The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 39

“Can you walk?” Alpha asked, and Crow let out a breath as if he’d been saving it up because it might be his last.

“I can’t even stand,” he whimpered. And I knew there weren’t no way he could. His legs were just busted up bits of bark. The shards all mashed and dangled, revealing tan bits of cracked wood. Any good the Healer had done for him, it weren’t doing no good anymore.

I watched as Alpha tried to work a jagged piece of rock from the ground, and when she finally got it loose, she took the rock over to the flank of the mammoth.

“Can you keep him still?” she asked me.

I pushed myself up, my body like one big bruise, and went over to join her, glancing at the mammoth’s face. I wondered if he already missed the rest of his kin. Did he realize he was stuck with us now, trapped in the bowels of the earth?

“What you gonna do?” I said, watching Alpha get close to him with the rock gripped in her fist. “I don’t want this thing kicking at me.”

“He’s got a name,” she said. “They called him Namo.”

“All right, then. I don’t want Namo kicking at me.” I stared into the beast’s strange, small eyes, trying not to pay too much attention to those big tusks of his. I listened to the sound of his breathing. “The ones that named you are most likely dead,” I said quietly. “I guess we got that in common.”

“He’s not gonna kick you,” Alpha said. “Just hold him steady.”

I kept looking him in the eyes and patting the side of his leg as Alpha wiped the gray mud from his belly and cut off a long swatch of fur. He let out a little rumbling moan.

“Weren’t so bad, was it?” she said. Then she took the thick purple threads over to Crow and bound up his legs, splinting them back together and tying the coarse strands in knots. So now Crow’s legs were all-GenTech, I reckoned. Bits of tree and bits of mammoth, all wound up as one.

“They’ll heal up,” Alpha said to him. “Be good as new.”

“And what do I do now? Just wait in this hole to get better?”

“You get your ass up there.” She pointed at the top of the mammoth. “We’re bringing him with us. Made ourselves a trade, didn’t we?”

So we started south again. Heading for the heat, just like the Speaker had told me. And it was hot, all right. Got hotter every twist we made through the tunnels. Felt like we were heading straight into hell.

We had Zee’s body on top of the mammoth, all tied up in its fur. And Crow had to ride up there beside my dead sister. I don’t know how he faced it. I’d barely been able to help get her lifted off the ground.

Just four of us now. Five, if you counted Namo. Five pairs of eyes in the shadows. And six saplings stuffed in a pack.

The straps of that pack cut me like a knife, as if I carried more than the weight of the trees on my shoulders. As if I carried all those who’d already died for them, too. All the strugglers GenTech had taken and killed in Vega or on Promise Island, all the survivors from the boat who had drowned in the lake. And how many Kalliq lives had been lost, on account of these saplings and the forest they might one day become?

I remembered the Healer’s face turning lifeless. Etsa, she’d said her name was. As if that was important. As if I needed the name of every woman who died in my arms. I thought of my mother, and Hina. And over and over, I thought about Zee.

They’d all died for the same reason.

Because of the last trees on earth.

And because of me?

No. I might have set things in motion, busting the trees off that island, but it weren’t my fault my sister was dead. It was more Crow’s fault, and Kade’s. They’d been the ones gathering everyone together, making tricks and bargains, desperate to race off once again.

Well, they got what they wanted. Here we were, groping our way south.

I tried to figure out exactly what it was I had promised my sister. Because I’d never been much of a brother to her. Never took care of her the way that I should. So I could at least try to make amends, I reckoned. As if you can do right by someone after they’re dead and gone.

And what was it she’d told me? That we all had to stick together. Yeah. That was her angle. Problem was, there was only one person I could trust.

Alpha staggered before me, leading the way through the catacombs, her skin tinted a pale green by the moss on the walls. She was the only one who’d stood by me. And the other two could rot down here, for all I cared. They’d both betrayed me. The one-handed field hand and the legless warrior. They’d made me break off that sapling, and for all we knew, Harvest had his hands on that tree I’d torn loose.

I relived the shock of when Pop’s blood had sprayed out, and wondered for a moment if his blood had been feeding the trees in some way, helping them get started. But I somehow knew that the blood had just been the last drops of my old man being human.

And that blood being spilled had been inevitable, thanks to Kade and Crow. They’d ruined everything—them and that parasite Harvest with his army of copies. They’d destroyed the one place I’d ever wanted to stay.

So what promise did I have to keep above all others? What was my purpose? To take care of the last trees. I’d sworn it to my mother. I’d sworn it to Zee.

But I also had a cure to find now. A remedy to save Alpha.

The tunnels we traveled down were high and wide enough that Namo could just make it through. But apart from their size, there weren’t nothing good I could say about them.

Spiked rocks hung from the ceiling, the ground was steaming and sharp, and it got hotter with every damn step. Not like the blistering sun or the scorching winds on the plains. This was some new kind of heat I’d not known before. You could feel it on your insides. Couldn’t help but breathe it in and cough it back up.

The algae on the walls glimmered. Giving off just enough light to see the emptiness and ugliness and the distance ahead. I scraped up fistfuls of the moss and shoved it in the pack with the saplings, checking the thin little trees were still coiled up snug, damp with the healing mud. Figured the moss was the only thing we’d see to eat for a while, but I didn’t eat none of it just then. God help the man who’s hungry when he has to bury his own flesh and blood.

“Never thought I’d miss snow,” said Alpha as we stumbled and sweated.

“The Speaker said there’s mountains down here.” I tried to remember the icy white world we’d left behind us, as if the memory might cool me down.

“Under the ground?” She was too worn out to sound too surprised.

“Said follow the heat, then follow the howl, and then the furthest peak points us home.”

“Home?” Kade said the word like it made his teeth ache. But then he quickened his pace, shoving past us and pushing ahead.

“Got some nerve,” I muttered. “Acting like he’s the only one gets to mourn her.”

“He was sweet on her,” Alpha said. “She was sweet on him, too.”

“’Cause he tricked her.”

“Guy has a big heart, bud. Like you.”

“Just a smooth talker.”

“You can be pretty smooth on occasion.”

“I don’t want you comparing me to him.”

“Forget it,” she said.

“He turned them against me.”

“I don’t know.”

“She’d have wanted to stay. If it weren’t for his meddling. That place was what she always wanted to find.”

“But she cared for him. Maybe that can change what you think is important.”

“He just used her. I’m telling you. He just knows the right things to say.”

I quit talking. The air had got even hotter and even harder to breathe, and Alpha peeled back her dirty vest, rubbing at the old wound GenTech had sealed up, the bit of bark that had saved her life when they’d stitched it into her.

“You all right?” I said, my heart thumping hard at the memory of the dead woman in that tin coffin. The woman who’d been all sealed up and solid wood.