Rootless - Howard Chris (книги бесплатно без регистрации .txt) 📗

“Here we are,” I said. “My half of the deal.”

Feeble metal signs hung on the fence, warning you from getting too close. But when I cut the engine, Zee hopped out of the wagon wearing a wild-ass grin. I had to run out after her, tackle her down in the dirt before she got too near the edge.

“What are you doing?” She blinked at me with angry eyes, her body coiled tight.

“You got to be careful,” I said, getting to my feet and helping her up. “Let me see how stable it looks.”

I brushed her off and she wheezed and cussed and hid her face like she was ashamed of something. Like she hated me seeing her all choked up and weak. I had her wait as I stepped to the edge, surrounded by that great rush of noise, moaning and howling like the baddest wind you ever known.

I’ve heard it said people used to come to the coast for fun. The beach, people called it. They’d play around in the water and the ocean was just tame as could be. Breaks rolling in just a few feet tall.

Few feet tall?

I stared down at the waves clawing at the cliffs. Higher than any building in Vega. Spinning around like liquid twisters, a thousand stories high. Huge walls of water, pounding and breaking and making my ears hurt. The spray rose up and stuck in my nose, and out there past the breakers I could see the whole world rising and falling, carving in on itself like someone had just pulled the plug.

Something about the moon, people said. Something happened to the moon and brought it closer. I guess it didn’t used to fill up such a big chunk of sky. But it wound up close at the end of the Darkness. There was twenty years of night and when the sun came back, that moon was so close it made the ocean go crazy as hell.

I almost drowned once. Tying chains for a river willow and I slipped off the bank, and no matter how hard I thrashed I kept sinking. Everything muted. Ready to burst. Pop pulled me out of the yellow slime, but I never could face the water after that. Never could learn how to swim. I mean, the Surge would fill you with dread if you could somehow breathe underwater. But for me it was even worse. Even high up as I was, it made my heart hammer at my bones.

I gestured to Zee, had her step closer. Some days you’d not get to the fence, the spray was so bad.

But today was Zee’s lucky day.

She peered down through the wires, and her eyes grew as wide as the waves were tall. The spray beaded up on her skin, and her mouth hung as she stared down at that frothy stampede, the rise and fall of that giant swell.

“I don’t believe it,” she shouted above the noise of the water. “It’s all like this?”

“They say the west coast’s even worse.”

Her face was wet from the spray hitting her, but I was pretty sure she was crying, too. Her face wasn’t all crumpled or anything, but her lips were pinched real tight. I reached out and took her hand.

“Come on,” I said, and I tugged her back to the wagon.

Zee didn’t want to leave right away and I was in no rush to find out what was happening back at Frost’s place, so I turned on the light inside the wagon and we sat in the front seats, our clothes all damp and salty.

“You’d never get across,” Zee said, her eyes still staring at the blank space where the stars should’ve been. I followed her gaze.

“Nope.”

“So how do we get out?”

“Out?”

“Somewhere better.” She said it so quiet I could barely hear her, like the words had hardly worked their way loose. “The Promised Land.”

“Right. Zion. Across the water.”

I felt bad for mocking her. She slumped in her seat and balled her eyes up and then she let the tears come loose. She was real quiet about it. But somehow that made it even worse.

“The rest of the pictures,” I said, not knowing what else to do. And besides, a deal’s a deal.

“Fine.” Zee tried to clear her throat. She held her bag open and I grabbed it, rummaging through a stack of photos of the sky and Frost’s metal house, Zee’s mother and Sal. Even pictures of me, wiring up the understory.

But that was it.

I stared at her.

“Screw it,” she said. “It’s not my fault.”

“Screw it? Screw you. You got me out here for nothing.”

“It’s all I’ve got. It was Crow’s camera.”

“But the trees?”

“Came with the camera. Crow fixed it and that picture spat out. You are going to give it back?”

“What the hell do you think?”

She twisted around in her seat and hacked on a cough. “You have anything to read?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m upset, and when I’m upset I like to read.”

“Must be nice,” I said. I figured she wasn’t worth getting angry with, but at the same time I was fuming. Crazy girl had me all the way out here for nothing. And who could I ask now about that picture, about my old man who’d been taken and the trees that weren’t supposed to exist?

I threw a bag of popcorn at Zee and fired up the wagon, turning it around to begin the long climb from the coast.

“‘GenTech’s been putting Superfood on the table for more than a hundred years.’” Zee read it off the bag like the words were going to make her quit crying and coughing, like it was a story that would calm her right down. “‘Through good times and bad, we’ve found a way to feed people. Corn. It’s what’s for dinner.’”

“Yeah,” I said. “Breakfast and lunch, too.”

“I read books,” she said, wiping the tears off her face. “From when there were laws and governments. And there used to be a thousand companies making the food.”

I’d heard that. But it makes no sense — everyone could have just grown food for themselves.

Zee was quiet for a bit, shaking the bag of corn and gazing out the window.

“So where else have you been?” she said finally.

“I’ve been around.”

“Vega?”

“Almost.”

“Far south?”

“Never seen the Wall, if that’s what you mean.”

“What about north?”

“Built trees in Niagara.”

“And past that?”

“Ain’t nothing past that,” I said. “Nothing but the wastelands. Lava and steam.”

“The Rift.”

“That’s what they call it.” I stared across at her. “I’m telling you to drop it. Nothing grew back after the Darkness. Nothing but corn. You ever seen a locust?”

Zee shook her head.

“Better hope you don’t never do,” I said, like I’d seen one. “They’ll rip your skin off faster than you can piss your pants.”

“Then Zion’s far off. Or hidden, somewhere safe.”

“Grow up,” I said, wishing to hell she’d quit chirping on about it.

“So how do you explain the picture? The trees and that sky so clear?”

“Ain’t no explaining it,” I said. “That’s why I gotta find out how Crow got the camera.”

“He got it from people he used to work with.”

“A watcher job?”

“No. He used to work for them. For GenTech.” She said it like it was the most normal thing in the world. But how do you go from being a Soljah to a GenTech agent, and then wind up as a Steel Cities watcher?

It didn’t make sense. No one hates GenTech more than the Soljahs.

“Crow worked for GenTech?” I stared at Zee. “You sure?”

She held up a stack of photographs and showed me the back of each one. The GenTech logo in purple ink.

“Don’t mean nothing,” I said.

“You’re right,” she said. “It doesn’t. Not now I’ve seen the Surge. They’re crazy. The pair of them.”

“Who?”

“Crow. And Frost. They’re as bad as each other. Build a boat big enough. Frost and his stupid coordinates.”

“Coordinates?” I said. My foot had eased off the accelerator and I pulled off the road as the wagon ground to a halt. I stared at her. “What coordinates?”

“That’s why they’re working together, hunting their prize. Crow’s been searching for years. That’s what he did for GenTech, I guess. Chasing rumors and clues.”

“Clues to what?”

“The trees,” Zee said, staring at me through the darkness. “The last trees on earth.”