The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout Page A

weren’t the eel’s usual prey, but eventually it would decide to vary its diet.
    A thought arrived in Fisher’s head. One way of catching fish was dropping a live electrical cable into a pond and electrifying all the fish. Turn off the current, gather the dead fish, quick and efficient.
    â€œThis will never work,” Fisher muttered, putting his head down and swimming toward the strikers. He’d be shot or electrocuted or eaten for sure.
    With a flick of its body, the eel went in pursuit, breaking the surface. And that made it a target again. The strikers fired their missiles. Red blotches exploded in the eel’s orange belly. It convulsed in fury, madly whipping its tail into a striker. Fisher’s skin tingled with a billion pins and needles as the eel discharged bioelectric energy. The striker exploded in dozens of parts, which zinged like bullets into the other strikers. Gadget parts kerplunked into the river.
    Fisher allowed himself a weak laugh of triumph. But his problems were far from over. Wounded, the eel churned and flopped about. Blood turned the muddy brown water to rust-colored froth. Its mighty tail came down on the raft, and Fisher watched in horror as the logs came apart and sent debris scattering over the river.
    Had he just witnessed Click being destroyed and Protein killed? But as the great eel grew still and sank below the surface, Fisher spotted his companions.
    Click lay facedown on Protein’s back, which rose like a little furry island. The mammoth’s trunk poked from the water like a snorkel.
    Fisher used his last dregs of strength to paddle over to Protein. He grabbed two fistfuls of hair and hauled himself up onto the mammoth’s back, beside Click.
    â€œMammoths can swim?” gasped Fisher.
    â€œApparently so. This is consistent with elephant behavior.”
    Fisher’s head dropped with exhaustion, the pungent reek of wet mammoth fur filling his nostrils. He wanted so badly to sleep, to surrender to exhaustion. But he kept his eyes open and watched the skies for more gadgets.
    The machines had hunted Stragglers.
    And now, Fisher was sure, they would be hunting him.

CHAPTER   12
    They hid in the mud.
    Snatchers, the kind of gadget that had abducted Click, skimmed down the river, their propellers kicking up rooster tails of brown water. Patrolling scout-drones buzzed angrily above mangrove trees.
    Click said the gadgets could sense infrared energy—heat—so covering themselves with cold mud helped Fisher and his companions conceal the warmth rising from their bodies. Not that Fisher had any body warmth left. He clenched his jaws to keep his teeth from chattering.
    He couldn’t spend the rest of his life hiding like this. He’d never find the Southern Ark this way, and the possibility of finding other humans had become as important to him as surviving.
    Of course, he couldn’t survive long hunkered down in river mud either. Hypothermia could prove more dangerous than the gadgets. Also, he just flat-out refused to live like a newt. He’d lost his boat, his spear, and his knife. Somehow, he would have to use his environment to make new weapons. And then he would teach himself to kill gadgets.
    But first, he must exercise patience.
    Finally, an hour after he heard the last gadget go by, he crawled out of the mud.
    â€œLet’s get you walking again,” he said to Click.
    Nudging aside Protein, who kept trying to gift Click with useless, meager roots, Fisher examined the robot’s knee.
    â€œDo you see anything damaged?” Click asked, not flexible enough to check for himself.
    â€œLooks like there’s a little wheel missing. And there’s a little copper plug thing that’s not plugged into anything.”
    â€œAh, yes. The gadgets appear to have taken one of my radial extenders and a lower nerve conduit.”
    â€œYou really need those?”
    â€œDo you need your kneecaps?” Click