Текст книги "The Rift"

Автор книги: Chris Howard

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For a moment, we couldn’t do a thing but stand there. We’d gotten the tank free of the nets and the salvage, and we needed to head south and be fast about it. But instead, we peered north, watching the troops with guns scatter in the wake of the rampaging beast.

“They can’t even make a dent,” Alpha said. And she was right—the bullets didn’t slow down that thing a damn bit. They couldn’t pierce its hide, and it just swung its snout in the air and reared up on its hind legs, then pressed on charging, horns low to the ground.

The cloaked mob sprinted behind the animal, protected by it, leaning out alongside it to let loose with their arrows and spears.

“Let’s move,” said Kade, and I grabbed the controller from under the tank, untwisting the wires and tapping at it to fire things up.

But nothing happened.

I flipped every switch, hammering the plastic with my fist.

“What’s the number?” asked Zee, her choked voice straining. Kade had his arms wrapped around her, muffling her coughs with his chest.

I yanked the panel open, not thinking. And the glass inside was pitch black and cold.

The white number blinked slow now. Nothing but zeros. Everything was switched off and shut down. No golden glow. No flash of red. So dark inside, I couldn’t even see the trees.

“What do we do?” I whispered, trying to peer through the glass.

I turned to Alpha. Crow. Kade and Zee.

But all of them stood like I stood. Staring at the tank like it was a thing that had died and snatched away every promise and every last dream.

The tank protects the microclimate. That’s what my mother had told me. Keep him safe, she’d said. Those were the last words that came out of her mouth.

And I hadn’t even made it to the Rift.

The mob was running back towards us now. Their arrows made a sucking sound as the spiked tips whipped through the air.

And those arrows could have taken down any one of us. They could have ripped us open or sliced us apart. But we hit the ice at the sound of them, taking a dive before the one thing that needed us to keep making a stand. And as the arrows pierced the hard ground around us, I heard one make a cracking sound above me.

Then there was an awful crunch.

That arrow had hit the tank, right where I’d left the steel panel hanging open, and I glanced up just as the glass shattered. The liquid inside exploding outward. Steam and spray like sparks in the night.

A second wave of arrows whistled and thunked. A third wave. A fourth. I staggered to my feet, grabbing for the tank, then shoving it before me. Sliding it. Forcing it to move.

An arrow drilled my lower back, and the pain made me feel forty pounds lighter. I could hear Alpha and the others. Begging me to quit. But I was trying to find cover in the rocks at the top of the cliffs, and I weren’t quitting for no one.

I blocked any more arrows from reaching the saplings, plugging up the hole. I felt an arrow pierce my thigh, and my whole body shuddered. I stumbled. Lost my grip for a moment. The next arrow clipped my neck, and a warmth gushed down my shoulder.

Then Kade was there, trying to grab the tank away from me.

“What are you doing?” he screamed, howling through the night.

But it was too late. I was at the cliff’s edge, grasping the slippery walls of the box and pulling it closer.

And the ice began cracking beneath me.

All I could see was a tumble and spin. Icy shrapnel. Gravel and spray. I bounced in the air and shot down the slope, arrows snapping off my back and my leg, the bladed tips hammering inside me as I skidded and thumped and my blood squeezed and spilled.

I could hear the squeak of my body on the ice, the whoosh of the world shrieking past me. I kept grabbing for something. Kept finding nothing at all.

And the broken steel box bounced with me. I could feel it. Hear it. As I stared up at the moon and the ridge, all so far above.

I clawed at the ice. Slowed but kept sliding. Dropping inside this funnel from out of the sky, this gaping mouth made of stone that drank up the starlight. And then I was pouring down the throat of the mountains. The way growing steeper. I stretched my arms like they were wings. And damned if that steel box didn’t spin right past me, as if my old man was leading the way.

At the base of the slope was a hole, and we slipped quick inside it. Like we’d been snatched and chewed and now faced being swallowed.

No more sting of ice or rubble. Just black and blur and the wind in my lungs. And it was over too quick to even see what was coming. I glimpsed a splash of silver. A smear of gray. And then I slapped and sank, and the busted remains of the tank gouged into the mud, right beside me.

I scraped my face from the sludge. Heard voices coming towards me. I could hear the squelch of footsteps as the mud bubbled and stank and rose up past my shoulders and sucked at my neck.

As I tried to pull free of the slime, the voices groped closer, everything slip-slapping with the stagger of feet.

And the last thing I saw was the broken box sinking. From out of the ruptured steel reached the gnarled bark of Pop’s hand, and it was like he was trying to offer me a fistful of flowers. Because sprouting from his stubbled palm, swaying in the half-light, uncurled one of the last seven saplings. Its buds bruised and splattered. Its stem sapped of strength.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Felt like a week I lay dying. Perhaps longer than that. The sound of the world, like the beat of distant drums, rustled and shook until it cracked me open again. And when it did, I came to with a gasp.

Steam filled my nostrils, turning my head sour. I called out, and someone restrained me, fluttering at me and shushing me as the earth cradled my bones.

I felt heat flashing beneath my back and my legs. Rested my skull and let the heat seep into my brain. Then I blinked at the steam that drifted above me, as hazy as everything I held inside.

“Rest,” a voice said, drawing out the word like it was sucking it dry. I twisted and turned to see who was speaking. A woman touched my forehead to stop me from moving, shifting her position so her eyes could meet mine.

She looked like she’d been whittled from out of the ground. Her skin was dark brown and wind burned, and her long black hair was shiny as it was straight.

I took in every sight, every detail. Even the bitter stink of the steam felt good on my tongue.

“Where am I?” I murmured.

“Safe,” the woman said, again stretching out the word. Her voice was about as pretty as she was.

“The trees,” I said, and my own voice sounded foreign to me. Guess that’s what happens when you find yourself coming back from the dead.

“Rest,” she said again.

“They’re safe?” I whispered. She placed a hand over my eyelids, her skin rough, and soon I was rolling in a sleep too deep for remembering, and far too deep for dreams.

No day. No night. No moon and no sun. When I awoke, all I saw was the rock walls and the steam shrouded around me. I pushed at the edges of darkness, forcing my eyes to stay open, but then I’d drift again and wallow in sleep.

Came through in the end, though. Hunger gnawed at my belly. Questions gnawed at my mind. And finally I was able to get my elbows beneath me and lever my head off the ground.

I peered around the cave, and there weren’t no one there. I almost called out, then thought better of it. I ran a hand to my lower back, where one of the arrows had pierced me, then to the gash one had left on my neck. Something was wrapped at my throat—a rubbery peel of mud, slimy and twisted. But the wound on my back was packed full of a crusty powder, and I scratched it with my nails.

My stiff legs bent with an uproar. Moving even a little made every little thing hurt. Back of my thigh, where the second arrow had gouged me, had been packed with the same dry dirt as the wound on my back. And the old GenTech rags had been torn off my bones, so I was naked as the forgotten day I was born.

But I was warm. Hot, even. The rocks toasted my feet and baked the cave walls all around me, the steam billowing in waves. I checked the back of my thigh again, scraping further at the caked-dry mud. And beneath the surface, the mud was oozing and silver. The same gray mud I’d fallen into. The mud I’d seen the steel box sinking beneath.

I studied the rest of my frail body. It was stretched out thinner than it ever had been—which is saying something when your whole life’s been spent hungry. It was like the cold weeks had eaten away at me. I could see the beat of my heart where it pulsed through my chest.

Slowly, I made my way to a flinty wall and hung there, leaning against the stone. Then I edged my way around the cave, clutching at the rocks and sucking in the steam, until I found an opening to a passage where the air was clearer.

The passage traveled in a straight line but bent upwards, and I felt every inch of the slope, my legs trembling, my hands clutching the walls for support.

Could hear the end of the passage before I could see it. Voices echoed towards me—loud voices, calling out to one another in the foreign tongue I’d heard at the top of the ridge. The same language the woman had used, when she’d been jabbing at me with her spear and I’d been staring at the beautiful beast in the moonlight.

Memories bounced inside my skull and crashed against one another. I pictured that massive animal, thick with purple fur, rampaging through the night amid gunshots and arrows. And I remembered falling. Pop’s broken tank beside me, in pieces in the mud.

I’d left them on the peaks—my girl, my sister, and my friend. They’d been surrounded by strangers’ arrows and Harvest’s guns.

I thought of Kade, trying to wrestle the tank away at the cliff’s edge, trying to work his way into Zee’s affections, and always trying to weave things the way he wanted, spinning you a part of some yarn with his words.

The voices hit harder as I neared the end of the passage. A pale light smudged the far side of the gloom. And when I reached the light, I leaned against the rock, trying to catch my breath, but the view stole my breath clear away.

The sloppy gray pit I’d landed in was at the base of a crater. Mud belched and smoked in the pit, and above it, rock walls funneled all the way up to daylight. It was like looking at the sky through a chimney, only you never seen a chimney this big. Thing must have been a half-mile wide and a half-mile deep, and curved around the walls was a swirl of steps and stone ledges that spiraled from the top of the crater all the way down.

People were climbing those steps and switchbacks, winding around the ledges within the crater’s walls. And it weren’t just people—the beasts were up there, too. I spied a whole herd of them four-legged animals, some of them almost black, others close to pink, but all of them some shade of purple. And I watched those shaggy great things, beneath the cold light of the faraway sun, until sweat and steam ran into my eyeballs and quit me from staring. I wiped my face, blinking, then started out along the rock path that rimmed the mud pit.

The path looped around the bottom of the crater all the way from one side of the pit to the other. And off from it, other passages led into the rock. Many of the openings were small, like the one I’d staggered out from, but some of them were huge, as tall and wide as those big purple critters, and a stench bulged out of the larger tunnels, punching inside the sour smell of the steam.

I kept groping along the wall, working my way around the pit, but before I found a tunnel I felt like starting down, my direction got picked for me. A gaggle of bodies came bursting out of the tunnel I’d just passed, and before I could even get turned around, their hands were grabbing at me, lifting me. They weren’t being rough about it, though, and I remember that surprised me—the softness in their voices, the gentle way they scooped up my limbs. It was like I was something they were afraid of breaking. As if I might shatter if I got clutched too tight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The room was lined with old hollowed-out televisions, and tiny fires flickered behind their glass screens, sending shadows across the walls and puffing smoke at the ceiling. When I coughed from the fumes, my ribs ached and my back pounded and my brain was just a rattle and throb.

I let my eyes get used to the flames as they thawed the darkness, the old world televisions making pretty pictures as they blazed. And I spotted more salvage at the far end of the room. Photographs in shattered glass. A toy piano and a plastic chess set. Everything painted orange by the oily flames. I huddled there, glancing about at the old scrap, the steam and smoke and stone. And I waited on the women to speak.

There were three of them, and the thrones they perched upon had seen much better days. The seats would once have been padded, but now they were just springs and steel. The women looked pretty comfy, though, as they stared down at me. One of them even had her seat wound back so it lifted in the front and stretched her legs out before her, supporting her bare feet on the rusty coils.

They wore purple fur and leather, and their dark skin glistened in the heat. The one who sat in the center with her feet up was a shriveled, pitted thing, her skin crinkled and chapped, eyes that took up half her face. She had to be old as anything. The woman’s hair weren’t so much white as translucent, and most of it was coming out of her ears.

On either side of that ancient face, the other two women looked shiny and new, but they were weather beat once you looked closer. And one was almost identical to the other—same face and hair, same dark skin—except the one on the right held her mouth stern, while the other’s eyes beamed bright. And the bright-eyed woman was the one I’d come awake to. The one who’d whispered to me when I’d first stirred again.

I became aware of how naked and thin I was before them, there on the stony ground. I tried to cover myself, felt my face turn fool red.

The old woman leaned forward a little, clacking and droning at me.

“The Elder welcomes you,” said the woman on the right, scowling as she translated. “The Elder is glad you’ve become awake.”

“Who the hell is the Elder?” I said. “And who the hell are you?”

“I am the Speaker. To you and all strangers. My sister is the Healer.” She pointed at the bright-eyed woman on the other side of the old crone. “To all who are sick.”

“But who are you people? What is this place?”

“Our people have many names.” Her accent bent the words in odd places. “You can call us Kalliq.”

“And you live here? Above the Rift?”

She frowned.

“The fire,” I said. “The lava. It’s close, I reckon. Making all this steam.”

“It is the Burning Wheel.”

I glanced at the Healer, and she just gazed down at me, her eyes full of wonder. Like I was as strange to her as she looked to me.

“And these things,” I went on, turning back to the Speaker. “These animals. Where did you find them?”

“Animals.” The woman smiled. “We did not find them. The mammoths were already here.”

“Mammoths,” I whispered, tasting the word on my tongue. “They lived before the Darkness? The twenty years of night?”

It took the woman a moment to understand what I was asking. “They were made here.” She pointed down at the stone and bent forward on her metal throne. “They were extinct. Hunted until there was nothing. But before the dark came, your chief brought them back.”

“What chief?” My voice cracked. “The Executive Chief?”

I pictured those thready beasts, all covered in purple, and I reckoned GenTech must have brought them back from the dead, all right. Much like they’d been trying to do with the trees. Only they’d brought back the mammoths more than a hundred years ago, before the Darkness. And then, after the twenty years of night, the only mammoths left had been trapped up here, north of the Rift.

“So GenTech made them,” I muttered, but at the mention of the name, the old woman began jabbering at the women on each side of her, and she looked all bent out of shape.

“The Elder says the mammoths were created for us.” The Speaker thumped her fist to her chest. “For Kalliq. And for Kalliq alone. A gift from your GenTech tribe, before the dark came. A gift to see us through.”

“Well, I ain’t asking for your gift back. The Elder can relax. GenTech ain’t my tribe.”

“You were wearing their symbol. Their clothing.”

“Me ending up in their clothes is a long story,” I said. “But how does the Elder know so damn much, anyway?”

“Because she has been here. Always,” said the Speaker. “Born before the skies turned black.”

“Since before the Darkness? That was a hundred years ago. Or more. That’s impossible.”

The Speaker suddenly rose from her seat and prodded a long finger down at where I sat huddled and naked. “So is what you have brought here,” she hissed, like she was accusing me of something wicked. “So is the future you bring.”

I stood up so I was level with her. Never mind her temper, or her accusations. And never mind that I was naked. I wanted answers.

“If she was alive then, tell me what happened,” I said. “What caused the Darkness? The twenty years of night?”

“The stars fell.” The Speaker clenched her fists, raised them over her head, then cast them down. “All the world over. A storm of rocks from beyond the sky, big as worlds split in two. They punched the moon closer. Ripped up our lands and the oceans, clouding the world with dust. Blocking the sun.”

“Creating the Rift?” I asked. “Your Burning Wheel?”

Yes, I thought. And if it had brought the moon closer, it had created the Surge—the towering, spinning seas that were all that was left of the oceans.

The world had been punctured, made weak and splintered. Left as fragile as the folk left hanging on.

The Healer stood up from her chair, came and checked the wounds on my back and my neck. She probed at the dirt that was packed in my thigh, her fingers reaching inside the wound.

And she reminded me of Alpha. Not the way she looked or the way she looked at me. But I remembered how my pirate girl had tended to me back in Old Orleans, when a fever had spread through my veins. And as I remembered her, the fear swelled inside me. She’d been up on that ridge, the arrows raining down, and I had left her. I’d abandoned her. Again. I’d left them all. Weaponless and stranded in the night.

“There were others,” I whispered, staring up at the Speaker. I stuck a thumb at my chest. “My friends.”

“Yes.” She seemed to smile at my panic. “They are still with the patrol. Last seen near the outer rim.”

“Alive?”

The Speaker waited, like she wanted to see how much I might squirm.

“Alive,” she said finally. “The patrol will return here. And bring your friends before us.”

“When?”

“After hunting.”

“Hunting what?”

She pointed at the salvage around the room, and I sank to the ground, breathing hard as the Healer prodded at the dirt she’d stuffed in my wounds.

So my friends had been seen. They were alive.

But they were so far away. And did they even know I was down here? I mean, here I was, stuck inside the earth, no way to know what dangers they faced.

I worried about Zee without me there to look after her, no one to make sure Kade didn’t get too damn close. And I’d been a fool to trust him, I reckoned. The redhead with the silver tongue. He’d had it in for me—truce or no truce. He’d just been using me to get in with the others and get to the trees.

Maybe I’d gone soft after I’d beat his face bloody, or after I’d learned he’d been hit by the crystal and lost his hand in the fields. But he was after my saplings, and he was after my sister, and I could now see that clearly. There weren’t no room for sympathy. We were all just dead weight to him in the end.

“Where are the trees?” I said, staring up at the Speaker. But the Elder started jabbering on again, and the Healer bundled me out of the room.

I was breathing hard by the time we reached the end of the tunnel. I had to stop and rest, the steam stinging my eyes. But the Healer’s bright face kept staring at me, curious and happy. I mean, her mouth never seemed to quit smiling at all. Reckon I was more used to the way her twin had looked at me—all bitter and pissed and full of scorn.

We entered a cave full of folk working at big patches of fur they’d stretched out on the walls. They were beating the stuff flat and shearing it into sections, weaving the purple thread into clothes. The Healer took me to one side to sort through a stack of their handiwork. Threw some pants at me, a pair of leather boots. Then she handed me a bright pink vest like the one Alpha had once worn. I mean, this one was new and clean, but I’d no doubt it was made of the same material. That somehow a little of this fur had made its way south, even if the mammoths themselves never had.

I checked out my new outfit. The vest practically glowed in the dim light of the cave, and I must have looked a right old sight in it. Still, at least I weren’t naked no more.

Back in the tunnels, we started to pass more and more of the locals. Steam swirled off their clothes, and their faces lit up when they saw me coming towards them. These people sure seemed friendly—except for the Healer’s twin, the one they’d picked to do the speaking.

The next cave we reached was large and well lit, with oil lamps in tin buckets all across the walls. The steam whirled thicker here, and I almost slipped on the rocks, but the Healer put my hands on her hips, making it so I could follow her as she pushed on inside.

Center of the cave, the steam lifted a little, and we reached a small pool, full of mud that looked more like liquid, real silvery in color and bubbling up something fierce. At the edges of the pool, bright against the dark stones, there was a layer of a soft green something. But I didn’t kneel down to inspect it. Not right away.

All I could do was stare into the center of the pool, where my seven saplings soaked up the heat. And I felt a bit lighter, just seeing them again, but I also felt heavier. Because there seemed to be so much resting on those little trees. So many people who wanted them. And I knew I could not get them south on my own.