Beluga Fay (Dragon Bone Hill) (32 page)

Speeding up, he took the corner as several figures ran out—all were firing wildly and shouting. They had to have been organized better than most, because they’d firearms and the rounds to waste on a passing car. This meant there might be more—with this in mind, he twisted south to the main road running along the northern frontier of Makati. Pym knew he had to get off this as soon as possible; if he stayed, he would run into a security patrol. Still, he stayed on it for a few more blocks; then hoping he had gotten beyond the territory of the shooters, he turned back north and slipped into the side streets. With each block, he was one step closer to the Beluga; one step closer to finding a safe place where he could figure out what he was going to do next.

For a moment, Titus considered turning north and toward the Timog apartment. There, however, he would be alone, and how long before the security forces would learn he was there once they learned of Glenna’s death. Soon that place would be little more than a death trap. Knowing he could not return to the place, he made a mental inventory of what was there. Nothing he could not leave behind, and little enough that could connect him to the place. He could think of nothing that connected him by name to Timog. Still, once the security forces began to look into the place, they would interview everyone there, and sooner or later someone would have a description they could share.

How would this affect him if there was no name to go with it? Security would have to match a description to the man, and that would be impossible once he was buried in the West. There were descriptions of him out there now, but these were vague because he had such a general appearance. What worked against him was that he was foreign and a northerner. That part of the description would stick out like a sore thumb, which meant they would know who he was and where he could be found—or make a good guess about this. Guessing was proof, and proof from the security forces would not play well with Synon and Bannly. Nor, he supposed, with Lander—though he would be taking a good, long, hard look at them once the information came to light.

Time was not on his side any longer, but it wasn’t yet against him.

With the last thought came a hard banging and hiss from the engine. Pulling over at the first opportunity and at the first place that appeared abandoned—though he was no longer certain what that would look like—Titus stood over the hood and prayed it was what he thought it was. Popping this, he looked down into the engine. Most of what he saw made no sense to him, but there was enough damage to the hoses and wiring for the man to know that he wasn’t going any farther in the car. So much for prayer.

Of course, he might drive until the engine finally died, but that would draw everyone in the neighborhoods he passed through—assuming the vehicle took him farther than this one. Slamming the hood, Pym cursed and pulled his rucksack out of the back seat. In this he had the extra clips, box of shells, extra food, change of clothes, energy bars, another pair of shoes, a couple of knives, and a few other odds and ends he felt might get him through the weeks it would take him to get to the southern islands and the dugout trip to freedom.

Shaking his head to rid himself of the fantasy, Titus stuffed the extra clips in his pocket and heaved the sack on his back. It would be hours back to the Beluga—the hike could take until dawn. Pym wasn’t certain though, since he’d mostly travelled by car and some by horse. Whatever the amount of time, he was going to have to make it on foot. He was in trouble. Taking a last breath and allowing this to slip out as a sigh, Titus stepped away from the car and turned west.

An hour later he was sweating freely. He’d started to sweat almost immediately upon taking to foot, and his clothes became sodden within the first fifteen minutes. Though he’d wanted to wear shorts, he thought he would need the extra protection the denim would provide if they were hiking through any of the subtropical forests. Pym supposed they’d have had to get off the roads as quickly as possible in case the Wall reported their escape. Torres would have been unlikely to have reported it, but there was that possibility and not to be prepared for it would have been foolish. Now, though, the heavy cloth was wearing him down, but there was also the possibility he would have to do some running, hiding, and crawling before this night was over—unless he could find a horse. Those, however, were about as precious as cars. In some ways, horses were more so, because the only fuel you needed for them was an empty common and a little feed.

Stopping to take another hit from the water bottle, he looked around from the top of a smallish knoll. The best he could tell was that he was somewhere northwest of the political district, southeast of Timog, and from the distance he’d covered in the hour, another five- or six-hour hike to the warehouse—if he took a straight line. That would not be possible—more and more the districts had become negotiable only in force, and that he did not have. Before skulking from house to house, however, Titus needed to make up as much distance as possible. He also needed to begin to conserve his fresh water supply—unless he could prize some water from one of the districts he would be humping through.

He mopped his face with a large, sodden bandana and tied it over his forehead. He slung the rucksack onto his back and already ever kilo felt like five. He was out of shape; he knew that—too many months of easy living, though it did not seem easy at the time with everyone wanting him dead, or seeming to. Now Titus saw just how much belonging to the Beluga had cost him. If he survived, he was going to have to change how they did things. As he moved from street to street, Pym was outlining several new programs for the Beluga—mostly endurance training—and planning on how they might expand into the agri-zone and the marina. That would cost them heavy, but it would wrest control of the city from Salazar, which he may have to do if the government, in collusion with the Wall, attempted to frame him.

This brought him up short. Here was his way out of the frame—take the city. It wouldn’t be easy or simple, but it would be the out he needed. Smiling, he was exiting the knoll and turning directly west from his general southwest trajectory. From a bungalow, there came the creak of floorboards, or was that the creak of rusted hinges on a door that swung loose? From the corner of his eye, not moving his head, there was a gentle, almost imperceptible, movement in the gloom behind the door. He’d picked up a tail.

“Can’t be.” The voice was incredulous.

“Dugo, you sure?” Another voice, older, lower, and much harder than the first.

“Zesto, he’s alone, and I’m sure it’s him.”

Zesto rocked back on the lawn chair—the cheap aluminum legs trembled beneath him, and he leaned back forward not wanting to collapse the chair with so many watching. Zesto, Buldo, none in the Santana knew for certain if that was his real name—but most in the gang weren’t using their family names so this would not have been unusual—was squat and square in shape. He wasn’t overweight, but in a few years of easy living, it looked as though he could become this. For the past year and a half—longer maybe—they’d been living hand-to-mouth, so no one was bulging beneath their waistbands.

Over the past few months, things had gotten desperate, and there’d been a few deaths they could relate to starvation. None of the deaths were directly related to hunger, but they had been inspired by this. There’d been the requisite suicides, but more often, hunger had forced members of Santana into attacking food shipments, or the agri-zone to the South. Some had even gone after the fish markets now in the hands of the Beluga. Occasionally each of these acts had ended well and there was food for a few days—more generally the attacks had ended in death or capture. Capture would mean a lingering death on the Hill—if they were lucky.

Whatever the case, the Santana were dying. Either they’d be folded into the Cartel or they’d join the Beluga. In each case, it meant the gang was on its last legs. From a membership of several hundred at the beginning of the Sweats, they’d been whittled down to less than a hundred. Zesto was no longer willing to call a roll because that would only bring the reality of their situation into stark relief—which would cause more defections.

Standing, Buldo stepped to the empty pool and pissed into it. The family that had been squatting in the house was tied up in the deep end. The woman was almost dead, as well as the daughter, but the husband’s eyes were bulging with fear and rage—Zesto wasn’t certain which it was and didn’t care. Before the news he’d just received, they were debating whether or not to take the next step. Hunger had brought them to that, and religion was no longer enough to save any from the necessity. Still, not everyone was ready for that step. After they did that, they may as well move on to Dragon Bone Hill, many had argued, but there seemed little choice if they were going to hang onto what was left of themselves and each other.

This news could change their outlook—in the short term, maybe longer. “You,” turning back to the skeletal Dugo with his bulging, oversized eyes, “could be wrong about this.”

“I’m not,” his voice with more bass than seemed right for such a short kid. Dugo Martilyo was little more than fourteen and was so underfed, even before the Sweating Sickness, he was hardly one hundred and forty-two centimeters.

“If you are—you join them,” pointing his chin toward the pool.

“You’re still,” Luis Silva asked, “going to...”

“If,” Zesto interrupted, “Dugo’s wrong, there will be no choice.”

“Should we leave them there?” Luis asked.

“Just make sure they’re tied up good and tight.” Turning from Luis and back to Dugo, the young man smiled.

Zesto could not have been twenty—truth was he did not know how old he was. No one in the orphanage had told him his age, and he had run away from the institution when he’d been there only a couple of years—that he could remember. Buldo supposed he’dbeen six or thereabouts, and that was years since. Now he supposed he was near enough to twenty to call it that. Most others were in the same situation as he—no family; no education; no trade; no skills. What remained for them were the streets and Santana. Yet, even now the latter was dying and the former were rapidly emptying.

“Where’d you see him?”

“He,” Dugo answered, “was a couple of blocks north of the highroad near the bank and just south of Squatter Hill.” They all had their own language for their territory no one else shared.

“And he was heading west on foot?”

Dugo nodded.

“How far you think he’s gone by now?”

“Not far—he is moving slow—maybe a block or two.”

“Okay, take some of your best to jump ahead of him a couple of blocks, and we’ll come up behind.”

Smiling, for no reason in particular except to keep Zesto happy, Martilyo ran off into the house to find those who might get the job done.

“He’s seen us,” Francisco grumbled from the gloom of the doorway.

“No. His head didn’t move,” The girl answered.

“Analise, you didn’t watch his body—it got really tight, and his step increased a bit.”

“We can’t go after him—he’s armed.”

“Meant for you to see that—which means he’s afraid of us.”