Raphael, Roman, and I rode the ley line out of Atlanta. The magic current ran whether the magic was up or down, but when tech ruled, like it did now, the ley line speed dropped to a mere forty miles per hour. It took us several hours to get there. The magic finally spat us and our cargo out right between Waycross and Folkston into the open arms of a shapeshifter woman with a Pack Jeep. She was short, dark-haired, and had a sprinkling of freckles on her nose.
“Here is your ride.” She held out the keys. Raphael took them. “Go down that road, take the right fork, then the second left. You’ll come to the pier. There are two pontoon boats there. Take them. The way through the swamp is marked with strips of white fabric. Good luck.”
She walked away.
We loaded the cargo into the Jeep, and me and my Heckler & Koch UMP submachine gun called shotgun. Roman crawled into the backseat.
Twenty minutes later we pulled up before the wooden pier. In front of us a narrow channel curved into the green wall of trees and underbrush. Two pontoon boats floated on the water the color of black tea.
A crate sat on the pier. On the side someone had written in black marker, “A present from Uncle Jim.”
Raphael pulled the top off the crate. Pixilated ACUs—Army Combat Uniforms—in lovely randomized patterns of greens and browns, perfect for the swamp.
“I like this uncle.” I found the shortest set and stripped off my jeans.
Roman opened his eyes wide, as if he had never seen a woman in underwear before.
Raphael threw a set at him. “Don’t just stand there.”
“You want me to wear these?” Roman looked at the ACUs and put his hand over his chest, as if protecting his black robe. “That’s not right.”
“You have a problem with pants?” Raphael asked.
Roman pulled his robe apart, revealing a pair of black jeans underneath. “I always wear my pants. I just don’t want to deal with that retarded outfit. I don’t even know how to put it on.”
“Wear the fatigues,” I told him. “It won’t kill you. Not wearing them might.”
Roman sighed, rolled his eyes, and stripped off his robe and jeans, revealing a muscled torso. Well. Someone worked out. Roman pulled on the fatigue pants, grabbed the black boots, folded the bottom of the pants in a practiced move, and stuffed his feet into his boots.
Hmmm.
Next he took the ACU top and rolled up both sleeves in a perfectly even summer regulation cuff. Raphael stared at him. Roman pulled the ACU on and flexed. “Makes your arm bigger, see?”
“You asshole,” I punched him in the shoulder.
“Gentle! I bruise easily.” He rubbed his carved biceps and I caught a glimpse of a tattoo on his arm: a skull wearing a beret. Army Ranger.
Now I had seen everything.
I stood on the bow of a pontoon boat and held binoculars to my eyes. Raphael sat at the helm. Roman piloted the second vessel behind us. He’d brought some sort of leather harness, which he had fit over his ACUs, and stuck his staff through it. It looked silly protruding over his shoulder.
A river stretched in front of me, its waters blue-black and half hidden by lily pads and water weeds. Strange trees bordered it, couched in the brush and reeds, tall, their trunks bare and bloated at the root where they thrust from the water, then narrowing as they rose to spread in a canopy of fresh bright green. They looked prehistoric. This was not my country.
“Cypresses,” Raphael told me, when I had asked about them a minute ago. “They are buttresses against the hurricanes.”
We made our way through the labyrinth of waterways and false islands made of floating peat and covered with grass. The air smelled of water, fish, and mud. Somewhere to the left a gator roared, the sound ripping from its throat deep, powerful, and primeval, as if the swamp itself roared into our faces. There was a strange serene beauty in this ancient, wet riot of life, but I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it.
Ahead the river forked, flowing around an island, a dense mess of underbrush and cypresses. A small piece of white cloth dangled from the lowlying bush, dead center of the river. In the past when Jim’s people had left markers, they were to the left or to the right, indicating which way we had to turn. This one was straight on.
“Island coming up,” I said. “I don’t think we’re going around this time.”
“Got it.”
Since last night, Raphael had said exactly sixteen words to me. He was distancing himself. It was probably better this way.
The boat slid into the muddy shore. I jumped out into the soggy soup of mud and water and pulled back the canvas covering the bottom of the boat. Guns stared at me, wrapped lovingly in plastic to keep the moisture out. Two shotguns. A Heckler & Koch UMP submachine gun. And my baby, a Parker-Hale M-85, my sniper rifle of choice. They didn’t make them anymore. She was a gift from my sniper instructor and she let me put a bullet into the center of a man’s forehead at nine hundred and sixty meters. She had never failed me.
I took the rifle and one shotgun, Raphael shouldered the backpack filled with ammunition and grabbed the UMP and the other shotgun. A moment later Roman docked and pulled back his own canvas, gathering up a giant rucksack filled with magic paraphernalia, and picked up my compound bow and two quivers filled with arrows. We set off through the swamp, moving as quietly as the wet ground allowed.
The ground climbed up. There must’ve been an outcropping of rock under all that mud. We kept going up the gently rising hill.
Raphael stopped. A moment later I smelled it, too—smoke. We bent low, moving up the hill in complete silence, until finally we went to ground at its end.
A small city spread out in front of the hill, stretching across the floodplain. Huts and shacks made of wood, tents, premanufactured buildings, all connected by wooden walkways, radiating from a circular channel in the center. Muddy water filled the channel, draining off into the floodplain. In its center a massive structure stretched to the sky. At least three hundred feet tall, it resembled a spiral of smooth coils, wide at the ground and narrow as it twisted about the base again and again, reaching to the flat top.
A clay spiral. Roman’s prophecy was coming true.
“They built an enormous dog turd,” Raphael murmured.
“It’s a snake,” Roman said. “Look, see the head is resting on the top, and the snake is curling down around the pyramid. They’ve made their god out of clay, and then they’ll animate him. It’s very clever, actually.”