The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 14

I staggered and fell through thin bits of ice, slipping on the cold rocks beneath.

“Alpha,” I whispered, like her name was tears I was crying. I sank to my knees, but there were hands on me, lifting me.

“Help,” Zee said. “I can’t find Crow.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We found Crow facedown in the water, and we spun him upright and hauled him to shore. Gray clouds crept across the sky, and the cold wind moaned. The three of us were shivering, but Crow weren’t shaking at all. Hell, he was hardly even breathing.

Zee shoved at his guts till water came heaving up out of him, then we pushed him onto his side, his eyes still shut down and fluttery, his chest moving slow, and his lips gone blue.

“His legs,” said Kade. “Look at his legs.”

The rags Crow had wound around his tree-legs had come all undone in the water, and Kade was picking at the knots and grooves of the bark. He pinched water out of the wood with his fingers. “GenTech?” he whispered, his green eyes wide and his mouth wide open. “They did this?”

“Get your lousy hand off him,” I said.

“It’s wood, though. Real wood?”

“I said leave it.” I went to shove at him, but he gripped my wrist with his fingers. It was like his one hand held the strength of two.

“Careful.” Kade stank worse than ever of old sweat and hunger, and he tugged me closer, clamping down on my wrist as if to snap off my hand. “I’m all the help you’ve got left.”

It was like a switch got flipped inside me.

“What did you do to her?” I whispered.

“What?”

“She had that gun before you did. I know that she did.”

“Banyan.” Zee tried to stop me. But it was too late. I swung my fist at Kade’s head, breaking his grip. Then I dragged him by his ears and smashed his skull on the rocks.

I pinned my knees on his chest and beat his face bloody. Zee quit holding Crow and started dragging at me, shouting, but I just shoved her aside.

“What did you do to her?” I screamed at Kade, spit flying out of my mouth.

His eyes bulged as I throttled him. He was fighting back with his one hand, wrestling me off him, trying to get up.

“I’ll kill you.” I roared the words in his face. But then there was Zee’s voice behind me.

“I saw her, Banyan. She came for the children. In the hull.”

I let Kade pull away from me.

“It all happened so fast,” Zee said. “We were sinking.”

“The water,” I whispered, staggering backwards and spinning back to the lake. She’d been below me, in the water. I could have looked for her. I could have jumped aboard that boat even though it was sinking. But I didn’t. Not once I had my hands on those trees.

“Please,” Zee said. Maybe she was sobbing. Hell, I don’t even know. I had no juice left. I was shaking and crying and couldn’t think straight. And I couldn’t look no more at that city. Not if my girl was cold and heavy beneath it. Lost in the depths I could not fathom.

I glanced at Zee, and she seemed to cower below me. As if I were a stranger. Like I was no longer Banyan and would have to be somebody else.

The trees. That’s what I’d gone after. That was the path I had picked.

I splashed back into the water, and the cold slapped at me as I reached the tank. The control pad’s wires were tangled and frozen, and I worked them loose with numb fingers, slowly untying the knots. Then the tank moved forward, when I punched the right buttons. It ground up onto the shore, and there were bones as well as rocks on this beach. Skulls burst under the tank’s heavy wheels, and the sound mingled with the sound of dirty water lapping at the shore, the muted sounds of the dead.

I pulled Kade off the crusty ground and handed him the sub gun. His face was frosted and bleeding. A handsome face I’d made ugly and weak.

Zee scrambled between us as Kade checked the gun. “We have to work together,” she said. “We have to stick close.”

Kade spat a wad of dark blood on the rocks.

“You owe me a beating,” I told him as he propped the gun on his hip. “Put a hole in my head if you want to.”

“What?” His voice cracked. “And let you off easy?” He was holding onto the gun with one hand and trying to wipe the blood off his face with his stump.

“We’ll put Crow on the tank,” Zee said, tugging at me. She stared into my eyes like she was wanting to find me in them. “I’m sorry, Banyan. I’m so sorry. I know you loved her so much.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“I know she was special. Strong.” Zee blinked up at me. “And I know what it feels like.”

“Please shut the hell up.”

“I lost my mother.” Her voice snapped in the middle. “I lost Sal.”

“This ain’t like losing some fake little brother.”

“He was more of a brother to me than you.”

“You can’t say that. I weren’t even there. I didn’t even know you.”

“But you’re here now, and I need you. And when you lose someone, you have to bring the rest close.”

“The rest?” I would have laughed at her if I hadn’t been crying.

“You can lean on me.”

“I don’t want no one to lean on. All that happens is they leave in the end.”

I was blank as I’d ever been. Like a blind man blessed with sight for one day only, and now night had fallen too soon.

“Think about Crow,” Zee said quietly. “Think about me.”

“You’re wasting your time with him.” Kade was studying the angle of the sun and the shadows. Same way that Alpha would have done it. And he kept sniffling and snuffling, like he was dead set not to cry. That was Kade. Our damned fearless leader. He pointed the sub gun at the slope of frozen mud. “South is over these hills, and we have to start moving. If we’re to honor those that fell behind.”

I broke free of Zee’s grip and stumbled over to the tank, my fingers shoved under my armpits, trying to thaw out my hands before I set them to work. Then I scraped at the panel till I pried the steel open.

There was a crack down the far side of the glass, near the top, and the tank had lost about a third of its liquid, and the damn red lights still flashed at the gold and the green. And there at the bottom, the dwindled remains of Pop’s torso had gotten tumbled and mashed, the saplings unruly and too bunched together.

“What about the counter?” Zee said, and I stepped back from the glass so she could see it. “Nearly two hundred thousand,” she said, which meant nearly two hundred thousand and not nearly enough.

“And what happens at zero?” Kade was still smearing the blood off his face with his fingerless stump. “If the charge runs out?”

“We don’t know.” Zee glanced at me as she said it.

“Sure we do,” I muttered. “Everything we fought for gets taken away.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The only thing was to head south, and so that’s what we did. Never stopping. Never resting. We just made soggy strides through the crusted mud, working our way up from the shoreline, heading for the frosted hills. Zee steered the tank as we trudged along beside it, and me and Kade had to keep making sure Crow didn’t fall off.