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

I had to let go.

“Give me your hand, bro.” Kade reached down. And just when I had nothing else to hold onto, I gripped hold of that bony stump at the end of his arm.

And then Kade was hauling me up the last part of the cliff, and I was scrabbling with my feet at the rocks till we were all the way clear.

I rolled away from the edge and onto my back, and I stared up at the faces squeezed together above me, Namo nudging at my chest with his trunk.

“For Zee,” Kade whispered, and I tried to say something to thank him. I reached my hand up and gripped his arm again. I nodded and swallowed. And in the end, the only words I could muster were the same two he’d used.

“For Zee.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I felt like a lump of coal, but they dragged me up, and we huddled there for a moment, peering back into the painful glow, watching the remnants of the old world city and old world machinery. And soon it would fall, I thought, as I watched some of the wretched creatures crawl back inside their concrete shells. Soon it’d burn and be fuel to start over.

“This way,” Alpha called, strapping the pack of trees to her back.

She’d found a tunnel. And as soon as we’d hustled after her and gotten Namo squeezed into the narrow passage, the air got cooler, softer. Easier to breathe.

We rushed on, fast as we could stagger, Namo bumping through the passage and bouncing Crow at the ceiling. And we were all sucking down air as the air grew sweeter. No more smoke. No more steam.

As the tunnel coiled through the rock, it kept getting cooler. And like the Speaker had told me—we’d followed the heat, and now we followed the howl.

It started as just a hum in the distance. But as we traveled further, the passage grew broader and the air began to rush towards us. Calling to us. Spinning at the craggy ceiling.

The passage opened up wider and higher until it became an endless cavern. Thing seemed to stretch on forever. And light spilled in up ahead. Rays of white and beams of blue, making it easier to see now.

Once we had plenty of room to maneuver, Namo started to saunter around at a pretty good trot. So we loaded him up, all of us climbing aboard and bundled together, holding on as the mammoth hurried through the open cavern, traveling beneath the roaring winds.

Was a lonesome place. The walls high and distant. The wind rushing above us, swirling and wailing and pounding like waves. The ceiling pushed further from the floor of the cavern—a half-mile high, then even higher. And as it reached upward, the rock gave way in places to patches of ice, making the ceiling twinkling and bright, as the sun found its way from the heavens all the way down here through some frozen part of the world above.

So we were past the Rift but still far enough north for things to be iced up for the winter.

Just gazing up at the frosty colors made me feel cleaner and mended. Though it made me feel even more thirsty, too. But that was all right, because as we drifted deeper into that bellowing cavern, leaning back on Namo’s fur and bouncing along, his feet began to make a splashing sound. And before the sound even fully registered, Namo was guzzling at the pools, then spraying us with water straight out of his trunk.

We clambered down into the knee-deep water. Cool but not too cold. And it could have been frozen, for all I cared. I flopped on my belly and gulped down water till my belly was full. Then I rolled onto my back, looking at the high ceiling of rock and ice, listening to the music of those faraway winds.

“It keeps going,” Alpha said, kneeling beside me. I gazed with her into the distance ahead, the pools all joining into one big stretch of water.

Hell, no, I thought. Don’t let it be another damn lake.

But it didn’t get any deeper. Even as the water stretched all the way to the walls around us, it stayed about knee high, and we could wade right on through, dunking our heads to drink whenever we felt inclined. It was good water. Clear and soft and sweet. I felt it charge through me, like it could flush out my brain.

And when evening came and light no longer seeped down through the ceiling, we had the strength to keep on walking. Taking hold of Namo’s shaggy fur as we trekked alongside him, taking turns riding with Crow on the mammoth’s broad back and sticking together, until we could stagger on blind no longer.

Finally, we rested. Namo stretching out on his side and us all stretched out on the side of his belly, rising and falling with each breath he took. Warm in his fur and from the heat of his body. Felt like being on a little island, surrounded by water and darkness.

Alpha reached out, finding my hand with hers, and I lay there a moment, feeling the great pulse of Namo’s heart through my spine. Then I felt Alpha shuffle the plastic pack so the trees were between us. She’d been carrying them since the edge of those black cliffs I’d almost never reached.

“You warm enough?” I asked her, remembering the bits of Kalliq clothing we’d stashed in the pack.

We tugged out some of the mud-covered duds, bundled up a bit. Kade and Crow were already sleeping, so we draped a coat over them. And then we started checking the trees.

The saplings were still coiled tight together, but some of their thin stems had got split and some of the buds were mashed up, broken at the tips of their twiggy beginnings.

“You think they’re all right?” Alpha asked, fingering the damage on a soft green stem.

“I think they ain’t supposed to be stashed inside plastic. And look—the mud’s drying out. That’s what the Healer used to mend them.”

Alpha scooted down off the side of the mammoth and scooped up some water, crawling back up on her knees as she cradled the water in her palms.

“Trees need water, right?” she said, slowly dripping some inside the pack. The drops glistened and beaded on the stems, got soaked up by the gray patches of mud.

At the bottom of the pack was the small last bits of my old man’s remains, green and black and stubbled. And the fistfuls of algae I’d stored in there were still glowing faintly in the gloom.

“You want to eat some?” I asked Alpha, pointing at the moss.

“I say we save it. Who knows when we might find food down here?”

We laid down together again as Namo’s belly grumbled and he let out a sigh beneath us, while at the same time, Crow and Kade began some kind of battle with their snoring, like they were seeing how loud the loudest could get.

“Thanks for carrying that pack,” I said to Alpha.

“Of course. Can’t do this all on your own, bud. We gotta share the weight.”

“Reckon so,” I said.

Because it sure does lighten the load.

Light dripped again through the icy patches above, waking me up. And when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was mountains.

I felt upside down. Confused. I shook my head and scrambled to my feet.

The mountains were pointing down at me, hanging from the high ceiling and making everything feel flipped the wrong way. Made me dizzy, looking up at them—jutting out of the stone, between the patches of ice, then jabbing downward, reaching towards the floor of the cavern. It looked like the rocky roots of the earth itself. And the upside-down peaks stretched as far as I could see. Spiraled and jagged, like endless rows of stone teeth dangling from the roof of a colossal mouth.