The Rift - Howard Chris - Страница 25

A second wave of arrows whistled and thunked. A third wave. A fourth. I staggered to my feet, grabbing for the tank, then shoving it before me. Sliding it. Forcing it to move.

An arrow drilled my lower back, and the pain made me feel forty pounds lighter. I could hear Alpha and the others. Begging me to quit. But I was trying to find cover in the rocks at the top of the cliffs, and I weren’t quitting for no one.

I blocked any more arrows from reaching the saplings, plugging up the hole. I felt an arrow pierce my thigh, and my whole body shuddered. I stumbled. Lost my grip for a moment. The next arrow clipped my neck, and a warmth gushed down my shoulder.

Then Kade was there, trying to grab the tank away from me.

“What are you doing?” he screamed, howling through the night.

But it was too late. I was at the cliff’s edge, grasping the slippery walls of the box and pulling it closer.

And the ice began cracking beneath me.

All I could see was a tumble and spin. Icy shrapnel. Gravel and spray. I bounced in the air and shot down the slope, arrows snapping off my back and my leg, the bladed tips hammering inside me as I skidded and thumped and my blood squeezed and spilled.

I could hear the squeak of my body on the ice, the whoosh of the world shrieking past me. I kept grabbing for something. Kept finding nothing at all.

And the broken steel box bounced with me. I could feel it. Hear it. As I stared up at the moon and the ridge, all so far above.

I clawed at the ice. Slowed but kept sliding. Dropping inside this funnel from out of the sky, this gaping mouth made of stone that drank up the starlight. And then I was pouring down the throat of the mountains. The way growing steeper. I stretched my arms like they were wings. And damned if that steel box didn’t spin right past me, as if my old man was leading the way.

At the base of the slope was a hole, and we slipped quick inside it. Like we’d been snatched and chewed and now faced being swallowed.

No more sting of ice or rubble. Just black and blur and the wind in my lungs. And it was over too quick to even see what was coming. I glimpsed a splash of silver. A smear of gray. And then I slapped and sank, and the busted remains of the tank gouged into the mud, right beside me.

I scraped my face from the sludge. Heard voices coming towards me. I could hear the squelch of footsteps as the mud bubbled and stank and rose up past my shoulders and sucked at my neck.

As I tried to pull free of the slime, the voices groped closer, everything slip-slapping with the stagger of feet.

And the last thing I saw was the broken box sinking. From out of the ruptured steel reached the gnarled bark of Pop’s hand, and it was like he was trying to offer me a fistful of flowers. Because sprouting from his stubbled palm, swaying in the half-light, uncurled one of the last seven saplings. Its buds bruised and splattered. Its stem sapped of strength.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Felt like a week I lay dying. Perhaps longer than that. The sound of the world, like the beat of distant drums, rustled and shook until it cracked me open again. And when it did, I came to with a gasp.

Steam filled my nostrils, turning my head sour. I called out, and someone restrained me, fluttering at me and shushing me as the earth cradled my bones.

I felt heat flashing beneath my back and my legs. Rested my skull and let the heat seep into my brain. Then I blinked at the steam that drifted above me, as hazy as everything I held inside.

“Rest,” a voice said, drawing out the word like it was sucking it dry. I twisted and turned to see who was speaking. A woman touched my forehead to stop me from moving, shifting her position so her eyes could meet mine.

She looked like she’d been whittled from out of the ground. Her skin was dark brown and wind burned, and her long black hair was shiny as it was straight.

I took in every sight, every detail. Even the bitter stink of the steam felt good on my tongue.

“Where am I?” I murmured.

“Safe,” the woman said, again stretching out the word. Her voice was about as pretty as she was.

“The trees,” I said, and my own voice sounded foreign to me. Guess that’s what happens when you find yourself coming back from the dead.

“Rest,” she said again.

“They’re safe?” I whispered. She placed a hand over my eyelids, her skin rough, and soon I was rolling in a sleep too deep for remembering, and far too deep for dreams.

No day. No night. No moon and no sun. When I awoke, all I saw was the rock walls and the steam shrouded around me. I pushed at the edges of darkness, forcing my eyes to stay open, but then I’d drift again and wallow in sleep.

Came through in the end, though. Hunger gnawed at my belly. Questions gnawed at my mind. And finally I was able to get my elbows beneath me and lever my head off the ground.

I peered around the cave, and there weren’t no one there. I almost called out, then thought better of it. I ran a hand to my lower back, where one of the arrows had pierced me, then to the gash one had left on my neck. Something was wrapped at my throat—a rubbery peel of mud, slimy and twisted. But the wound on my back was packed full of a crusty powder, and I scratched it with my nails.

My stiff legs bent with an uproar. Moving even a little made every little thing hurt. Back of my thigh, where the second arrow had gouged me, had been packed with the same dry dirt as the wound on my back. And the old GenTech rags had been torn off my bones, so I was naked as the forgotten day I was born.

But I was warm. Hot, even. The rocks toasted my feet and baked the cave walls all around me, the steam billowing in waves. I checked the back of my thigh again, scraping further at the caked-dry mud. And beneath the surface, the mud was oozing and silver. The same gray mud I’d fallen into. The mud I’d seen the steel box sinking beneath.

I studied the rest of my frail body. It was stretched out thinner than it ever had been—which is saying something when your whole life’s been spent hungry. It was like the cold weeks had eaten away at me. I could see the beat of my heart where it pulsed through my chest.

Slowly, I made my way to a flinty wall and hung there, leaning against the stone. Then I edged my way around the cave, clutching at the rocks and sucking in the steam, until I found an opening to a passage where the air was clearer.

The passage traveled in a straight line but bent upwards, and I felt every inch of the slope, my legs trembling, my hands clutching the walls for support.

Could hear the end of the passage before I could see it. Voices echoed towards me—loud voices, calling out to one another in the foreign tongue I’d heard at the top of the ridge. The same language the woman had used, when she’d been jabbing at me with her spear and I’d been staring at the beautiful beast in the moonlight.

Memories bounced inside my skull and crashed against one another. I pictured that massive animal, thick with purple fur, rampaging through the night amid gunshots and arrows. And I remembered falling. Pop’s broken tank beside me, in pieces in the mud.

I’d left them on the peaks—my girl, my sister, and my friend. They’d been surrounded by strangers’ arrows and Harvest’s guns.

I thought of Kade, trying to wrestle the tank away at the cliff’s edge, trying to work his way into Zee’s affections, and always trying to weave things the way he wanted, spinning you a part of some yarn with his words.