Rootless

by Chris Howard

  “What if we don’t find them?” Alpha said, shivering in the rain as it mingled with the blood on her skin.

  “Then I’ll keep building them,” I said. “Best as I can.”

  She studied my face, like she was reading something.

  “Where my dad was taken,” I told her. “Could be that’s where your mom got dragged off, too.”

  “Been a long time, bud.” She stared down into the city. The pirates had begun to gather below us, waiting for a new captain to call.

  “I don’t think they can come,” I said, looking down. “If you’re coming with me.”

  “I’ll go with you, bud. They’ll call me queen of every pirate army, I come home with trees to grow and fruit to eat.”

  I stared at her. Wanting her. And I wanted to be more than just her means to some end. I wanted to be someone with which she’d become rooted and tangled.

  I leaned into her. And I would have kissed her. Never mind all the guts on the ground, never mind her face being covered in filth. I would have kissed her. Tried to, at least. But I heard a voice rise up from the city below us. And the voice belonged to no pirate.

  “That you, little man?” Crow called through the darkness. “That you?”

  My heart sank in my guts as I staggered back down into the city. It was pitch black now, the clouds plugging the stars and painting the moon. The rain had settled into a drizzle. Harvesters lay broken on the ground, and the surviving pirates were huddled in stooped patches. But Crow stood tall and wide, towering above everyone. And everything.

  He’d lost his beard. All the hair on his head had been singed off, replaced by blood and blisters. His clothes hung off him, torn and frayed, as if he’d been trying to shed them but had given up halfway through.

  Crow’s grin split the dark as I approached him. “Happy to see you,” he said. “Though you look about as bad as I feel.”

  “You got out,” I said, as if saying the words might make me believe them.

  “Aye. With bodies before me. And bodies behind.” Crow studied his hands, his forearms. “Can still feel the poor bastards sticky on my skin.”

  “Are there more?”

  “Don’t know. Was a mighty big split in the hull. But Miss Zee was in there. Her mother also.”

  “How’d they catch you?”

  “In the corn.”

  “Poachers?”

  “Agents.”

  “Agents don’t grab folk off the road.”

  “They do now.”

  I thought about what that could mean — GenTech agents handing off slaves to King Harvest. And I thought about how it made heading west now seem a whole lot more dangerous, seeing as the cornfields are never short of those bastards in the purple suits.

  “What the hell was he gonna do with all those people?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” Crow shrugged. “But a ship that size, I’d say whatever he been doing it for, he been doing it a long time.”

  “Wait,” I said, remembering what Zee had told me. “You used to work for GenTech. Before you worked for Frost.”

  Crow laughed that low rumble of his. “Indeed I did, little man. Indeed I did.”

  “You were looking for trees.”

  He quit laughing and his eyes changed. “Looking?” he said. “No, I wasn’t looking. But they found me, you might say. And now I think you’d better take me with you.”

  “Take you with me?”

  “Miss Zee said you hell bent on finding the Promised Land, in which case you need what I need. Vega’s the only place you can find the GPS. So you best head west. And that being so, I’d say you need me.”

  “Why?” said Alpha, coming up behind me. “So you can get caught by agents again?”

  Crow turned to her. He licked his broken lips. And then he turned back to me. “The cornfields are a maze, tree builder. Big as the South Wall. And the forty ain’t the only way of crossing it.”

  “There’s another way?”

  “GenTech got plenty of ways. Some of them unguarded. Some of them unwatched.”

  “Then why not just head there yourself?”

  “Oh, I would, little man. I would. But where’s my wheels? Know what I mean? You get us moving, and I can show us the way.”

  “What makes you think I got wheels?”

  “The pirates got trucks. And this pirate girl likes you.” He stared at the two of us, lifting his chin as if that single motion made him in control of everything. “Course she does,” he said, his melted face suddenly bleeding he was grinning so hard. “Told you before, little man. You’re crazy cool.”

  A mist rolled in from the south, and at the forest it was too dark to see. Just gray clouds moving through the metal, drizzle sprinkling at the trees. Alpha and Crow were passed out sleeping in the city, but I’d come back to retrieve Sal. And Hina.

  I stepped through the slippery undergrowth, a dead Harvester’s plastic boots on my feet. I knocked at the base of the statue, called for Sal, but when there was no reply I rummaged through my soggy tools, found my headlamp, and then shimmied under the foot and pried the panel free.

  They were all the way at the end of the outstretched leg, Sal curled up against Hina and both of them crashed out cold. There was a sweetness they held in sleeping that neither of them showed awake. They looked peaceful. Calm. I lowered my headlamp and rested against the curve of the statue.

  I tried to conjure some feeling for the mother whose arms I’d once slept in. She’d been from the northern lands, Pop had told me. And she’d starved to death before I was able to remember her. But she’d taught Pop to read, which I’d always thought a real good gift. I guess you got to take what you can get.

  I leaned back and tried to picture what had happened between my father and this woman who now slept across from me, her arms held tight around her adopted son. Pop must have loved her real fierce to build such a statue, and I reckoned that meant she must have loved him in return. But I’d really little idea about the way of such things. And whatever had happened, whatever had been felt, their paths had got split in the end.

  Hina wound up gambled away and ended up raising a daughter with a fat junky bastard. And my father met my mother and then dragged me around the Steel Cities, faking nature in a world where none survived.

  Or did it?

  I thought of waking the woman, staring into those silver eyes of hers and asking her what she knew. Ask her about my father. About that tree curved around her belly. Because it seemed strange that this tattoo Pop must have known so well now led to the same place he’d been taken.

  The night felt heavy and my eyes drooped. And before I could think anymore or get up or move, I was sleeping, my headlamp still shining, its batteries burning, and by the time I woke up the thing was useless.

  But it didn’t matter. When I woke up, the sun was back out and I could hear Alpha calling my name from the forest.

  “Where’s Crow?” I asked Alpha as I hurried out through the base of the statue, squinting at the sky.

  “Still sleeping,” she said. “Like a dead man. If the dead could snore.”

  “Good.” I didn’t want Crow to see the forest. Or the statue. I figured anything I knew that the watcher didn’t, just might prove useful somewhere down the line.

  Sal crept out behind me, all sweaty and pale in the heat of morning. He slumped down, yawning.

  “Your friend?” said Alpha.

  “I guess.”

  “So where’s the woman?”

  As if she’d been summoned, Hina crawled out of the statue, all matted down and her muscles straining. I tell you, it was like watching that statue give birth to itself. And I remembered what Zee had said, how Frost had gotten this woman hooked on the crystal. So I reckoned Hina was now facing the worst kind of sober. Along with the fact that her daughter was dead.

  “We’re heading to Vega,” I said, helping her to her feet. “And I reckon you should come on with us, but I ain’t gonna make you if you don’t want to go.”


  “I can’t stay here,” Hina said, keeping her back to the statue. She seemed to shrink as the sun beat down. But her eyes were as cold as ever.

  “You said something,” I said, dropping my voice. “About those fake Harvesters.”

  She stared at me. Not blinking.

  But I couldn’t talk to her about my old man. Not in front of Sal. He was someone else I might need advantages over, somewhere on down the line.

  Every vehicle the pirates owned had been torched and left to smolder on the clay, their giant steel carcasses still steaming.

  “We’re stranded,” muttered Alpha, staring out at the smoky wreckage.

  “No,” I said. “My wagon should work, if it’s still where we left it. We’ll just have to find it on foot.”

  We filled a couple of canteens with rainwater, salvaged a pocketful of cornmeal between us. And then the five of us headed north. Back toward the forty.

  Must have looked like a right family of freaks out there, shuffling along the plains with our boots sticky in the mud. Old Orleans dissolved in the haze behind us, and ahead of us we couldn’t see a whole lot at all. Just the endless dirt and the washed-out sky.

  Alpha took the lead, guiding us toward where we hoped the wagon would still be. And I hung back, behind the group, trying to figure out what the deal was between Hina and Sal and the man who’d once been their watcher. Hell, I guess I was trying to figure out which one of them I could trust.

  Crow spent most of the morning switching between Hina in his arms and Sal on his shoulders, both of them too weak to walk too far. The fat kid had gotten real quiet when I told him about Zee. Caught him crying, too. But now he was warbling on about what happens when you die and if you go on to someplace different. Asking if we thought you head someplace better. Or if you wind up someplace worse.

  But the kid should have been saving his energy — no one was paying him any mind. Probably they were too busy mulling how they’d wound up out here in the first place. And no one was more silent than Hina. She was grieving hard, and it got to me, seeing the pain etched all across her. But Zee hadn’t had much time left, that’s what I told myself. Not with how bad her lungs had gotten.

  Truth is, part of the reason I kept pulling up the rear was because I thought Hina might drift back there with me. Figured I could comfort her. Talk to her. But slow as she moved, she always seemed to pick up the pace a little when she felt me getting close behind.

  She was valuable, that’s what she was. And she was more than just a map. She knew about my father and maybe about the place he’d been hauled off. In that head of hers, there were answers. I tell you, I would have traded my last drop of water just to see what she had hidden inside.

  So there we were, stumbling along. I’d told Alpha to make the weapons scarce and not let the pirates give one to Crow, no matter how many times he kept demanding one. So Alpha strode out in front of us stragglers, two pistols rammed down her belt and her rifle slung across her back. The only one of us who was armed.

  Her tall boots made quick work of the mud, and her mohawk had returned to its former glory. Hell, even that fuzzy vest of hers was coming back to life. And I knew if I let myself, I’d do nothing but want her, and the wanting would turn thick inside me. But that would have to wait, I reckoned. Like everything else I was after. It’d have to wait.

  Around noon, Sal got sick of walking and sat his ass in the mud. “I need a rest,” he mumbled when I caught up to them.

  “Can’t you carry him?” I said to Crow, who had put down Hina and was rolling his eyes at me.

  “I been carrying him half the morning. You carry him.”

  I didn’t have it in me, and I whistled for Alpha to stop. She squatted down right where she was, fifty yards ahead.

  “How’s your skin?” I said to Crow.

  “Parched and broken.” He squinted at me, and I reckoned he was missing those big old shades of his right about now.

  “You want water?”

  “No. Give mine to the lady.”

  I glanced across at where Hina was kneeling down in the mud, her face turned eastward. It was hot out there. Damn hot. I mean, it was supposed to be winter and all, and we sure could have used a little nip in the air down south of the forty.

  “Hina,” I called, but she didn’t turn her head or anything. “You thirsty?”

  “I’m thirsty,” Sal moaned. “But more I’m starving.”

  “You ain’t starving,” I told him. “You don’t know what the word means.”

  I trudged over to where Hina was sat.

  “You should drink some.” I held my canteen to her. Her eyes flickered at me, held my gaze a moment. Then she took the canteen and knocked it back, taking a good long draw. She screwed the cap back in place and set the water on the ground.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I finished that statue,” I told her. “The way my old man would have wanted.”

  She froze.

  “The pirates said he loved you,” I went on, but Hina shook her head.

  “He left me,” she said. “I wasn’t enough for him.”

  “They said you both went to Vega.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say something. She stared up at me. But then she dropped her eyes again and I’d lost her like the sun going down.

  “How did he know about the Harvesters?” I said. “About how they got copied?”

  She stayed blank, like I wasn’t even talking to her.

  “Shit,” I said, picking up the canteen. “I get that you’re suffering. And I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. But you know something about where it is that we’re heading, you’d do well to spill it to me.”

  “I try to remember,” Hina said. “I do. But all I see is that wall, the concrete rising up into clouds.”

  “The South Wall. Yeah. That’s where they found you.”

  “And I remember the statue. I remember your father building it. But more I remember him angry. And afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  She buried her face in her hands.

  I tried to touch her shoulder, but she flinched like I was some sort of devil.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I just stood there for a moment, watching her rattle and cry.

  When I got back to Crow, his face was smug. “You ready?” he asked, getting up off the dirt.

  “Waiting on you, tough guy.”

  “Just as long as you’re all taken care of.” Crow glanced over at Hina and then fixed me with a look.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Is it lunchtime?” Sal asked, tugging at Crow.

  “Ask the boss,” Crow said, still staring at me. “He be the one in charge.”

  “Get up,” I said. “We’re walking.”

  But we walked until nightfall. And we still had not found the road.

  “The stars are all I need,” Alpha said, pointing at the night sky. “We keep north. Keep moving.”

  “Thought it was a day’s walk,” Crow said, looming over my shoulder. “You getting us lost, sweet thing?”

  “It is a day’s walk,” she said. “If you keep at the walking. And call me sweet thing again, I’ll chop you in two.”

  Crow chuckled. “Your little man here mightn’t like me and you get to wrestling.”

  “Cut it out,” I said. “We’ll be at the wagon soon enough.”

  “Soon enough? Soon enough for what? Ain’t no prize for seconds. Not in this race. How you think we gonna beat Mister Frost to the punch?”

  “Depends on your shortcut.”

  “Didn’t say it were no shortcut. Just said it was safe.”

  Alpha pointed at where Sal and Hina were already curled up, passed out on the mud. “We’re gonna have to rest a minute. Or the two of them ain’t gonna make it.”

  “Fine,” Crow said. “Rest. I’ll do the watching.”

  “I ain’t sleeping,” I said.

  “That right?” Crow laughed as he sank down on the dirt. He stretc
hed his arms out, and stared at the stars. “Sleep with one eye open, boss man.”

  I went and sat on the other side of Hina and Sal, trying to keep my back straight so my head wouldn’t fall.

  “We can’t trust him,” Alpha whispered, kneeling beside me.

  “I know. But he needs us if he wants to find the wagon.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we’ll have to keep our eyes on him.”

  “I’m keeping my eyes on him now.”

  “So am I.”

  And I did. For about five minutes. Then my head plunged and my eyes sealed up and I was lost in a shadowy sleep.

  I dreamt about Zee, and a nightmare is more what it was. She was on my back and I was crawling out of the Surge, soaking wet and my lungs tight, limbs all made of mud and crawling for the high ground. I held Zee on my shoulders, in the middle of a dusty city, and she began building, her hands weaving my hair in her fingers and tying my hair to the trees.

  When she’d finished, she began on something different and I sensed someone watching us, but I couldn’t see who it was, and then Zee’s trees began falling, one by one, only I couldn’t catch any one of them because my hair was all tied in the branches and they were pinning me in place as Zee wandered free.

  I could see now she’d been building a statue, broad shouldered and faceless. It grew a beard and it was Crow, and then its belly sagged and it was Frost. But then its body was Frost and its face was me and finally the statue was my father, and he was staring down at me as if he were sorry for something.

  And then the statue fell in pieces on top of us and I watched as Zee was crushed beneath the steel and wires, her face howling silently and my hands reaching for her. And I wanted to tell her something.

  But she was already dead.

  When I came to, the stars were so bright it was like they’d pricked me awake. But it wasn’t the night sky that had caused me to stir. Alpha was stood above me, her face peering into the distance. And Crow was right beside her, his eyes so focused it filled me with fear.