Page 31 of Green City Wars

Two more dogs are dead here. A dachshund lies locked in a death grip with a badger, its natural nemesis. The same badger that had hired on with the Graycoat Army at Franz-Ferdinand’s, in fact. The other mutt, something like a miniature pit bull, head-heavy, bloody-muzzled, lies sprawled on its side. Three more tatters of fur and plumes of tail have gone to Valhalla with it. The Graycoats paid heavily for their intrusion here, and that gives Skotch a moment of hope.

There is a scrape from somewhere nearby. He whirls, fumbling the popgun.

A voice, little more than a whisper, says his name.

There’s a hatch the whisper leads him to. A square thing that was once the flap on some kind of mail chute. Behind it, there’s Sly.

A leap of joy: Sly! Still alive. A swoop of misery. Sly, the red of his fur not the russet of foxhood but plenty of his own blood. One artificial stilt of a forelimb gone entirely, the other scratching feebly as he tries to pull himself out. Sly, wheezing, the rattling from within his narrow torso both organic and artificial. The war veteran back in the game for one last round of pointless, needless violence.

“Skotch,” he says. He took a serious broadside of shot from the Grays. There are entrance wounds peppering his ribs and flank.

“Wait. I’ll … I can…” Skotch tries to stop him hauling himself out of his little bolthole, but Sly kicks and scrabbles with his hindlegs, slides himself out like a corpse on a gurney. When Skotch touches him, he’s already cooling. Cold and sticky as laying a hand on the Baron.

“Meece,” says Sly. The confirmation, if any were needed, of what sealed his fate. Skotch’s fault, surely. But he hadn’t known, back then, just how much death could hide in one mouse’s shadow.

He tries to speak but Sly says, “Listen, no, listen.” And what can you do, to that kind of last request? The fox drags in a breath that hisses out of him through at least one hole not on the original plans. “Meece—is…” he gasps.

Skotch, desperate to spare him, says, “I know, I know. Meece is trouble. I’ll go get him, Sly. I’ll put a stop to it.”

The fox’s eyes bulge. A desperate scrabble has his face right in Skotch’s, jaws open as though he’s going for the raccoon’s throat in a final access of instinct. “No,” he gets out. “Change the world, Skotch … Amazing … Free. Save him, Skotch.”

“What?” Skotch chokes. Because he’d been right about to take his newly acquired piece of hardware and go on a brief and merciless rodent hunt right then, for all the trouble this damn country mouse had caused. But now this. “Sly, what do you mean? What did you—?”

“Step away from the fox,” says a new voice. Not a total stranger, but not anyone Skotch wants to hear from right then. And he’s not going to, but Sly’s eyes are as lifeless as the taxidermy he always looked like. His last breath has whistled out of him. The old veteran has lost his last war.

Skotch turns, and the popgun is in his hands. Facing him, come in behind him, are a good dozen Graycoats, all of them armed. “Ripper” Ripley is at their head, signalling her contempt for him by having her own weapon just cradled in her arms, because she’s got lesser squirrels to threaten raccoons for her. In the wild, she and hers would definitely be on the menu for Skotch’s kin, and maybe she’s looking forward to redressing that balance.

“All this, huh?” Skotch says. “For what, Ripley?”

“Drop the piece,” she says.

“You’re going to tell me the army had some serious reason, to declare war on Sly?” Skotch’s body is full of something. It’s fight; it’s flight: those animal passions. It’s the directionless rage of a beast in a trap. It’s something else, that crept in by way of his engineering. It’s grief at a lost friend. He’s outgunned twelve to one but right now he’s not letting go of the gun. “Tell me who it is, Ripley. Or we’ll all pull the trigger together and see who comes out of it.”

“That’s ‘Ripper’ to you,” the squirrel sneers. “And I don’t reckon you’ve got the guts.” Because Ripley is, all said and done, a truly stupid squirrel, one in whom the species’ natural caution has been entirely overwritten by the engineering. And Skotch is about to give her a lesson in Darwinian evolution right then and there, except Szerky slinks her way out from behind the pack of squirrels. She has a new bee-shooter in hand but, deadly as it is, it can’t compare to her own self.

“Herr Skotch,” she says, “who do you think has the pockets deep enough?”

“That’s it, is it?” Skotch demands. “Graycoat Army just errand boys for the Country Clubs? All your boasts and flags and it’s that?” Because the blind rage is ebbing, and Skotch understands he’s in a very bad spot here, one that the advent of Szerky has only made worse.

Some of the squirrels shift and shuffle a little, but Ripper doesn’t flinch. “You ever tried farm food, Skotch? Like, human food?” And Skotch has. There’s always a lively market for contraband from the farms, the good stuff, way tastier than SLG rations. Ripper Ripley snickers. “Who doesn’t want to have the farm owing them favours? The troops eat well tonight.”

“Those who made it out alive,” Skotch says. “I counted plenty bodies on the way in.”

“That’s war for you.” Ripley makes a cavalier gesture with her popgun. “Besides, way I hear, this squeaker you got is making waves everywhere. Best he’s gotten rid of double time, is what my chiefs tell me. That makes us the good guys. We’re just doing everyone a favour. Just a shame you got so turned around you don’t see that. Drop the piece, Skotch. You ain’t going to use it.”

Skotch looks down at the popgun in his hands, still pointed at the sublimely unconcerned Ripley. A decided pleasure, to let fly and maybe explode that smug squirrel face, but all it would get him is a fatal salvo of return fire. He could turn it on Szerky, and maybe her continued health is key to the Graycoats getting paid? Except he’s seen her move in a fight and he doesn’t reckon he can actually hit her.

These days Gehirner don’t generally end up gnawing their own legs off when caught in a trap. They have thumbs and tools and friends to get them out of that kind of scrape. Skotch seems to have run right out of friends and, in their absence, the thumbs and the tools don’t seem to be up to the task. When he puts the gun down and surrenders, it feels a move as desperate as biting into his own ankle.

“We’re going to have a proper conversation about where you’ve put the mouse, Herr Skotch,” Szerky tells him, and when he insists, yet again, that he hasn’t stashed Meece anywhere, she waves his protests away. “Save it. We’re going somewhere to focus your attention, mein Herr. It’s time you had a dose of good old-fashioned religion.”

They bring him out and most of the disruption is already cleared away. There’s a wheeled trolley. A half-dozen crows have turned up after all the murder and they’re dragging the bodies onto it, squirrel and dog both.

“There’s more inside,” Ripper tells them almost cheerily. Brutally unsentimental about her own losses, but then squirrels breed fast, and the bonds of both kin and camaraderie run thin amongst them. The army is all.

Skotch stares at the trolley. It’s marked with the unmistakable symbols of the Separation Plant, where all Gehirner end up in time.

“Hop on,” says Ripley. “We’re going for a ride.”