Текст книги "The Rift"

Автор книги: Chris Howard

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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Kade wiggled a tooth free from his gum, then flicked it across the cell floor as he slumped against the wall beside me.

“Harvest’s a hard man to kill,” I said. “Hell of an ally you poachers rustled up.”

“He’s not my ally.”

“So, what? You a poacher or ain’t you? Shit, how am I supposed to believe a word that you say?”

“Orlic used to pick corn with him.”

“They were field hands?”

“Used to be,” Kade said. “Harvest clawed his way up through the ranks. Started to work as an agent.”

“Then what? Decided he could do more damage on his own?”

“They say he knew GenTech needed bodies, so he started to snatch people off the plains, trading them for machinery and the army they made him.”

“Right,” I muttered. “The replicants.”

Kade scratched his left arm, rubbed its stump. “I want to see every one of them dead. You know I do. All of them. All of him.”

“So how come your people trust him?”

“Because he never touched the poachers. In all the years he spent taking people, he never bothered the people down here. He knew our location—could have sold us out to the agents. Traded us all.” Kade shook his head. “But half the people here were field hands once. Just like him.”

“Well, you sure made it nice and easy for him, didn’t you? All the trees in one place.”

“No. I’m going to kill him. I’ll make him pay for what he did to Zee—for everything.” Kade sucked at his torn lips. “I don’t know. Maybe Orlic’s done us a favor.”

“A favor? We’ll be surrounded.”

“There’s still a chance.”

“Ever feel like you’re all out of chances?”

“We can’t give up,” he said. “Not yet. I told you Zee said you’re important. That you could bring people together. She said they’d believe in you because you’d never give up, no matter what.”

“Right. A real glutton for punishment.”

“They made contact with Harvest the day before yesterday. We still have some time.”

“I was out for two days?” I felt the cuts on my face. My head bruised and swollen. “You poachers kick a guy good when he’s down.”

“It’s no worse than you’ve dished out to me.”

“So we’re even now?”

“Come on. We need each other.” Kade reached out his hand. “I cared about her, you know. Your sister. I still do, man. I can still feel what she was like.” He breathed slow and deep, like he was giving all he could to keep steady. “She was like one of the saplings. Fragile and special, but strong when it mattered the most.”

“You were leading us into a trap.”

“I didn’t know we were going to end up in these tunnels.”

“But we did,” I said. “And you’d have stuck Zee in the flames of that pit, if that Council told you to do it.”

“You can’t say that.”

“You did it to me.” I pointed at the burns on my stomach. “You’d have done it to Alpha.”

“I called your bluff, that’s all.”

“That ain’t all, and you know it,” I said. “And I ain’t shaking your one lousy hand.”

“You still need me, bro.”

“Stop calling me that.”

I looked at him. Dressed up in his cornhusk robes. A poacher and a thief.

But hadn’t he also been a friend to me? Hadn’t he pulled me out of harm’s way when I’d needed it, yanking me clear of the lava when I’d been slipping off the side of that cliff?

“We have to get the trees out,” he said.

“For Zee?” I scowled at him.

“For everyone. It’s like you said before. Everyone rising up together to take on GenTech. With me on the Council, I could get the poachers on board. These tunnels could come in handy, going into battle against the forces of Vega. And the poachers have food for the troops—more than the bootleggers could ever provide.”

“I don’t want to hear no more of your talking, unless it’s you telling me a plan to get out of this place.”

“Our scouts contacted Harvest’s people out on the plains. They said he’d be here by nightfall on the third day, so that means tonight.”

“Well, shit.”

“He’ll have a small group with him, but not too many. He’ll want to keep a low profile in the fields, stay out of sight so he can sneak through the corn. He’s on good terms with GenTech, but he won’t want to draw their attention—he wants those trees for himself.”

“But even if he don’t bring an army, how do we get the trees past your people?” I said. “There’s thousands of them.”

“That’s why we have to be stealthy.”

I thought about it. Stealthy weren’t something we’d been real good at. But I reckoned it had to be worth a shot.

“And you’ll come with us?” I asked him. “If we get out?”

“No.” Kade shook his head. “It can’t look like I helped you escape. But I keep one of the trees here, and I’ll rally the poachers to our cause. I belong here. They took me in when no one else would have me.”

I wondered then if Kade and I were so different. We’d both been born to struggle, and both wound up on our own.

“They broke me,” he whispered. “The crystal. These people got me clean.”

“All right,” I said. “Stay in this hole if you want to. But how do I get the hell out?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Work on it faster. And you gotta tell Alpha and Crow. Whatever you come up with.”

“I’ll tell them. Just be ready when the time comes.”

He staggered to his feet, robes rustling. He retrieved his knife and that small pouch he’d thrown on the floor. Then he handed them to me and started working at the locks on the door.

“What’s this?” I asked him, squeezing the little nylon bag.

“It’s for your belly,” he said, not turning around. He clinked and rattled the locks until he got the door open. “If someone peers in here, try to make it look like those ropes are still on you. And keep the knife stashed down in your boot.” Then he stepped into freedom and sealed me inside.

After he’d gone, I concealed the blade like he’d said to and backed into the shadows, winding the ropes around my legs in a way so that I could kick them loose quick. Then I tore open the pouch Kade had given me, and damned if it weren’t full of that good Kalliq mud the Healer had packed around the saplings and roots. Kade must have scooped up some of it, though there hadn’t been a whole lot left. Must have figured I needed it bad, I reckon. And I did need it. I grabbed that fistful of gray slime and smeared it on my belly, rubbing it into the patches of red, the blisters and black.

The mud felt soothing, like a cool hand in a fever, and I let its goodness seep into me, cutting the sting. And I almost busted out crying as I sat there in the cell, remembering the Healer telling me her name, her beautiful smile falling away as her body turned stiff in my arms.

I wondered how deep Kade’s feelings for my sister had run. Had he cared for her like I cared for Alpha? Yeah, I thought. Maybe he had. And maybe I was going to lose my girl, like Kade had lost his. Now or come springtime, no matter how hard I fought against it.

I felt shut down as I slumped there in the darkness. It was like I’d never been more trapped. GenTech above, poachers crawling all around me, and King Harvest creeping through the corn with his copies, heading straight for the trees.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

I came awake in a panic as the metal hinges screeched, the door to my cell flying open. I hoped it was Kade. It had to be Kade.

But it was Baxter.

He stood there for a moment, illuminated by the lights behind him, scratching his bald red scalp, then chewing on his fingernails. Looked like he was making his mind up about something. But then he gestured in the guards.

They found my ropes untied and began binding the cornhusks back in place until Baxter stopped them. “There’s no time,” he said. “Just bring him. Now.”

The passageway was loaded with poachers, some with cornstalk spears, others carrying machetes. They had other cell doors yanked open, and I watched as they dragged Crow out through one of them. His arms were bound up tight, but his legs were free. And as the guards shoved him around, I saw Crow could stand again. He was even able to walk.

Up ahead of us, they hauled out Alpha. She was conscious now and thrashing around. And Kade had said he’d tell the others the plan, but what was it? Just sit tight and wait, he’d said. And where the hell was he now?

“Come on,” Baxter called to the guards. “Let’s get moving. Quick as we can.”

A spear jabbed my back, pushing me along, and then they bundled us out of the passage and down through the tunnels. Hell, they practically ran us around the place. Half pulling us, half pushing. We were all shoved up together, about a dozen guards surrounding us, with Baxter out in front, his flaking red scalp leading the way.

“What’re you grinning at?” I said, glancing up at Crow.

“I be walking, man,” he said. And sure enough, he was moving them legs pretty smooth.

“Yeah, well, you’re walking into a whole mess of danger.”

“Least I ain’t being carried. And look at these things now.”

The purple thread Alpha had cut off the side of our mammoth had done more than bind Crow’s legs back together—it had started to grow shaggy all over the bark.

“So, what? Now you’re a furry sort of freak?”

“Almost like Namo be here with me,” he said. “Giving me strength. I feel all right about, too. Like a lion, no?”

“Look at you, being all positive.”

“And I can feel my legs getting stronger. I can feel it more each minute that goes by.”

“Better enjoy this walk then. Seeing as it might be our last.”

“Banyan,” Alpha called, trying to push through the throng to reach me, but the poachers kept holding her back.

I craned my neck, trying to catch another glimpse of her. And I remembered again how it had been a damn poacher who’d shot her in the cornfields. And now she had that GenTech bark on her belly. The start of a disease.

And what about Crow? His legs seemed to have been somehow altered, changed by the fur they’d been splinted up with, but would he still suffer the same fate as the woman who’d been all wrapped in bark, sealed up and suffocated in the spring?

I had one hope of finding a way to stop that from happening to Crow, to Alpha. I had one desperate idea, that final trick up my sleeve, my plan for the last tree. But to fix anything, to put my plan into action, to find a cure, I had to get out of here, and I needed those saplings.

So where the hell was Kade when we needed him?

“I have to tell you something,” Alpha called. “Banyan. It’s about what I saw.”

“Silence,” said Baxter.

I saw Alpha try to wriggle free of the guards that were holding her.

“Beneath the peaks,” she cried. “Beneath those mountains.”

“Guards,” Baxter yelled. “Keep them quiet.”

One of those filthy grubbers smothered Alpha’s mouth with his hand. There were too many of them surrounding us, rattling their weapons. Not a thing we could do.

I glanced up at Crow, and he was gazing straight ahead, and he’d quit smiling. Maybe he’d remembered what we were up against. Or perhaps he was remembering the things he’d seen himself below the Speak It Mountains. The vision he’d been screaming about when we found him in the water. Something about a lion’s mane and an army, and something buried beneath the South Wall.

We entered the sprawling chamber with the high ceilings and the scaffold. Poachers everywhere, milling around and keeping busy. But there were too many of us to be ignored now. The workers quit shucking their corn and digging their ditches, their rusty mine carts rolled to a stop. Folk watched us awhile, then wiped the sweat from their faces, and then they turned back to their backbreaking work.

The heavy steel door to the Council’s chamber was already cracked open, and the guards shoved us towards it, then squeezed us inside. The room was just as smoky and foul as before—the fire still roaring in the center, flames and shadows dancing across the Council’s faces. I looked around for Kade. But then my eyes found the trees. They were right there near the fire. The last six saplings.

And they were dried up and shriveled in the dirt.

Looked like if you grabbed that bundle of sticks, they’d turn to ash in your fingers. The last bit of Pop was like a punctured sack, as if he were now no more than a wilted womb, or the remnant shell of a swollen seed, the bark brittle and ruptured.

“What the hell?” I yelled, shoving guards out of my way, wrestling their spears from my path.

“Let him closer,” said one of the lords.

They’d set the trees in the middle of the circle. Laid them on top of the plastic pack, right beside the flames.

I collapsed on my knees before them.

“We think it’s cold,” said Baxter, when he saw me tug the clump of saplings away from the smoky pit.

And he was right. The saplings felt cool to the touch. Like they were sucking the life out of my fingers.

“What happened to them?” asked Kade, kneeling beside me, all crunchy in his cornhusk robes. And it seemed to me like the trees were as dead as the husks Kade wore wrapped around him. Just as dead but twice as fragile.

And I had no idea what to do.

The tank had protected the trees. The liquid and the lights and GenTech’s science. And when the tank was shattered and the liquid was gone, the Healer’s wisdom had nursed Pop’s saplings back to health.

“The Kalliq mud?” I said.

“That’s all of it.” Kade pointed at the patches of gray powder that clung to the parched stems. Looked like everything had been squeezed dry and used up.

I reached to my belly, and the dried mud flaked off the burns where I’d smeared it. Nothing left we could give to those saplings. Nothing around us but crappy corn roots in the ceiling and mile after mile of dust.

“Did your mother warn you, boy?” Orlic asked, gazing at the trees from across the fire. “Did she say this might happen?”

I glanced back through the guards, searching for Alpha.

“Something to do with GenTech’s science?” said Kade.

“It ain’t science,” I told him. “It’s nature. It’s life and death.”

“So they are dying,” Orlic muttered.

“Of course they’re dying,” I said. “Any fool can see that.”

We needed Zee. She’d spent more time with my mother than I had. She’d hung around on Promise Island, watched the Creator at work. And she’d read books about the old world. She knew about the way things had been.

I thought of all the things my father had told me. About the way life was before the Darkness and the locusts, before trees were only welded from steel and woven with plastic and wired with lights.

“All I know is they need water,” I said. “Like the corn. Water and the sun.”

I stared at the saplings. Here lay my hope of saving Alpha, and Crow. And these were the trees we were going to surround the whole world with? The trees I was going to break up so we could bring folk together? One world. One forest. It was like Zee had told me, we had to all work to make that happen. We had to trust each other. All of us. And it had to start now.

“Bring water,” Baxter called out. “Quickly.”

I curled my fingers under Pop’s remains, lifting him real gentle, holding the wilted bits to my chest. “We gotta get up top. He needs sunlight.”

“But the moon is rising.” Harvest’s voice crept in through the doorway. “And all is now dark.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The room was silent for a moment, but for the crackle of the fire.

“I should thank you, tree builder,” Harvest said.

Everyone had swiveled to face him. He stood in the doorway, his skin as pale as his drab plastic clothes, and he seemed to blend with the dirt down here. Just a streak of gray staining the brown.

“Yes.” He nodded and rubbed his hands together. “I’m grateful. They’re still waiting for you in the north, you know. GenTech. Looking rather desperate about things, plugging the passage through the Rift, and not wishing to lose hope that they’ll find you. And how would I have gotten these trees past all of those troops? GenTech has begun not to trust me, it seems.” Harvest tried to smile, but his scarred face couldn’t do it. “Of course, I don’t trust them, either. But now you’ve saved me the trouble of smuggling the trees home.”

“They’re sick,” I said, holding up the bundle of saplings. “They need help.”

“So do you, tree builder.” Harvest stepped into the room, and six of his replicants filed in behind him. “So do you.”

I glanced at Kade, hoping he had a plan and he just hadn’t told me. I peered through the poacher guards for Alpha. Crow.

“Harvest,” Orlic said, standing. “We’re much obliged for your haste.” He actually said that. He thanked him.

“But of course.” Harvest had begun striding towards me. “The very least I could do. Though your hospitality is not what it was, I must say. I would have preferred my men to remain armed upon entry.”

I remembered what Kade had said about the king having once been just a field hand. So I guess he’d learned to speak fancy as he worked his way up the line. Because that’s what he talked like—real fancy, like a rich freak from Vega. Instead of like a thief who’d been born to work in the fields.

Man was a fake. A slave who had made slaves of others. A king that built himself an empire by snatching folk from their families and homes.

And he was more than all those things. Because he’d stolen any chance I had of knowing my sister. And now here he was, coming to steal any hope we’d had the nerve to hold onto.

I watched the replicants behind him, the carbon copies with their lifeless eyes. And what was it Hina had once told me? GenTech could copy the body but not the mind. So what about the black pit of the king’s soul? Did that get copied, too?

Two poachers staggered into the room behind the Harvesters, carrying an iron vat, water splashing on their filthy clothes. The men froze for a moment, but Kade beckoned to them, and slowly they shuffled towards me, half dragging their vat through the dirt, their arms looking like they might snap from the strain.

As Harvest stepped closer, I took the frail saplings and coiled them inside the pack, being as careful with them as I could.

He stopped when he was just two feet from me. Then Harvest searched me over with his beady eyes, the crusty scars hanging off his face, the skin like melted plastic.

“You’ve fought bravely,” he said. “But the trees belong to me now.”

“Hang on, old friend.” This was Orlic. “There’s enough to be shared between us.”

“Be quiet, you fool.” Harvest’s eyes stayed glued on me as he snapped at the poacher lord. Then he held his hand out towards me.

I extended the pack towards him, my fists shaking. And Harvest reached out with his wretched fingers. The saplings almost in his grasp.

And that’s when I dropped the pack and grabbed him by the arm.

“They need sunlight,” I said, pulling him towards me. “Not shadows.”

I yanked Harvest forward. Hard. Then whipped him past me with every bit of strength that I had.

And I hurled that murdering bastard right into the fire.

I scooped up the pack and shouldered it as I pulled the knife from my boot. It was like one movement how I did it. And then I was darting forward. Slicing my way through the poacher guards and heading for the Harvesters at the door.

There were screams behind me, and I turned my head for an instant, saw Kade grappling with Harvest in the fire, his cornhusk robes going up in flames. Other poacher lords were trying to break them up, but I couldn’t think about the fact that Harvest was still alive and kicking and Kade needed my help. Because up ahead of me, the replicants were closing in and closing their empty hands into fists.

No weapons. Not this time. So I’d see what these boys could do in a bare-knuckle fight.

I charged past the two poachers with the vat full of water, and I swung my knife at the Harvesters, trying to get some space so I could make for the door.

I called for Crow. Hollered for Alpha. But I couldn’t see nothing except those dull copies around me. I couldn’t move the knife fast enough. They were getting closer, ready to rush me all at once.

I slammed into the one between me and the doorway, stabbing at him as the others pressed tight, their hands at my neck, fingers grabbing at the pack.

I spotted Alpha. Her arms still bound in the cornhusk ropes, two poacher guards holding her back. And she was straining and screaming, but I couldn’t hear her above all the damn noise. And I couldn’t do nothing for her. The Harvesters were crawling all over me. Tightening their grip, like they were all fingers of the same giant fist.

I slammed and bucked, and we smashed into the dudes with the vat of water, spilling it clear across the dirt with a crash.

But then I heard a new sound. Above all the turmoil. I heard a bellow and a boom. And then the Harvesters were being peeled off me, one after another. They were being ripped apart and thrown through the air.

I broke free. Spun around, so I could see what was happening.

And it was Crow that was happening. Holy shit, it was Crow.

Bide our time, he’d said. Save our strength. And you best believe he had meant it. Because he weren’t just standing, or walking, and he weren’t just towering ten feet tall. He was spinning and kicking. Mowing down Harvesters and poacher guards with those big purple tree-legs. His wrists were still bound together, but it was like he didn’t even need them—dude moved like a blur, mammoth and tree and man all mixed up together.

And nothing could stand in his way.

I yanked at the straps of the pack, cinching it against me as I raced over to Alpha. Sliding into the dirt and slashing her ropes apart with my knife. She grabbed two machetes off the ground and leapt up beside me.

But there was Kade and Harvest, dragging themselves out of the fire and rolling in the dirt to extinguish the flames. Kade’s robes had gone up in smoke, leaving him all red and singed at the edges. But Harvest’s clothes had just seemed to melt against him, leaving him more smoke-like than ever as he scrambled to his feet and stared into my eyes.

It was Kade I wanted to get a good look at, though. How could we get out of here without him?

“They’ll head for the scaffold,” he yelled, though the poacher lords were too frail to run after us, and all the guards had been beat down by Crow.

Kade stared at me, trying to make sure I was getting the message. “They’ll head for the scaffold,” he screamed. “They’ll head for the fields.”

Didn’t need to tell me a third time.

We bolted through the door as Harvest rallied and the poacher guards and the replicants began squirming upright. I hacked my blade at the ropes on Crow’s wrists, setting his arms free, and he jammed the steel door shut behind us.

“What about them?” cried Alpha, pointing into the sprawling chamber.

The workers had turned still at the sight of us, but slowly they began hoisting up their shovels, flicking open switchblades, brandishing hacksaws and pickaxes. And there were so many of them crowding towards us. A whole mob between us and that tower of ladders we needed to reach.

“Hope you saved some of that strength,” I said to Crow.

“Just stay behind me. Both of you. And give me one of them swords.”

Alpha threw a machete up to the Soljah, and damned if he weren’t something, stepping in front of us, like he was putting us all on his back.

I tugged the pack even tighter to my shoulders, felt the remains of Pop hang against me.

I’ll get you out of here, I wanted to tell him. I’ll get you some water. Show you some sun.

“What about Kade?” asked Alpha.

“He ain’t coming with us,” I said. “But he wants a tree. He told me.”

“No,” Crow said as we inched forward. “I’m not leaving a tree with these scum.”

I had my knife in a white-knuckle grip as the crowd shook their weapons and tools and marched closer. And it weren’t just those poachers ahead of us, neither. The steel door was rattling and clanking. And once it flew open, we’d be surrounded. Too many poachers on too many sides.

And Harvest, of course.

Unless Kade could figure out some way to kill him.

“Give me your knife, bud,” said Alpha, taking one hand off her machete.

“I’m gonna need it.”

“No time to argue. You trust me or not?”

She reached her hand out, and I gave up my blade, just as this battle was about to go down. But if there was one person I trusted, it would always be Alpha.

She pitched the knife at the closest dirt wall. The blade spun through the air, and when it hit the wall, it sparked up and smoked as it sank. She’d cut those red wires. Busted the circuit. And one by one, the white lights that lit up the chamber blinked out like broken stars.

Until every star had turned black.

We plunged forward through the darkness just as the door peeled open behind us. I could smell the smoke from the fire pit. Hear the yells of the poachers. And then I heard Harvest’s voice, too.

I could sense the mess of bodies before us. Blades and shovels, ready to strike. But we kept charging, blind and desperate. Alpha letting out a battle cry that seemed to turn things bright for a moment. Her voice setting the darkness ablaze.

Then we hit the first wave of poachers. I could see their shapes in the gloom. Metal scraped upon metal. Sharp steel clanged and clashed. Crow and Alpha slashed their machetes, fending off the poachers’ tools, hacking a pathway through the mob, until we were swallowed and wriggling inside it.

The three of us kept spinning, punching and thrusting, and we never quit moving. But once we got through the crowd, we weren’t at the scaffold—just a dirt wall, and we were cornered against it.

Crow spun around with one leg out, knocking folk back like they were nothing. Giving us a little time to escape.

“Wait,” I yelled, still at the wall. “Crow, wait.”

I’d hit something. Stubbed my foot on the old iron pipe that ran all the way up here, pumping the water from beneath those upside-down peaks.

“Bust it open,” I screamed, and I kicked at the pipe so it rang out in the darkness.

Crow took two giant strides and was right there beside me, swiping behind him with his machete as he took aim, and then boom, the pipe crunched and crumpled. He kicked it again. Two more times. It punctured, and he smashed it wide open. There was water everywhere, gushing out of that pipe so fast, it damn near smacked me onto my ass.

But I stayed on my feet as the dirt turned to mud. Slippery and thick. I started to try to push through the crowd. Head down. Flailing around with no way to see. I just followed Crow, battling onward. I could hear Alpha behind me. But I lost my footing.

And then I went down.