Rootless

by Chris Howard

  “Man’s gotta have a plan, tree builder.”

  “So what the hell you doing out here?”

  “Well, first of all.” He pointed at the trees. “They’re lovely, I’m sure you agree. And second, I aim to smuggle one back with me. To the mainland. I can’t sell something to GenTech they already own, but you might remember you were supposed to be building me a forest. And I’m going to put one of these things right in the darn middle of it. Just see if I don’t.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. People will pay plenty to see themselves a real tree.”

  “The locusts, Frost. You got a plan for them as well?”

  “Glass,” he said, looking like I was the idiot. “I’m gonna cage it up in glass. Keep it safe.”

  “You’re a fool,” I said, and I strode right up to him. “You’re a fat piece of grease and I could turn you over to them. Right now.”

  “But you’re not going to, are you? You followed me out here, I figure you got something to say.”

  “You’re thinking too small,” I said. “That’s your problem. One of these trees ain’t gonna get you nowhere at all.”

  “Go on.”

  “What you really need is something the locusts can’t go eating. What you really want is the thing that makes GenTech different from the rest of us.”

  “You mean that thing in the Orchard.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Nice little pipe dream you got there, Mister B. But maybe you didn’t spot the troop of heavily armed agents. Or see the doors that open according to only one key.”

  “There’s a whole army I guarantee would be happy to start fighting. Just gotta wake them up, that’s all.”

  Frost stared at the hill. He chewed his lip.

  “They’d need weapons,” he said finally.

  “You’re an agent, aren’t you? Can’t you track down some guns?”

  Frost gazed back and forth between me and the trees.

  “Who’s in on this?” he said.

  “You and me. And Crow.”

  “What about Zee?”

  “Yeah. She’s coming with us.”

  “Then you can have my help. But I get her. I get Zee when we’re finished.”

  “Okay,” I said, and a switch got flipped inside me. Frost could not leave the island, that’s what I was telling myself. He just could not leave this place.

  The fat man reached out his hand with the missing finger. And I shook it. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

  But I did.

  One hour past sunset and everything would change. By my best guess, that was when the medicine would start turning the prisoners into something that weren’t human. That’s when we’d lose our army. And that’s when I’d lose Alpha.

  But that wasn’t going to happen, I told myself.

  I wouldn’t let it.

  The sun set around three, and there’d be an hour of darkness for Frost to smuggle the weapons into the bunker and shut down the system so as to wake up the prisoners. My job was to create a diversion. But I also had to find a way to get the key to the Orchard. I figured the first job was pretty easy. The second task, not so much.

  Frost was a gamble. I knew that. Any way you looked at it, he was nothing but risk. But what else could I do but try and use him? Way things had unfolded, Zee couldn’t be trusted to keep her mouth shut. And Crow couldn’t even walk.

  I kept asking Zee to check on him, and she’d wade off through the snow then shuffle back to the forest, but the news was always the same.

  No news.

  The morning passed too quick, and I got sloppy with my work. I built a single tree in the middle of the clearing. Just one damn tree. But without my normal tools, and maybe because of the way I was feeling, nothing seemed to go quite right with it.

  I was tired. Running on fumes. But I bent the rusty iron into a twelve-foot funnel, and that’s what I buried in the ground. Then I broke up the tubes and used the metal for branches that I set to turn on the hubcaps, rigging cans and broken glass where the leaves should have spun.

  Told you. Kind of a rush job.

  The important part was what I did with the cable. And with that big metal drum. I patched up the drum so it’d hold without leaking, and then I built it into the crown of the tree. I strung the cable out of the drum and ran it all the way around the forest. Took me ages. I had to set it just right, connecting all the treetops into one giant wire canopy.

  One other thing — before I ran that cable out, I’d soaked it in a big old barrel. A barrel full of the same stuff I’d poured inside the metal drum that I’d tied high in the tree.

  Juice.

  My secret ingredient.

  Remember, when you build it’s all about the details. Well, this was a detail that was going to make this forest come alive, all right. It’d be illuminated brighter than all the LEDs you could harness.

  And then it would burn.

  Right down to the ground.

  Zee got back from checking on Crow just as I finished rigging up the cables. The cold air was pretty ripe on account of all the juice, and Zee scrunched her nose as she stared at the tree.

  “What do you think?” I asked her.

  “I’ve seen better, I’m not gonna lie.”

  “Guess that’s what you get for rushing greatness.”

  “That’s some stinky kind of greatness. Looks better than it smells, I’ll give you that.”

  “Generator’s leaking.”

  “So you can’t get the lights going?”

  “We’ll see,” I said, needing to change the subject. “How’s Crow?”

  “Same as he was two hours ago. And two hours before that. But he says he wants to come and see your tree.”

  “No,” I said. “He can’t come over here. You gotta make sure he stays where he is.”

  “Why?”

  I wanted to tell her that I needed her and Crow safe and out of the way, but I couldn’t tell her why. Not yet.

  “Just do me a favor and keep Crow where he is. Out of sight.”

  “But he wants to see your tree.”

  “Why?” I snapped. “It’s just a piece of junk. Tell him to keep where he’s at.” I should have already told Crow my plan and now I was panicked. There wasn’t any time.

  The sun was getting low in the sky and I’d told the Creator to be here at first sign of dark, told her I’d show her my work. My lousy fake tree.

  Zee coughed on her crappy lungs. She stood staring at me.

  “Listen,” I told her. “You run along back to the base and keep Crow company. You tell him Banyan said to just sit tight. Can you do that?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll be right along,” I said. “Just sit tight and wait for me.”

  “Okay,” she said, then she turned and ran through the forest, and I just stood there watching her, waiting until I could see her high up on the slope beyond the trees.

  I poached a nail gun out of the toolbox they’d given me. I shoved the gun deep in the pocket of my big coat. And then I sat in the snow and I waited for sundown.

  The Creator appeared on the hillside as the sun disappeared behind it. She was right on time. And she was alone. Just as I’d told her.

  I’d started to get pretty damn cold, so I was pacing around the clearing and flapping my arms about, stomping my feet. It got dark real quick. Too dark to see. And I heard the woman get close before I spotted her again.

  “Banyan,” she called, snapping through the branches. I watched her fire up a flashlight and wave it around the clearing. “Where are you?”

  “Right here,” I said. “Right here.”

  She found me with her torch beam and I watched her tug down her hood, and her face was smiling like I’d not yet seen.

  “Turn off the light,” I said. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  “But I can already see how beautiful you made it.” She was up close to the tree now, messing her hands in the glass-bot
tle leaves.

  “It’s not quite finished, though,” I said, and I was suddenly impatient. “You gotta stand back here to see it right.”

  “Oh, but it’s lovely, Banyan. Such craftsmanship.”

  I pictured Frost waiting with his guns in the dark. I pictured Alpha and all those empty faces that needed me. And how much time was left? How much longer before it would all be too late?

  “Come on over,” I said, trying to sound all cheery about it. “Come stand with me.”

  She trudged through the snow, taking her own sweet time. But then she was close beside me, staring up at the new addition to her forest. And that was when I pulled the nail gun out and pointed it at her chest.

  “I’m gonna need that key to the Orchard,” I said, my voice shaking as much as my damn hand. “The tag that gets you in there, I’m gonna need it.”

  But she just stared at me through the darkness, and her face was suddenly as old as the earth and as bitter as the cold wind off the water.

  “The key,” I said. Kept saying it, too.

  “What are you going to do?” she whispered.

  “I’m taking him. Pop. What’s left of him, anyway. Taking the trees back to the mainland. Setting them free.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, what are you going to do to me?”

  I tried to steady my hand. “Just give me the key, woman.”

  “I’m your mother, Banyan.”

  “Like hell you are,” I said, suddenly shouting at her. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Because he stole you from me. Because he stole you and now I deserve this?”

  “You don’t deserve shit, lady. And there’s a hundred bodies waiting to die in that bunker to prove what you are.”

  “What?” she screamed back at me. “What is it you think I am?”

  “You’re a killer,” I said, and I pushed the nail gun toward her. “And a thief. And I’m gonna take that key.”

  But I couldn’t do it.

  Just couldn’t.

  Everything had gone wrong and now she was crying and I began to hate myself for it. I wanted to stop her from crying and just let her go. Forgive her, I guess. That’s what I wanted.

  But there was no time for that now.

  “Come on,” I said as she crumpled and wailed. She was sinking in the snow and I tried to grab at her, feel in her pockets, find the tab that I needed so I could just start my diversion and get the hell out of there.

  Then I suddenly felt like too much time was wasting, like I needed to get this show on the road. So I left the woman where she was and took aim at the tree, pointing the nail gun right up at the drum full of juice. I began squeezing the trigger.

  But something stopped me.

  I heard footsteps in the snow behind me but before I could turn, I felt a club smash my head. One of those spiky bastards. GenTech issue. Driving right into my skull and turning the whole world white.

  I hit the snow all splayed out and bleeding. I blinked until my eyes could see again, and then I spun my face to the sky. The nail gun was gone. Long gone.

  And there she was. That face that was going to just keep haunting me. Zee. Standing above me with the club in her hand and her body all breathless and her face covered in snot and tears.

  She was saying something but I couldn’t hear her. And it wasn’t because of my head being busted or the ringing in my ears. It was because in the distance, over the ridge, there were gunshots. And all I could think was that Frost was in trouble. And that my whole plan had already failed.

  I sat up and swiped my hand at the blood gushing out the back of my head. I felt dizzy. Sick as hell. My mother was still folded on the snow and weeping and I wondered why it had hurt her so bad. Hadn’t she done the same thing a thousand times over? Doing something wrong so you could put something right?

  Guns fired in the distance again. Like tiny claps of thunder.

  “What’s happening over there?” Zee said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do. Sit tight, you said.” She shook her head. “Trying to get rid of me.”

  “I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted to bring you with me.”

  “And what about her?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said my mother, standing tall and wiping the snow from her clothes.

  There was a moment. Just a moment. A handful of seconds where the two of them stared at each other as if trying to make up their minds about me. I stretched my fingers deep in the snow and groped around for something I could use.

  “Your father would have been shot,” my mother said, turning to glare down at me through the dark. “When the agents caught him, they chained him to these trees and they raised their clubs and cheered.”

  But I was done listening. My fingers had found something solid. The plastic piping I’d scavenged for my tree but found no place to put. I grabbed that chunk of tubing now and I swung it around my head, forcing the two of them back.

  Zee raised her club, brought it down, but I blocked her and pushed her away from me. Then I cast aside the tubing and plunged back into the snow. I dug and thrashed and then my hands were upon it. The nail gun. Clamped in my fist.

  Zee was bearing down on me again, but I had that gun in my hand and I lofted it toward the crown of the fake tree and I let the nails fly.

  Metal on metal. Sparks on fire. And boom. Just like that, the drum blew wild and flaming, and it filled the clearing with light. I watched the fire zip over the cables, searing the night sky as if welding it shut.

  Everything glowed, then exploded. I buried my face in the snow and listened as the world snapped and crackled. And when I could see again, the canopy was a fiery web above me and the whole forest was burning.

  Every last tree.

  I’d never seen anything burn like that. The trees caught alight like that’s what they’d been put on this earth to do, just to spark up the night and flame on and on. No smoke. Not yet, anyway. Just balls of red and gold that swelled and spiraled and breathed heat down billowy upon us.

  Flames streamed down the trunks of the trees, and soon we were surrounded by fire. I was sweating inside the thick coat, and I yanked down the zipper and crawled out of the purple fuzz as I scrambled to my feet. I shoved the nail gun down inside the back of my pants and pushed forward through the melting snow.

  Zee and my mother had charged to the edge of the clearing, but they’d stalled there. Nowhere to go but straight forward. Into the fire.

  “Come on,” I screamed, but they couldn’t hear me above the roar of the inferno. So I grabbed their hands and pulled them along with me, deep inside the tangle of flames.

  We plunged through the burning forest, and as bright as it was, it was impossible to see. I lost my grip on Zee’s hand and got behind her, pushed her before me, the three of us stumbling single file toward the cold blackness that waited at the edge of the trees.

  As we ran and tripped and breathed in the ashes, my chest wound up and my eyes got blurred. And I panicked. Because I’d killed them. Each one of them. Each one of those beautiful trees. Except for one, I kept reminding myself. Except for the one locked in the Orchard, on the far side of the hill.

  Zee’s coat caught fire and I had to yank it off her, unpeeling the bulk from her skinny body, then throwing the coat in front of us, trying to beat back the blaze.

  I lost track of them both for a second. I called out. Screamed Zee’s name. Then a tree crashed down and knocked me backward, igniting the shirt on my back.

  I rolled in the snow and I steamed and fizzled. Then I saw Zee. Out in the clearing. I staggered blind. Lurched forward.

  And finally I broke free.

  “What have you done?” she kept screaming, beating me with her bare hands as I crawled onto my knees.

  “Stop,” I called, trying to breathe again. I glanced back into the forest, and the only thing that wasn’t burning was that crappy metal tree in the center. The tree I’d built too fast.

  “You burned them, B
anyan. Killed them. All of them. After everything we’ve done.”

  “No,” I said. “There’s more. There’s more.” I stood, grabbing her hands and pinning them beside her. “In the Orchard. We have to get to the Orchard. And then I’m getting us out of here. All of us.”

  She got a hand loose and swung her fist but I blocked it. She tried to say something but then started coughing, her lungs shredded and smoky. And when she finally stopped choking she just stared at me, her lips trembling and her eyes wide.

  “We can’t let them have it, Zee. We can’t let them do this. They do just what they like. With all of us. You get in their way and you’re nothing. And as long as they control what grows and what doesn’t, people can’t ever be free.”

  “There’d be trees, though. Blue skies and clear water. Fruit growing everywhere. Air I could breathe.”

  “Trees won’t grow everywhere if only GenTech can grow them.”

  “But how do we do it without them? You don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t grow these trees with a hammer and nails.”

  “We’ll try,” I said. “We try so no more people get killed for some experiment. So no more people have to suffer.”

  Zee fell to the ground and put her hand on her chest, her throat twitching. “My lungs,” she croaked, tears in her eyes. “I can’t do it. I can’t go back.”

  “I’ll keep you safe,” I said. “And we’ll get trees around you. I promise.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re my sister. And I won’t leave you behind. Not if you’ll come with me.”

  She grabbed my wrist and stood beside me and I held her then, her hair soft on my face as she sobbed and shuddered.

  “But I need that key,” I said, staring back into the flames. “I need the Creator.”

  “She’s there.” Zee pointed and I spun around.

  And there she was. Halfway up the damn hill.

  I scrambled up the slope as fast as my legs would carry me. I didn’t pull the nail gun out. It was no use. I couldn’t pull the trigger. Not on her. Not now.

  She was moving pretty quick. But I was so much quicker. I was gaining on her, a few steps closer each time she glanced back to check. I lunged at her. Wrapped my arms around her waist to tackle her. She pulled the electric tag from around her neck and went to hurl it at the snow.