The Rift - Howard Chris - Страница 43

The slab was creaking and crunching. Cars were pitching and sliding across the road. I heard the creatures wailing. Felt their snatching fingers and teeth. I spun to face them. Fired a bullet. But they were pouring all around me now. There weren’t enough bullets, and there weren’t enough time.

“Namo,” someone was screaming, “get on Namo.”

I glimpsed Crow up ahead, holding the mammoth steady. Kade hauling himself up its side.

And there was Alpha. Kicking her way through the pile of ravenous freaks that surrounded her. Then she was reaching the mammoth, climbing up on it, and Namo took off moving again.

I felt hands at my thigh. My back. Pulling me under. They were on the pack. At my neck. Screeching in my ears.

I raised up the sub gun and let that thing loose. Plugging rotten flesh with lead and steel and no longer counting my bullets. And when I got clear for a second, I bolted as fast as I could.

I leapt from car roof to car roof, trying to catch up to Namo and the others. But the mammoth was full on charging ahead, clearing cars out of his way with his tusks. He was too fast. I couldn’t reach him. And as he shoved the wreckage into piles behind him, it only slowed me down.

Then the road was shaking. Tearing and splitting. I could feel it wrenching apart beneath me. Separating.

And I was on the wrong side.

The slab shattered into a hundred pieces. The lava spinning us like a river, turning everything around. I watched Namo race across a piece of road turned to rubble. And then he leapt in the air with the others holding on tight.

He landed just high enough on the black cliffs at the far side of the lava. And he’d done it. They were safe.

But I was stranded.

And I had the trees.

Best thing going for me was I’d ended up on one of the bigger chunks of tarmac. Worst thing was the amount of company I had.

The creatures began to circle me. Snarling. Creeping closer. A pack of more than two dozen, hungry for one last meal. I aimed the barrel of the sub gun at them. But they kept tightening around me. Cinching in like a goddamn noose. They were fifteen feet away. Twelve feet. Ten.

I fired a shot at one that looked extra nasty. I fired another shot. And then that was it. I clicked the trigger, but the gun made a hollow sound. Empty.

Just act like you still got bullets, I told myself. Just act like you got plenty left.

But even if I could get through these creatures, how was I supposed to make it to the cliffs?

I glanced across the lava, spotted my girl and that beautiful beast. The mammoth that could leap fifteen feet through the air. The mammoth that had charged on to safety. Because there they all were. Safe. And there was no way they could help me now.

Think. Come on, Banyan. Think.

There had to be a way off this rock. Had to be a way to get free.

Me and you, Pop, I thought, feeling the pack on my shoulders. This is what it comes down to—the two of us together. Just like the years we’d spent drifting in our rusty wagon.

Wait. I stared at the steel remains of old cars around me.

That was it. That had to be it.

As I took off running, the creatures quit their formation, and they howled and shrieked as they closed in. But I hoisted the sub gun by the barrel and swung it around, waving it in circles like a club. I nailed the first creature in the jaws and sent it flying. I scattered two more as I sprinted to the center of this asphalt island I was stranded on.

Didn’t have much time to make my selection. Just had to count on dumb luck. So I hit the side of a sedan and pried the door open. I kicked at the freaks behind me. Lashed out with the butt of the gun. And then, when I got clear for a second, I pulled the door wide and piled into the car.

I landed in seats made of leather, snapped the door shut behind me. But those things were all pressed at the windows. They were smeared at the windshield and gripped on the roof.

I slid into the driver’s seat, squashing the saplings against my back. I was fumbling around on the floor. The dash. But the keys were right there in the ignition.

So now I’d see how good this salvage could do.

I cranked the key. But nothing. Just the screaming and scratches at the windows. And I couldn’t look at those wretched faces. The gaping mouths and bloated eyeballs.

I cranked the engine, again and again. Hell, my old wagon sometimes needed plenty of times to get going. This weren’t no different, I told myself. The damn thing at least had to be well rested.

Felt like the hundredth time I turned the key, the car buzzed and sputtered. And the next time, I eased the engine into a growl.

Then I pumped the accelerator. Floored it. And damned if a song didn’t crackle out of the dashboard. Some jazzy number. And the howling creatures clashed with the happy tones of the music. And all of it clashed with the fear that was beating my heart.

I swung the car left. Then right. Smashing the other vehicles out of my way. And then I sped forward. The freaks on the windshield could barely hold on. I flipped on the wipers. Still swerving. Trying to loosen their grip. Doing anything I could to get a view and aim for the edge. Faster. Forward.

And then we took off.

That sedan never made it to the cliffs. Got close, though. Got more than halfway.

And then it nosedived into the molten roar.

I was already scrambling backward. I crawled across the seats and busted a hole through the rear windshield. Then I inched out and staggered on the tail end of that old sedan as its front end sank into the Rift.

The music gurgled and was gone beneath me. And I had seconds left before I went down the same way.

On the cliffs, a dozen feet too far, Alpha and Crow were screaming and pointing. And Kade was scrambling around, like he was searching for something to throw out to me.

I unhooked the bag then. Got it loose from my shoulders. I was ready to throw those saplings to as safe a spot as I could. And I would have gone down without them, though I’d have gone down screaming.

Only I didn’t toss that bag to the cliffs that were too high, and too far. Because as my legs trembled and the lava swamped up red and closer, just inches from my boots, I held the pack over my head, and damned if something didn’t reach out to retrieve me.

Namo.

The mammoth we’d traded for. The beast we’d dragged into hell. He perched his front legs on the cliff edge and reached down with his long, shaggy trunk, scraping the top of the pack and making the thing come unraveled so the saplings poked out in the fumes. Then Namo curled his trunk till he’d wound it tight to those saplings, and I held onto the pack and the clump of trees inside as the mammoth hoisted us into the air.

Not a moment too soon. And no moment lasted longer. As I floated up, the car disappeared beneath me with a juicy shower of sparks.

But then Namo was in trouble. The cliff edge was giving out beneath him, and he stumbled. Hunching backwards. And as he reared up on his hind legs, he lost his grip on me and the trees.

I ended up with one hand on the rocks and one holding the pack of saplings. My feet slip-slapping beneath me. Heat blowing up off the lava, making my grip on the cliff sweaty and loose.

I stared at the others, up on the remaining safe ledge above. Not too far, I reckoned. I could probably claw up there—if it weren’t for this fistful of trees.

But it wasn’t just Namo that could reach down to me now. I saw Alpha, climbing down and leaning towards me. Stretching and straining.

“The trees,” she hollered. “Throw me the trees.”

I swung up the pack. High enough she could reach it. And as she pulled it to safety, I held on, letting her pull me up, too—until the pack started ripping. If it tore too wide, the saplings would come loose, fall out.