Rootless - Howard Chris - Страница 32

Alpha climbed Crow’s back and settled in on his shoulders, sawing her blade at the ears of corn, dust raining down as she worked. Crow had his big hands clasped on those pretty thighs of hers, holding her in place, and something about his fingers pressed tight on her skin made me feel all queasy inside.

“Can’t you go a little faster?” I called up at her.

“Going as fast as I can, bud.”

“You should keep watch, little man,” Crow said. “Out by the wagon. We’re not gonna spot no agents all bunched up in here.”

He was right, but it pissed me off to admit it. Pissed me off him calling me little man all the time, too. Little man? Son of a bitch. We can’t all be seven-foot watchers.

I forced my way back through the plants, their lousy leaves all covered in sand and whacking me in the face. And I was about to bust free when I stepped right on top of Sal.

Kid was on all fours, trying to eat his way through a stem, really gnawing at it but getting nowhere. “I’m so hungry,” he said, taking a break to stare up at me, spit hanging out of his mouth.

“Just don’t you get lost in here,” I said, stepping over him and pushing my way outside.

Hina hadn’t joined us in the cornfield. She was sat in the dirt, arms around her knees and her head bent on her shoulder. She was facing away from the sunset, staring east where the sky was nothing but black.

I sat down next to her, our backs to the corn.

I saw goose bumps on Hina’s shoulders and thought of taking my shirt off to give it to her, but I had the bark tied on my skin, so I left my shirt right where it was. She trembled a little in her thin top, and there was a distance in her eyes that reminded me of my father. That faraway look that said no matter where you were staring, you were seeing some whole different world.

“Gonna eat soon,” I said. Hina didn’t say anything but I thought I caught her glancing at the car. “I know,” I said. “Gonna be kind of cramped. Once we enter the cornfields there’s no going outside the wagon. But all goes well we should be through these crops in a day or so.”

“And then what?” she said, startling me. She never spoke enough for her voice to be something I got used to.

“Well, then I reckon we’re gonna find us your trees.”

She smiled, but it was a thin, bitter shape. “They’re not my trees,” she said, her hands going to her belly.

“You remembered anything?” I said.

“Like what?”

“Like about my old man.”

“Just bits and pieces.” She stared east again, scratching at her arms. “Guess I’m no good to anyone without the gypsy’s memory box.”

I watched her blink three times before a tear rolled out and ran down the side of her cheek. I thought I ought to say something. Do something. But I didn’t know what.

“You find your father,” Hina whispered. “Then you can ask him what happened.” I felt her lean against me, and I suddenly wished I’d kept that picture of Zee to give her, this woman with a brain like a broken sieve. But I just sat there, leaning against her, until the others came crashing back through the crops.

Hina went rigid and I stood, turning to watch Alpha come busting into the open with a whole stack of corn in her arms. Crow came after her, stupid big grin on his face.

“We gonna eat good tonight, people,” he boomed. “Miss Alpha ain’t a pirate no more. She’s a poacher.”

“Ready to head south?” Crow said as I jumped behind the wheel and fired up the wagon.

“South?”

“Follow the perimeter until you see the fourth service road. We’ll follow that west and start winding our way through the maze.”

“The least watched way.”

“That’s right, little man. Crow here gonna steer you right on through.”

I pulled off the road and the wagon sank into the sand as I pointed us south. I flicked the lights on, but Crow had me turn them off again.

“Just go slow,” he said, leaning over my shoulder and peering with me through the windshield. “We’ll see the service roads. Night as clear as this.”

We drove silent through the dark, nothing but the soft hum of the engine, and cruising south somehow felt like we were going downhill.

The first service road surprised me.

“It’s huge,” I said, studying the broad path cutting through the crops. Unpaved. Just packed dirt, the walls of corn towering on either side.

“Gotta be big enough for the dusters,” Crow said. “Get them in the right spots to start harvesting.”

“The dusters are that big?” I’d heard stories, but that service road was massive.

“Oh, they’re big,” said Crow. “Getting bigger every year.”

Hours passed. I counted two more turns, and at the fourth I cut right, pointing us west again.

“Here we go,” Crow said. “No more plains. Anyone needs to take a leak, you get one minute out of the car. Max. In fact, I need to take a piss, I might just be hanging out the back window, know what I mean? This here is locust country, people. Bad as it comes.”

We turned south. Then west. Then south again until we cut east. And by dawn we’d made so many damn turns that the only way I knew which direction we were heading was because the sun was coming back up.

“You get sleepy, I can drive.” Crow said, his head at my shoulder.

“I ain’t sleepy.”

“Just an offer, little man. No need to be so tough all the time.”

“You’re all heart. But you can stick it. It’s my wagon. And I’m the one who drives her.”

“Fine. I’ll stick to navigating.”

“Feels like we’re going in circles.”

“Aye,” Crow said. “Does feel that way, don’t it? Always does. Out here in the corn.”

“How the hell you end up working out here anyway?” I asked him.

“Oh, I worked all over.”

“As an agent?”

“Special agent, you might say.”

“Looking for trees?”

“Sort of. GenTech wants them trees bad, little man. They reckon there’s food growing in Zion.”

“And all that time you were looking for Zion, you ever heard of folk getting dragged off there? You heard of folk being chained to the trees?”

Crow stared out the window. “I saw the same picture you did.”

I watched the corn get its color as the sky grew light. Deeper into the fields, the crops got less dusty. More green.

“So how’d you end up with Frost?”

“Mister Frost had something I needed.”

“The tattoo.”

“Said if we found those trees, he’d split whatever GenTech gave us. Split it right down the middle.”

“And you trusted him?”

“Much as I trusted anyone,” Crow said. “And you could say I figured I’d have a little more leverage on old man Frost than with GenTech Corporation.”

“Didn’t work out too good, I guess.”

“It did and it didn’t. See, I’m not just aiming for the money. I want to bring me something back home.”

“Home?”

“To Niagara.”

“Thought you’d have given up being a warrior.”

“You born Soljah, little man, then you die part of the tribe.”

“So why’d you leave?” Sal said, from the back of the wagon. “If you just want to go back there.”

“You must know, I got myself thrown out of Waterfall City.”

“Banished,” I said. “Who’d have thought?”

“Bring a tree back, though,” Crow went on, “like a nice little fruit tree. I be back in the good graces then, no? Give the Soljahs something to trade besides water.”

“Reckon I’ll bring me one back to Old Orleans,” said Alpha. “An apple tree. Like in the stories.”

“You can’t go wasting apples in that shit hole,” Crow said, laughing.

Split up all the trees, I guess. That was the plan.

“What about you?” Crow said, fixing me with a look. “What you aiming to do?”