“Okay.” It overwhelmed her all at once. She got up from the table and walked around the room, holding her robe closed tightly. “Okay.”
“Carmen.”
She held up one hand. “Gimme a minute.”
He waited.
She breathed slowly and deeply. “Okay. I already know enough that you’re fucked if I talk, and I’m fucked if you decide to be extra careful and shut me up. So you might as well tell me the rest. How’d you end up here? You bust out of the lab? And where’s your buddy Henri and the others?”
“Do you really want to know?” he asked.
Carmen thought about it. “Yeah, I do.”
Martin told her.
Told her how by the time they turned eighteen, the government decided they might as well get some use out of their unlikely refugees and train them to do what they were bred for. Trained them as soldiers. Used them as an elite squadron. Told her stories of what they’d done.
“We were good,” he said dryly. “Too good. There were rumors. People got nervous.” He nodded at the tabloid. “No one was supposed to know we existed.”
“So you deserted?” she guessed.
He shook his head. “Not right away. They decided to break up the unit. Split us up.” His mouth twisted. “Henri got wind of it. He said if it came to it, we should run. There were some good people, people who tried to help us, but we were the only family any of us had.”
“The Lost Boys,” Carmen murmured. “So they did it, huh? Split you up?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d you run here?”
Martin smiled sideways at his half-empty bottle of beer. “It’s on the way. I got turned around in the cordon for a few days. Whatever I’m bred for, it’s not a good sense of direction. I needed food and rest.”
“Mexico,” she said. “You’re going to fucking Mexico.”
“Do you hate it that much?” he asked curiously. “Half the folk in this town must have roots there.”
“Yeah.” Carmen sat down. “Viva la Raza. We used to say shit like that when I was a kid. Put it on bumper stickers, you know? But that was before the war. Before El Segundo.” She shivered. “He killed Tommy’s father. He’s killed a lot of people.”
“Someone has,” Martin agreed.
She stared at him. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t think he’s real,” he said softly. “I think he is a ghost. Something the government made up to give them an excuse to seal the border and cut off aid to a country hit worse by the flu than America.”
“So who’s setting the bombs?” she asked. Martin didn’t answer. “Oh, shit.” She shook her head. “No. No.”
“I don’t know for sure.” His voice was still gentle. “It was Henri’s theory. He was the smart one.”
“And that’s why you’re going?”
“It’s one reason,” he said. “Mostly because we can’t stay here. We never thought to complain about anything until they tried to split us up. Then we did. As a result, the U.S. government declared us property. Spoils of war. Because we aren’t entirely human, you see.”
“Wolf-man,” Carmen murmured.
“Maybe.” He laughed unexpectedly. “Maybe not. Who knows? Henri said if they bred us for strength, we’d more likely be part ant than wolf. Maybe they ought to call us the Myrmidons.”
“How can you laugh about it?” she asked plaintively.
Martin shrugged.
Silence stretched between them. “I wish you’d never come here,” Carmen said at last without looking at him. “I don’t want to know this shit. Any of it.”
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.
She lifted her head and gazed at him. Despite everything, she didn’t. “Did you kill some poor soldier-boy for that uniform?”
“No,” he said steadily. “I stole it. I didn’t kill anyone for it.” She sighed. “Okay. What’s a Myrmidon?”
Martin smiled and told her.
FIVE
In the end, he stayed longer than he meant to.
It was the desire that burned between them, hot and unquenchable. Knowing what she knew, it didn’t matter. Wolf-man, ant-man; whatever Martin was, she wanted him. Couldn’t help the way her blood leaped at his touch, couldn’t help the way her body craved his. Couldn’t fucking help it.And it was something he’d never had with anyone else.
“No one?” she whispered in the small hours of the night, her breasts flattened against his hard chest, her sweating skin plastered to his.
Martin shook his head. “No one.”
Carmen groaned and dug her nails into his flanks. “Aw, fuck!”
So he lingered.
Days turned into a week; a week turned into a month. Except for Inez, no one but Grady and Sonia from the diner knew he was staying with her, and they weren’t going to talk. No one came looking for him. Martin kept a low profile, content to stay indoors, teaching Tommy card games. Tommy doted on him, so much so that he didn’t even mind splitting his nights between Carmen and Inez. And in the end, Martin stayed long enough to discover he was very much mistaken about one big, important thing.
“I’m pregnant,” Carmen told him.
He stared blankly at her. “That’s not possible.”
She shrugged. “Well, maybe they shouldn’t have left the shitty scientists to run tests on you, or maybe it’s a goddamn miracle. But I went to the free clinic today and they did the test. And I haven’t been with anyone else.”
Martin gave a short, wondering laugh.
Carmen scowled at him. “It’s not funny! They won’t do abortions, Martin. It’s against the rules.”
“I’ll stay with you.” He said it without hesitation.
Tears brightened her eyes. “You sure?”
He gave her that surprisingly sweet smile, making her heart leap. “Yes.”
Work was a problem; they couldn’t all live on her meager earnings. Martin had some cash, but it wouldn’t last. And it wasn’t a good idea to have him do anything that would put him in regular contact with the soldiers, which was pretty much any job in Outpost.
“Talk to Salamanca,” Inez advised Carmen. Carmen had told her that Martin was a deserter, though not the part about him being not quite human. “He’s always looking for guys desperate enough to haul garbage.”
It was the worst job in Outpost: collecting garbage and hauling it in hand-drawn carts to be burned or buried. But the garbage collectors went around in the early dawn hours, and no one looked at them.
It was a risk. When they met, Hector Salamanca studied Martin with narrowed eyes. “What are you hiding from, son?” he mused. “ ’Cause I don’t think you’re from here. You running scared from El Segundo? Looking to desert?”
“Yes,” Martin agreed. “Is that a problem?”
Old Salamanca licked his lizard lips. “Half wage. And if you get caught, I don’t know nothing.”
Martin nodded. “Okay.”
For two months, it was good. For two months, it was like they were a family. Martin hauled garbage better than anyone had ever hauled garbage before. No one took notice of him and the grueling work didn’t bother him. Carmen waited on soldiers in the diner, wondering what in the hell was growing in her womb, but glad that whatever it was, it was conceived in something that was beginning to feel a lot like love. And Tommy was just plain happy.
Fight night was when it changed.
It was Tommy who wanted to go. She’d begun to tell him stories that had been too painful before. Stories about how she’d met his father. He wanted to see the boxing, begged and begged until she relented for the first time since her first true love had died.
It was still the best spectacle in town—with free beer, too. They stood in the cheering throng, watching a hard-hitting army middleweight slugger patiently stalk an agile local boy nicknamed Fleet Ortiz. Martin put Tommy on his shoulders. When Fleet made a misstep in the fifth round and went down with a stiff jab to the jaw, the Outposters groaned and the soldiers cheered. Fleet got to his feet after the count, wobbly but defiant. Locals cheered. The general nodded in curt approval. The crowd began to thin and the lights dimmed as the generators sighed. Martin swung Tommy down.
“Hey, Martin!” Tommy gazed up in adoration. “You could of beat that guy, huh?”
“That guy?” Martin smiled. “I guess so, Tom Garron.”
“Any guy!” Tommy persisted. “You could, right?”
Martin shrugged. “Lots. Most.”
“Is that so?” It was a new voice, a familiar voice. Carmen’s belly tightened and the left side of her face ached with remembered pain. She looked up to meet Danny Garza’s gaze. He was still handsome, but he’d gotten fleshy. There was a new scar running through one eyebrow and his eyes were cold. He had his younger brother with him, hulking twelve-year-old Miguel. “Who’s your invincible new friend, Carmen?”
“Martin,” she muttered.
“Martin,” Danny echoed. He laid one hand on his brother’s head. “My brother here’s gonna be a boxer when he grows up. Gonna win the prize and go to the free land. He punches like a donkey kicks, don’t you, Mig? Show the man.”
Miguel grunted and threw a punch at Martin’s gut. “Ow!”
Martin raised one eyebrow.
“Shit!” Miguel backed away, shaking his bruised hand. “That ain’t right, Danny.”
“No,” Danny said thoughtfully. “It ain’t.”
That was the beginning of fear.
Martin couldn’t feel it and Tommy was too young, so Carmen carried it for all of them. Carried it with a dread certainty, carried it for a full four days before Danny Garza came to the diner and slid into a booth, accompanied by a few of his bully-boys.
“He’s a traitor,” Danny said conversationally.