Armageddon's Children Read Online Free Page B

groaned.
    Hawk left them grouped together in the center of the street and walked toward the stricken Lizard. It was a big one, well over six feet and heavily muscled. Hawk was slender and not very tall, and the Lizard dwarfed him. Normally, a Lizard would not intentionally hurt you, but this one was so maddened with pain that it might not realize what it was doing until it was too late. He would have to be quick.
    He reached into his pocket and extracted the viper-prick. Tearing off the packaging, he eased up to where the Lizard lurched and shuffled, head turning blindly from side to side as it groped its way forward. Up close like this, Hawk could see the full extent of the damage that had been done to it, and he wondered how it could still even walk.
    There was no hesitation as he ducked under one huge arm and plunged the viper-needle into its neck. The Lizard reared back in shock, stiffened momentarily, then collapsed in a heap, unmoving. Hawk waited, then nudged it with his toe. There was no response. He looked down at it a moment more, then turned and walked back to the others.
    “You just wasted a valuable store on a Freak!” Panther snapped. His tone said it all.
    “That isn’t so,” River said quietly. “Every living creature deserves our help when we can give it, especially when it is in pain. Hawk did what needed doing, that’s all.”
    She was a small dark-haired twelve-year-old with big eyes and a bigger heart. She had come to them on a skiff down the Duwamish, the sole survivor of a plague that had killed everyone else aboard. Fierce little Sparrow had found her foraging for food down by the piers and brought her home to nest. At first, Hawk hadn’t wanted to let her stay. She seemed weak and indecisive, easy prey for the more dangerous of the Freaks. But he quickly discovered that what he had taken for weakness and indecisiveness was measured consideration and complex thought. River did not act or speak in haste. The pace of her life was slow and careful. She’s like a deep river, filled with secrets, Owl had told him, and he had named her accordingly.
    Panther was not impressed. “Nice words, but they don’t mean spit. We don’t live in the kind of world you keep talking about, River. Most of those creatures you want to help just want to see us dead! They’re nothing but frickin’ animals!”
    Bear leaned in, his blunt, pale face dripping rain. “I don’t think we should stand out here like this.”
    Hawk nodded and motioned them ahead once more. They spread out in the Wing-T without being told, disciplined enough to know what to do. Panther was still muttering to himself, but Hawk paid no attention, his mind on the dead Lizard. If there was something in the city that could take on and nearly kill a Lizard that size, then they needed to be extra careful. Up until now, there hadn’t been anything that dangerous to contend with, not counting Croaks. He wondered suddenly if maybe a pack of them had done this, but quickly dismissed the idea. Croaks didn’t inflict that kind of damage. No, this was something else—something that had either crawled up out of the deeper parts of the underground or come into the city from another place.
    He would ask Owl when they returned. Owl might be able to learn something from one of her books.
    They reached the Hammering Man and paused for a quick look, just as they always did. The Hammering Man stood frozen in place, a flat black metal giant with one arm raised and the other outstretched in front of it. The raised hand held a hammer; the outstretched hand held a small anvil. It was a piece of art, Owl said. The building behind it had once been a museum. None of the Ghosts had ever seen a museum except in pictures. This one had long since been looted and trashed, the interior set afire and the windows broken out. The Hammering Man was really all that was left.
    Hawk drew them away and turned them uphill toward the city center. The streets were slick with mud and