The Rift - Howard Chris (читать книги TXT) 📗

I forced myself to stand, though. Shivering in the wind as I scraped what was left of me back together to keep pushing on.

There were three bridges leading off the rooftop, each one woven out of thick steel cables and anchored to the concrete with rusted bolts. Each bridge stretched to a different building, creaking and sagging in the middle and not looking too stable. They were narrow, too. Just about wide enough for the wheels of our tank.

I was so damn lightheaded, I thought I might float away, but when I bent down and checked the steelwork, the feel of the metal seemed to ground me a little. Reminded me of all the years I’d spent building trees with Pop.

I stared out across the rooftops, watching the bridges drooping and swaying. They formed a web, patched across this old city that drowned. And it made me think of another old city—the city on the plains where Alpha had made me promise to return. She’d wanted me to get the trees to her band of pirates in Old Orleans.

But could I do that for her? Could I do it without her?

In the distance, I saw the strugglers who’d escaped off the boat, already disappearing into the skyline maze. Same people I’d locked up. The people who couldn’t be trusted. Until something worse came along.

And where would they go now? What would they do? Out there, past the eastern edge of the buildings, I saw hills as old as time. Land. Just like we’d wanted. Brown dirt. Snow on the high ground. But how did we get there from here? And then what? Then where?

“Which one do we take?” Zee said, the wind whipping her wet hair all around her. She pointed at the bridges, but I just stared down below.

We were a good hundred feet above the water, and part of me wanted to topple down there and smack at the surface, then become withered and shriveled in all that blackness.

“Thought you wanted to hand the trees over,” I said, my voice shaking, as I turned to face Zee. “Thought we were supposed to give them to Harvest.”

“He’s going to kill us,” she screamed.

“So he kills us, takes the trees, and the trees keep living. Ain’t that all that matters to you?”

“I never wanted to die.”

“Nor did Alpha.”

“Stop.”

“We could have used your help fighting.”

“Fighting was your idea.” Her voice fought the wind to see which one was louder. “Yours.”

“Just pick a bridge,” said Kade. “Whichever looks strongest.”

He combed the city with the scope of the sub gun, still trying to keep things together. Still playing the fearless leader, even though he had no one to lead. And how had he ended up in that gun tower, anyway?

How was he the one ended up with that gun?

“This one,” Zee said, turning from me and stomping her foot at a bridge.

“No,” Kade said. “We go west.”

“Away from land?” cried Zee.

“Away from them.”

Kade pointed at a rooftop just east of us, where pouring out of a doorway stormed a whole crew of Harvesters.

The bridge swayed as the tank rolled onto the woven cables and balanced above all the nothing below us. And as Zee stepped onto the bridge, it lurched even worse, swinging from side to side.

“Climb on top,” Kade told her, adding his own weight to the cables. “But go slow.”

Zee clambered for the top of the steel box, then Kade crawled up onto it after her, everything bobbing and weaving each time they moved.

But how much weight could these bridges handle?

I heard the Harvesters racing behind us, boot heels slapping at concrete.

They wouldn’t shoot at us, though. They couldn’t risk losing the trees, and they’d lose everything if this tank fell into the waters. But I reckoned they could catch up to us, wrestle the tank from us. And it sounded like they were getting real close.

So I shuffled out onto the bridge. Got my hands on the steel walls of the tank, steadied myself, and dragged myself up. Then we were all huddled together, our knees pinning Crow in place as Zee gently rolled the tank forward.

The bridge was barely wide enough. Cables corralled us in place, but we were tripping and tipping, the tank teetering this way and that.

The wind sucked us inside its noise, and Kade’s sub gun cracked like thunder when he fired at the Harvesters on the rooftop behind us. But it should have been Alpha with her finger on that trigger. Not this son of a bitch.

The bridge sank real bad in the middle, like the cables had all gone slack. But we made it across, rolled up onto the next roof with a bump, went wheeling across it, then began rattling down a bridge even longer and more scraggly than the last. It kept us away from the Harvesters, but it didn’t lead much closer to shore.

Replicants were popping out onto rooftops all over the city, crawling over the buildings like a disease, multiplying and festering and closing in quick.

Kade took aim at a bridge across from us that was chock-full of troops, and as he opened fire, the steel cables beneath us began to pivot and swing so bad, I lost my grip on Crow.

I grabbed at him, hauling him against me with one hand while I held onto the tank with the other. And when we rolled up onto the next roof, Zee started to cut to the east, but I grabbed the controls from her and ground the tank to a halt.

“Land’s this way,” she yelled, trying to snatch back the controller, scratching her nails at my fists.

“I know,” I said, because the bridge before us stretched away from the city and down to the shoreline. “But what about them?”

I was staring back across the web of steel to where a group of survivors were running towards us, racing across a bridge, steel cables shaking beneath their pounding feet. I was checking their faces. Searching for Alpha. Knowing they were all that was left.

Out in front, I could see a woman sprinting along with a kid in her arms, and it was that mechanic from the Salvage Guild. The one who’d fixed the boat so we could steer straight into this mess.

I saw Muscles limping along, a girl hooked on his shoulders.

There were others I recognized. But no one I knew.

“Come on, bro.” Kade thumped me on the back.

“Ain’t they your people?” I said, watching the poor souls from the boat. Folk who’d fought their way off Promise Island, then fought their way up here. And I reckon I should have trusted them all to begin with, because now I saw the fear in their eyes, they didn’t look like strangers, they looked just like me.

“They don’t belong to me,” said Kade, and I let Zee steal back the controller.

I reckoned those strugglers belonged to no one at all.

We were midway down that last bridge when I felt it go sloppy. Punched too wide and pinched too thin. There was too much damn weight on the cables, but here came everyone behind us, anyway—the last of the survivors, the Harvesters—all squeezing onto the bridge.

“Hold on,” Kade shouted as Zee forced the tank to go faster. The cables were moaning, shredded and rusty. And land looked so close now. Mucky and solid. I could almost taste the dirt and the rocks. But the cables started snapping and screeching, and then there was no more damn bridge at all.

We were hurtling through the air. And when I crashed down, I landed in the water, just shy of the shoreline.

I stood, up to my hips in the water, and stared back at those who’d been on the wrong side of the bridge. Those who’d managed to hold on had been whipped back to the buildings. They were sliding down the concrete walls and smashing into the lake.

So we’d got separation from that Harvester posse, but we’d lost our survivors. The ones who’d made a stand and the ones who’d sat singing. They were gone. Just like Alpha.

I pictured the little thing with the sticky-out ears, remembered prying the gun from her too-small fingers. And what good had it done? I’d failed them all in the end. Left them all behind.