The Rift - Howard Chris - Страница 19

She raised an eyebrow.

“It’s all right,” I said. “A misunderstanding is all.”

Kade made an empty laugh.

But we had to trust him, I reckoned. He was the one had let us go, called a truce on the boat, and he could have shot me any time he’d felt like it, once we’d made it to land. He needed us, and we needed him. And I knew now he was as broken as we were—a one-handed field hand, his mind wrecked from crystal. Hell, Kade was damaged, so I figured he fit right in.

“There’s no one else?” Alpha glanced about as if a bunch of strugglers might bust out through the snow to join us. “I went into the hull to get the kids out. The little ones.” She gazed back in the direction of the lake but couldn’t finish her story.

“It ain’t your fault,” I told her.

“No. It’s Harvest’s fault. And I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill him or die trying before all this is through.”

I peered into the tank, my hands still squeezing Alpha’s fingers. Still marveling at the feel of her skin against mine. “I can’t believe you climbed in there.”

“It saved me. The lights flashing red and gold through the blizzard. I was seizing up, stumbling and shaking something fierce.”

“Did you touch them?” Kade peered in at the bundle of green limbs. “The trees?”

“Tried not to. Didn’t want to mess with things.” Alpha gave me a look as she said it. And I wondered what it’d feel like to hold the tiny saplings in your hand.

Zee blinked back tears as Alpha put her arms around her. My sister surprising me again with how much she cared. But she was already building a new family, I reckoned. New people to stop her from being alone.

“You all right, girl?” Alpha squeezed Zee like she was her own sister, and I envied the way she could show her affection, but there didn’t seem to be room in my heart for all of them. I don’t know. Maybe your heart gets smaller if you spend too much time just looking out for yourself.

“It was awful,” Zee whispered, her voice stifled and choked as Alpha held her. “It was like we lost Banyan, too.”

My face burned as Zee started to cough worse than ever. But what the hell? I hadn’t abandoned her. And what more did she want from me? Ain’t easy, being a brother to a stranger, I tell you that much.

Alpha soothed Zee until she began to breathe easy, and then we all stood there a moment. Crow wavering on the wooden legs he’d anchored in the snow, my heart finally slowing down as I gazed at my pirate girl in all her ragged beauty.

“All right, hon,” she said to Zee, letting go of her gently. “I hate to break up the reunion, but we got a long ways to go yet.”

“True that.” Crow gazed south at the mountains and the orange glow beyond them. “And this new snow will make us easy to track.”

“How many rounds you got left?” Alpha asked Kade, and he uncoiled his too-big coat, revealing a belt full of bullets. One strip of ammunition, tied below the bite of his ribs.

“That’s it?” Zee said.

“Keep that chin up,” Alpha told her. “Some’s better than nothing at all.”

But I swore then, if I could get back to the dusty world that lay south, I’d leave all the bullets behind me. No more guns. No more fighting. I’d plant those trees and be a builder once more. I’d build that house for Alpha and me in the treetops, surrounded by sweetness and shielded from suffering. And I started to think love is like every tree I ever crafted, taking broken pieces and making something beautiful, something better. Something to believe in. And something to hold onto, when all else is black.

PART TWO

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We steered the tank towards the mountains, moving as fast as we could, but we sank too deep in the powder to keep up a good speed. We were as hungry as we were exhausted. And we had to keep glancing behind us, searching the frozen landscape to see if Harvest was closing in.

My body felt weak and shriveled close to the bone. But I waded along next to Alpha, shielding my eyes from the sun and studying each part of my girl like I was about to go snow-blind. I even let myself grow hopeful, with our hands once more entwined and our eyes setting fires between us.

But too soon, the fear seeped back like a cold fever sweat. I mean, all I’d wanted was my pirate girl back, and it ain’t right how quick you can take things for granted. As the day wore on, the dead spooked at me again, prying open my mind so I could see their faces—my father and mother, Hina and Sal, every struggler I’d seen perish along the way.

“We get back,” I said to Alpha as we pushed on ahead of the others, following the plateau to the base of the mountains, “we plant us a forest. And I ain’t never letting you out of my sight.”

“Can’t say that, bud.” She squeezed my fingers, but her gaze was fixed on the peaks up ahead. “Can’t let me and you make us weak. Not if we’re gonna keep fighting.”

“Get south,” I said. “Somewhere safe. And I’m all done fighting.”

“That easy, huh?”

“There ain’t been nothing easy about it.”

“But you think we’re gonna dig down and plant us those trees,” she said, “and just sit there watching ’em grow?”

“Sounds real good to me.”

“And how do you think GenTech’s gonna feel about that?”

“I don’t give two damns about GenTech.”

“Yeah, you do.”

I quit wading through the powder, and Alpha stopped to wait for me, still clutching my hand in hers. Both of us were breathing hard from the effort required to keep moving, and the deep snow sparkled far as the eye could see.

The others were starting to catch up. We’d got the tank boxed up back in its steel cloak, and Crow had the control pad in his hands as he sat up on top, nudging the thing’s wheels through the snow. Kade and Zee were stomping along beside him, and I saw Zee was laughing, cracking up at some joke Kade had made.

It bothered me. There weren’t no reason to be laughing out here. But I’d decided to trust that redhead, I reminded myself. So I busied my brain by peering north to see if I could spy Harvest’s troops behind us.

“You ain’t thought this thing through,” Alpha said, letting go of my hand.

“I’ve thought plenty. I ain’t losing you again.” I turned back to face her, but she was staring up at the peaks. “We get back, we keep these trees secret. And I keep you safe.”

Her face looked all prickly and pissed. “That’s what your dad would have wanted?”

“How the hell would I know?” I crossed my arms at my chest, as if it was just the cold I was feeling. “Man did nothing but keep secrets from me.”

That night, right at the foot of the mountains, we pulled the steel cloak off the tank so we could settle inside its walls again. I hadn’t wanted to, but Zee’s cough had got worse as the day wore on, her crusted lungs sounding rougher than ever.

Tired as I was, I didn’t feel like turning in yet, so I stood under the stars awhile, watching the numbers count down on the tank.