“No. It let me go. And then it crawled over there and curled up. Could’ve done me, easy. Had plenty left to sink me and make sure I never came up.” He shrugged. “Didn’t do it.”

The doctor was wading around the beast, staring. Even dead, the monster was imposing. Mahlia had known it before, but seeing the doctor standing next to the creature drove it home. The half-man had been huge. She thought of the three dead soldier boys and the wounded sergeant back at Doctor Mahfouz’s squat, and couldn’t help wondering what a monster like that could have done if it were healed and healthy.

The doctor waded back to them, moving clumsily through the muck.

“It’s not dead,” he said grimly.

“What?”

Mahlia found herself backing away, even though she was meters distant from the huge body.

“The half-man is still breathing. These creatures are very difficult to kill entirely.”

Mouse’s eyes had gone wide. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes, I think that’s best.” The doctor climbed out of the swamp and wrung brackish water from his dripping trousers. “The soldiers will be searching for us. I’d like to be deeper in the swamps before they find this place.”

Mouse didn’t wait for the doctor to finish. Already he was headed into the jungle, hopping over roots and wading across spongy mosses, moving deeper into the bogs. Soon he would be nothing but a shadow amongst the moss-draped trees and crumbled vine-covered walls of fallen buildings. And then he’d disappear entirely. He was good at that.

The doctor clapped Mahlia on the shoulder. “Come. We should be on our way.”

“Where to?”

Doctor Mahfouz shrugged as they walked. “We’ll go deeper into the jungle. There are buildings everywhere. We’ll find a new place we can use until the soldiers leave. Eventually they’ll give up and we should be able to return.”

Return? Mahlia stopped short. She looked back toward Banyan Town. Return? All she wanted to do was get away. “And then what do we do?” she asked.

“We’ll rebuild.”

Something on Mahlia’s face must have given her away because Doctor Mahfouz smiled. “It’s not so awful as that.”

“But you know those soldiers will just come back. If it isn’t UPF, it’ll be Army of God, and if it isn’t them, it’ll be someone else. And then we’ll just have to run again.”

“This war won’t last forever.”

Mahlia couldn’t help staring at Mahfouz. “You serious?” But from his expression, she could tell that he was. He really thought things were going to get better, like he was living in some kind of dream. Like he couldn’t see what was going on all around.