The Rift - Howard Chris - Страница 21

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

At sunup, there’d still been no sign of Harvesters. I’d taken the first watch, and I’d taken the last. And when I heaved the steel box up onto one side, I found Kade sleeping with his arm around my sister.

“Hey.” I kicked him in the back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He wriggled his hand out from under Zee’s waist. “She was cold,” he said through a mouthful of sleep, swatting his hand at me like I’d just blow away.

“Sure she was.” I hauled the box aside so they were out in the open.

Zee coughed herself awake. “It’s all right, Banyan. I got the shakes in the night.”

“Next time you get the shakes, you can let me know.”

“Take it easy.” Kade stood up slow, stretching his shoulders.

“Don’t tell me to take it easy.”

“Then stop being such an ass. She was cold.” He cracked his neck. “I don’t see why you and your girl get to be the only ones keeping each other warm.”

“You’re full of it.” I leaned in close to him. “You think I don’t know what you’re up to?”

“Banyan,” Zee said, using my own name to scold me. “I can look after myself.”

“You’re my sister. And I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“Then get me somewhere warmer.” She pushed past me, her lungs heaving worse than ever. I turned to watch her stumbling through the snow.

“I don’t know, bro. She is pretty as a poem.” Kade said it so only I could hear him. “And a man has needs, right?”

I spun around with my fists up, but he shook the sub gun in my face.

“You’re too easy,” he said, laughing.

“What? This all a game to you?”

“Oh, yeah.” He blew out a shock of steam. “I’m having a wonderful time.”

We began up the mountains, the air growing thinner, and as we got higher, the snow grew stiffer, till soon it was nothing but ice.

It was like scaling a slope made of broken glass, and my feet grew swollen and painful, kicking at each step to try to get some grip with my boots. We held onto each other as the going got steeper. I was panting and sweaty inside my big coat, my skin all scratchy against the GenTech fuzz. And before long, we were struggling to keep the tank upright.

“Time to get down.” Kade was leaning hard against the tank to stop it sliding backwards, and he stared up at Crow, who, as usual, was slumped up on top. “You’ll have to walk like the rest of us. No more special treatment.”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Zee said. But Kade was just saying what we already knew. We’d have to practically drag that tank up this mountain, and each of us had to carry their weight.

“It’s all right, Miss Zee,” Crow said. “Might do me some good. Use it or lose it.” He glared at me as he slid down the side of the steel box. “Think positive. Right, man?”

I helped him get steady, but then I let go of him. I mean, I couldn’t carry that giant. And I couldn’t stand the idea that he might need me to.

“You can do this,” I said, hoping it didn’t come out like a question.

“Guess we’re gonna find out.”

He took his first wobbly stride forward. Bits of purple rags were still caught on the brown, knotted bark of his legs, and those rags fluttered like tiny flags in the wind. He took another step. Then another. And when he slipped backwards, there was Zee, stopping him from falling, taking his hand and putting it firm on her shoulder.

“You can lean on me,” she said. “As long as I’m standing.”

We watched them start up the slope together, Crow with both hands on Zee’s shoulders.

“He’s gotta learn,” Alpha said behind me, keeping her voice down. “He’s gonna have to take care of himself.”

“The General’s right,” Kade said, nudging the tank up the slope, the control pad in his hands and his back against the steel. “Dead weight is the worst weight of all.”

Only good thing about the ice was our tracks got harder to follow. You could still make them out, though, if you looked close enough. And at midday, when the sun shone highest, we noticed there were other tracks on the slope ahead of us.

“What do you make of these?” Alpha said, kneeling to take a closer look.

Crow was bent over double, still holding onto Zee for support, while he studied the tracks in the ice. “Whatever it is,” he muttered, “it’s not something I want to meet.”

“Must be some kind of pod.” Kade scoured the mountainside above with the scope of the sub gun. “GenTech-built.”

“It’s no pod,” Crow said.

“No.” Alpha stood back up and shivered beside me. “I don’t think so, either.”

“So what the hell is it?” I asked her.

“Something that leaves footprints.”

“Footprints?” Zee frowned.

“Aye.” Crow peered up at the peaks looming craggy overhead. “And if they’re footprints, then those are some mighty big feet.”

“It’s a pod,” I said. “Kade’s right for once, the tracks must be GenTech. They’re the only ones who found their way north to this place. Figured out some route through the Rift.”

“Harvest made it up here, too,” said Zee.

“Aye.” Crow glanced down the slope behind us. “And it doesn’t seem like Harvest’s working with GenTech. No agents with him. He be freelancing, I’d say. Which means, who else knows the way through the Rift?”

Pretty soon, the wind howled so hard, we quit talking about it. Just cinched our hoods tight to our faces and carried on up the slope.

None of us wanted to follow the tracks to find out what had made them. But we didn’t have no other choice. Harvest was bound to still be in pursuit. And we had to get south somehow.

We’d hit a frozen channel that seemed to split the cliffs around it, creating a steep path up to a mountain pass that we reckoned would lead over to the other side. I shuffled up backwards, my aching back pressed against the tank to keep it from falling, and I kept kicking my heels into the ice as the wind blew the high clouds into mist.

Below me, Crow was still using Zee like a bony crutch. But he kept onward and upward, his stiff legs keeping him anchored so long as he moved them real slow. And that was all right. Slow was the only way we could move, anyway. Crawling our way up to the heavens. Everything steep and high pitched.

Just keep on, I told myself. Just keep going up and keep going south until you find someplace safe.

“Come on,” I yelled down the slope, calling for Crow and Zee because they’d got stretched out behind us, but my voice got swallowed up by the wind.

“You think we should wait?” Alpha said. Both of us were leaned up against the tank to stop it from sliding. Seemed we had a mile left to go to the top of the pass, and not an hour of sunlight.

“They can look after each other,” I said. Because that’s what Zee and Crow been doing, right? Long before I came along.

So we kept pushing at the tank, shoving it up the last frozen stretch, the sun creeping down and painting the white mountains pink.

Then I heard Crow’s voice moaning in the distance below. So far away, like he’d been buried inside the earth. And it wasn’t until the patches of cloud parted beneath us that I saw what he was moaning about.

The troop of Harvesters. Trudging through the snow. Getting closer to the foot of the mountains.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN