Rootless

by Chris Howard

  Of course, who I’d really come over to take a look at was Crow. He was sprawled on top of the wagon, his feet propped on one of the new tires I’d tied to the roof. I pretended I was just pacing the tarmac, but I was really trying to catch a glimpse of his face.

  “Your sweet thing sleeping?” he said. I was on my fourth go-around of the pacing business, and Crow rolled on his side and stared at me. “Got yourself a real firecracker there, little man.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Think you can trust her?”

  “More than I trust you.”

  “That all?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Sure it is. You take my advice, little man. Don’t go trusting no one but yourself.”

  “That’s what you do, I guess.”

  “Only ones I trust are the ones I know what they’re gonna do before they do it. Like you, little man, I can trust you pretty good. Real good, matter of fact.”

  I started to say something, but he cut back in.

  “Where are the pictures?”

  “What pictures?”

  “Pictures of the tree. The GPS numbers. The pictures Sal said you took from the house. I not seen you dig them up yet. Which makes me wonder what else you got buried.”

  “I got a book,” I hissed at him. “That what you want to know?”

  “A book?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Gets cold one of these nights, we can burn it.”

  “We ain’t burning nothing. I call the shots.”

  “Really?” Crow said, laughter in his voice. “Between me and the firecracker, I’d say you’re just firing on empty.”

  I crawled beside Alpha and dug Zee’s bag out of the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Alpha said, coming awake in a hurry.

  “Nothing,” I told her. “Just go on and sleep.”

  She rolled over, and I unzipped the bag and counted out the pictures of the tattoo leaves. I lay the pictures flat on the dirt so I could see that tree again, and then I gathered up the photos and slipped them in Alpha’s vest pocket.

  Flicking through the rest of the bag, I found a picture of Zee and pulled it out, thinking I could give it to Hina. I studied Zee’s face in the photograph. And then I stared at the trashed bits of tarmac in the moonlight, the road people built when the world was still growing, before the earth was just rubble and stunted, before everything became punctured and blank.

  I left Zee’s picture in the dust. Just didn’t see it doing Hina any good to pass it along. I reckoned some things you do best to remember. But some things it’s best to forget.

  I tied the piece of bark around my waist with a plastic cord, and I had my back turned so none of them could see what I’d got there. Then I strode up to the wagon with the book in one hand and Zee’s camera in the other, and I shoved them beneath the driver’s seat.

  I jammed on the horn, leaning on it way longer than necessary.

  Sal and Hina crawled out from under the wagon with their hands over their ears. Crow stared at me from the roof, the giant moon bright behind him. And Alpha gave me a strange look as she came up, brushing the sand off the back of her thighs.

  “Me and my wagon are taking off,” I shouted, yelling to all who’d listen, my voice echoing in the empty night. “You want to find Zion, then jump right in. You got other plans, that’s fine. I’ll leave your ass. Right here in the dust.”

  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 po
inted 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.