The Rift - Howard Chris (читать книги бесплатно полностью .txt) 📗

“You can make it,” I said to Zee when Kade’s cry had become a whimper, and my own words got frothy as the tears streamed down my face. “Look at this mud all around you. It’ll heal you.”

“I can feel it,” she whispered. “Prickles.”

“It healed me up,” I said, but I’d been gouged by a couple of arrows, and Zee had been drilled full of lead.

Crow crawled up on his belly, Alpha helping him claw his way close. And Zee reached her hand to Crow’s face, her fingers shaking. She wiped at the mud on his cheeks, tracing the edge of a faint scar.

“I’ll miss you,” she whispered.

“I shouldn’t have let Frost take you out of that house,” Crow said, and it was as if I’d never before heard his real voice at all.

“But I’ve seen so much.” Zee turned to me, choking up blood, and I lifted her, holding her gently against me as Kade rolled up in a ball beside us.

“You have to promise,” she said, as if scraping the words from the roof of her mouth. “Promise you’ll take care of them.”

Her lungs were gurgling, swollen and shut.

“You know that I will,” I told her.

“But you’ll have to give them up,” she said. “In the end.”

I squeezed her little body.

“Promise me, Banyan. You can’t keep them. You have to use them to bind folk together.”

“You’re coming with us,” I said.

“No.” She pulled her head back so she could see me. And she made a smile so sad that it shredded my heart. “I have loved you, my brother.”

“Please.”

“Even if you didn’t know.”

“Please don’t go.”

“I’m sorry we weren’t small together,” she whispered.

“Don’t leave me.”

“And I’m sorry I won’t see you grow old.”

“But Zee. I’m already so alone.”

“No,” she croaked. “No, you’re not.”

She coughed up more blood, and I felt it warm on my chest.

“Promise me,” she whispered. “That you won’t keep them hidden.” She was sinking against me now. “You have to trust people, Banyan.”

“I promise,” I told her.

Zee’s eyes darted to Alpha. Then she rolled her head towards Kade.

And then her body turned crooked and crumpled.

Her bones were just a shell. Something that would rot. This sister I’d kept a stranger and never loved like I should.

And what had I done to deserve her saying she loved me? I’d never been there. Never known her. Hell, I didn’t even deserve to make her a promise. I’d been all set to say goodbye and hunker down in that crater, and she’d been ready to head south without me, and I would have just stood back and watched her go.

But now there’d be no more leaving and no more loving, no more her wishing I was wiser or rolling her eyes at me being foolish, no more the feeling of her head on my shoulder, or the sight of her long hair dancing in the wind.

“We should have gone,” Kade said, his voice full of anger as he uncoiled himself from the ground. “We should have gone, instead of arguing. Instead of you wasting our time.”

“Stop,” I said.

“She’d still be here.”

“You can’t do that.”

“If you had just come along and not been so selfish.”

I let his words hang in the air, like I was letting them be true.

“Leave it, Kade,” Alpha said. “Think about what she was saying. The four of us have to work together, or it’ll all be for nothing.”

“It’s already for nothing.” He slammed his stumped arm against the wall.

“Not if we loved her,” I whispered.

He spun around, glaring down at me. “What do you know about love?”

“Go easy,” said Crow.

“Your love is selfish. It’s just as selfish as you.”

“Let him be,” Crow said louder. “Miss Zee was his sister.”

“But he never acted like it. And what sort of plan is this now?” Kade grabbed his sub gun, shaking the mud out of the barrel, then feeding in the last of his ammo, uncoiling the half-empty belt of bullets from around his waist.

“The Speaker said it’s the way,” I said quietly.

“You messed up, man. You messed it up. All of it. And she’s dead because of you.”

I bolted up and grabbed him by his shoulders. Pressed him hard against the wall. “And what was she to you?”

“Someone I chose. Not someone that got forced on me.”

Chunks of mud dripped onto us, smacking on the ground and spraying across the walls.

I let go of Kade’s shoulders.

He was right. I never chose Zee for my sister. And loving her might have meant even more on account of that.

Yet all I could do now was bury her, and remember her. Or try to forget. But I would not accept the blame for her death.

“You did this,” I said to Kade. “You were the ones called that meeting. Distracting the whole tribe. Getting them all in one place.”

“Leave it,” Alpha said, coming between us. “Both of you. She died because of Harvest. And because of something she believed.”

“What?” I said. “That we all have to work together?”

“It’s people like Harvest that prove her wrong. Not people like you. And not people like Kade.”

He pushed past me and stumbled down the tunnel. I peered after him, toward the waves of heat that waited through the catacombs beyond.

“Please, Banyan.” Alpha put her arms around me. “You have to stay strong. I know it’s hard. I know it hurts like it won’t ever stop. I had a sister of my own, remember? So I know it. The feeling. Having Zee around reminded me what that was like.”

“She didn’t remind me of anyone.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“We can’t let her just sit here.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want her to die for nothing.”

“We’ll find Harvest,” Alpha said. “If he’s still alive, we’ll find him.”

“I don’t care about Harvest.”

“We’ll kill him.”

I shook my head. “I want the killing to stop.”

“But we gotta fight for that to happen. Can’t just run and hide and hope to stay hidden. We’ll have to make a stand in the end.”

“In the end.” My legs gave out as my voice cracked, and I sank down onto my knees, peering up at Alpha. “Maybe when it’s all over, you and me could settle down someplace, and I could build something for her. A statue. Something Zee would have liked.”

“Course you will.” Alpha held my face to her belly, and I felt the cool piece of bark that was stitched on her skin. “We’ll do it together.”

But you’ll die, too, I thought. In the spring.

And I reckoned there was only one way to stop the people I loved dying for nothing. “Me and you get south, we head to Old Orleans,” I whispered. “We start the trees growing, make all this death mean something. Then we gather your pirates to protect our trees from GenTech and people like Harvest. We gather all the pirates, from all over the plains.”

“What about these two?” Alpha glanced down the tunnel at Kade, where he leaned against the wall, sobbing. Then she looked at Crow, splayed out on the ground beside Zee.

“They were gonna walk away from me,” I said. “Why should I care what they do?”

CHAPTER THIRTY

I watched Crow through the shadows, mangled up and twisted. His tree-legs were splintered beneath him, looking less like legs than ever. They just looked like a sloppy old mess.

“Ready to move?” Alpha said, kneeling beside him.

I sat against the glowing walls, peering up at the mud and moss, half wondering if someone might shove their way down here to join us. But the other half of me wondered if that crater had tumbled in on itself entirely, leaving everyone in my Zion dead.