“They got a spotter,” he gasped. “We find him and shut him down, we can get some breathing room.”

He nodded toward a building across the way. “They ain’t shelling that one.”

Pook scanned the building Ocho indicated. “You think that’s where they are?”

“It’s the only building they ain’t blowing up.”

The 999 went off again, and they all flattened themselves, but the round went somewhere else. Didn’t even explode. They all laughed.

A dud.

“How we doing, warboy?” Ocho slapped Mouse’s knee. “Ready to hurt these bastards?”

Mouse couldn’t form the words. He was shaking. His face was bleeding from some bit of shrapnel that had hit him and he didn’t know where it had come from.

He realized Ocho was looking at him. He tried to speak but couldn’t say anything at all. He was surprised to see that Ocho was smiling.

The sergeant leaned close. “I got news for you, half-bar. None of us is getting out of here alive. You get it? We’re just walking dead. So don’t worry so much about surviving, right?” He slapped Mouse’s leg, grinning. “Don’t take it so serious. We’re just meat in the mill.”

Mouse closed his eyes and wanted to cry, but Pook grabbed him. “Come on, half-bar. Time to earn your verticals.”

Ocho pointed at the building across the canal. “You get your ass in there and find that spotter. Get the 999 off us, and maybe we get out of here alive. Fight another day, right? Only way out is if we shut down that 999. Otherwise we’re kill food.” He slapped Mouse on the back.

“Go on, half-bar! Hunt!”

And then he shoved Mouse into the canal, right into a hail of bullets. Mouse went down, came up sputtering. Wondering what he was going to do.

He thought about trying to swim away, to flee, but then Pook splashed into the drink with him.

“Come on, half-bar. Let’s get your prick red.” And then he was swimming for the far side.

All of Mouse’s senses were alive. It felt like he was looking in twenty directions at once. Army of God boys down the canal, shooting at them. Rubble raining down from above. Mules in the water, swimming around, braying and thrashing and climbing up on one another, and being dragged down and tangled by their harnesses.

They hadn’t seen it coming. None of them had. One second they’d been patrolling, working muscle while a bunch of civvy slave labor moved scavenge down the canal—just making sure the scavenged wire and marble and pipes and I beams all went out and bought them more bullets—and the next they were in a firefight for their lives.

Mouse made it to the far side of the canal.