The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 58

I peered up at the blackness that hid the way out. And below us was the gnashing of weapons and the flashing of steel. A mob raging and the water rising. A hurricane trapped in a hole. I hung there for a second, staring down at the frenzy, like I was caught between two versions of me.

“Crow,” I shouted. And this time there was no question. No hesitation.

There was only something that I had to do.

I unhitched the straps from my shoulders, hoisted the pack from my back. And I didn’t look up as I held up that bundle. I just waited till Crow had it and the weight disappeared.

“Take care of him,” I said, staring down at the war we had started. An army of poachers against an army of one.

“All right, man,” Crow said. “You take care of you.”

And then he was gone, racing up the ladders.

But I wasn’t leaving no one behind.

I slid down a few sections of scaffold, grabbed onto a rope from the pulley, and leapt off the side. Swinging out through darkness. Sailing back into the fight.

I landed in the thick of things and ended up on a poacher’s back, and he snarled beneath me. I wrestled him for the shovel he was holding.

I wrestled him, and I won.

“Alpha,” I screamed. But too much was happening. I thrashed around, trying to keep the scaffold close enough so I’d know where it was.

The water was coming thick and fast, up to my knees now. Folks were yelling and running. Trying to grab up buckets of corn.

Then gunshots cracked in the air above us.

“Bring him to me,” Harvest called, firing another shot high over the storm of bodies. “Find the boy and bring him. Now.”

I crouched down in the water, scooped up a fist of mud, and smeared it on my face. In the dark and the dirt, I could be just another poacher, I reckoned. So I stood back up, tightened my grip on the shovel. Things were getting quiet now. Folks were still scrambling about, but they were too frightened to make much noise.

Son of a bitch had a gun. Total game-changer. And I reckoned the poachers might rustle up more firearms—they’d sure had guns when I’d run into them topside.

I glanced up, hoping Crow had almost made it to freedom. Hoping he’d made it out into the corn.

“Tree builder,” Harvest called. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your friend?”

I stopped breathing.

“Took me a moment.” Harvest’s voice was clear as it was cruel. “But I remember the face of anyone who tries to kill me. And how could I forget this would-be sniper from the crater? Dirty red hair and angry green eyes.”

So Harvest had recognized Kade. And now he was going to try to bait me with the life of some poacher who’d betrayed us. Some punk who’d lied to us.

But Kade was also the struggler who’d hauled me up the side of the rocks and saved my life at the Rift.

“Let him go,” I hollered, shouting real loud so that Harvest could find me. I was the one he wanted. And I couldn’t hide in the dark while he put a gun to Kade’s head.

But all of a sudden, the darkness was ending. The lights flashed back on the walls and burned bright all around us. A blast of electrics, like the last gasp of a world coming back to life.

And that weren’t the only thing that happened.

There was a trumpeting sound. One more miracle. Because it weren’t just the trees that we’d found, after all.

Namo came crashing out of a side tunnel like a rumble of thunder. He had his tusks pointed straight ahead and his head bowed low. And riding on his back, her machete held high and her face splattered with blood, was Alpha.

I spotted Harvest through the crowd, maybe twenty yards from me. His deformed face unable to contain its confusion as it wrinkled and clenched. He had Kade pinned next to him with one hand, and his other hand gripped a revolver—a crummy old world weapon, not Harvest’s usual style, though this gun could kill Kade all the same.

The lights pulsed on the walls, illuminating the poachers’ faces, full of shock and wonder, their eyes stretched wide with fear, as Namo galloped onward, surging through the mob and the muck, splashing through the water, Alpha waving her machete, her battle cry melding with the wail of the beast.

Harvest trained the gun on the mammoth, and Alpha pinned herself down in the thick fur, holding on tight. He let off a shot, then another. Emptying his gun of its bullets. Each bullet cracking and booming and bouncing right off.

“Kade,” I screamed, my voice lost in the sound of the stampede. He was grappling with Harvest as the mammoth bore down on them.

“Move,” Alpha shouted, but I knew Kade weren’t moving. There was no way he could let that bastard run.

Kade punched Harvest in the gut and sent him spinning. Then he clutched Harvest with his one hand, holding him steady, as Namo skewered a tusk straight through the king’s chest.

The mammoth roared as he lifted his head, and when he ground to a halt, he reared up and threw Harvest’s body high in the air.

Harvest landed in a heap, and the crowd cleared away, fleeing from the dead man and the unchained beast.

But I’d seen Harvest killed before. I’d seen him shot dead by Jawbone. At least, that’s what I’d thought I had seen. I ran through the mud and the water, shoving my way through the bodies. I reached Namo and stroked his side, letting him know it was me that was there. Then I crept up to the mangled heap, turned Harvest over. His chest had been gouged open. His lungs were pierced and crushed. And his jagged face rippled with agony. Every part of him shaking as he choked on one last breath.

Kade knelt beside me with his hand clenched in a fist, as if he were still holding Harvest. As if he were throttling him and meant to never quit watching him die.

“You fools.” Harvest coughed and shuddered. His scarred features all ruptured with pain. “Now nothing can stand in GenTech’s way. They will take the trees. And they will crush you. All of you.”

The light drained from his eyes, and then he was still. But it had been there—the spark, like the scars, that let me know it had really been him.

I spun up to face Alpha. The shovel still clamped in my hand.

“He’s gone,” I said.

“Told you we’d kill him.”

“No.” I pointed the shovel up at the scaffold. “I mean Crow.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Kade called an end to the fighting. He rounded up what was left of the Harvesters, and he put the poachers to work, patching the water lines and digging ditches to drain the flood. He had Namo led away, then took me and Alpha before the Council, and there we huddled around the fire pit, facing the anguished looks on their sunken faces.

“Crow’s gone,” Kade said. “Killed six entrance guards and took one of Harvest’s speeders. Disappeared through the fields.”

“He’ll go east,” said Baxter. “Head for Niagara.”

“Moves fast when he gets his hands on those trees.” Kade stared at me. “Doesn’t he?”

“It’s all right,” I told them. “He’ll keep them safe.”

“Yes.” Orlic’s face was a thorny scowl below his cornhusk crown. “I’m sure he’ll deliver them safely to the Soljahs.”

He was pissed, of course. We’d killed his old friend from the cornfields, and Crow had made off with the saplings. But these poachers couldn’t punish me and Alpha. They knew it. And I knew it.

We were the only hope they had left.