Rootless - Howard Chris - Страница 36

The poacher’s face looked like it had once been broke open and then pieced back together wrong. He stood before us. An ugly shadow beneath the bright white of the moon.

“Get away from her,” the man said. But I was frozen, like I was tangled up in the plants. “Move,” he said, and this time he pointed a shotgun at my head.

I stepped aside, the gun following my every move, waving just inches from my face. I went to say something, but the man cut me off.

“Keep your mouth shut, boy.”

He shone his flashlight over Hina, top to bottom, his mouth hanging open and stringy with spit, his eyes bulging out of his head. He blinked as he jabbed the flashlight at her skin, like he was testing whether or not she was real. Then he stared at me again and pushed the shotgun under my jaw.

The man turned his head and waved his flashlight in a figure eight. He knocked four times at a cornstalk.

“How many are there?” he said.

“Ain’t no one else,” I told him, my voice as shaky as the rest of me.

“In the car?” He jabbed the shotgun deeper. “How many in the car?”

“It’s empty,” I said. “Broken.”

“You lie.” He sneered. “But it’ll do you no good.”

I heard more footsteps in the crops, and the poacher gestured for me to start walking. I pushed Hina in front of me, keeping my hands on her shoulders and trying to block her from the poacher as he stabbed his gun at my spine and shoved us back toward the wagon.

When we stepped onto the service road, about twenty poachers stepped onto it with us. They slid through the stems and appeared in the night, like they’d bled right out of the crops. Some of them didn’t even carry guns, just knives or hacksaws. They wore clothes made of corn husks, and all their feet were bare.

I studied the shriveled bodies and the faces in the moonlight. Dead eyes. More scars than teeth.

The poacher behind me prodded his gun at my head, pushing me against the wagon as he tried to peer inside it. Then he took the butt of the shotgun and pounded at the roof.

“Come on out,” he roared.

The rest of the poachers had circled the car now. Heads stooped and weapons raised. The man pounded on the wagon again.

“We don’t want you,” he yelled. “Just the car and what’s in it. So come on out. Or your friends here are gonna suffer.” He stared at Hina as he said it and I felt her tremble beside me.

The man hammered at the roof until the rear hatch lifted as if the pounding had popped it loose. Sal’s head stuck out and the poacher made a sound that was supposed to be laughter.

“Shit,” the man said, pulling Sal out of the car by his ear. “Look at the size of this one.”

It all happened so fast there was no time to think.

A gun fired out the back of the wagon, and the bullet sank into that brokeface poacher, launched him back about five feet. Then the rest of the poachers fell upon us. Some of them heading for Sal, but most of them cornering me and Hina and wrestling us into the corn.

It was chaos. A tumble of bodies charging through the crops, gunshots and voices screaming.

But then the world stood still. The night turned black.

And an ugly swarming sound filled up the air.

I’d never seen people disappear like that. Those poachers spread thin and then vanished, like they’d found holes in the world to stay hidden inside. They were gone. Just like that. And me and Hina were ten yards from the road.

I stumbled and thrashed through the crops, pulling Hina with me as locusts filled the air with a whining, desperate sound that filled your head and stopped you from thinking.

I crashed forward, losing my balance for an instant, and then I was down in the dirt and lost and Hina’s hand was gone.

I spun around and saw her.

One last time.

She’d stopped running. She was just stood there, staring at me, and I watched as that frothy cloud descended upon her, buzzing and biting and coming down slow. Consuming her. Her head, her beautiful head. The swarm seemed to suck her inside it. It went down past her neck and over her shoulders, spun down her arms and low down her chest, pulling her in like a twister on the plains.

Her beautiful belly. That soft brown skin. The tree. All of it. Gone. Ravaged. Every root and branch and leaf. Every secret inside that now would stay hidden.

And I howled at that swarm and the crops and the sky, and the stars should have quit because there weren’t no reason to be shining.

The locusts were at her hips now, clawing their way lower. And I could have touched them if I’d just reached out my hand. But finally I felt my legs moving, pushing me backward. I was on all fours. And then I was running.

At the wagon every door was closed. I punched at the windows, smashed at the roof. And I felt the locusts buzz closer, tearing through the air toward me.

Alpha threw open the door as I felt the sharp mouths sink into my skin. I fell inside, pulled the door shut. But the locusts were still on me, gnawing my neck and the back of my skull.

Crow pushed me to the floor and leaned over me, swiping at the locusts, crushing them with his fist. They bit at him, and he lashed and cried till the last one was dead. And then he just crouched above me, his fists all bleeding and raw and the windows black with that swarm pressing in at us.

Then, finally, as the noise let up and the swarm drifted higher, I could hear the sound of Sal weeping. And Alpha’s voice, quiet and muffled.

“What were you doing?” she kept saying. “What have you done?”

I stared at her as the moonlight spilled in. Her face was slick with tears and her hands were clasped at her stomach, pressing at the bullet wound like she might squeeze the blood back inside her.

Alpha gazed at me through a face full of pain. She was quivering with it. But her eyes were still sharp. Focused. The veins on her neck twitched and her breath came short and shallow.

“Banyan,” Crow said, but the word seemed to float past me. “Banyan.”

He’d slid behind the steering wheel with his hands all mashed and bleeding. I stared at him, wondering what could possibly matter now.

Then I sensed the night shift color again. Brighten. But not on its own accord. I stared through the windshield and saw three pods in the distance. Bearing down the road toward us, burning us up with their purple glare.

Crow cranked on the engine and spun the wagon back around.

“You’re gonna need to hold them off,” he said, and for the first time, everything about Crow seemed out in the open. And he was scared shitless. Just like me.

I hauled Alpha into the back as Crow slid the wagon through a turn and began speeding back down the service roads. Undoing all the distance we’d covered. Losing ground all over again.

I got Alpha set so she’d not be shaking around too much, and she was staying silent now, but her eyes told me all I needed to know. Her hands were slick with her own blood, and I tried shoving my hands against her wound but the blood kept coming and the blood would not stop.

“Sal,” I screamed, and I could hear Crow shouting at me. “Sal.” I grabbed the kid by his neck. “Quit sniveling, you little shit. You gotta help.”

I pulled off my shirt and had Sal shove it deep in Alpha’s stomach, stemming the wound that kept gaping and frothing like some sort of mouth. Then I yanked the piece of bark off my torso and placed it over the shirt, strapping it in place so tight I was scared it might stop her from breathing.