Rootless - Howard Chris - Страница 17

What now? I thought. What next?

I shuddered. Broke out cold and sweaty. I was captive. The wagon would rust. And my book would crumble and the bark would fade and every one of Zee’s pictures would turn blank like bits and pieces of nothing that ever mattered anyway. And my father would fade, too. Just like a photograph. He’d be killed in the spring and I’d be killed before him and there’d be no one to remember either one of us in the end.

I turned my face to the wall and sobbed. I clutched the nail in my arm and wished only to be numb. There was nowhere further to drop.

But then it was worse.

Because then the truck stopped and the door groaned open a little. “This one with you?” a woman called in at me.

I couldn’t turn. Couldn’t look at all. I just felt Sal grab a hold of me and hold on tight, the poor little bastard screaming so loud I could barely hear the door clanging shut behind him.

They played the same damn album. Over and over. Cranking up the volume at all the same places until we got wherever it was we were heading.

All I wanted to do was black out. Disappear. But I knew I had to stay awake and pay attention. So that’s what I did — eyes closed but my ears pricked. And I counted that album cycle through four times before the truck stopped. So I figured we’d been driving about four hours. And at this speed, off-roading it, I guessed that put the wagon at a day’s walk. If you knew the direction.

When the wheels stopped rolling, voices broke out inside the tanker, wobbling and whining, choking on bitter sounds. I tried to picture something safe in my head, something good, and I imagined I was back in the Tripnotyst’s memory box and trees were growing all green around me.

Eventually, I heard the squealing of latches, the sound of steel on steel, and my eyes watered as daylight poured in like ice water.

Sal’s arms were locked tight around my waist and I pried him off as I slithered to the doorway. I tried to stagger to my feet. But one by one, the pirates appeared. Silhouetted black against the setting sun. I counted their mohawks, their broad shoulders, the hips laden with pouches and guns. There was too many of them. Way too many.

I fell out of the truck and the mud was slimy on my face. Dark and sweet and wet. I let the stuff ooze inside me, tried to breathe it in and scrub the stench of the truck from my mind.

Bodies were stacked around me, on top of me, and I felt hands clutching at me, tapping frantic on my back. Spinning up, I could see it was Sal again, reaching for me. I stared up at the glimmering sky and wiped spit from my mouth, tried to croak some words to the kid, to comfort him.

But no words would come.

Between the two trucks, the pirates had racked up at least a hundred bodies, and god knows where they’d gotten them all.

The ones who couldn’t wake or walk were picked up or dragged as the rest of us limped forward, following the pirate who’d caught me, the one who strutted like she was the biggest badass ever seen, her tall rubber boots splashing in the mud.

Alpha. That’s what the others called her. And I reckoned that was the word stitched crooked in the back of her fuzzy vest, too.

I took Sal by the hand and led him through the slop, doing my best to stand upright, doing my best to see where in the hell we were going.

The air was as sticky as the mud and it pressed your skin, daring you to breathe it. The sun was low now, puke orange, but the day showed no sign of cooling. And it was still. No wind. No flutter or breeze. So we’d dropped south, I reckoned. Somewhere south of the forty.

Up ahead, an ancient settlement sat on stone stilts above brown water. There were bridges and walkways strewn between flat buildings, everything crumbling and patched with plastic.

The pirates pushed us up a ramp that led over the slime and deep inside the settlement. A rubbery banner frowned over our heads.

“What’s it say?” I said, nudging at Sal.

“Old Orleans,” he muttered, glancing up at the curly letters. I stared down through the slats and stone, watched the water move like sewage.

It was like being stranded in the devil’s own shantytown, the world dissolving below you, leaving you in the refuse of days gone by.

Buried a half mile inside the town was another ramp, but this one led downward. The pirates kicked and prodded us into a watery corral, then they yanked rusty chains to pull the ramp over our heads, blocking out the near darkness of the sky.

I peered around at my fellow prisoners as they splashed and sat and buried their faces. I felt at my arm, the flat end of the nail solid beneath the festering wound.

“What are we gonna do?” Sal whispered. But I just peered up at the walkway, listened as the women went stomping away.

Somewhere in the enclosure a baby began wailing, and the whole world seemed to silence at the sound of it. Then the ramp started to lower again and we scurried from its path. A single pair of boot heels swaggered down the ramp, and I spotted the pink vest and the broken nose, watched as Alpha found the baby and took it in her arms. The infant fell silent as Alpha rocked it upon her hip, hushing and cooing the child and bundling it in rags. Weren’t something you’d think would look right. But it did. And her tenderness sure stuck out in a place so ugly and torn.

“You people are safe here,” Alpha said, and the whole place froze still. “For now. Some of you will be traded. The rest will be set free.”

A murmur rippled through the enclosure, then cut short. I wanted to say something, shout out loud, but all I did was watch as Alpha held the baby close and strode up the ramp away from us, leaving those who could manage it to holler and beg.

Traded. That’s what she’d said. Traded like an old world Benjamin or piece of salvage, a jug of water or a gallon of juice. But what was our value? I stared at the filthy bodies surrounding me, the ragged bits of skin in the moonlight.

What good were we to anyone but ourselves?

It made me get to wondering if this was how Pop had been taken. But him and me had been out near Vega, the other side of the cornfields, and pirates don’t go messing where GenTech is at. Besides, all the racket they made, I would have heard pirates coming. Whoever stole Pop away had been stealthy. Because Pop had heard voices, but I never heard a damn thing.

I finally gave up standing and sank down in the sludge. Sal slumped beside me, waiting, I’d no doubt, for me to tell him how come we were pinned inside the leftovers of a city, trapped by buildings rooted in mud.

“They’ll take him for sure,” a raspy voice said behind me, and I spun around to a beady set of eyes. The man’s head was smudged silver in the moonlight, his cheeks hammered hollow and thin. “The fat one,” the man whispered, staring at me.

“What you talking about?”

“He’s young. And there’s plenty of him.”

“For what?” Sal said in a small voice.

The scrawny dude scrunched up his shoulders. “For whatever they like.”

“Shut it,” I said, turning away. “Don’t you listen to him.”

But Sal was already sobbing, his fists squeezed tight.

I felt at my arm where the nail stung and throbbed, and I knew much longer and I’d have to claw the damn thing out with my fingers. At sunrise, I told myself, pulling away from Sal and hunkering down to sleep. I needed to rest, if I could. I couldn’t do anything now. Not until the sun came up.

But when the sun came up, I was caught in a sickness, wrapped inside a fever that painted the brown world red.