Rootless (16 page)

Five bodies full but the wagon zipped along pretty good. I wasn’t in much mood for talking and was glad to be behind the wheel again. Gave me something to focus on — plowing through the dirt clouds, keeping steady against the winds. Dodging the deep sand and ditches. This road led to Vega. It’d take us right through the corn, and right past the place where my father had been stolen away.

Took the whole day to reach the cornfields and when we did the sun was red behind them. The wind had mostly quit and we watched as the crops appeared on the horizon — a thin strip of yellow against the colors of evening sky.

No one said anything. We all just stared.

The plants stood dense and tall and ordered, running as far as we could see from north to south. They barely seemed to sway in the breeze.

When my father had taken me west, we’d stopped in the cornfields, camped on the side of the road beneath the crops. It was dead of winter, good crossing season, and Pop had dug in the snow and pulled up a plant, shown me roots that plugged right into the ground. He told me a tree’s roots could reach a mile deep, that the corn was nothing, just a fluke made by people who’d done nothing but play a trick on
nature. Except nature got the last laugh, I guess. If that’s what you can call a never-ending plague of locusts eating every damn thing in sight. I don’t know that you can. But those people had done such a good job of twisting the corn into something indestructible, here it still was, food and fuel and a gold mine for the ones who owned it.

The cornstalks became silhouetted black against the sky as the sun sank farther from view. And I pulled the wagon off to the side of the road, right at the point where the plains gave way to crops.

We stood out of the car, our feet in the dirt but our eyes on that dusty wall of corn ahead. The thirty-foot plants.

GenTech designed the corn to withstand frost and drought, bad winds and big temperatures. Hell, if the crops flooded, I reckon that corn could probably grow arms and swim. The one living thing the locusts couldn’t feast on, the one thing to grow back after the Darkness. And now nothing could kill it. All GenTech had to worry about was poachers, and it was hard to imagine the poachers even made a dent, burrowed in their underground colonies, hidden from the locusts and the agents, buried away from the sun.

These crops on the edge were full grown and just turning ripe. You could see the biggest cobs near the top, where the thick leaves rustled. Another week and GenTech would have the dusters down here, blading one crop and reseeding for the next.

You can’t steal the corn for planting, on account of the purple logo on the kernels. People steal the corn, they eat it. Hungry people. People like us.

“The perimeter’s the safest spot,” Crow said. “Locusts nest on the insides, keep to the core. And agents figure most folk ain’t got the balls to do their poaching out near the open.”

“So what’s the plan?” I said, annoyed at Crow being the expert.

“What plan?” Crow laughed. “All we need right now is a knife.”

Alpha had a blade stashed down her boot, so we pushed into the first rows of plants, looking for food, all pressed up in the cornstalks because they plant that stuff so damn close together. Beneath all the dust, the leaves were dark green and crunchy. I tapped at a stem and it made a hollow sound, like a tube of plastic. Hardly even felt like a living thing.

Alpha climbed Crow’s back and settled in on his shoulders, sawing her blade at the ears of corn, dust raining down as she worked. Crow had his big hands clasped on those pretty thighs of hers, holding her in place, and something about his fingers pressed tight on her skin made me feel all queasy inside.

“Can’t you go a little faster?” I called up at her.

“Going as fast as I can, bud.”

“You should keep watch, little man,” Crow said. “Out by the wagon. We’re not gonna spot no agents all bunched up in here.”

He was right, but it pissed me off to admit it. Pissed me off him calling me little man all the time, too. Little man? Son of a bitch. We can’t all be seven-foot watchers.

I forced my way back through the plants, their lousy leaves all covered in sand and whacking me in the face. And I was about to bust free when I stepped right on top of Sal.

Kid was on all fours, trying to eat his way through a stem, really gnawing at it but getting nowhere. “I’m so hungry,” he said, taking a break to stare up at me, spit hanging out of his mouth.

“Just don’t you get lost in here,” I said, stepping over him and pushing my way outside.

Hina hadn’t joined us in the cornfield. She was sat in the dirt, arms around her knees and her head bent on her shoulder. She was facing away from the sunset, staring east where the sky was nothing but black.

I sat down next to her, our backs to the corn.

I saw goose bumps on Hina’s shoulders and thought of taking my shirt off to give it to her, but I had the bark tied on my skin, so I left my shirt right where it was. She trembled a little in her thin top, and there was a distance in her eyes that reminded me of my father. That faraway look that said no matter where you were staring, you were seeing some whole different world.

“Gonna eat soon,” I said. Hina didn’t say anything but I thought I caught her glancing at the car. “I know,” I said. “Gonna be kind of cramped. Once we enter the cornfields there’s no going outside the wagon. But all goes well we should be through these crops in a day or so.”

“And then what?” she said, startling me. She never spoke enough for her voice to be something I got used to.

“Well, then I reckon we’re gonna find us your trees.”

She smiled, but it was a thin, bitter shape. “They’re not my trees,” she said, her hands going to her belly.

“You remembered anything?” I said.

“Like what?”

“Like about my old man.”

“Just bits and pieces.” She stared east again, scratching at her arms. “Guess I’m no good to anyone without the gypsy’s memory box.”

I watched her blink three times before a tear rolled out and ran down the side of her cheek. I thought I ought to say something. Do something. But I didn’t know what.

“You find your father,” Hina whispered. “Then you can ask him what happened.” I felt her lean against me, and I suddenly wished I’d kept that picture of Zee to give her, this woman with a brain like a broken sieve. But I just sat there, leaning against her, until the others came crashing back through the crops.

Hina went rigid and I stood, turning to watch Alpha come busting into the open with a whole stack of corn in her arms. Crow came after her, stupid big grin on his face.

“We gonna eat good tonight, people,” he boomed. “Miss Alpha ain’t a pirate no more. She’s a poacher.”

“Ready to head south?” Crow said as I jumped behind the wheel and fired up the wagon.

“South?”

“Follow the perimeter until you see the fourth service road. We’ll follow that west and start winding our way through the maze.”

“The least watched way.”

“That’s right, little man. Crow here gonna steer you right on through.”

I pulled off the road and the wagon sank into the sand as I pointed us south. I flicked the lights on, but Crow had me turn them off again.

“Just go slow,” he said, leaning over my shoulder and peering with me through the windshield. “We’ll see the service roads. Night as clear as this.”

We drove silent through the dark, nothing but the soft hum of the engine, and cruising south somehow felt like we were going downhill.

The first service road surprised me.

“It’s huge,” I said, studying the broad path cutting through the crops. Unpaved. Just packed dirt, the walls of corn towering on either side.

“Gotta be big enough for the dusters,” Crow said. “Get them in the right spots to start harvesting.”

“The dusters are that big?” I’d heard stories, but that service road was massive.

“Oh, they’re big,” said Crow. “Getting bigger every year.”

Hours passed. I counted two more turns, and at the fourth I cut right, pointing us west again.

“Here we go,” Crow said. “No more plains. Anyone needs to take a leak, you get one minute out of the car. Max. In fact, I need to take a piss, I might just be hanging out the back window, know what I mean? This here is locust country, people. Bad as it comes.”

We turned south. Then west. Then south again until we cut east. And by dawn we’d made so many damn turns that the only way I knew which direction we were heading was because the sun was coming back up.

“You get sleepy, I can drive.” Crow said, his head at my shoulder.

“I ain’t sleepy.”

“Just an offer, little man. No need to be so tough all the time.”

“You’re all heart. But you can stick it. It’s my wagon. And I’m the one who drives her.”

“Fine. I’ll stick to navigating.”

“Feels like we’re going in circles.”

“Aye,” Crow said. “Does feel that way, don’t it? Always does. Out here in the corn.”

“How the hell you end up working out here anyway?” I asked him.

“Oh, I worked all over.”

“As an agent?”

“Special agent, you might say.”

“Looking for trees?”

“Sort of. GenTech wants them trees bad, little man. They reckon there’s food growing in Zion.”

“And all that time you were looking for Zion, you ever heard of folk getting dragged off there? You heard of folk being chained to the trees?”

Crow stared out the window. “I saw the same picture you did.”

I watched the corn get its color as the sky grew light. Deeper into the fields, the crops got less dusty. More green.

“So how’d you end up with Frost?”

“Mister Frost had something I needed.”

“The tattoo.”

“Said if we found those trees, he’d split whatever GenTech gave us. Split it right down the middle.”

“And you trusted him?”

“Much as I trusted anyone,” Crow said. “And you could say I figured I’d have a little more leverage on old man Frost than with GenTech Corporation.”

“Didn’t work out too good, I guess.”

“It did and it didn’t. See, I’m not just aiming for the money. I want to bring me something back home.”

“Home?”

“To Niagara.”

“Thought you’d have given up being a warrior.”

“You born Soljah, little man, then you die part of the tribe.”

“So why’d you leave?” Sal said, from the back of the wagon. “If you just want to go back there.”

“You must know, I got myself thrown out of Waterfall City.”

“Banished,” I said. “Who’d have thought?”

“Bring a tree back, though,” Crow went on, “like a nice little fruit tree. I be back in the good graces then, no? Give the Soljahs something to trade besides water.”

“Reckon I’ll bring me one back to Old Orleans,” said Alpha. “An apple tree. Like in the stories.”

“You can’t go wasting apples in that shit hole,” Crow said, laughing.

Split up all the trees, I guess. That was the plan.

“What about you?” Crow said, fixing me with a look. “What you aiming to do?”

“He’s my father,” I said. “The man in the picture. The man chained in the trees.”

“Your daddy?”

“That’s right.”

Crow grinned. “And you don’t think he’s dead?”

“He ain’t dead in that picture.”

“True that,” Crow said. Then he pointed. “Here. Take this left.”

I made the turn and we started down a thinner service road, the dirt a little softer beneath the wheels.

And at the end of that road, not a hundred yards from us, towered a GenTech duster in all its glory.

I skidded the wagon to a halt, grinding up the dirt into a cloud all around us. The duster was as wide as the service road, twice as tall as the highest crops. And it wasn’t moving. Damn thing was just sitting there. Facing us.

The huge, rolling blades were rested on the ground, and behind the blades were rows of metal teeth that fed the compactor and the sorting boxes. And on top of it all, painted in GenTech purple, was the duster’s cockpit, windows bulging out the front of it like goggles on a steel face.

They’d seen us, of course. Whoever was up there. They were pointed toward us, staring right at us.

I cranked the wagon into reverse.

“Wait,” Crow said.

“For what?”

“Running ain’t gonna do us no good. And GenTech likes to keep its dusters moving. Check the grime on that thing.”

He was right. The machine was covered in a fine layer of dirt — the blades, the engine, even the windows. None of it looked like it’d moved in a while.

“Shift over,” Alpha said, climbing past Crow and squatting next to me. She had the telescope out, scanning the duster and the rest of the road. “Can’t see nothing else,” she said. “Nothing but that big hunk of steel.”

“I say we go closer,” Crow said. “See what we find.”

“What is it?” Sal was trying to squirm himself a view.

“Ain’t nothing,” I said, and Crow pushed the kid back down.

Alpha flipped the safety off her rifle and lowered her window a crack, just enough she could ease out the barrel of her gun. Then I popped the wagon back into gear and rolled slowly forward.

As we got closer, I could tell just how big the damn thing stood. The blades alone were taller than the wagon, and the duster was so wide I could barely squeeze between it and the wall of corn at the edge of the road. I steered through the gap, me and Crow and Alpha all staring at the engines and sorting boxes, peering up at the cockpit.

I pulled past the blades and teeth, brought us alongside the flank of the machine.

“Wait,” Alpha said. “Stop.”

“What do you see?”

“Up there.” She pointed at a ladder that stretched from the dirt all the way to the cockpit.

I stopped the wagon. Leaned across Alpha.

“You see it?” she said.

“Yeah. I see it.”

“Well, what is it then?” said Crow, trying to push his face at the window.

“It’s a body,” I said. Though I’m not sure you could really call it that. Just bones is what it was. Blood dried black and baked in the sun. Little tuft of hair, maybe. But no flesh. No organs. Poor bastard was
gripped on that ladder, and he’d been almost to the top of it, too. Almost back in the cockpit. Almost safe. But almost ain’t enough. Not out here. Not with the locusts.

“And that,” said Crow. “Is why we do not leave the vehicle.”

“No shit,” whispered Alpha. She glanced across at me, more fear in her eyes than she’d shown before. She pulled her gun down and cranked the window back in place.

I turned the wagon around the back of the duster, heading for the next crossroads.

“Which way now?” I said to Crow.

“Stop,” he said.

“What?”

“Stop. Here. Behind the engines.”

“Why? What’d you see?”

“Agents,” Crow said. “Right behind us.”

I spun the wagon back around, pulled in behind the bulk of the duster. Then I cut the engine.

“You think they’re following us?” Alpha said.

“Most likely,” said Crow. “Unless you seen someone else out here to follow.”

“Maybe they’re just checking on the duster,” I said. “That could make sense.”

“Well, I say we ambush ’em.” Alpha peered up at the duster. “We got the high ground, after all.”

“That means getting out of the wagon,” I said.

“You want to sit here and wait, bud, you can go right ahead.” And with that, Alpha popped her door open and leapt out of the car.

Me and Crow just stared at her as she strapped the rifle on her back and began crawling her way up the duster, hoisting herself atop the rear wheels, then working her hands and boots along the engine.

“Told you.” Crow shook his head. “Girl’s a firecracker. A real live wire.”

“Not much of a plan,” I said.

“No it isn’t.”

“Guess today’s your lucky day, though.”

“How’s that?”

I threw my door open and climbed outside. “’Cause you get to drive.”

They say you can hear locusts a moment before you see them. A big buzzing rush of noise. The sound, I guess, of their countless tiny wings. So that was good. Because right now everything was silent. Except for the sound of my breathing as I hauled my way up that grimy machine.

Alpha was ahead of me, almost to the cockpit, clambering her way along a section of purple tubing, carefully remaining blocked from the other side. I scrambled to the top of the engine, getting a good look down at the sorting units — cobs in one, husks and stems in the other. Cleanly done. Efficient.

I was pretty high now, a good forty feet up. And I could see out above the rows of plants, see the waves of crops shimmering in every direction until they just merged with the sky.

“Take my hand,” Alpha whispered. She was just above me, hanging off the back of the cockpit, and she gripped my wrist and hauled me
alongside her. We stood with our feet on a thin metal ledge, our hands grabbing hold of anything we could find.

“You see them?” I whispered.

“Yeah. Here.” She pulled me past her so I could poke my head around the cockpit. And there they were. Agents.

There were three of them. Two men and a woman. Dust masks on, even here in the cornfields where the dirt can’t blow so free. They were dressed identical — dark purple suits with the GenTech logo plastered all over in tiny white letters, as if the cloth had caught some disease. They matched their vehicle, too. A small round pod with fat purple tires and dark tinted windows, it sat fifty yards behind them. I watched the agents kneel and bend at the dirt, studying the tracks. Our tracks.

“You think there’s anyone left in the car?” I whispered, swinging myself back behind the cockpit.

“Hard to say. One more, maybe.”

“Well, you’re the pirate.”

Alpha grinned at me. “Here’s how it goes down. Even if there’s no one in their vehicle, we gotta immobilize it, in case they make it back there and try to get away.”

“All right.”

“So we wait till the agents are close enough for you, then you start shooting. I’ll take out their tires with the rifle.”

“Right.”

“You got it?”

“Got it.”

She worked her way into position, angling her rifle till she was all set and ready. Then she motioned me behind her and I kept low as I
climbed around to the edge of the cockpit, holding on with one hand and laying out my pistol with the other.

The agents were pointing at our tracks and jabbing around at the corn, talking over something. Then the two men started for the duster. And the woman began jogging back to their pod.

“I’ll take homegirl,” Alpha whispered.

The agents pointed up at the cockpit, and for a moment I thought they’d seen us. My heart stopped but then thudded back into action — they were staring at the remains of the field hand, the bones must’ve been hanging right below me, just down the ladder on the far side.

“They gotta be in range,” Alpha said. And she was right. They got much closer and I’d lose sight of them behind the blades. But I was trembling now, and not out of fear. I told myself it was like the Harvester I’d plugged with the nail gun. But it didn’t feel the same. That was a war zone, and out here was so quiet. Those agents had no idea I was aiming to steal away their last breath.

“Banyan,” Alpha hissed. I clicked the safety off, aimed the gun right at the nearest agent’s chest, my heart pumping cold blood through my veins. I closed my eyes and pictured Pop needing me, his body wound up in chains and cuffed to the trees, and there was a gun at my father’s head and he was starving to death. Just like my mother had starved so many years before.

I squeezed the trigger. I’d barely pulled it tight when the agent slumped forward and hit the ground. The second guy pulled his weapon and took a shot at me, the bullet clanging off the side of the cockpit. Awful damn close.

I ducked back. Alpha was firing at their vehicle and the noise of her gun seemed to shake my brain loose. I needed to get back up. Take another shot. But suddenly I wasn’t real worried about it. Because there, beneath the boom of Alpha’s rifle and the thud of bullets on steel, there was another sound. A terrible sound.

The sound of locusts.