Rootless

by Chris Howard

  “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.

  I screamed at Alpha and begged her to move. I grabbed her by the vest and dragged her with me around the side of the cockpit. I stumbled. Slipped. Almost lost it. Hanging on by one arm, my face staring down at the top of the dead field hand’s skull.

  The noise was louder now, whining like a broken engine. I pulled myself up as Alpha yanked at the door to the cockpit. But she slipped back as the door flew open. And then she was hanging off the purple tubing below. Ten feet down. Ten feet too far.

  The sun went black as locusts swarmed above us, spiraling out of the sky as I scrambled below the cockpit, inching out along a steel pipe, reaching down with my hand.

  “Go,” Alpha screamed, but I just kept reaching for her as the swarm closed in above us. And then I saw locusts below, pouring out of the corn and across the service road, rising up the sides of the duster like a flood.

  Alpha stretched up with her fingers, high as she could, and the locusts grew louder, wailing and buzzing and filling the air.

  I locked my hand on Alpha’s wrist. Dragged her toward me, hauling her up. We slipped back along the pipe as it gave way beneath us, leapt for the cockpit as the locusts hit.

  I felt their wings beat the wind through my hair and they bored through my boots as I shoved Alpha into the cab and spun around to seal the door tight behind us.

  They hammered at the glass windows. They rattled at the walls. A black cloud. A blur of wings and sharp little mouths. We stamped dead the rogues that had made it inside, and then we pressed together in the middle of the cockpit, arms over our ears as we squeezed our eyes shut.

  Then the roar became a buzz and it faded. Light broke back inside the cockpit. Sunlight. I opened my eyes. Stared out the window. I watched as the locusts drifted across the tops of the cornfields then swooped down all at once inside the plants, sinking into the crops like a stone. Gone to feast on some field hand, I guess. Or some other poor struggler who’d strayed into the corn.
r />   “We’re okay?” Alpha whispered, shaking against me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’re okay.”

  I stared down at the service road where the bones of the agents were splayed on the dirt. If there’d been another agent inside the pod, then they’d not made it — Alpha had shot the windshield clean through.

  “We should get back,” I said.

  “Wait,” she said. “Look.”

  I peered west across the top of the cornfields and there, jagged and dark on the horizon, I could see the towering mess of Vega. The bulging skyline of the Electric City.

  “We’re getting close,” I said. I turned to Alpha and her eyes were bright. Her lips were just inches from mine.

  “You know what we’re supposed to do?” she whispered.

  “Just keep on till we get there.”

  “No.” She made our noses touch. “I mean now.”

  She pulled me to the floor on top of her, and my heart was pounding and my mouth got thick. I felt wired up. Full of juice. And then we were kissing, something inside of me exploding as I felt her lips on mine.

  She took my hands and wrapped my fingers beneath her thighs. Her legs were strong. Smooth. And she was so warm. I’d never felt anything near as soft as her skin. I kissed her jaw and her neck and then her mouth again, and kissing that girl was like the whole point of living.

  Her eyes were closed and trembling and I closed mine too. Dark now. Like we’d been sucked inside some tunnel leading down through the earth.

  “Damn, bud,” she said, when I stopped kissing her.

  I just lay there, breathing her in.

  She reached to her vest and unclipped it, as if she was unlocking herself for me. I stared into her brown eyes as she took my hand and pressed it on her chest. I felt her heart beat strong. But then Alpha grinned, like being serious had suddenly become foolish.

  I went to kiss her again, but she was already grabbing her gun and standing, buttoning back up her vest. “Come on,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “They’ll be worried about us.”

  She winked at me as she threw the door open, and then she slid down the ladder, blowing right through the bones of the field hand and kicking his remains into dust. I just stared after her for a moment, my body still hungry and light. Then I shot down the ladder and we hit the ground running, our eyes watching the sky for the darkness, our ears peeled for that horrible sound.

  Crow shoved the door open and we dove into the wagon. Ended up in a sweaty pile on the floor by the driver’s seat, Crow just staring down at us, shaking his head.

  “Your car’s tougher than it looks,” he said.

  I saw Hina and Sal cowered in the back, holding on to each other, and Hina was giving me some new look I’d not seen before.

  “What’s left out there?” Crow said.

  “Nothing,” I told him. “Just their vehicle.”

  He arched his eyebrows. “Their vehicle? Unattended?”

  “Right.”

  Crow sparked the engine and backed up the wagon, pointing it around the far side of the duster.

  “What are you doing?” said Alpha, and Crow laughed out loud.

  “I be going to see what Jah has provided for us on this fine morning. A GenTech pod ain’t salvage,” he said. “It’s gold. Solid gold.”

  Crow tore through the dirt and plowed the wagon through those three piles of bones, and what was left of the agents just fizzled like smoke. We pulled so close to the GenTech pod that the two vehicles were almost touching. Then Crow cut the engine and waited until everything was silent.

  “We leave this door open,” he said, pointing at the passenger side. “We’re quick. And we’re quiet. Anyone hears anything, the door closes in ten seconds. Right?”

  “All right,” I said, then I turned to Sal and Hina. “You two stay in here.”

  “I want to come,” Sal said.

  “You’re too slow, kid.”

  “It’s all right,” Hina said, giving me that strange look again, like her eyes were trying to tell me something. “I’ll watch him.”

  Alpha popped open the door and we fell into daylight, the sky blue above us and the corn a deep green.

  The pod had sunk on busted tires, bullet holes riddled the paint job, and all its glass was shattered. We lifted up the side hatch. And then we dropped down inside a whole different world.

  GenTech purple. Everywhere. Everything clean looking, shiny, like it had been snatched from a dream. They had gadgets down in that pod that you could tell were a whole different league. None of it was sprouting wires or had been taped together or was rigged backward and falling apart. These gizmos were tidier than the console in Harvest’s ship. Sleek and small and silent.

  “There it is,” Crow said, kneeling on a seat, getting up close to a glittery console on the wall.

  Alpha still had her head out the top of the hatch, watching the skies.

  “What is it?” I said to Crow.

  “This here’s the main hub,” he said. “And the readouts. But there’ll be another one around somewhere.” He yanked open some panels and rummaged inside.

  “You see anything?” I said to Alpha, giving her leg a squeeze.

  “Quiet,” she said. “I’m listening.”

  I stared around the pod again. Picked up a foam hat with the GenTech logo plastered across the front of it.

  “Fancy shit,” I said.

  “As fancy as it comes,” said Crow, digging inside a box of tools. “Look in the back for their guns, little man.”

  I stuck my head back there and found a spare set of suits all neatly folded and stacked in place. And there, hanging off the ceiling, were two purple handguns that looked a whole lot better than the one I’d been using. The guns were clean and smooth, looked like they’d never even been used. I unclipped them, grabbed them off the ceiling, then I scooted back to the front of the pod.

  “I got it,” Crow said.

  “What is it?” I stared at the small box in the palm of his hand.

  “This,” Crow said, his grin broad as I’d seen it, “is a GenTech Positioning System. Agent types in coordinates, it tells them where to go. This is it, little man. This is what we been needing. This right here is our GPS.”

  Sal couldn’t believe it. His eyes grew as big as his whole head. Hell, I could hardly believe it myself. But there we were, heading west, winding through the service roads, weaving our way through that maze of corn, and when we popped out the other side, all we’d have to do is enter those numbers, the north one and the east one, and then we’d just glide right on through. My old man seemed close all of a sudden. Like he could be waiting around the next bend in the road.

  Alpha wanted to enter the numbers right then, see how far away we’d be heading, but Crow just dangled the gadget off his fingertips, holding it away from us. Had to conserve the battery, he said. Better to wait till we were out of the maze.

  I drove through till the sun went down, and when it got dark I pulled over next to the corn and shut the engine off. We couldn’t risk using the headlights, and the absence of moon made it too dark to see.

  The five of us clumped in the back of the wagon, all rammed together as we guessed about the future. Closest thing to family I’d known since Pop had been taken. A team, all of a sudden. A real team. Hell, even Hina seemed to be smiling, though she also kept stealing strange looks at me. I paid that no mind, though. We had food in our bellies and tomorrow on our brains. And the next day, and the next one. And every day after that.

  “What do you think they look like?” Alpha said.

  “Like that, you dummy,” Sal yelled, pointing at Hina’s belly and laughing. “What do you think they’re going to look like?”

  “But do you think there’s just a couple?” she said. “Or a whole big stand?”

  “There’s a stand,” I said, picturing the photo of my father. “Whole forest.”

  “You bet there’s a whole forest. And I bet there are oranges and coconuts and almonds, too. Imag
ine the flavors.” Sal let out a shriek. He slapped me on the thigh. “We’re going to be so loaded. So rich we won’t even know what to do.”

  Crow had stayed quiet mostly, but now he chimed in. “Just remember, Mister Sal, your daddy might be there, too.” Crow stared at me as he said it.

  “That’s right,” Sal said, nodding at Crow. Then the kid turned his face so I couldn’t see it. I thought about the correction, the hidden tattoo.

  And I thought about Zee.

  Thinking about her made me solemn. Couldn’t help but picture her in the back of the wagon with us, celebrating something we’d not yet done. And it made me think about what was going to happen when the journey ended. Would I really find my father in that stand of trees? Alive? The old Rasta had said Pop had until spring. And winter had only just barely begun.

  So if my old man was there, what would come next? Could we build us a house in those treetops? Or had the trees already been cut down and sold? Was that what it came down to? Selling the forest like a bucket of corn? Something for the pirates. Something for the Soljahs. Who else? The Salvage Guild?

  Still, as long as GenTech didn’t get it. I thought about the endless rows of crops that surrounded us. Enough food you could feed every struggler. Or you could just get rich off your prices, and keep people low down and starved.

  Soon we had eaten and talked enough to be sleepy. No damn air in the wagon that hadn’t been breathed a thousand times over. We were drowsy. All of us. Even the watcher.

  “Been awake since Old Orleans,” Crow said, pulling my old man’s sombrero over his face. “Believe I earned me some shut eye.”

  And one by one, our heads dropped till we were all passed out and sleeping. Reckon I was the last to go, pressed up against Alpha as her face twitched and her mouth hung open. I loved the smell of her, and I remember thinking that right before I fell asleep.

  Before my eyes fell shut and everything changed again.

  It was Hina that woke me. She was poking at my back, and I sat up and glanced around the wagon. Everyone was sleeping. Everyone but her and me.