The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 50

But then Crow slowed the beast all the way down, and he was twisting up at something. Fidgeting at the ceiling.

“Come on,” I said. “Quit fooling around. And quit making so much noise.”

“Still think we’re under the Steel Cities?” Crow threw down a small clump of something he’d yanked out of the ceiling.

I bent down, scrabbling in the dirt till I had my hands on it.

“Roots,” Crow said. “Reaching down from above us. We ain’t under no Steel Cities. We be under the corn.”

I peered at the dirt walls. The crumbly ceiling. Everything seemed to shake in the throbbing white lights. Then I stared at the mess of roots in my fists. Felt like tangled strips of plastic.

I remembered Pop showing me the corn’s roots, when we’d been together in the cornfields, his hands digging into frozen dirt to reveal the wrinkled fingers of GenTech’s crop. And it struck me that Pop had always been careful to show me the ends of all things—the Surge that rips at the coasts and keeps us landlocked, the twisted tips of GenTech’s twisted plants, groping at the earth. Pop had wanted me to know I had nowhere else to go, so I’d better try to make this world better. Ain’t no grass greener, he’d once told me. Since there ain’t no grass left at all.

And now here we were, under the ground, and under the cornfields that kept the GenTech Empire fueled and well fed. The fields that run down the middle of everything, from up near the Rift all the way to the South Wall. The towering rows of thirty-foot plants and the huge purple dusters—steel machines blading down one crop and reseeding for the next. Up above us would be agents and field hands and the place Kade had told me about, the Stacks, a cornhusk kingdom full of junky slaves.

“If we’re under the cornfields,” said Alpha, “then this is a GenTech tunnel.”

“Irrigation.” Kade tapped at the iron pipe. “The corn hardly needs much water, but it still uses some.”

“You think it’s some kind of maintenance passage?” I turned to him. “I mean, you was a field hand. Where do you think it comes out?”

Kade shrugged. “It probably runs up somewhere.”

“It’ll put us right in the thick of things,” said Alpha. “Surrounded by GenTech.”

“Surrounded by plants, maybe.” Kade frowned. “The crops could give us cover.”

“It’s winter,” I said. “Too cold for the locusts.”

Crow stared down at us. “There be no point heading backwards.”

“We move then.” Alpha fixed me with a look. Fear in her eyes. “Quiet and quick. Ain’t got one weapon between us.”

“We have him, though.” I pointed at the mammoth, and Namo curled his shaggy trunk towards my hand. “His hide’s damn near bulletproof. And those tusks can do some damage.”

“But then what happens? If we do find a way out?” Alpha reached up to Namo’s belly, stroked his fur. “We take him out in the corn?”

She was right to sound worried. What would we do with the mammoth? Could hardly sneak him out through the fields. And even if we did, there weren’t no way to ride him across the plains. Might as well drag a big old flag over our heads and wait for GenTech agents to hunt our ass down.

Cross that bridge when we come to it, though. That’s what I told myself. Because before we could worry about Namo, we had to find an end to this tunnel. I glanced at the water pipe, wondering where it led to. I shielded my eyes from the flash of the lantern.

But then I quit moving at all.

I held up my hand to the others, held myself still.

Up ahead, I’d heard voices. And now there were footsteps. Creeping towards us through the dirt.

All I could think was how we should have Namo in front of us. We had to get behind him and use him like a shield.

I grabbed Alpha. Trying so hard to be quiet as I shoved her behind me. Then I turned to Kade. Reached for him, too.

But Kade wouldn’t move.

He just stood there, his green eyes glittery, his whole body seeming to pulse in the busted white lights. I reached for his arm. Not sure what was happening. But he pulled it away from me.

And then he swung his stumped arm at me like a club.

He used it as a weapon. Clobbering me with it, like he was hammering me into the ground. And when I hit the dirt, Kade started grabbing at me with his hand. No, not at me—at the pack on my back. He was hoisting it off me. Yanking the straps from my shoulders. And as the footsteps pounded closer, the whole tunnel seemed to shake and spin.

I was face down in the dirt with blood in my eyes, and behind me, I could hear Namo wailing and Crow cursing. I rolled up and saw Alpha standing above me, her legs wide and fists clenched.

Kade was bounding down the tunnel away from us, his head straight and high. He had the pack held above him. And he was shaking it, spilling the saplings out of the plastic and into the light.

There was confusion for a moment. Hesitation on the faces of the approaching crowd.

“Kade?” one of them said, coming forward to grasp his hand. And then they all gathered around him, talking. Giving him a little space as he stood there, cradling the saplings to his chest.

And then there was cheering. Voices raised, loud and righteous. Shocked. But happy as a damn jubilee. And these weren’t field hands.

They weren’t GenTech agents, neither.

I knew what they were from their cornhusk clothes and their underground faces.

The crowd moved closer, and I heard them gasp at Namo, and still freaking out at the trees. And then they were descending on us. Jabbing at Alpha with hacksaws and knives and forcing her backwards. And Kade was above me, sticking his foot on my chest, a machete gripped in his fist.

“I trusted you,” I whispered, peering up at him.

“Did you, though?” Kade’s mouth hung open, his teeth all sharp and spitty. And then that poacher kicked my head so hard, my brain snapped loose as my eyes snapped shut.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The ropes were made of woven cornhusks. I could feel them, crunchy and rough, biting into my skin as they strapped my ankles together and bound my wrists behind my head.

I blinked my eyes wide in the half-light. Rolled off my back and onto my side, wobbled there for a second. Then I hit the dirt face first.

I spat the grime from my teeth. Tried to arc up and stare around the dusty cell. Every part of me was aching and cracked, all dried blood and bruises. It hurt just to move my eyeballs around.

The cell was brown and black shadows, but there was a brightness spilling in from the far end, and I rolled myself towards it. Slowly. Painfully. Finally squirming up against the iron bars of a door sealed shut with chains and padlocks.

I pressed my head against the bars and peered out at a long, empty passageway, where flickering white lights twitched on the walls. I spied other doorways. More sets of bars.

“Alpha,” I called out, my voice all raspy, my throat swollen.

“That you, little man?” Crow’s voice seemed to come from a cell halfway down the passage.

“Where’s Alpha?” I moaned.

“In here someplace. Maybe. ’Less that bastard has her for questioning.”

“Questioning?” I whispered. I banged my head on the bars. What questions could Kade have for us? We’d been straight with him, hadn’t we? He’d been the one covering his tracks with lies.

“I’m so hungry,” I called out. My guts were so empty, it made me dizzy, and that made everything feel even worse.