Rootless

by Chris Howard

  And that was option number two. So you can see how the first one became so appealing. Especially after you spent a day breathing in the ashes of all those poor bastards who’d been fried.

  Could have been longer than a day. Could have been it was just an hour and each minute felt like twenty. The drugs we were on kept things silent. For the most part.

  Every now and then a low moan would howl, escaping out of someone’s lips like they were trying to wake themselves up.

  I was awake enough already, though. On the inside. I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on as I watched the poor bastards who had to take their turns before me.

  A woman with one arm tested positive and the agents dragged her away. Next up was a blond kid who failed, and I clenched my eyes shut.

  And it kept going on like this. One after another. Those purple suits threading through the crowd and calling out numbers, hauling off bodies, and stoking that fire pit in the middle of the room.

  It just kept on going, and what started off horrifying only got worse. Any wall that my mind had built or the drugs provided, that wall pretty soon got blown into bits, reality piercing like a razor on bone. It got so bad I started longing for my own turn to be tested, just so I wouldn’t have to witness no more. Watching some kid get pulled from his mother, or some woman being took from her man. All these unknown faces. These strangers.

  But then the purple suits changed even that. Because from out of a corner, they gathered up someone I knew.

  It was Crow. His top half hadn’t ever really healed from the burning, and his bottom half wasn’t even there at all. Gone. Lost in the jaws of the duster. The agents carried Crow’s torso to the staging area. And as they jabbed his arm with the needle and siphoned his blood, some twisted part of me wanted to shout out at him.

  Hey, little man. That’s what I wanted to yell.

  Sick, right?

  Must have been the drugs.

  Crow passed the test and they hauled him out of view, and I wondered how they’d stopped him from bleeding out in the cornfields. I wondered where they were taking him now. But I didn’t have long to sit there and think about it, because next thing you know, the agents had Sal up there, and I could tell by their faces that the poor bastard had failed the test.

  The sight of Sal being hoisted toward the flames did something to me. It broke into my skull and shattered down the back of my mind, and I could move again. But as I stumbled up and staggered toward the purple suits, it was like someone was working my muscles for me, as if it wasn’t my mouth that was screaming. As if it wasn’t my friend about to be burned alive.

  Is that what he was, then? My friend?

  I honestly don’t know, but yeah, I like to think that he was. Which is why it must have hurt him when his eyes recognized me for a moment but all I was shouting was “The numbers, the number. Tell me what it is.”

  And maybe that’s all we’d been to each other, anyway. Not just the fat kid and me, but Crow and Alpha and Zee. The whole damn lot of us. All we’d wanted was to find those trees.

  Something to believe in. To bring us back home. Something to make us free, maybe. Or just something to sell.

  The agents were all over me, blocking Sal from view. But the strength I’d saved while I’d been under, it all came racing to the surface now. I pushed and kicked at some bastard in a purple suit that I’d never seen before, but here he was trying to control me. Trying to hurt me. Trying to murder my fat little buddy right in front of my eyes.

  I must have been spitting, I was crying so hard. And for a moment I reached him, somehow Sal was next to me, we were breathing in smoke from the fire, gloved hands all over us.

  That kid stared at me like his eyes were windows and he was trapped inside there somewhere, tired of hiding.

  “The number,” I said to him, or I tried to say it anyway. And what good was it? Now everything was lost.

  But the kid surprised me. His voice popped out.

  “There was no number,” he said, the suits lifting him up, shoving him at the flames. “I made it up,” he said, as he disappeared from me forever. “So you’d take me with you.”

  And then he was gone. Still high, I reckon. Because I never even heard him scream.

  I felt the hands working me over, and I thought that was it. Thought I was just going to burn right then. And all I could think was how Frost must have already made it. He had his coordinates. His GPS. And somewhere, he was out there. And my father was out there, too. Surrounded by trees and murderers.

  “Wait,” one of the agents was yelling. “He should be tested.”

  They yanked me to my feet.

  I didn’t do a thing. I couldn’t even feel the needle go in or the blood coming out. But I watched it, that deep dark red. And because of the blood draining out of me or my previous show of strength, whatever it was, I was suddenly empty. And as they pulled the needle from my skin, I sank inward as every light inside turned black.

  Weirdest thing about whatever they’d doped me up with — awake you felt like you were dreaming, but pass out and no dream would come. It was a void. The darkest night. Untouched by the motion of the world or the swell of whatever you kept hidden inside.

  Sometime on the boat, though, they let us come around. And somehow I knew that meant we were almost there.

  They fed us. Juiciest damn corn I ever tasted. They gave us water and then they stripped us of clothes and shaved off our hair. I waited. Still coming back to life. Shielding my eyes from the neon lights. But soon as I could, I stumbled across the giant cargo hold we’d been allowed to wake up in. I made for the exit. And I found my way onto the deck.

  I don’t know what time it was. Early morning, maybe. I stood alone, bony beneath the plastic sheet they’d draped across my shoulders. It was so cold out there, made me feel brand new and old as anything, both at the same time. The cold hurt, too. I almost turned back inside with the others. But I just bit at my tongue as the freeze enveloped me. I watched my hands shake and my toes turn blue.

  I found my way to the center of the deck and I watched the water and I stared around at the boat. A cockpit sat on top of the cargo hold and above that was a gun tower. Everything black and silver. No purple. No GenTech logos. It sure wasn’t the biggest boat I’d ever imagined, but it didn’t need to be. The water was flat. And it stretched in every direction for as far as my eyes could see.

  I pulled the sheet around me and hunched my shoulders in. My breath blew steamy, the same color as the clouds. Air was so cold it was hard work just to breathe it. But it helped my mind come back into focus, even if my body felt like it might snap apart.

  I stared back at the steel walls of the cargo hold where my fellow survivors were now huddled together, escaped from the fire. Escaped from the burn.

  But still taken.

  I remembered Sal. Too high to be scared, robbed even of emotion as they’d tossed him to the flames. And I reckon I’d been a bastard to Sal, pretty much right from the beginning. I mean, what had he done? Other than live up to the way the world seemed to treat him. Father like Frost and what chance did he have? I pictured Hina holding the kid, giving him some sort of feeling, and I figured that was such a good thing to have done for someone. To give without wanting nothing in return. But Hina was gone, too. I shuddered as I pictured her about to tell me her secrets but then stolen away and lost in that swarm. And who was left? Me. Crow?

  I stared at the cargo hold.

  And what about Alpha?

  I’d not seen her in the factory, or whatever you want to call that place. I’d not seen her since the cornfields. The back of the wagon, where she’d been dying in my arms. Dying from a poacher’s bullet I might as well have shot from my own gun. May as well have killed them all with my selfishness. Running around without thinking, instead of doing what I’d promised and finding the trees.

  And you know what? For a moment I didn’t even care about the damn trees.

  All I wanted was my pirate girl back
.

  I wanted her the same way as when I’d run barefoot through Old Orleans with my hands empty and my heart full. The way you want something when every part of you says that you ain’t going to get it.

  I was scared to go looking for her. So scared to know full out she was gone. She probably hadn’t made it to the factory at all. And if somehow she had, then she’d likely been thrown like poor Sal into those hungry flames. And how could I stand not seeing her among the stolen and shaved sat huddled on this ugly barge? What would I do if she was ash and smoke when she should have been beside me with her voice soaring free?

  Eventually, though, I staggered up to go try and find her. Because even when there is no hope, somehow you can still find a place to pin inside the things that you need.

  I started across the deck but I tripped and fell. Landed on my face and began crawling, dragging myself through puddles of icy water. And as I tasted the water, I stopped crawling and just stared off the boat.

  Water. Flat water. All the way to every horizon. And this water wasn’t just flat — it was fresh. Like out of a river. Water you could drink, not salty like the Surge. We were on a lake. Cold and deep and wide.

  The freeze in the air told me we were north. Way north. Had to be somewhere above the molten wastelands, this cold this early. Somehow GenTech must have figured a path through the steam and ash of the Rift. And I figured if this was a lake, then somewhere there had to be a shoreline. A place they were taking us. And some kind of reason we had been kept alive.

  I crashed back through the steel doors and let the warmth and the stale air consume me, felt every bit of skin and bone I had come roaring back to life. I steadied myself against the door as I thawed out. And then I stared around the cargo hold.

  There were agents stationed along the walls, their bright purple suits in contrast to the white paint and the pale neon blast. The agents were weaponed up, no doubt about that. Pistols on their belts, spiky clubs in their hands. But I tell you, those agents had nothing to worry about. My fellow prisoners might have been moving some, but they still looked like corpses.

  Vacant eyes. Lips too tired for screaming. We were a broken crew. Silent. I thought again of King Harvest and his hull full of bodies. That’s why they’d needed so many, I guess. That damn test they were running. Take some of us off across the water and burn up the ones left behind.

  But what test had we passed?

  I couldn’t see us being meant for working. Or eating. Not the state we were in.

  I stared around for Alpha. For Crow. Scanning those shaved heads and plastic sheets for a face I knew. I wandered between the bodies that were sprawled and twisted on the floor, stepped past groping fingers and patches of flesh half-covered in plastic. Voices rose up. People whispering to one another, moaning and holding on to the person beside them.

  I kept walking. Stumbling is what it was. I kept an eye on the agents along the walls. Watched for Crow’s melted skin or the stump his legs had left behind. And in my mind, Alpha didn’t fit in with anything I was seeing. Like two worlds that could not meet.

  Fingers gripped cold around my ankle. They tugged at me, squeezed at me, and then went limp. I looked down. And no part of me was surprised I had walked right past her.

  I remembered when I found Alpha on the wall in Old Orleans, with her arms above her head and her vest all matted with blood. I held that image close inside of me, really lodging it tight so I’d remember. So I couldn’t forget.

  Because this time, Alpha wasn’t towering above me, legs spread and head thrown back. This time she was crumpled. The fuzzy pink vest with her name etched upon it had been replaced by the white of her shoulders and the crappy GenTech plastic. They’d shaved off her mohawk, and it changed her whole face. Made her look younger. And older.

  I squatted down to her. My hands on her hands. My feet touching her feet. We’d been stripped of everything and painted gray, but it didn’t matter. Not in that moment. Not right then. I ran my hand over the stubble on top of her head, and she blinked at me like her eyes might work her mouth into a smile.

  “I’m here,” I whispered. “Right here. And I won’t go nowhere. I promise.”

  She pulled my hand to her cheek and touched her mouth to my fingers. And we sat that way for a bit, comfort enough to just keep on breathing. But finally I wanted to tell her about the lake outside we were floating over. And I wanted to know if she’d seen the things I’d seen. If she’d been awake when we’d been pulled into the city, if she’d seen the buildings grow tall and the lights explode. I wanted to know if she’d seen the fire at the factory, if she’d watched as people were torn from the rest of us and the bodies were cast into flames.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. Not yet. And I had another question, one that somehow seemed more pressing.

  “Your wound?” I said. “You were shot.” I pointed at my own belly. “Right here.”

  “Sealed up,” she said, and her hands went to her stomach, clamping down on the plastic sheet.

  “Let me see.”

  She shook her head.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “Show me.”

  She let her hands fall beside her and I pulled apart the plastic. And there, where the wound had been, a chunk of her skin was missing. And where there used to be skin, now there was bark. Not the old piece of wood I’d shoved there to stem the bleeding. This was new. Grown fresh to patch her together. It was pink and green and knotted. I tapped on it. That unmistakable sound of wood.

  Alpha yanked the plastic back across her and turned her eyes from me, as if ashamed.

  “No,” I said. “It’s beautiful.” And I weren’t lying. All the beauty I’d seen before was just a dream with her in it. I tried to kiss her, but she spun her head away.

  “Where are they taking us?” she muttered, tears streaming down her face.

  “I don’t know,” I said. But truth was, I was starting to think I did know. It was the same place the old Rasta had been taken. The place where he’d seen my father.

  The place where he’d seen the trees.

  We found Crow and carried him out to the deck so he could see the water. I didn’t ask how they’d stitched him back together, because I already had a pretty good idea.

  But why? That’s what I wanted to know. What were they keeping us alive for? And what was so important that we’d been taken so far?

  “You worked for them,” I said to Crow as the three of us huddled together near the railing, shivering and watching the spray off the water. “You worked for GenTech. So what the hell do you think they’re doing?”

  Crow moved his head so he was staring away from me, as if any one direction held something the others didn’t show.

  “I worked for them,” he said, first words I’d heard out the mouth of his new body. “I was security. The lower ranks started asking too many questions. I was supposed to shut them up.”

  “Too many questions? About what?”

  “About what was happening.”

  I just stared at him. Blank.

  “This.” Crow pointed with his chin. “All this.”

  “What is this?”

  “It’s what happens to those that get taken. Project Zion, GenTech calls it.”

  “And what the hell’s that?”

  “I don’t know.” Crow shrugged. “I was supposed to stop the questions. Not find the answers. But I heard GenTech was desperate to find them some trees. And I uncovered a legend about a forest and a woman that could point its direction. So I started digging. GenTech tried to shut me down. They captured me, drugged me. But I escaped. Kept on digging, following clues. Till I tracked the woman down. Till I found that tattoo.”

  “And you think the trees are across the water?” I said. “I mean, what if they are? What if they’re out here?”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then I think GenTech should’ve charged me a ticket. Instead of slicing me to pieces.”

  “Think a
bout it,” I said. “Project Zion.”

  “Zion. Trees. You’re talking about heaven, boy. We be heading to hell.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Could be one’s really just the same as the other.”

  I watched clumps of ice appear on the water. And I pictured my father, chained to a tree trunk, captured in a forest beneath a clear blue sky.

  This was the boat. It had to be.

  “My old man’s out here somewhere,” I said, and I turned to Alpha. “Your mother might be, too. Harvest was part of this whole operation.”

  Alpha just looked at Crow and then looked back out at the water.

  “What?” I said.

  “She probably thinks you should give it a rest.”

  “Well, it ain’t spring yet. And I ain’t giving in now.”

  The chunks of ice got bigger and began to stick up real high. The boat wound between the frozen mounds, the jagged white peaks, and it crushed right through the small stuff.

  We were wrapped tight in our plastic sheets and bundled together, watching the future drift into view. But the ice clustered up, thicker and thicker.

  And at first we almost didn’t see the island.

  The island was wide and tall, and just past the brown shore were hills covered in snow. As we got nearer, a siren rose up off the boat and kept wailing so loud we had to plug up our ears.

  “I’m too cold,” mouthed Alpha, standing to shuffle back inside. The wind had picked up and the air was sleety. But I couldn’t turn away from the island.

  This was it, I reckoned. End of the line.

  Got close and I could see that the island was floating. It had grown right out of a giant wad of trash. Plastic and metal and salvage, all wound up and mashed together in the water. A mile of scrap. A mountain of it. Bits of junk sticking up on the shoreline and jutting out of the snowy hills.

  But on the beaches, you could see the trash had begun dissolving into earth again. So I reckoned that meant the island was ancient. Old enough to turn back into dirt.