Rootless - Howard Chris - Страница 29

I shook my head, and she grabbed the gun back and showed me how to pull the safety off and get the thing ready to fire.

“There’s one more of those,” said Crow. “I’d say it best go to someone who can use it.”

“Forget it, Rasta,” Alpha muttered, and then we lay there, still and silent as the engine grew louder and the vehicle spun close.

There was this moment when that big moving shadow seemed to alter its course right for us, and I couldn’t understand it, but that’s what it did. We’d not made a move or a sound and it was dark as all hell out there, but I swear it seemed like the thing was coming dead on. Damn near was going to be right on top of us.

“Give him the gun,” I said to Alpha, fear seizing me up inside.

“What?”

“Give him the gun. It’s no use if we’re dead.”

I heard her scrabble for the last pistol and then she threw it at Crow. And now all three of us were armed.

Crow clicked off his safety. But then the vehicle turned again, steering itself westward, the engine screaming and grinding and us just watching as the thing sailed by.

It was a wheel. A giant wheel. Giant tire tread churning up mud as it rolled through the night. And inside of that wheel, suspended so as not to be spinning, was a cockpit built for a few dozen people.

There was only one thing big enough to spin wheels like that one. Only one thing I’d seen, anyway. The Harvester transport. The Ark. And that’s where this damn thing had come from. No doubt in my mind. Some kind of escape pod. Get out clause. Transport all blown to hell and that wheel just rolling free, moving fast, jetting off in the night.

“Holy shit,” I said, sucking myself out of the mud, staring into the distance where the Harvest wheel grew quiet and its torch beam got small.

“Give it up, Rasta,” Alpha said, and I turned to see Crow shoving his pistol in what was left of his pants.

“I ain’t no Rasta, sweet thing,” he said. “Not technically speaking. But I do believe in the Promised Land.” Crow grinned, patting the butt of the gun. “And we all be heading there together. Ain’t that right, little man?”

The mud turned to sand and the sand turned into the forty, and when we hit that old strip of tarmac we turned west.

“The wagon’s this way,” Alpha said. “If it’s still out here at all.”

Dust clouds picked up around dawn and for an hour we had to hold on to one another as we choked and stumbled through the dirt. And then, when the winds quit, the sky just started cooking. Sweat ran down my face and stung my eyes all grimy and swollen. Both canteens were dry. But the five of us just kept on walking. Looked like we were made out of sand.

My old brown wagon had dissolved into the dirt, and it wasn’t until we were almost to it that I spotted the thing, half-buried in the earth.

I broke into a run and exhausted myself, my pistol jabbing me as I jogged down the road, the sun burning like winter wasn’t ever going to come. My skin was crispy and my limbs were sore but you can bet I had the biggest damn grin on my face. No soul’s ever been more happy to see a junky old pile of metal. I could hardly believe it. My old jalopy. Still there, waiting on me like a friend I didn’t deserve. And it was only after a half day of digging we came to realize the wheels were gone.

We’d worked right through the afternoon and I’d discovered early that the inside of the car had been stripped. All the doors were open and the corn and juice had been taken. The passenger seat had been yanked right out and someone had peeled the nylon off the inside of the doors. But the engine seemed as intact as I’d left it looking, and we worked brimmed with hope until Crow scooped out around the first wheel and found it missing. I clawed the dirt out from beneath the rest of the car and uncovered the same sad story. Sons of bitches may as well have hauled off the whole damn thing. What good’s a wagon without wheels?

“So what do we do now?” Sal said, plopping down in the dirt. The sun had done the kid no favors — beneath the dust, his bloated face was a chapped shade of purple, blisters puckering his skin. Still, he was nothing next to Crow. The watcher’s burns had shriveled and glazed in shredded patches, like he’d decided to just unpeel his flesh and start over.

“We wait,” Alpha said. I’d given her my dad’s old sombrero and she’d punched a whole through the lid so her mohawk stuck out the top. You’d think I’d have minded, her messing up my old man’s hat. But I didn’t. I liked seeing her wear it.

“Someone comes along, we take their wheels off ’em,” she said. “Shouldn’t be too long. Not this time of year.”

“Guess you’d know, pirate.” Crow grinned.

“If it goes against your moral code,” she said, “then you can make a better plan.”

“Moral code?” Crow leaned back on the wagon and it shifted beneath him. “What moral code?”

I’d only salvaged a few of my tools in Old Orleans. Just some spanners and ratchets, a spare set of fuses. But I’d grabbed the telescope. The thing was on the heavy side but I figured it might come in handy, and it came in handy now, all five of us hunkered down and sweating inside the wagon, Alpha checking the road through the scope.

One of the scavengers had tried to pry out the microwave and they’d tried so hard, they’d messed up the wiring. I got it patched back together, but the water was a tougher fix. The tank had been drained empty.

“One bit of good news,” I said to the others. “We got corn and juice buried on the side of the road.”

“Yeah,” Sal said. “And we got the pictures.”

“What pictures?” Crow was stooped and squashed in the back of the wagon, his frame much too big for the space.

Sal pointed at Hina, gesturing at her belly like the woman was no more than a picture herself. “We got shots of each one of them. Every leaf. Her whole body.”

“We need water, though,” I said, not liking the way the conversation was heading. Hina crossed her arms across her stomach and gazed at the floor.

“How you get those pictures, little man?” Crow stared at me, eyes bugging off his melted face.

“You left them behind.” I shrugged. “With your boy.”

“I didn’t leave no one behind.”

“Just wanted me to keep the house safe,” said Sal, peering up at Crow. “Right?”

Crow didn’t say a thing. He was too busy glaring at me and I couldn’t figure out what had gotten him so worked up. Then he turned his gaze on Hina, and I imagined he was thinking that if we had the GPS numbers, then we didn’t need the woman. But Frost had headed off with Hina and Zee along for the ride. Did he need them for something? Why else would he have brought along two more mouths to feed? Even mouths as pretty as theirs.

“Banyan,” Alpha said from behind the steering wheel, her eye pressed at the telescope. “We got company.”

Could have been anyone. Just a slate gray cruiser with a flatbed trailer off the back, rolling out of the west in no particular hurry. I wondered if they’d already seen us, but I doubted our wagon looked like any reason to slow down.

I peered through the telescope at the tinted windows, tried to imagine what face was staring back at me. Then I studied the tires, the good thick tread. Off-road tires. Oversize. They’d be perfect. But they weren’t mine. And here I was getting ready to take them.

“You flag them down,” said Alpha. “I’ll be on the other side of the wagon. Waiting.”

“Right,” I muttered, concealing the pistol down the back of my pants. “What about the others?”

Alpha glanced at the rest of our crew. “Stay down,” she said. “But keep the hatch open. And be ready.”