Текст книги "The Rift"

Автор книги: Chris Howard

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

At sunup, there’d still been no sign of Harvesters. I’d taken the first watch, and I’d taken the last. And when I heaved the steel box up onto one side, I found Kade sleeping with his arm around my sister.

“Hey.” I kicked him in the back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He wriggled his hand out from under Zee’s waist. “She was cold,” he said through a mouthful of sleep, swatting his hand at me like I’d just blow away.

“Sure she was.” I hauled the box aside so they were out in the open.

Zee coughed herself awake. “It’s all right, Banyan. I got the shakes in the night.”

“Next time you get the shakes, you can let me know.”

“Take it easy.” Kade stood up slow, stretching his shoulders.

“Don’t tell me to take it easy.”

“Then stop being such an ass. She was cold.” He cracked his neck. “I don’t see why you and your girl get to be the only ones keeping each other warm.”

“You’re full of it.” I leaned in close to him. “You think I don’t know what you’re up to?”

“Banyan,” Zee said, using my own name to scold me. “I can look after myself.”

“You’re my sister. And I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“Then get me somewhere warmer.” She pushed past me, her lungs heaving worse than ever. I turned to watch her stumbling through the snow.

“I don’t know, bro. She is pretty as a poem.” Kade said it so only I could hear him. “And a man has needs, right?”

I spun around with my fists up, but he shook the sub gun in my face.

“You’re too easy,” he said, laughing.

“What? This all a game to you?”

“Oh, yeah.” He blew out a shock of steam. “I’m having a wonderful time.”

We began up the mountains, the air growing thinner, and as we got higher, the snow grew stiffer, till soon it was nothing but ice.

It was like scaling a slope made of broken glass, and my feet grew swollen and painful, kicking at each step to try to get some grip with my boots. We held onto each other as the going got steeper. I was panting and sweaty inside my big coat, my skin all scratchy against the GenTech fuzz. And before long, we were struggling to keep the tank upright.

“Time to get down.” Kade was leaning hard against the tank to stop it sliding backwards, and he stared up at Crow, who, as usual, was slumped up on top. “You’ll have to walk like the rest of us. No more special treatment.”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Zee said. But Kade was just saying what we already knew. We’d have to practically drag that tank up this mountain, and each of us had to carry their weight.

“It’s all right, Miss Zee,” Crow said. “Might do me some good. Use it or lose it.” He glared at me as he slid down the side of the steel box. “Think positive. Right, man?”

I helped him get steady, but then I let go of him. I mean, I couldn’t carry that giant. And I couldn’t stand the idea that he might need me to.

“You can do this,” I said, hoping it didn’t come out like a question.

“Guess we’re gonna find out.”

He took his first wobbly stride forward. Bits of purple rags were still caught on the brown, knotted bark of his legs, and those rags fluttered like tiny flags in the wind. He took another step. Then another. And when he slipped backwards, there was Zee, stopping him from falling, taking his hand and putting it firm on her shoulder.

“You can lean on me,” she said. “As long as I’m standing.”

We watched them start up the slope together, Crow with both hands on Zee’s shoulders.

“He’s gotta learn,” Alpha said behind me, keeping her voice down. “He’s gonna have to take care of himself.”

“The General’s right,” Kade said, nudging the tank up the slope, the control pad in his hands and his back against the steel. “Dead weight is the worst weight of all.”

Only good thing about the ice was our tracks got harder to follow. You could still make them out, though, if you looked close enough. And at midday, when the sun shone highest, we noticed there were other tracks on the slope ahead of us.

“What do you make of these?” Alpha said, kneeling to take a closer look.

Crow was bent over double, still holding onto Zee for support, while he studied the tracks in the ice. “Whatever it is,” he muttered, “it’s not something I want to meet.”

“Must be some kind of pod.” Kade scoured the mountainside above with the scope of the sub gun. “GenTech-built.”

“It’s no pod,” Crow said.

“No.” Alpha stood back up and shivered beside me. “I don’t think so, either.”

“So what the hell is it?” I asked her.

“Something that leaves footprints.”

“Footprints?” Zee frowned.

“Aye.” Crow peered up at the peaks looming craggy overhead. “And if they’re footprints, then those are some mighty big feet.”

“It’s a pod,” I said. “Kade’s right for once, the tracks must be GenTech. They’re the only ones who found their way north to this place. Figured out some route through the Rift.”

“Harvest made it up here, too,” said Zee.

“Aye.” Crow glanced down the slope behind us. “And it doesn’t seem like Harvest’s working with GenTech. No agents with him. He be freelancing, I’d say. Which means, who else knows the way through the Rift?”

Pretty soon, the wind howled so hard, we quit talking about it. Just cinched our hoods tight to our faces and carried on up the slope.

None of us wanted to follow the tracks to find out what had made them. But we didn’t have no other choice. Harvest was bound to still be in pursuit. And we had to get south somehow.

We’d hit a frozen channel that seemed to split the cliffs around it, creating a steep path up to a mountain pass that we reckoned would lead over to the other side. I shuffled up backwards, my aching back pressed against the tank to keep it from falling, and I kept kicking my heels into the ice as the wind blew the high clouds into mist.

Below me, Crow was still using Zee like a bony crutch. But he kept onward and upward, his stiff legs keeping him anchored so long as he moved them real slow. And that was all right. Slow was the only way we could move, anyway. Crawling our way up to the heavens. Everything steep and high pitched.

Just keep on, I told myself. Just keep going up and keep going south until you find someplace safe.

“Come on,” I yelled down the slope, calling for Crow and Zee because they’d got stretched out behind us, but my voice got swallowed up by the wind.

“You think we should wait?” Alpha said. Both of us were leaned up against the tank to stop it from sliding. Seemed we had a mile left to go to the top of the pass, and not an hour of sunlight.

“They can look after each other,” I said. Because that’s what Zee and Crow been doing, right? Long before I came along.

So we kept pushing at the tank, shoving it up the last frozen stretch, the sun creeping down and painting the white mountains pink.

Then I heard Crow’s voice moaning in the distance below. So far away, like he’d been buried inside the earth. And it wasn’t until the patches of cloud parted beneath us that I saw what he was moaning about.

The troop of Harvesters. Trudging through the snow. Getting closer to the foot of the mountains.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

At the top of the pass, we were tucked out of the wind, and the stars sparkled so close you could taste them. I rested against the tank with Alpha as Kade began heading back down the slope without saying a word.

“Guess he had a change of heart,” I said, watching Kade descend, scraping to hold on with his one hand but mostly just sliding along on his ass. Hell, he might never have stopped if he hadn’t run right into Crow.

“Red must like Zee even more than I figured,” said Alpha. “Least that’s my take.”

“Well, I don’t reckon she’s liking him back.”

“No?”

“You should warn her,” I said. “We both know what he’s after.”

“And what’s that, bud?” Alpha’s face was buried in her hood, but I got the feeling she had just winked at me.

“Come on,” I said. “She listens to you. You should look out for her.”

“I’m looking out for those Harvesters.”

The base of the slope had disappeared in the darkness, but I could see lights flashing down there, like torch beams at the bottom of a deep pit.

“How far do you reckon?” I said.

“They’re a couple hours behind us. Less, if Crow keeps slowing us down.”

I watched as Kade pulled one of Crow’s arms over his shoulder. Ten-foot tall, but Crow was stooped so low, he was damn near folded in half. Zee had him by the other arm, and they were dragging him up the mountain between them.

“Should leave me,” Crow mumbled when they finally reached us.

“That’s no way to talk,” Zee said.

“Just holding you back.” You never heard such a big voice sound so pathetic. And he kept whining as we dragged him to the other side of the pass.

A valley stretched to the south, the terrain dropping down steep and disappearing under a blanket of night, until it reared up jagged and snowcapped once again in the distance. And beyond those rocky peaks, on the far side of the valley, the Rift glowed red as it flickered and spat.

I’d never felt so numb with cold nor more in awe of the earth and the sky and the battle one waged with the other. The wind had dropped and turned things silent, and the night grew more strange and beautiful because of it. The moon was not yet fully up, but I knew when it rose, it would dwarf even these mountains, just as it could outshine those stars.

And the five of us were like wide-eyed pilgrims, gazing at the soaring peaks and the steamy red sparks beyond them. It felt like standing at the top of the whole damn world.

The lava bloomed across the southern sky, splashing against the wall of mountains that kept it from pouring into the valley below us, and that lava looked alive. Trapped. Like a living thing caught in the rocks.

“How can there be a way through?” Kade said.

Alpha shrugged. “How else did GenTech get us up here?”

She was right. Somewhere there was a path, a passage, a way that the agents had taken us. A way back to the world that we knew.

“So we go down?” Zee peered into the depths of the valley.

“I say we keep to the high ground.” Kade pointed. “Follow this spine of rock as far as we can.”

The peaks to the west rose tall and crowded, but east of the pass, the ridge ran smoother than anything we’d faced in a while. Hard to see, dark as it had gotten, but it looked like the ridge curved south eventually, and that meant we might avoid dropping into the valley and having to climb back out.

“Problem is,” said Crow, still leaning on Zee, “these tracks go east also.”

He pointed at the strange marks in the ice. We’d followed them the entire way up the pass.

“Maybe they’re heading the same way we are,” I said. “Maybe they can lead us on through.”

“We take the ridge,” Kade said. “None of you has a better idea.”

“How about this for an idea?” I grabbed the tank’s control pad from the ground, my legs numb and weary. “We all ride on top of this thing.”

“We can try,” Crow said, and I helped him climb up there, feeling like a sack of shit for not helping him before.

I caught Zee staring at him, her pretty face choked up and wrinkled with worry. She could hardly breathe, but she looked more concerned about Crow.

“Told you,” Kade said behind me, real quiet. “Dead weight.”

I glanced up at Crow, but he hadn’t heard the punk. Or maybe he had and was too gone to care. And it bothered me that Zee hadn’t heard Kade, either. What was the redhead playing at? Acting the hero, helping out, but on the inside, just looking out for number one.

Alpha had scrambled back to the other side of the pass, standing atop the edge of the slope we’d just climbed.

“We’re not gonna make it,” she said when I joined her. We stared down at where the Harvesters’ torch beams wavered and spun, splashing higher as the troops moved up quick. “Not with Crow.”

“You know we can’t leave him.”

“Never said nothing about leaving him.” She turned to face me, and her eyes were all wet. “But he needs to get his shit together. We’ve seen him use those legs. It’s just in his mind.”

“You can’t say that.” Zee had come up behind us, and Alpha turned away, not letting on she was crying. “You could help him, instead of whispering about him.”

“Easy, girl,” Alpha said. “We’ve all seen him use those legs proper, that’s all.”

“He’s trying. You don’t know him like I do.” Zee went to say more, but then she got choked up, coughed up something dark and spat it out on the ice.

And was it blood? No. Couldn’t let myself think that. I’d promised to get trees growing around her. She was going to get a forest just as pretty as she was. A place she could rest easy and breathe the clean air.

“Let’s go,” Alpha said, steering my sister back towards our busted Soljah and our slippery new friend. “All of us.”

“Try to breathe softer,” I called to my sister, but it came out wrong. Like I was bossing at her, instead of being a good brother. Like I was faking the feeling, and she was still too much of a stranger.

We squeezed on top of the steel box, Alpha working the controller up front, and Kade stationed in the rear with the sub gun. He wrapped his free arm around Zee, and I watched her nestle against him, leaning away from me as she did.

And as the moon began to rise, we started making good speed. Zipping along the ridge, dodging the steep chutes and boulders. Only time we got off to walk was when the route got too skinny, and then we picked our way along behind the tank till things got wider again.

It was a clear night and colder for it. The huge moon looked as frozen as everything else. But we kept warm enough, being all bundled together. Just our teeth chattering. Our fingers shaking in our fuzzy gloves, and our toes numb in our boots.

Weren’t talking at all. Hell, even Kade kept his mouth shut. And I reckon in the end, we moved too quick through the moonbeams. Because we never slowed down to think about how long those tracks had sat in the ice ahead of us. Or how close we might be getting to whoever had made them.

They were waiting for us. Must have heard us coming, or glimpsed us through the dark. And there was no warning.

Just a rush.

A swarm of shadows swept up from both sides of the ridge, appearing before us and behind us, smothering the path.

Our attackers were cloaked and hooded, the clothes they wore shaggy and thick. And they had bows, pulled taught and snapped back with arrows.

Alpha slammed the tank to a halt amid the surge of bodies. And before Kade could open fire, I yanked the gun out of his grasp.

He spun around to glare at me, his eyes on fire.

“Can’t shoot our way out of this one,” I said, staring down at the hooded strangers, the rows of arrows. There were maybe fifty of them surrounding us.

“Look at their weapons,” said Kade. “One bullet would send them running.”

It was too risky, and it was too late, anyway—they were pulling the gun from my grip.

“Kade,” Zee called, but we soon lost my sister. Alpha grabbed my hand as the strangers pried at her, but then they ripped her away, too.

Crow was gone. Then Kade. But I bolted upright. Out of reach of the fingers, standing in the middle of the top of the tank.

I felt the sharp point of a spear jab the side of my leg. And I watched the cloaked strangers below me, their eyes bright as the moon could make them, their mouths murmuring words I couldn’t make out.

But then I heard something else. A heavy, thumping sound, just down one side of the ridge.

Rocks were falling beneath us on the western slope, clattering into the depths of the valley. And then, through the darkness, six figures appeared, struggling up onto the ridge with ropes pulled taut behind them.

The ground shook and scrabbled with a strange stomp and shuffle. And I heard a wailing moan echo out across the mountains. It was the sound of something alive. But no human had made it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

First thing I saw was horns.

They stuck straight up over the ridgeline as the thing climbed towards us, silhouetted against the giant white moon. And those two horns were massive. Each of them as long as Crow stood tall. Set wide apart and curving upward, thick as two skulls mushed together at the bottom, but tapering to sharp points.

And that was just the horns. You should have seen the rest of it. A quick burst of speed, and the thing scrambled towards us, lumbering up to the flat top of the ridge, so it was towering above me, blocking the moonlight. Must have stood more than fifteen feet high.

Its head alone was bigger than I was. Its four legs stood taller than me. And it was buried in fur. All of it shaggy and shaking as it stamped about, making that low, rolling wail.

I gazed up at it. Trying to take it all in. The small eyes and floppy ears and rounded back. The short tail at its rear end, and the long, hairy tail up front where its nose should have been. A snout, I reckon, is what you would call it. Only that don’t come near a hundred miles of describing it. I mean, it was a snout that hung right down to the ground.

My body got limp as I stood there, listening to the great beast breathing deep, shadowy sounds. The strangers with spears and arrows stared up at me. Surrounding me. But for the moment, they left me alone.

On top of the tank, I was almost high enough to look into the beast’s eyes, and it was so close, I could reach out to touch it—so before my brain knew what the rest of me was doing, I did. I felt the smooth surface of its horns as it curled its shaggy, long snout in my direction and took a sniff at me.

An animal. A living, breathing thing that weren’t a human or a locust. Eyes and ears and a big beating heart. You best believe my hands were shaking so hard, they shook up the rest of me.

And then the thing tapped its snout at my head.

The people below waved their arrows and spears as they busted out laughing.

I glanced down at where Crow and Zee were surrounded, separated from Alpha and Kade. Someone had taken the sub gun and dismantled it. But the faces inside the hoods smiled up at me, their fingers pointing at the beast like they wanted me to go on and get close to it again.

It made a chewing sort of sound when I patted its snout. It slapped its tongue around and let out this big sigh. The hair on that thing was coarse, long, packed thick. And up close, I could make out some color. The horns that reared up from either side of its mouth were the pale yellow of old bone. And, no mistaking it, the beast’s fur was a deep shade of purple.

“Get down,” Alpha called, but our captors just laughed even harder.

“It’s alive,” I called.

“Yes, yes.” A woman patted the beast’s giant leg. She tried to tell me something else, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She clicked and clacked, and I guess she were joking, because the rest of her folks all cracked up again.

Hell, I’d forgotten what it felt like to laugh like that.

“It’s an animal,” I said, peering down at where Crow was blocking Zee from the arrows and spears. I glanced at Zee as I patted the thing’s head. “Like in the stories. It survived.”

“It’s purple,” Kade said. “And so is all the fur they’re wearing.”

“These people ain’t GenTech,” I said. “Look at them.”

The woman who’d been trying to talk to me pulled off her hood in the moonlight. She had cheekbones like knife edges, and her long, dark hair wound like a rope down her back. She kept on speaking, and though I’d no way to understand her, the look she gave me, and the way she started to jiggle her spear, seemed to mean I was supposed to get down now. And what else could I do standing up there? There weren’t no way to fight these people. And there weren’t no way to run.

Our captors had a harness rigged to the beast, and we watched as they reconnected the harness to a salvaged flatbed trailer that had been stashed up ahead, out of sight behind a wall of rock.

The trailer formed a giant steel sled for the beast to haul over the ice, loaded up with junk, rubbery nets strapping everything in place—and it soon became clear they aimed to strap us in, too.

They unwound ropes and unclipped hooks, then peeled back the mesh and forced us to climb in with the salvage. The woman that seemed to be in charge messed with the tank’s controller until she figured out how to get it moving. Then she had her folk lower a ramp off the trailer so she could wheel the tank up and get it squeezed in with the rest of the things these people had collected, as if the tank full of trees was just one more piece of junk.

The ramp got shoved back in place, and the strangers started wrapping their thick nets back over everything, trapping us with the big chunks of steel and plastic, binding things tight. Then, once they had the nets secure, our captors resumed their march southward, dragging our asses across the ice in a makeshift sled.

I could get my head clear of the nets just enough to watch them in the moonlight. Half a dozen of them rode on the beast’s back, perched behind the hump of its shoulders, and the rest of them took turns walking beside the thing, running their hands along its shaggy coat and speaking to it in their strange tongue.

“Praise Jah,” Crow whispered, straining through the nets to watch the beast swagger and roll. “Trees in the tank, and a monster on the loose.”

“You ever seen something like it?” I said. “I mean, in pictures? Drawings? I never heard one tale about a thing so big.”

“It’s like an elephant,” Zee said, strapped somewhere in the junk behind us. “But with fur on it.”

“An elephant?” Sounded vaguely familiar.

“People used to keep them in cages,” said Kade.

“You can’t keep something that big in a cage,” I told him.

“Depends how big your cage is.”

“I wonder what it eats,” said Alpha, her head jamming up next to mine as she wrestled some scrap metal aside to scoot closer.

“It didn’t eat me,” I said. “And I was up close to it. I was patting its head.”

“The beast itself could be good eating.” Kade’s shoulder jabbed in my ribs as he fought the nets.

“Will you get off me?” I tried to push him away. “And don’t be a fool. You can’t eat something like that.”

“He’s right.” Crow’s head sank down below the nets. “Too hairy.”

“Not underneath,” Kade said.

“But you’d have to kill it,” I said. “If you wanted to eat it. And you wouldn’t ever kill it.” I watched the great woolly thing as it lumbered through the night. “It’s too beautiful.”

“I might have killed it. If you hadn’t snatched that gun off me. At least I might have scared these people away.”

“Thought you don’t like making new enemies. Thought you’re all about talking things through.”

“And how are we supposed to talk to them,” Kade said, “when we can’t understand a word they say?”

After a mile or so of staring at the beast and arguing about it, we began to explore what was hooked in the sled all around us. Nothing much. A few old stoves, punched-hole crates, some long coils of chain, and bits of piping. I kicked loose a few rusted old hubcaps.

“What do they want with all this?” Zee asked.

“It don’t matter.” I knew the look that was on Alpha’s face when she said it. “What matters is where they’re taking us, and what they aim to do with us when they get there.”

“I’m guessing you’d have taken your chances with that gun,” Kade said. “Same as me.”

“Give it a rest,” I told him. “They could have killed us by now if that’s what they wanted.”

“Don’t mean they won’t later, bud.”

“You’re agreeing with him?” I couldn’t believe it. “They had arrows pointed at every one of our heads.”

I felt Crow arcing up against the nets beside me again, peering out at the night.

“What is it now?” I tried to get so I could see out there with him.

“Moon shadows,” he said. “Moving quick behind us.”

My eyes followed the frozen ridge as it curled back the way we had come from, a silvery-white slab peeling open the night. And I saw the flicker of shapes advancing. No torch beams needed now. All the Harvesters needed was stealth and speed.

“Harvest’s not gonna believe his luck,” Kade said. “The trees in a box and the bones of that beast. Nice work, bro. You’ve put us in a prime slot.”

“Harvest ain’t getting neither one,” I said. “We should warn these folk what’s coming.”

Kade struggled his arm loose and pointed at the strangers hauling us south. “And what good are their arrows against Harvest’s army?”

“Stop it.” Alpha grabbed his arm, shoved it back inside the nets. “We have to wait this one out.”

“You just want to sit here?” said Kade. “Get caught in the crossfire?”

“We won’t.” This was Zee. “Not if we stay hidden.”

“That’s right, hon.” Alpha was already working her way under the salvage. “Let the battle bring down the numbers on all sides but ours.”

We followed Alpha’s lead. Crawling away from the nets, wheedling our way down into the junk. Grabbing at the tin and plastic and old bits of rubber and pulling it around us, all of it sharp and flaky and cold.

The junk clinked and crashed as we scraped our way through it. The smell of damp mingled with a rotten PVC stink. But I kept working my way under the trash until I found the steel-cloaked tank, and I made sure it was good and buried under all that junk.

When the beast stopped moving and the sled quit sliding, everything got so quiet, I could hear the blood in my veins. There’s no mistaking that silence before the storm hits. When each second could be an hour, and each moment could be your last.

Then I heard voices. The scrabble of feet. There was a shriek, like a war cry, rising up in one direction. But from the other direction came the sound of guns.

Bullets clanged at the salvage around us, drilling into pieces of junk and shaking things loose. I heard the beast wailing. Its heavy legs stomping the ground. Then the bullets let up for a minute. Our sled must have gotten unhooked, because we were being shoved aside and the sled was toppling, everything spinning and crumpling until we rolled to a stop.

“Banyan,” yelled Alpha, somewhere above me now. “There’s a split in the nets.”

I struggled towards her voice, but I was all the way at the bottom of things, and the salvage was pinning me down.

“The tank,” I called. “Get the tank.”

I could hear Zee choking, spluttering on the loose rust. I’d thought I couldn’t get any lower, but she was further down still.

“Crow?” I shouted. “You see Zee?”

No answer.

“Damn it.” I couldn’t get up or down or even sideways. “Get this shit off me.”

“I’m out.” Alpha sounded far off. “They’re gone. In the distance. They’re chasing the Harvesters back.”

I hollered for Kade, hearing Zee wheezing worse with each breath. “Somebody help her.”

“I see the tank,” Alpha said. “It’s up here with me.”

The junk shifted, loosening a little. I got an arm out where I wanted it. Tried to claw myself free.

“Zee?” I hollered.

“Relax.” Kade’s voice came from higher up. “I have her.”

Yeah. Of course he did.

“Come on, hotshot,” he said as he helped pull me loose. “We’re just waiting on you.”