Rootless - Howard Chris. Страница 40

We found Crow and carried him out to the deck so he could see the water. I didn’t ask how they’d stitched him back together, because I already had a pretty good idea.

But why? That’s what I wanted to know. What were they keeping us alive for? And what was so important that we’d been taken so far?

“You worked for them,” I said to Crow as the three of us huddled together near the railing, shivering and watching the spray off the water. “You worked for GenTech. So what the hell do you think they’re doing?”

Crow moved his head so he was staring away from me, as if any one direction held something the others didn’t show.

“I worked for them,” he said, first words I’d heard out the mouth of his new body. “I was security. The lower ranks started asking too many questions. I was supposed to shut them up.”

“Too many questions? About what?”

“About what was happening.”

I just stared at him. Blank.

“This.” Crow pointed with his chin. “All this.”

“What is this?”

“It’s what happens to those that get taken. Project Zion, GenTech calls it.”

“And what the hell’s that?”

“I don’t know.” Crow shrugged. “I was supposed to stop the questions. Not find the answers. But I heard GenTech was desperate to find them some trees. And I uncovered a legend about a forest and a woman that could point its direction. So I started digging. GenTech tried to shut me down. They captured me, drugged me. But I escaped. Kept on digging, following clues. Till I tracked the woman down. Till I found that tattoo.”

“And you think the trees are across the water?” I said. “I mean, what if they are? What if they’re out here?”

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then I think GenTech should’ve charged me a ticket. Instead of slicing me to pieces.”

“Think about it,” I said. “Project Zion.”

“Zion. Trees. You’re talking about heaven, boy. We be heading to hell.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Could be one’s really just the same as the other.”

I watched clumps of ice appear on the water. And I pictured my father, chained to a tree trunk, captured in a forest beneath a clear blue sky.

This was the boat. It had to be.

“My old man’s out here somewhere,” I said, and I turned to Alpha. “Your mother might be, too. Harvest was part of this whole operation.”

Alpha just looked at Crow and then looked back out at the water.

“What?” I said.

“She probably thinks you should give it a rest.”

“Well, it ain’t spring yet. And I ain’t giving in now.”

The chunks of ice got bigger and began to stick up real high. The boat wound between the frozen mounds, the jagged white peaks, and it crushed right through the small stuff.

We were wrapped tight in our plastic sheets and bundled together, watching the future drift into view. But the ice clustered up, thicker and thicker.

And at first we almost didn’t see the island.

The island was wide and tall, and just past the brown shore were hills covered in snow. As we got nearer, a siren rose up off the boat and kept wailing so loud we had to plug up our ears.

“I’m too cold,” mouthed Alpha, standing to shuffle back inside. The wind had picked up and the air was sleety. But I couldn’t turn away from the island.

This was it, I reckoned. End of the line.

Got close and I could see that the island was floating. It had grown right out of a giant wad of trash. Plastic and metal and salvage, all wound up and mashed together in the water. A mile of scrap. A mountain of it. Bits of junk sticking up on the shoreline and jutting out of the snowy hills.

But on the beaches, you could see the trash had begun dissolving into earth again. So I reckoned that meant the island was ancient. Old enough to turn back into dirt.

Got closer still and I could see people on the ridgeline, climbing up toward us from the other side of the hills. They stood there, waiting on us. And as the boat drifted to the shore, I could see they were all dressed in purple, leaving no doubt as to whose island this was.

“Let’s go in,” Crow said, his voice as bitter as the rest of him. I hoisted him up with me, our teeth chattering.

We huddled inside the cargo hold with the rest of the prisoners, and it wasn’t long before the boat let out a thud and slammed to a stop. People stumbled and fell, but I stayed on my feet, grabbing Alpha, and clutching Crow so he was held tight between us.

One by one the lights blinked out, until everything was black. Then the agents cranked open the doors to the deck and we began squeezing outside, all shoved together, one big wriggling mob.

I gripped Alpha’s hand and I had Crow on my back. But we couldn’t move all tied together like that — the crowd surged past and tore us apart. I lost Alpha between the bodies, and an agent swooped behind me, prying Crow’s arms from my shoulders and dragging him away.

I tried to keep my head up, to suck in some air. And I peered around for Alpha but the shaved heads bobbing just all looked the same.

The agents had run a ramp off the deck and down onto the frozen shoreline, and I waited and pushed until it was my turn to skid down, my feet numb and slippery in the snow.

I landed in a pile on the plastic beach, amid crusty old bottles and boxes. Up on the hillside, the agents were staring down at us, wrapped in their purple fuzz, their faces buried inside huge hoods. They watched as we shivered and splashed in the puddles.

A rough path led up the hill, and it wasn’t long before we were forced to climb it, spiked clubs prodding us forward, voices shouting for us to move. I remember staring up at the sky as the snow whirled, and I wanted to try not walking and see what happened. But my bare feet kept shuffling, staggering onward until I was at the top of the hill and staring down at a massive bio vat on the other side, steel walls rumbling as the innards worked corn into juice, sooty fumes greasing the sky.

“Banyan.”

It was Alpha, calling from down the path behind me. I turned, tried to wait for her. But then another voice was calling my name.

I stared at the agents on the ridgeline, and one of them was running toward me — the same agent who was shouting for me, telling me to wait. And then the agent was pulling down her hood, and her face burst into the cold air like it might melt everything around her. Her breath steamed and her brown skin was flushed red.

I just stood there. Froze to the snow as the bodies rushed past. And as Alpha reached me, she took my hand, and stared like I stared as Zee ran across the hill toward us.

Chaos thawed out the whole freezing lot of us. Prisoners stumbled and fell as the agents tried to keep everything moving. But things weren’t going to keep moving. The crowd ground to a standstill, just a pile of half-naked bodies stacked in the snow. The agents waved their rifles and swung their clubs, but woven through their commands, I could still hear Zee’s voice, shouting and straining.

“Stop,” she was calling. “Bring him to me. Bring him to me.”

“Who is she?” Alpha whispered as she pushed in close, our plastic sheets clacking, sticky in the cold. But before I could answer, an agent had his hands on me and another was swiping the path clear with a club.

“Wait,” I tried to tell them as they yanked me off the trail. “Stop.”

I thrashed around, trying to find Alpha. I saw her come for me, but the agent swung his club and Alpha’s blood burst bright and sprayed at the snow. I screamed for her, stretched my fingers out toward where she’d been. Then I saw her, still on her feet, trudging away with her head down and her arm bleeding. She was keeping on. Giving up. And I lost sight of her through the trampling mob.