They are metal, yes, but there are no straight lines. The spider is all long curves. Maybe that’s why they look so alive when they move, especially from a distance.
The yellow color, it’s paint. Rust streaks where that paint is chipped and cracked. Irregular red-brown circles with misshapen globs of metal in the center—the balls fired from the Springer clubs, embedded in the spider’s shell. Dozens of them, far more than were fired just now.
Around the clearing, I count five dead Springers, their bodies broken and mangled, blue blood soaking into the cracks between the tiles.
We lost one of ours. They lost five of theirs.
No…six.
The memory of my spear thrust comes rushing back. The sound of the blade entering the Springer’s body. The feel of the metal glancing against bone before it punched out the other side. The look in the creature’s intelligent eyes as life faded away.
Coyotl reaches up, runs his fingers over the circle-star painted on the spider’s thick shell.
“Like mine,” he says. “They belong to us.”
One of its legs lies mostly limp. That’s the leg that dragged behind, made the spider move with that funny gait. Coyotl runs his hands over the old, rusted, beat-up metal.
“The leg is broken,” he says. “Not from a bullet, I don’t think.”
Bullet. That’s the correct name for the metal balls, Matilda’s memory tells me. And those aren’t clubs, they are guns.
Bishop rubs the back of his head, unknowingly smears blood across his dirty hair.
“Coyotl, get up top and keep a lookout,” he says. “Kalle, Borjigin, collect the dead Springers’ weapons and their bags.”
Coyotl scrambles up a spider leg with balance that surprises me. At the top joint, he stands, arms outstretched, then leaps gracefully onto the machine’s back. Most of him is now hidden by ridges I didn’t notice before—ridges that would protect him from bullets.
He runs his hands along the front ridge, stops at a triangular notch. Just behind that notch is a stubby metal tube with an opening as big as my head. I see the expression on Coyotl’s face: he’s having a flashfire, recalling something from his creator’s past. He blinks, then wiggles the tube, pushes and pulls at it. It doesn’t move. Finally, he lifts his black boot and gives it a solid kick.
The tube slides outward with a ringing metal sound and a light shower of dust. It’s not stubby at all: it’s long, longer than I am tall.
“Like the guns the Springers used to kill Visca,” Coyotl says. “But bigger. This is called…a cannon. I think it’s broken, though. Maybe it’s too old.”
If the Springers’ clubs shot small bullets, what does that cannon shoot? I look at the other spiders: they have the same ridges, the same triangular notches, the same stubby tube.
I glance at the ruins surrounding this clearing, wonder what the buildings looked like when they stood tall, when the jungle was pushed back, under control. I imagine an army of shiny spiders. Other kinds of machines as well. Maybe some that fly like blurds. Machines rushing in, cannons firing, buildings burning and crashing, explosions tearing the streets to bits, Springers screaming and fleeing, burning and bleeding, dying.
“Em,” Bishop says, “I need to dress your wound.”
He doesn’t wait for permission. He grabs my shoulder firmly, his thick fingers lying on either side of the deep gash. The stinging pain floods in all at once. I’d forgotten about it somehow.
“Does it hurt?” he asks.
“Feels great,” I lie. “Do what you have to do.”
One corner of his mouth turns up. I see pride in his eyes. The stubble on his face has grown thicker—not quite a beard but not far from it.
He uses his knife to cut my sleeve completely away. He takes a small bottle from one of his coverall pockets, sprays something on the wound that burns even worse than the bullet did. From another pocket, he takes a roll of the purple bandage and wraps it around my shoulder.
“How do you know how to do that?” I ask.
Bishop shrugs. “They taught us how to keep each other alive. We need to get you back to Doctor Smith. I can’t lose you, too.”
Pain in his voice. Not from the cut on the back of his head, but from his soul. I feel it, too—we lost one of our own. It isn’t the first time. Latu, Yong, the El-Saffani twins, Bello, Harris…and now Visca. Seven of us, gone forever. Of those seven, five were circle-stars. They are the first to fight, the first to die.
“We can’t leave Visca,” I say. “We have to go get his body.”
Bishop shakes his head. “We don’t know where we are, and the enemy is out there in the jungle.”
“The pigs ate Latu,” I say. “I won’t leave Visca to be eaten by animals.”
Bishop leans close to me.