”

“No-listen to me- Ark One. The Ark they’re building in Colorado. In the end, Thandie says, that’s the only chance. In the end… She said you needed to know. She tried to tell Gary-”

There was shouting. Lily turned.

Ollantay shook himself free of his guards and whirled around. Lily saw that he had a weapon held behind his back, in his cuffed hands, a revolver that must have been hidden under his tunic. He shot blindly, aiming for Piers.

And Sanjay screamed and fell; he lay twitching, his breast laid open to the bone, bloody masses bubbling within.

Piers raised a revolver and shot Ollantay point blank in the head. The Quechua fell. Kristie hid her son’s eyes. Piers lowered his gun. “Should have done that a long time ago.”

Lily yelled, “Sanjay!” She tried to get to him; he was still alive, it seemed, still struggling to breathe.

But Piers grabbed her. “No more time!” He pushed her into the chopper’s open hatch, where AxysCorp goons grabbed her and hauled her in. Kristie and the kid were bundled in after her, and Grace, Hammond, Piers, a few others.

The chopper lifted with a surge that sent Lily tumbling to the floor. She wasn’t strapped in, wasn’t even in a seat. She found herself looking out of the open hatch at the receding ground. There was Sanjay, sprawled in blood like a fallen fledgling. She swore to herself that she would get word of this to his family in Scotland, his children. And further out the ring of AxysCorp troops were still fighting to defend the scrap of land from which their employer had already ascended.

As she rose the bowl of the stadium opened up. Everywhere people fought and died in a cloud of toxic dust and gunsmoke, fighting for the right to exist on this dwindling scrap of ground. And still the chopper rose until the stadium shrank into the detail of Cusco, a carpet of red-tiled roofs where more battles continued in the squares and in the streets, a whole city abandoned by Lammockson now that it had served its purpose. Higher still Lily ascended, until Cusco was lost in its bowl in a spine of water-lapped mountains.

Grace sat, still cuffed, bewildered. Ark One, Lily thought, looking at Grace. That’s it. Whatever it is, Grace has to be aboard. Sanjay gave his life to tell me about it. And I have to get her there.

Kristie was coming out of her shock. She looked around wildly. “Where’s my mother? Is she on this chopper? Where’s my mother?”