The Rift - Howard Chris - Страница 3

CHAPTER TWO

I put my hands on the railing next to Crow’s and stood with him at the bow, trying not to think about how deep the lake was, or how being no good at swimming makes you so good at drowning.

“How’s the south looking?” I said, but got nothing from him.

Back when we were trying to find the trees and my father, there were plenty of times I’d have done anything to shut Crow’s big mouth. In those days, most things he’d said had seemed like a lie. But that was before we’d become bound together, I reckon. Because now, his silence left me hollow.

“You’re doing an awful lot of watching for someone who’s all done being a watcher.”

I’d made this joke before, and Crow closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head just the littlest bit. Reckoned that meant I was getting to him, though. Just had to keep on trying.

Even stooped, he towered above me. A bona fide giant, more than ten-foot tall now, on account of GenTech growing him his new pair of legs. His face had healed pretty good, too. The scars had faded on his dark skin. Still there, but not so bad, considering the burns and blisters he’d earned when Harvest’s slave ship had exploded into flames.

“Didn’t do a damn bit of good, waltzing into that cargo hold,” I said. “I knew it was a waste of time. Some punk with one hand’s the ringleader. Kade, they call him. Told him to watch out, or you’d head in there and kick his ass.”

Finally, Crow turned to look down at me.

“Guess he weren’t real scared of that prospect.” There was no color in his voice, it was thin and bloodless, and when he cocked his head at the noise spilling out of the cargo hold, I tried to interrupt, but Crow weren’t done yet. “And why should he worry? One hand’s better than no legs.”

“You got legs,” I said, staring down at the lake. Anything but see the look in Crow’s eyes.

“Sure I do. Big pair of wooden legs I can’t use right.”

“You’re standing, ain’t you?” I saw him grip tighter at the railing as I said it. “Hell, you used them before. Scampered all the way up the hill and off of that island.”

“One time being better than never?”

“You’ll get it back.”

“Zee put you up to this?”

“What?”

“Always coming up here and pestering me?”

As the wind picked up, Crow wobbled against it, and he seemed to age a hundred years in one second. His fists clenched even tighter on the railing, and his voice became an angry whisper, like he was ashamed to even be speaking at all. “Even if I appreciated it, I don’t need it, Banyan. I do not need it at all.”

“So tell me what you do need.”

“Nothing you can give.”

I studied the horizon, searching for GenTech boats or a glimpse of land, so used to seeing nothing at all.

“You think you’re the only one who lost something on that island?” I said. “I lost the father I’d come looking for, and a mother I never even knew I had.”

“Well, I be the only one who ended up a cripple. I’m the only one who’s a freak.” Crow spat the words at me, then glared down at the thick tree-legs that had been forged to his hips. He’d covered them with strips of purple fuzz, hiding the knotted bark, the gray-brown grooves and ridges, and all across the fabric, the GenTech logo was stitched in tiny white letters, as if claiming ownership of their handiwork, and ownership of Crow.

“Freak of nature,” I said. “So? You’re one of a kind.”

“Not nature, Banyan. Science.” Looked like Crow had tears brewing on his eyeballs, but I told myself it was only the wind.

“They fixed you with that science. Best that they could.”

“Aye. After they tore me in two.”

“You’ll be sprinting come springtime, you’ll see.”

“Spring, you say?” He shook his head. “Just get me to Niagara, little man. That all I be asking.”

“Waterfall City, huh.” Mightn’t be a bad idea, I reckoned. The Rastas there had held onto some power, on account of all the fresh water they had to barter. Some said they even traded water to GenTech, forming an uneasy truce with the same folk they’d once battled real fierce. And agents kept out of Niagara, for the most part, anyways, so it mightn’t be a bad place to plant us those saplings. We could keep them hidden there, amid the rivers and rocks. And even if the locusts found them, my mother had said these new trees weren’t something the swarms could go eating, she’d said they were even stronger than the plants in GenTech’s cornfields. So maybe someday, we’d watch our trees grow tall and see the branches bend down towards us, full of apples, limbs heavy with fruit.

Crow rubbed a hand at the scar on the back of his neck, where he’d once been burned with the red lion, the mark of the Soljah warriors who call Niagara home. “Sure, man. Waterfall City. Get me there, broken or not.”

“Must be nice to have someplace to get back to,” I said, staring at all the emptiness that lay south.

I sat in the cockpit and pieced together a small tree out of purple clips of wire, hung with pierced bits of white plastic I’d cut to the shapes of leaves. Thing was small, not a foot high, but it felt good to sit there and twist at it, even though I had to ignore the hollering in the cargo hold right beneath me the whole damn time.

That noise was a constant reminder of everything I wanted to forget—the locked-up survivors, the fear of never finding land, and the fear of running into GenTech. But I tried to put it all out of my mind and just focus on the wire and plastic I’d spread across the control panels, draping my little tree building project over all the gizmos and dials we didn’t know what to do with. Boat had started steering itself once we’d hit open water, plowing south like it knew where it wanted to go. And even if we’d been able to change our direction, south seemed like the only place to head.

“Why’d you make it purple?” Alpha leaned over me, her chest pressed at my shoulder, her breath steaming.

“All the color I got.” I tugged at the GenTech wires, resting my head against my girl as the cries leached up from the cargo hold. “I sure wish to hell they would shut the hell up.”

“I know, bud. Me, too.”

“You think Zee’s right about telling them? Letting them out?”

“No. I think your sister’s too soft for her own good.”

“I don’t know.” I thought about what Zee did to that old bastard Frost, back on Promise Island. “You’ve not seen her with a nail gun.”

“Crow say why he’s giving us the moody?” asked Alpha, and we watched him on the bow through the glass eyes of the cockpit, as water sprayed off the lake and soaked him to the bone.

“Just said he’s a cripple.” A piece of wire broke off in my hand. “Thinks he’s some kind of freak.”

“He is pretty freaky-looking.”

“Don’t let him catch you saying it.”

“But look at the size of him.” Alpha slumped into a chair beside me, and that meant I was all done looking at Crow, because Alpha was by far the best thing to look at, just like she was by far the best way of forgetting all the pain that filled up this boat.

She stretched out her legs, propping her tall boots on the control panel, her thighs like pale gold beneath her purple rags and old bandages, and I felt sped up just at the sight of her. We’d fooled around up in the gun tower, when we could sneak up there and get away from Zee, but each time had just left me more frazzled and my lips more dry. I didn’t know where to go next with it. And how the hell could I? My old man had barely mentioned women at all. He made sure I didn’t stare too long at the ones we’d built trees for. Avert your eyes, he’d say. The good ones can burn you worse than the bad. But that was about all I got from him, all those years on the road. Still, seeing as what happened between him and my mother, I can’t say as I’m surprised.

“So where do you think we’ll put them?” Alpha said, swinging her boots off the control panel and resting them in my lap. Her skin had been tinged a whitish sort of green at first, after I’d unplugged her from GenTech’s cables, but that was one thing that had gone back to normal.