by Chris Howard
Perfect.
“I’ll build tomorrow,” I told Zee as we headed back through the forest.
“Are you gonna make it light up?”
“Sure, if you get me a generator. Some LEDs. But I’ll need juice,” I told her. “Lots of juice.”
I got back to the compound just as it was getting dark, and the Creator was waiting on me outside Crow’s room.
“Success,” she said, her gray eyes tired but bright. “At least I think so. Usually we can repair someone with a small graft if they need it. But I’ve never tried to replace whole limbs before.”
I wondered for a moment what it would take for this woman to be someone who just fixed folk with her science. I mean, this here patching up people proved useful. It had saved Alpha. And maybe it had saved that old Rasta once, before Pop had set the dude free.
“So it worked?” I said.
“It appears so. We’ll know when your friend comes back around. I stimulated propagation, and the cells worked their magic. But whether or not his nervous system agrees with the plan, well, we’ll find out when he wakes up again.”
“How long?”
“He’ll sleep until morning. But what about you, Banyan? How did it go today?”
“You’ll see,” I said. “Tomorrow. When I get done. But tonight I get to see my old man. Right?”
She smiled and put her hand on my shoulder, giving me an awkward sort of squeeze. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you some of my work.”
The Creator led me across the snow, past the dome, and up to the large bunker. “This is our main staging area,” she said, as we shuffled through the snow. “Where we conduct dormancy, and where we’ll begin fusion.”
She swiped a plastic tag that caused two sets of steel doors to peel open. Then she led me inside a giant chamber of bright lights and bodies.
Human bodies.
They were all stretched out together, head to toe and side by side. Their eyes were sealed shut, faces beyond sleeping. And all of them were naked. Limbs pale and floppy. Arms wired up with cables that ran to a giant purple vat that hung from the ceiling.
I scanned the bodies, far as I could see, looking for a face that could be Alpha’s, knowing she was in there somewhere.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said the Creator, raising her voice above the drone of machinery. “But we’re not killing anyone. We’re transforming them. In fact, we’re providing them with everlasting life.”
“How do you reckon?” I said, buying for time while I kept checking for Alpha.
“We’re going to make them magnificent, Banyan. They’ll be the first of a whole new species. A locust-proof species. And they’ll self-propagate, just as the white trees on this island have done for centuries. Reproducing asexually. New plants off the same shared root system. Once we start planting on the mainland, the organism will keep on growing. Don’t you see? We’re granting these single bodies the chance to multiply. To be eternal. Part of a forest without end.”
I gazed across the field of human skin that’d soon be made of leaves and wood. I thought about the fire pit back in the factory, pictured Sal being cast into the flames because his DNA didn’t match up with what GenTech needed. No eternal life for him, then. Not unless you could live inside ashes.
“Can’t you just copy the bodies you want?”
“The gene pool needs diversity. We’ve had to match a core protein set, but the more variants we mix in now, the better off we’ll be.”
I kept scanning the faces. “So what keeps them sleeping?”
“Up there.” She pointed to the purple vat on the ceiling. “It’s a feeder. Keeps them under and gives them everything they need to get their bodies strong, get their cells ready. This time tomorrow, we’ll add a solution that prepares them for fusion. Soon after that, they’ll no longer be simply human.”
I just stared at her, and she beamed with pride.
“The first crop of a brand new species. Trees made ready for the mainland. Regenerating like the white tree but growing fruit like our apple tree. And now,” she said, taking my arm, “it’s time I showed you the source.”
She called the dome the Orchard, and it was smaller and much quieter than the bunker full of bodies. The Creator opened up the steel door with her plastic key. And once inside, I saw a glimpse of something from a broke-down dream.
I staggered and the Creator caught me. I would have pushed her away, pulled myself free. But I felt upside down, as dizzy as when I’d been sick back in the mud pit. All full of a fever that stretched out my mind.
I heard the Creator. She was speaking to me. Trying to explain what was going on. But she didn’t refer to the man as my father. Or Pop. Or anything like that.
She just called him the Producer.
Locked up, Zee had said. My dad was somewhere on the island. Locked up. But no one had really told me anything. Because no one had said one damn thing about this.
Pop didn’t need to be locked up.
He didn’t need to be wrapped up in chains.
He’d left me out near the cornfields. Down in the dirt. But now, seeing him again, it was like he was leaving me all over. And it was like I was just watching, turning to stone as he floated away.
They had him inside a big old tank of water. A tank glowed up with golden lights. There ain’t a way I can really tell what they’d done to him. There’s not words built for what they had going on.
I swayed forward. Part of me wanted to run up and press my face at the glass. But I just waited, watching as the Creator strolled up to the tank and checked the gadgets that were wired against it.
I counted seven saplings.
Each one of them was fresh, bright green, budding in the liquid. Two of the saplings had grown out of Pop’s legs, and one was growing on each of his hands. There was one on his head, one out the belly. And the smallest one curled out from his chest. Straight from his heart.
Pop’s skin was green and knotted. Fibrous. The hair on his scalp had grown twiggy and black. His face was buried under a mess of green roots, and right where his mouth should have been was where a sapling wound upward in the golden lights.
I remember being grateful Pop’s eyelids were sealed shut.
No faraway look in his faraway eyes.
Thought I might puke. Let it all spill out of me. But I just shuffled closer. My footsteps echoed as they scraped at the floor. I went ahead and got next to the glass, and I knelt down by the rubber wheels the tank had been placed upon.
No matter what you called the thing floating in there, it was still my father. What was left of him, anyway. And if what the woman said was true, he might somehow live on forever now. Just keep on going.
But not in the ways that mattered.
I closed my eyes and pictured that forest we’d talked of building. The metal trees and a house of our own. And I saw myself sitting amid the forest and every leaf and branch had turned rusty and broken and all the trees were nothing but holes. I had our old book in my hands, but I’d forgotten all the stories and I was ripping out the pages now, crumpling them and burning them along with Pop’s corn husk sombrero. And I’d quit eating so I was just made of bones and even the locusts wouldn’t touch me. And no one would touch me or see me or hear me as I began screaming for my father in the never ending night.
When I opened my eyes I was still screaming and the Creator had wrapped her arms around me and everything seemed to suffocate me. Heavy and loud. So I quit screaming. I just squatted there. Quiet. Still. The Creator crawled off me, sat on the concrete and watched me. And I knew I had to find a way to let go of this feeling. I had to find some way to keep in control. And I had to play things out right, in front of this woman. Everything depended on it.
So I told her what she’d done to my father was beautiful.
And you know what’s messed up?
It was sort of beautiful. In its own horrible way. And I remembered what I’d said to Crow about heaven and hell and how they’re maybe
just the same thing anyway. Glory and hunger. Fear and love. All looped together so there’s no place where one ends and the next one’s beginning.
And then, as I stared into the tank, I thought maybe the world wasn’t as dead as we’d thought it. Maybe it was just lying dormant. Waiting for seeds.
“The liquid preserves the microclimate,” the Creator said, still watching me, her voice scuffed and loose. “Protects him from winter.”
I swallowed. Almost spoke.
“He’s safe,” she whispered. “This is the one. Where every test went right.” She stood, staring into the tank. “He’s a hundred percent locust-proof. Free from harm. Forever.”
I tried to see a way my dad was just sleeping inside what was growing in there. His mind still working, still thinking. Dreaming. Not dead, somehow. Not gone.
“What about his brain?” I whispered.
She shook her head. “He’s more tree now than man.”
The words stabbed at me. I felt them in my guts. My bones. Nothing makes the world seem hopeless like knowing it’s empty. But I had to cut off those parts that the knowing infected. Those parts that can cause you nothing but pain.
“And what’ll be left?” I said, clenching my fists as if I might squeeze out the hurt and let it drip from my fingers. “After you’ve used him.”
“Just enough to regenerate for the next crop. His body became the perfect breeding ground. And we’ll keep fusing these cells to human tissue until we’ve reached enough diversity.”
“And then?”
“Then my work will be done.” She put her hand on the wall of the tank, and it left a sticky smear on the glass. “His work, too.”
Outside the Orchard, we stood huddled together as snow fell white against the darkness. I felt like I’d been punched flat and sucked dry. My head was pounding and parched.
“I am sorry,” the Creator said, hunching her shoulders. “I’m sorry your father and I caused you so much pain.”
The woman smiled at me and for the first time I felt bad for her, because I knew there was no part of her that could understand what I felt.
She’d stayed here, searching for a solution that cost hundreds of lives. Thousands, maybe. And no matter how she justified it, the way I saw it, everything the world now needed only GenTech was going to get. But how could she not see that? How could she choose to be so damn blind?
We crunched back through the snow with our hoods hiding our faces, making our way toward the building where Zee would be sleeping and Crow would hopefully be healing so as to be ready to fight. You got to be strong, that’s what I told myself. For Alpha and all the other prisoners. For what was left of my father. For the taken. The burned. For the empty-bellied strugglers. On this island we could bust a hole in something wicked. And I’d die if I had to. Or I’d live. And bring home the trees.
There was an agent standing watch at the door to the building. He was bundled and wrapped as we were, buried inside a huge puffy coat.
“Good evening, Creator,” the man said.
“Staying cold enough for you?” She swiped her electronic tag to unseal the door.
“Oh, don’t worry about me, miss,” the man said, and his voice wound my guts tight inside me. “I love to see the seasons. No matter how cold they get.”
As the door began to slide back in place and lock us inside, I stared back at the bulky figure all covered in fuzz and GenTech logos. A gun on his back and a club in his hand. Just like all the agents. Except he had a voice I’d heard and would always remember. Because this agent wasn’t just no one. Or anyone.
This agent was Frost.
I didn’t sleep. I just waited at the side of Crow’s bed, counting the seconds till he woke up again. The work they’d done on his legs had helped repair his skin as well, gave him a sort of sheen where before he’d been all scarred and blistered. The new limbs were something else, though. Strapping big legs, all scaly with bark. They were stuck outside the sheets, full of lumps and grooves, and they were bigger even than the originals had been. If Crow woke up able to use them, I reckoned those legs would have him standing about ten feet tall.
Crow’s face was peaceful, looked like he was catching up on a whole lifetime of sleep. And I just sat there, restless, watching the watcher.
“Crow,” I finally whispered.
“What?”
“You sleeping?”
“No. I be talking to you.” He opened his eyes. “What you doing here staring at me?”
“Wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“Okay. We doing okay.”
“The legs,” I said.
“Yeah, man. I been trying to use them.”
“How long?”
“Long enough, man. Long enough.”
I stared down at his legs and they weren’t even twitching. “Maybe it’ll just take awhile,” I said.
“Sure, Banyan. Maybe.”
“I gotta tell you something.”
“What?”
“Frost’s here.”
This got his attention and he turned his glare on full.
“Frost?”
“Yeah. I seen him.”
“Old bastard must’ve volunteered himself.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t have much choice. Or maybe he just paid his way up here. How in Jah’s name would I know?”
“Listen,” I said, not sure what I was going to say till the words were coming out. “I think we can use him.”
“Frost? No, man. Frost can’t be trusted.”
“We don’t need to trust him, just get him on our side for a bit.”
“And then what?”
“Then we can get rid of him. Once and for all.”
“You’re cold, Banyan. Cold.”
“Yeah? Well, you ain’t got legs, pal. And I’m gonna need a little help here.”
“Sell your soul to the devil, then. What do I care?”
“It’s just an idea,” I said, trying to calm him down.
“Just a bad idea.”
“You partnered with him.”
“And look where that got me.”
“We only got till the end of the day. That’s it. I got a plan, but I’m gonna need some help.”
“You should talk to Zee. She’ll help, man. She’ll help.”
“Okay. You rest up. Try to get those legs moving. I’ll come back and check on you.”
“You going to talk to Zee?”
“Yeah,” I said, but I was lying.
I was going to talk to Frost.
I strode outside into the dead part of morning. Snow all over the ground and no sunrise. Frost was gone and a different, thinner agent stood guard at the entrance.
“The man here before you,” I said. “You know where he went?”
The agent pointed and I took off the way he’d gestured, following Frost’s footsteps all the way up the hill.
When I’d made it down the other side, I found Frost in the clearing, rooting around in the scrap I’d dug from the ground. He had his hood off and his fat face was pink and chapped by the cold. Dark roots had grown in behind his bleached white hair. I stood there watching him awhile from inside my jacket, concealed in the bulk and fuzz, and hidden by trees. Then I stepped forward and Frost jerked around at the sound of my footsteps.
“Oh, hey there,” Frost said, taking me for just another agent. He went back to poking around at the salvage. “You know what the hell all this is for?”
“Yeah,” I said, pulling down my hood. “It’s for the tree I’m building.”
Frost’s eyes grew as fat as the rest of him.
“It’s really you?”
I nodded, and Frost laughed.
“Crow was supposed to cut your damn throat.”
“You can take that up with Crow, if you like. He’s here, too.”
“Is he, now? So we all made it, did we? You and me. The watcher.” Frost made a slimy grin. “And the pretty little thing.”
<
br /> “How the hell’d you find this place?”
“Even agents can be bargained with.”
“Coordinates didn’t work so well, I guess.”
“No matter. Keep digging and you find the dirt you need. Went and got myself employed.” Frost spread his arms wide, showing off his purple threads.
“You should know your boy’s dead.”
“My boy?” Frost’s grin broke down and his jaw clamped tight. “I left him behind. To keep him safe.”
“You don’t keep someone safe by ditching them,” I said. “Sal came looking for you. And now he’s dead.”
Frost blinked at the snow. “Tell me you’re lying.”
“I ain’t lying. They killed him.”
Frost’s hands were shaking, and he pulled his gloves off to scratch around at his knuckles and at the back of his arms. Been awhile since he’d had his fix, I reckoned. Not a whole lot of crystal on Promise Island.
“Your wife’s dead, too,” I told him, and Frost’s hands stopped shaking.
“My wife?” His anger grew him taller, stretched his face into a grin you’d not call smiling. “She made you feel wrong just wanting her. And besides, there seems to be no shortage of that woman running around.”
“Well, the one you were married to is dead.”
Frost waved his hand in the air, like he was dismissing his grief. But I wondered if maybe he’d needed Hina like he needed the crystal, if maybe it’s the needing that leaves you spiky and torn.
“Plenty more where that came from,” Frost said. “Though she was an awfully lovely bit of ass.”
Suddenly I got the feeling Crow was right. I couldn’t deal with this guy. Glued to a vice that can ruin the best of them. And Frost weren’t the best of them, not by a midnight mile.
But I needed him. And I let him talk.
“The Creator, now she’s a real ballbuster, I’m thinking. But let’s face it, she’s getting a bit long in the tooth. Zee, on the other hand, now isn’t she something? Why else you think I kept the little bitch around?”
“Got it all figured out, don’t you, fat man?”
