Текст книги "The Rift"

Автор книги: Chris Howard

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I hugged the bag of trees against me as the water pooled all around. Feet trampling and stomping me. I was trapped beneath the mob and the mud. I called out. Screamed. And then Crow was above me. Stooping down and grabbing me up with one hand.

I landed in a pile on his shoulders as he busted through the dark. It was chaos. Carnage. Crow had the machete in one hand and his other hand clenched in a fist. But it was those legs of his that made him unstoppable, whirling and kicking, crunching every bone and skull in our path. Freak of science or force of nature, either way, all I could do was hold on.

I peered back through the darkness. Watching behind me. Searching for Alpha.

“Crow,” I called, but he knew what I was thinking.

“No, man. We gotta go,” he yelled. “We gotta take care of business.”

And that’s what Alpha would do. She’d push on for those saplings, even if it meant leaving one of us behind. That’s what she’d been trying to tell me—that this thing was bigger than me and her being together. It was bigger than all of us in the end.

We hit the scaffold, and Crow was swinging up the side of it. I crawled off his shoulders and made my way onto that column of plastic and steel. And then there I was, climbing upward, my old man on my back, just as I had once been on his back, bundled in a blanket, bouncing around as he worked.

I peered up at the blackness that hid the way out. And below us was the gnashing of weapons and the flashing of steel. A mob raging and the water rising. A hurricane trapped in a hole. I hung there for a second, staring down at the frenzy, like I was caught between two versions of me.

“Crow,” I shouted. And this time there was no question. No hesitation.

There was only something that I had to do.

I unhitched the straps from my shoulders, hoisted the pack from my back. And I didn’t look up as I held up that bundle. I just waited till Crow had it and the weight disappeared.

“Take care of him,” I said, staring down at the war we had started. An army of poachers against an army of one.

“All right, man,” Crow said. “You take care of you.”

And then he was gone, racing up the ladders.

But I wasn’t leaving no one behind.

I slid down a few sections of scaffold, grabbed onto a rope from the pulley, and leapt off the side. Swinging out through darkness. Sailing back into the fight.

I landed in the thick of things and ended up on a poacher’s back, and he snarled beneath me. I wrestled him for the shovel he was holding.

I wrestled him, and I won.

“Alpha,” I screamed. But too much was happening. I thrashed around, trying to keep the scaffold close enough so I’d know where it was.

The water was coming thick and fast, up to my knees now. Folks were yelling and running. Trying to grab up buckets of corn.

Then gunshots cracked in the air above us.

“Bring him to me,” Harvest called, firing another shot high over the storm of bodies. “Find the boy and bring him. Now.”

I crouched down in the water, scooped up a fist of mud, and smeared it on my face. In the dark and the dirt, I could be just another poacher, I reckoned. So I stood back up, tightened my grip on the shovel. Things were getting quiet now. Folks were still scrambling about, but they were too frightened to make much noise.

Son of a bitch had a gun. Total game-changer. And I reckoned the poachers might rustle up more firearms—they’d sure had guns when I’d run into them topside.

I glanced up, hoping Crow had almost made it to freedom. Hoping he’d made it out into the corn.

“Tree builder,” Harvest called. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your friend?”

I stopped breathing.

“Took me a moment.” Harvest’s voice was clear as it was cruel. “But I remember the face of anyone who tries to kill me. And how could I forget this would-be sniper from the crater? Dirty red hair and angry green eyes.”

So Harvest had recognized Kade. And now he was going to try to bait me with the life of some poacher who’d betrayed us. Some punk who’d lied to us.

But Kade was also the struggler who’d hauled me up the side of the rocks and saved my life at the Rift.

“Let him go,” I hollered, shouting real loud so that Harvest could find me. I was the one he wanted. And I couldn’t hide in the dark while he put a gun to Kade’s head.

But all of a sudden, the darkness was ending. The lights flashed back on the walls and burned bright all around us. A blast of electrics, like the last gasp of a world coming back to life.

And that weren’t the only thing that happened.

There was a trumpeting sound. One more miracle. Because it weren’t just the trees that we’d found, after all.

Namo came crashing out of a side tunnel like a rumble of thunder. He had his tusks pointed straight ahead and his head bowed low. And riding on his back, her machete held high and her face splattered with blood, was Alpha.

I spotted Harvest through the crowd, maybe twenty yards from me. His deformed face unable to contain its confusion as it wrinkled and clenched. He had Kade pinned next to him with one hand, and his other hand gripped a revolver—a crummy old world weapon, not Harvest’s usual style, though this gun could kill Kade all the same.

The lights pulsed on the walls, illuminating the poachers’ faces, full of shock and wonder, their eyes stretched wide with fear, as Namo galloped onward, surging through the mob and the muck, splashing through the water, Alpha waving her machete, her battle cry melding with the wail of the beast.

Harvest trained the gun on the mammoth, and Alpha pinned herself down in the thick fur, holding on tight. He let off a shot, then another. Emptying his gun of its bullets. Each bullet cracking and booming and bouncing right off.

“Kade,” I screamed, my voice lost in the sound of the stampede. He was grappling with Harvest as the mammoth bore down on them.

“Move,” Alpha shouted, but I knew Kade weren’t moving. There was no way he could let that bastard run.

Kade punched Harvest in the gut and sent him spinning. Then he clutched Harvest with his one hand, holding him steady, as Namo skewered a tusk straight through the king’s chest.

The mammoth roared as he lifted his head, and when he ground to a halt, he reared up and threw Harvest’s body high in the air.

Harvest landed in a heap, and the crowd cleared away, fleeing from the dead man and the unchained beast.

But I’d seen Harvest killed before. I’d seen him shot dead by Jawbone. At least, that’s what I’d thought I had seen. I ran through the mud and the water, shoving my way through the bodies. I reached Namo and stroked his side, letting him know it was me that was there. Then I crept up to the mangled heap, turned Harvest over. His chest had been gouged open. His lungs were pierced and crushed. And his jagged face rippled with agony. Every part of him shaking as he choked on one last breath.

Kade knelt beside me with his hand clenched in a fist, as if he were still holding Harvest. As if he were throttling him and meant to never quit watching him die.

“You fools.” Harvest coughed and shuddered. His scarred features all ruptured with pain. “Now nothing can stand in GenTech’s way. They will take the trees. And they will crush you. All of you.”

The light drained from his eyes, and then he was still. But it had been there—the spark, like the scars, that let me know it had really been him.

I spun up to face Alpha. The shovel still clamped in my hand.

“He’s gone,” I said.

“Told you we’d kill him.”

“No.” I pointed the shovel up at the scaffold. “I mean Crow.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Kade called an end to the fighting. He rounded up what was left of the Harvesters, and he put the poachers to work, patching the water lines and digging ditches to drain the flood. He had Namo led away, then took me and Alpha before the Council, and there we huddled around the fire pit, facing the anguished looks on their sunken faces.

“Crow’s gone,” Kade said. “Killed six entrance guards and took one of Harvest’s speeders. Disappeared through the fields.”

“He’ll go east,” said Baxter. “Head for Niagara.”

“Moves fast when he gets his hands on those trees.” Kade stared at me. “Doesn’t he?”

“It’s all right,” I told them. “He’ll keep them safe.”

“Yes.” Orlic’s face was a thorny scowl below his cornhusk crown. “I’m sure he’ll deliver them safely to the Soljahs.”

He was pissed, of course. We’d killed his old friend from the cornfields, and Crow had made off with the saplings. But these poachers couldn’t punish me and Alpha. They knew it. And I knew it.

We were the only hope they had left.

“I’ll bring you one,” I said. “I’ll bring one back here. I promise.”

“And what makes you think the Rastas will give one up?” Orlic took a handful of cornhusks and threw them in the fire.

“Because we’re gonna band together,” I said. “Rise up against GenTech. You, too, if you’ll join us. Imagine it—getting out of the dirt. Enough food for everyone to share, and no one tribe to control it. Imagine forests growing free. Clean air, clean water. Plenty to eat.”

There was doubt on their faces. There was doubt in their eyes. And I started to ask myself the same damn questions. Would the Soljahs be willing to work with the rest of us? What sort of welcome would we receive if we made it across the river and reached Waterfall City?

But Crow would be there, I thought. And I’d trusted him before, so now I had to trust him again.

“Kade will go with you,” said Bracelets. “He’ll go with you and make sure one of the trees comes back here.”

“Kade helped them kill Harvest,” said another. “How can we trust him?”

“You saw him put that gun on me.” Kade stared at Orlic. “And he’d have taken what he wanted and left us with nothing, if it had been up to you.”

“Return with a tree, lad,” Orlic said to him, his eyes softening as they studied the fire. “And you will be pardoned. But you’ll never sit on this Council again.”

“We’ll take the rest of the speeders they came in on.” Kade touched the burns on his arms, from where he’d wrestled Harvest in the fire, and I couldn’t see his eyes, but I reckon they simmered full of rage. I heard him try to breathe through it. A poacher lord for three days, and now his robes had been turned to ashes, and he was in rags again. Just like us.

“What about Namo?” I said.

“The mammoth?” Orlic frowned.

“He could prove useful,” said Baxter.

“He already has,” I told them. “And you should let him go.”

I couldn’t argue them down about it. They wanted to keep the beast chained up and put him to work. And in the end, there weren’t no way he could come with us, anyway, I reckoned. Nor was there a way he could get home. Hell, for all we knew, every mammoth had perished in that battle between the Kalliq and the Harvesters, and Namo had no home to get back to at all.

I had Orlic swear they’d keep the chains off him. That lord needed me too much not to give me his word. And I didn’t know how much faith I should put in that poacher’s word, but what other choice did I have?

He let the three of us take Namo back down the tunnels, leading the mammoth to a spot where he could stay out of the way. Alpha leaned her head against him as she staggered along, worn out and busted as I’d ever seen her. Covered in dirt and blood, and her grip still on her machete, as if at any moment, the poachers might turn on us again.

We got to a crappy dugout, and Kade set down a bucket of corn, the tiny GenTech logos on the kernels the same purple as the mammoth’s fur. It was tight in there. Namo had to keep his head stooped, and it weren’t no place fit for him.

“He’s gonna get lonely,” I muttered.

“But he’s safe,” Kade said. “And what else can we do?”

I stared up at Namo’s big, shaggy face, and he just blinked down at me. Then I reached up a hand to his trunk, patting him as he brought his head close to mine.

“We’ll come back,” I told him. “Get you out of here.”

“You think he’s all that’s left?” Alpha asked. “The last of the mammoths?”

“I sure hope not.” I thought of the walls tumbling into the Kalliq’s crater. The bullets and rocks raining down. Harvest had got out, though. So maybe some of the Kalliq did, too.

“Kids will come and see him,” Kade said. “There are good people down here.”

“Bet they put him to work.” Alpha shook her head. “Soon as we’re out of sight.”

I leaned against Namo, and I’ll be damned if that big ball of fur didn’t wrap his great trunk around all three of us, curling us against him and holding us close.

“There’ll be hell to pay,” Alpha whispered, her voice muffled in Namo’s fur. “If these bastards eat him.”

“These bastards are my people,” said Kade. “And they’ll show him respect.”

Namo pressed us even tighter together, then uncoiled his shaggy trunk and stamped his way into the corner of the dugout. There was hardly enough room for him to turn around.

And he was like the trees, I reckoned. Something beautiful left behind. So there’d have to come a time when he was no longer hidden. You don’t do the world any favors if you hide things away.

“No one’s gonna eat him,” I said, though my voice trembled as we started back through the labyrinths, and I wondered if I’d ever have a chance to see that mammoth again. “Reckon you gotta have faith in folk.”

“Yeah?” Alpha said. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Reckon it’s too soon to say.”

“And what about Crow?” she said. “You think he’s gonna give up those trees when we get there?”

“Guess you’re gonna have to leave persuading him up to me,” I said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

I felt Alpha staring at me, but I turned to Kade.

“We’ll catch up with you,” I told him.

“Don’t get lost,” he said, pushing past us, and I waited till he’d disappeared around the bend.

“You know I don’t want to do this.” I couldn’t even look at Alpha as I said it.

“Do what?”

“Split.” The word came out weak, when I’d meant to sound strong.

“Split?”

“You and me,” I said. “We gotta say goodbye.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

I stood in that tunnel as the white lights throbbed on and off again, as if they were counting the seconds until one of us could speak.

“What’re you talking about, bud?” Alpha said finally. She tried smiling, as if I’d been joking. But her mouth couldn’t make the smile last.

“You have to gather your armies. Every pirate on the plains who can fight. Once GenTech finds out people are banding together, that we’ve got the trees, we’re going to have to be ready for them. And I gotta get to Waterfall City. Make sure those saplings get split up, for everyone, like we planned.”

“We’ll do it together.”

“There’s no time.”

“I’ll make time.”

I put my hand on her face. “All I want is to be with you. You know that.”

“Don’t—”

“I love you,” I said. And I needed to keep steady. I took her in my arms, to feel her against me, and so she’d not see if my tears started to fall.

“Then why would you leave me?” Alpha trembled as I held her. She was sobbing so hard, and there weren’t a thing I could do.

“I have to.”

“Because of the trees.”

“Because of the people who need them. Because everyone deserves them. It’s bigger than us. And it ain’t fair, none of it’s fair. But it’s the world we got given and the one chance we’ve got.”

“But I need you, Banyan. And I love you, too, damn it.” She said it softly, and the words I’d waited for cracked beneath the weight under which they were spoken. “I should have told you sooner. I should have told you all along.”

“No. I should never have started this to begin with.” It came out faster than I could think. “I fooled us both with this feeling. Wanting some life that we can’t have. It’s like you said, just something out of an old world song.”

“But it don’t belong to the old world.” She pulled away from me. Put a finger on my lips. “I belong to you, Banyan. And you belong to me. And I’d do it all again, all of it. Just to know you. Just to spend this time by your side.”

I was worn down and torn up, and I couldn’t move a muscle for fear I might fall.

“We’ll be together again,” I whispered, her finger still pressed on my lips.

“The pirate clans are all over the plains. It’ll take weeks to unite them. Months.”

“We ain’t got months.”

“No.” She turned her face to the dirt wall. “You’re right. We got no time at all.”

The poachers quit working when it came time for us to leave. They stood in the dirt with their tools and their corn, and even the Council pried themselves away from their fire. It was a silent affair. Solemn as a gray-rain dawn. Kade had me and Alpha climb with him into a big, empty bucket at the base of the scaffold, then he gave the signal, and poachers started working the ropes and pulleys, hoisting the three of us into the air.

The pulley system creaked and clanged, and I wondered if the whole thing might fall apart. But Kade said it’d be all right. Said it had held a lot more than our weight, was built to keep hauling poachers and corn for a whole lot more years to come.

So we got dragged up the side of the scaffold, staring down at the dirty faces. I spotted Orlic, Baxter and Bracelets and the rest of the Council, all huddled together in their cornhusk robes. And I wondered how Namo was doing. Did he miss us? Did he miss his old buddy Crow?

I pictured the Soljah heading east, purple wood legs wrapped around his stolen speeder. And would he remember me when the time came? Would he still believe in the things I had said? That we had to gather the tribes together. And to do that, we had to break up the trees.

Hurt to admit it, but I reckoned I’d no idea what Crow would do. Nor did I know how much sway he would hold with the Soljahs. And if the Soljahs wouldn’t share the saplings, what would come next?

Alpha stood beside me with her arms crossed, and she seemed distant already. And I would lose her. For a while. Or forever. Because that’s what falls upon everyone. Every step you take gets you closer to the end.

“Almost there,” Kade said, and I glanced at the top of the scaffold, where ladders pointed straight up into a hole in the dirt.

Still the bucket hoisted us higher, till we were enveloped by the earth and bound by darkness, black as a grave, the smell of soil rich and damp. And the only sound was the squeak of the rusted bucket and the creak of the cornhusk ropes.

We pushed up through a thatched panel of husks and dirt. And when we broke out beneath the sky, the red sun filtered through the crops hardly at all, but it was enough to bloom through my insides and turn me blind for a moment.

I kept my eyes shut as I turned my face to the light, felt its fingers on my skin as if it were tugging me closer. As if it might hold me against it and never let go.

And when my eyes got used to being aboveground again, I could only blink at the huge corn plants that towered above us, thirty feet high, tightly packed stems and dark green leaves, dusted with the dirt from the plains. I peered up at the stalks—so damn straight, and planted so damn close together. Nothing like the ragged six saplings. Nothing like my thin, twisted trees.

I remembered how sickly those trees had looked when I had seen them last. How drained of color and life they’d appeared. But Crow would have gotten them water and given them sunlight. Plenty of water in Niagara, after all, and plenty of sun in a world where shade’s so hard to find.

A handful of poachers emerged from the corn, stepping out from the plants around us, their feet not making a sound.

“My lord,” said one of the men. “I hear you’re leaving us.”

“I’m leaving,” Kade said. “But I’m not a lord anymore.”

He asked three of the men to hand over their shotguns. He gave one to Alpha, and he gave one to me.

Then they led us through the corn, pushing at the stiff leaves, working our way between the tight green stems, until we reached a narrow service road. Abandoned, by the looks of it, the surface rutted and broken. Little patches of snow in the ditches. Frost gleaming in the dust.

Too cold for locusts then. Good crossing season at last.

There were three ATVs on the side of the road, covered with old cornhusks and stems. We hauled the dried remains off the vehicles, dusted them down.

“Here you go,” Kade said, handing us GenTech masks to protect our lungs from the landscape. Alpha pulled hers down, hiding too much of her beautiful face. But I just hung mine loose from my neck, as if the dust could do me no more damage.

“We follow this road through the corn,” Kade said. “It winds east till it pushes us out to the plains.”

“Then let’s stop there.” Alpha straddled her ATV and propped her shotgun under her leg. She glanced at me. “To say goodbye.”

“Keep your eyes open,” Kade said, and he threw us each a pair of goggles.

“Don’t worry,” I muttered, climbing onto my bike and pulling the goggles down over my head. “They’re open every second of the day.”

We never saw any agents as we rode down that road. We never saw any dusters in the distance or field hands in the corn. All I could see was Alpha ahead of me and the dust raging high all around us, and I plowed through the ditches and deep sand, my face once again all covered in grit. It felt good, to be honest. The dirt thick on my tongue, crunchy in my teeth. Hell, maybe the dirt was the closest thing to a home I ever had.

At the edge of the cornfields, the tall plants stretched west behind us, and they spread north and south far as the eye could see. But the landscape just gave up to the east, where everything was crumbled dirt. We stopped the ATVs, letting the dust settle as much as it could.

“We’re pretty far north,” Kade said. “Niagara’s about due east of here.”

“Well, compadre.” Alpha pulled her mask and goggles up onto her head, approaching Kade then slapping him on the shoulder. “A general needs an army, so I’m dropping south to start building one. And I guess this is it.”

“A general, huh?” He smiled, as if remembering he’d called her that, but you could see his heart weren’t in it. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you on the battlefield then.”

“I hope so.”

“You know, I’ve been trying to find the right way to thank you.” Kade gazed back into the corn. “For killing that monster.”

“You held Harvest still,” Alpha said. “All I did was point Namo the right way.”

“No.” Kade climbed off his bike. “He had a gun at my head, and I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

“He had a gun on me, too, once. Remember?”

“Yeah.” He choked the word out. “I do.”

“I miss her, too.” Alpha took Kade’s face in her hands, making him look into her eyes. “But we’ll fight for what Zee wanted. And there’ll be more sorrow, but the hurt’s to be lived with, you hear me? Don’t go getting yourself killed.”

“You underestimate me.”

“And you’ll take care of my man for me?”

“Like he’s my own brother,” Kade said, glancing over at me.

I was still sat on my ATV, and I yanked my goggles down around my neck and stared east at a world that now seemed foreign. Everything altered since when I’d last seen it. As if the way things were stitched together had all been undone.

“Come on, bud,” Alpha said, striding past me. “It’s time.”

I slid into the dust and followed her over to her bike, and then we stood there, a cold wind picking up the dirt around us as the sun beat down.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, taking my hands but avoiding my eyes. “And you ain’t gonna like it.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“It’s about what I saw. Beneath the peaks.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to know.”

“I was in a forest, bud. A real forest. It was all tangled and dusty, but there were leaves on the trees. Everything all green and thick.”

“Don’t sound so bad.” I tried smiling.

“It was all wrong, though. I was trapped in there.”

“You were just dreaming,” I said, but I’d turned tight and cold inside.

“You couldn’t see me. You were running through the forest and screaming my name. And I was trying to tell you I was there, right there, but no matter what, you still couldn’t hear me. It was like the words wouldn’t even come out of my mouth.”

I couldn’t look at her now. I glanced back at the wall of corn behind us. The dust. The sun. Anything else.

“It don’t mean nothing,” I said.

“Yes, it does. It was a warning. My own mind telling me that I’ll lose you if we don’t remember this.” She put her hand on my chest. “You mustn’t forget. Okay? And I won’t forget, neither.”

“I won’t forget it,” I said. Because how could I tell her the real meaning of her vision? The real future that the world had in store.

“I’ll send word,” she said, trying so hard to hold it together. “To Waterfall City. Let you know when the Army of the Fallen Sun is ready to rise once again.”

“We’ll go wherever you want.” I tried to smile as I said it. “Just me and you. In the end.”

“See those trees bloom. Leaves and apples and everything. In the spring, right?”

“Right,” I said. “In the spring.”

I stepped closer. Pushed her rags above her stomach and wiped off the dirt. I put my hand against the bit of bark GenTech had sewn into her, and I let my fingers rest there a moment, as if I might conjure some spell. Then I pulled her towards me, shielding her with my body.

“I’ll be your pirate queen,” she said, her voice shaking. Her breath so warm on my neck.

“Course.”

“And you’ll be my tree king.”

I forced a smile, even though she couldn’t see me. Even though her face was buried in my chest.

“Aren’t you gonna kiss me?” she asked, and I held her face in my hands, wiped the dust off her skin. Then I kissed her lips and her neck and her shoulders. I held every part of her against everything I had.

“Hurry,” I whispered. Swallowing back tears as I watched her mount her speeder. Feeling ripped out and empty as she tugged down her mask.

And then she was tearing off beneath the burning sky and the plumes of dust, and the sound of her engine was the only thing left behind. And perhaps I should have let my tears loose, when she’d still been there to see them. But I’d wanted to look strong so she’d remember me that way, as if I could stop time or make the world stop spinning long enough to jump off. But the world would keep turning and time would keep moving and with spring would come life, and with life would come death.

But if I could get back those trees, there might still be a way forward. Because if Alpha was sick, there had to be a remedy. And if the bark was a disease, then there was one tribe that might know the cure.