The Rift - Howard Chris - Страница 24

“He’s right.” Crow’s head sank down below the nets. “Too hairy.”

“Not underneath,” Kade said.

“But you’d have to kill it,” I said. “If you wanted to eat it. And you wouldn’t ever kill it.” I watched the great woolly thing as it lumbered through the night. “It’s too beautiful.”

“I might have killed it. If you hadn’t snatched that gun off me. At least I might have scared these people away.”

“Thought you don’t like making new enemies. Thought you’re all about talking things through.”

“And how are we supposed to talk to them,” Kade said, “when we can’t understand a word they say?”

After a mile or so of staring at the beast and arguing about it, we began to explore what was hooked in the sled all around us. Nothing much. A few old stoves, punched-hole crates, some long coils of chain, and bits of piping. I kicked loose a few rusted old hubcaps.

“What do they want with all this?” Zee asked.

“It don’t matter.” I knew the look that was on Alpha’s face when she said it. “What matters is where they’re taking us, and what they aim to do with us when they get there.”

“I’m guessing you’d have taken your chances with that gun,” Kade said. “Same as me.”

“Give it a rest,” I told him. “They could have killed us by now if that’s what they wanted.”

“Don’t mean they won’t later, bud.”

“You’re agreeing with him?” I couldn’t believe it. “They had arrows pointed at every one of our heads.”

I felt Crow arcing up against the nets beside me again, peering out at the night.

“What is it now?” I tried to get so I could see out there with him.

“Moon shadows,” he said. “Moving quick behind us.”

My eyes followed the frozen ridge as it curled back the way we had come from, a silvery-white slab peeling open the night. And I saw the flicker of shapes advancing. No torch beams needed now. All the Harvesters needed was stealth and speed.

“Harvest’s not gonna believe his luck,” Kade said. “The trees in a box and the bones of that beast. Nice work, bro. You’ve put us in a prime slot.”

“Harvest ain’t getting neither one,” I said. “We should warn these folk what’s coming.”

Kade struggled his arm loose and pointed at the strangers hauling us south. “And what good are their arrows against Harvest’s army?”

“Stop it.” Alpha grabbed his arm, shoved it back inside the nets. “We have to wait this one out.”

“You just want to sit here?” said Kade. “Get caught in the crossfire?”

“We won’t.” This was Zee. “Not if we stay hidden.”

“That’s right, hon.” Alpha was already working her way under the salvage. “Let the battle bring down the numbers on all sides but ours.”

We followed Alpha’s lead. Crawling away from the nets, wheedling our way down into the junk. Grabbing at the tin and plastic and old bits of rubber and pulling it around us, all of it sharp and flaky and cold.

The junk clinked and crashed as we scraped our way through it. The smell of damp mingled with a rotten PVC stink. But I kept working my way under the trash until I found the steel-cloaked tank, and I made sure it was good and buried under all that junk.

When the beast stopped moving and the sled quit sliding, everything got so quiet, I could hear the blood in my veins. There’s no mistaking that silence before the storm hits. When each second could be an hour, and each moment could be your last.

Then I heard voices. The scrabble of feet. There was a shriek, like a war cry, rising up in one direction. But from the other direction came the sound of guns.

Bullets clanged at the salvage around us, drilling into pieces of junk and shaking things loose. I heard the beast wailing. Its heavy legs stomping the ground. Then the bullets let up for a minute. Our sled must have gotten unhooked, because we were being shoved aside and the sled was toppling, everything spinning and crumpling until we rolled to a stop.

“Banyan,” yelled Alpha, somewhere above me now. “There’s a split in the nets.”

I struggled towards her voice, but I was all the way at the bottom of things, and the salvage was pinning me down.

“The tank,” I called. “Get the tank.”

I could hear Zee choking, spluttering on the loose rust. I’d thought I couldn’t get any lower, but she was further down still.

“Crow?” I shouted. “You see Zee?”

No answer.

“Damn it.” I couldn’t get up or down or even sideways. “Get this shit off me.”

“I’m out.” Alpha sounded far off. “They’re gone. In the distance. They’re chasing the Harvesters back.”

I hollered for Kade, hearing Zee wheezing worse with each breath. “Somebody help her.”

“I see the tank,” Alpha said. “It’s up here with me.”

The junk shifted, loosening a little. I got an arm out where I wanted it. Tried to claw myself free.

“Zee?” I hollered.

“Relax.” Kade’s voice came from higher up. “I have her.”

Yeah. Of course he did.

“Come on, hotshot,” he said as he helped pull me loose. “We’re just waiting on you.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For a moment, we couldn’t do a thing but stand there. We’d gotten the tank free of the nets and the salvage, and we needed to head south and be fast about it. But instead, we peered north, watching the troops with guns scatter in the wake of the rampaging beast.

“They can’t even make a dent,” Alpha said. And she was right—the bullets didn’t slow down that thing a damn bit. They couldn’t pierce its hide, and it just swung its snout in the air and reared up on its hind legs, then pressed on charging, horns low to the ground.

The cloaked mob sprinted behind the animal, protected by it, leaning out alongside it to let loose with their arrows and spears.

“Let’s move,” said Kade, and I grabbed the controller from under the tank, untwisting the wires and tapping at it to fire things up.

But nothing happened.

I flipped every switch, hammering the plastic with my fist.

“What’s the number?” asked Zee, her choked voice straining. Kade had his arms wrapped around her, muffling her coughs with his chest.

I yanked the panel open, not thinking. And the glass inside was pitch black and cold.

The white number blinked slow now. Nothing but zeros. Everything was switched off and shut down. No golden glow. No flash of red. So dark inside, I couldn’t even see the trees.

“What do we do?” I whispered, trying to peer through the glass.

I turned to Alpha. Crow. Kade and Zee.

But all of them stood like I stood. Staring at the tank like it was a thing that had died and snatched away every promise and every last dream.

The tank protects the microclimate. That’s what my mother had told me. Keep him safe, she’d said. Those were the last words that came out of her mouth.

And I hadn’t even made it to the Rift.

The mob was running back towards us now. Their arrows made a sucking sound as the spiked tips whipped through the air.

And those arrows could have taken down any one of us. They could have ripped us open or sliced us apart. But we hit the ice at the sound of them, taking a dive before the one thing that needed us to keep making a stand. And as the arrows pierced the hard ground around us, I heard one make a cracking sound above me.

Then there was an awful crunch.

That arrow had hit the tank, right where I’d left the steel panel hanging open, and I glanced up just as the glass shattered. The liquid inside exploding outward. Steam and spray like sparks in the night.