The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 37

My father, my mother, and now Zee. I’d lost all the family I’d been given.

But through the carnage, I saw Kade standing over Zee’s body, still working the sub gun. Still screaming and fighting. I saw Alpha dragging Crow away from the battle. Still running. Still trying.

And I knew the closer you get to nothing, the more you have to lose.

I shouldered the pack as I rushed down into the battle. But before I could reach the fight, a mass of rock fell and detonated into a thousand screaming pieces, wiping everything out.

I fell back, blind in the dust, rock shrapnel piercing my skin. And as things cleared, the break in the bullets persisted—so I kept low, fumbling forward. I spotted shadows in the blur and crawled towards them.

“Where’s Zee?” I said, finding Kade and pulling him upright. He lifted his one hand, and Zee’s fingers were clasped tight in his.

I leaned over her. Could hear her chest wheezing and gurgling on some whole new level. She was coughing up blood, her eyes fluttering in a silent howl.

“Can you stand?” I asked Kade.

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s the gun?” I scrabbled around for it. The dust was starting to clear, and pretty soon we’d be out in the open, and the bullets would be flying once more.

“Alpha,” I called out, though it meant giving away our position. Reckon I just needed to know she was there.

No answer came back.

Beneath the debris, I felt the tip of the gun, warm on my fingers. I started to grab at it, but then I felt something thumping my back.

I glanced up. Behind me. Peering through the haze. And damned if it weren’t a mammoth, swinging its shaggy trunk at my head.

It was the one we’d first seen, the one I’d patted, high on that ridge in the starlight. I’d have recognized that thing anywhere, and now it kept shoving at me, getting me to move out of the way.

Then it reached its trunk around Zee and lifted her real gentle, putting her up on its back.

“Holy shit,” I said. “It’s helping.”

But Kade weren’t listening. He was already climbing up there, too.

“Come on,” he said, straddling the mammoth’s hump and yanking a fistful of fur till the thing turned and trotted in a circle around me.

I snatched up the sub gun, then leapt for the side of the beast and clambered my way up.

And before I’d got used to sitting on the thing, it was charging through the rubble in an all out stampede.

“There.” I pointed as we emerged from the dust. Alpha was wrestling a Harvester for his gun, and Crow was pulling himself out from under the rocks beside them.

I aimed the sub gun at the back of the Harvester’s head. Had been awhile since I’d killed a man. Not near long enough.

I squeezed the trigger, took him out. And Alpha’s eyes grew wide when she saw us. She pulled up Crow as we charged towards them, and together they jumped for the mammoth, then wrestled their way to the top.

I pulled them close, had Alpha help hold Zee in place. Kade was aiming the mammoth for one of the wide tunnel entrances, a passage that hadn’t yet been blocked by the crumbling walls.

“Hold up,” I hollered. “That ain’t the right way.”

“And where do you think we’re going?” he yelled back.

“We gotta go down.” I pointed at the mud pit. “In there.”

“Through the pit?” Alpha screamed.

“It’s the only way. The Speaker told me. It’s the way south.”

The Harvesters had us surrounded, closing in, their bullets shrieking through the air.

“Let’s do it,” Crow said, and Kade turned the mammoth around just as the crater began to collapse all around us.

We plunged on through the hail of bullets, the spinning slabs and the steam.

“Hold on,” Kade yelled. And for a second, it felt like we were flying.

But then we dropped and splattered, and the world turned quiet as we sank down inside the mud.

PART THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The hot silver mud seized us and squeezed us and shut down every scream. My flesh pressed flat against my bones, slime oozing into my ears and under my eyelids, jamming up into my nose.

I gripped at the mammoth’s fur as the beast drifted lower, pulling us deeper into the earth, as if sucking us inside a wound.

And I felt weightless, as the mud turned even heavier and sealed up around me, but I kept my grip on the mammoth, still dropping with it, lower and lower, until we weren’t drowning, we were falling.

I was out in the air.

I let go of the mammoth and braced myself, then landed in a heap, splashing into a puddle and cracking my shoulder on hard stone. I rolled onto my side, smearing the mud off my face and feeling at the pack full of saplings, still bundled and coiled and strapped to my back.

The mammoth staggered to its feet and towered there, eyes blinking from muddy sockets, its long fur matted and dripping with filth. And I pictured the mammoth I’d seen sacrificed, the beast of burden I’d seen drown. Only it hadn’t drowned at all. Not if it had ended up down here.

As my eyes got used to the dim light, I realized how much I could see. The walls were covered with the green algae I’d become accustomed to in the Kalliq’s caves, but down here, that moss glowed as bright as the North Lights had shone in the sky. I stared up at the thick gray mud we’d pushed through, and it was sealing back in on itself with a squelch, big globs splattering around us, patches of moss crusted across the mud like tiny hands trying to hold it in place.

“Zee,” I called, spitting the muck from my teeth. The others groaned and cursed in the gloom, and Alpha crawled up beside me, coated in slime.

“Where’s my sister?” I whispered.

“She’s here,” Kade said, and I followed the broken sound of his voice.

When I found him, I put my hand on his shoulder, and he was shuddering so fierce, I could barely hold on. As he pulled away from Zee, I knelt down beside her. The mud had mingled with the blood on her skin, silver and red, swirling in the mossy green glow of the walls. Zee’s eyes were wide open and so white and twitchy, and they somehow reminded me of that old world camera she’d once had, as if she were snapping pictures of me with her eyeballs, freezing these moments in the back of her brain.

“He did good, didn’t he?” she said, her voice like rusty metal, and I realized she was staring at the mammoth, behind me.

“Yeah,” I said. “So did you.”

Kade let out a sob, and I gripped tighter on his shoulder, trying to quit my own tears from falling, because I didn’t want this to be the last way Zee saw me. I reckoned I’d already let the girl down too many times.

“I was wrong,” Zee croaked.

“You were brave.”

“Where’s Crow?” she asked.

“I’ll find him,” Alpha said, and I heard her shuffle away.

Zee closed her eyes, and now Kade was howling beside her, just letting all the pain inside of him loose. It was such a wretched sound. Wild and fierce, but fragile. Like his insides were caught on fire, his spine full of smoke.