Blight Page 17

  The sun climbs high above us, and the road ripples with mirages, quicksilver pools that shimmer into view and then disappear. At some point, I stop sweating, which I know is bad, but I keep walking, checking behind me, walking again.

  A roar rips across the sky. I look up, expecting to see thunderheads rolling in, but the sky is a perfect blue. The sound grows louder, closer.

  “Get down!” I grab Alder and throw us both on our bellies in the weeds.

  A trio of jets scream overhead, angling northeast, in the direction of the Red Hand base and my compound.

  “What are they doing?” Alder asks as the sound fades.

  I stand and dust seeds and burrs from my legs. “I don’t know.”

  The words are barely out of my mouth when we hear a distant boom-boom-boom. A wall of smoke appears on the horizon. It must be at least thirty miles north of us, maybe more, rising above the treetops.

  “The blight?” Alder says.

  I have a vision of it spreading, seeping out in evil wisps like the red streaks on Alder’s arm. Touching all the creeks and rivers veined across the landscape, carrying the infection in the current.

  “Must be. They’re trying a firebreak, I think.”

  “Fire didn’t stop it before,” Alder says grimly.

  “Maybe they didn’t get all of it the first time.” My mouth is dry. I’m not sure even I believe me.

  Alder doesn’t answer. We wait in the grass as the jets circle back around and disappear to the south, in the direction of the city. Then we wait a few minutes more before we stand again and keep walking.

  The retaining wall appears several quiet miles down the road, a concrete barrier that starts at knee height and steps up until it towers six feet above our heads. It runs beside the highway as far as I can see.

  “Can we go around?” Alder looks weary. “Through the woods?”

  I lean over a waist-high section of wall. The ground slopes up sharply behind it, covered in a dense undergrowth of briars and weeds.

  I grimace. “We can try.”

  We try to pick our way through the thicket, but it’s no use. Thorns snag our clothes and slice red lines across our skin. Alder’s ankle turns in the soft, uneven mud, and I barely catch him before he rolls down the slope and crashes into the back of the retaining wall. After half an hour, we turn back. I can still see the highway behind us. We’ve made it only a handful of yards.

  “How long do you think it goes?” I say as we stand, scratched and sweaty, back where we started.

  “I don’t know.” Alder stares at the wall. “Couple miles? I’ve never been this close to the city before.”

  I gnaw on the inside of my lip. Even if it’s only a couple of miles, that’s a long time with no way to run off the road and take cover. If we keep following the highway, we’re exposed, trapped. But if we veer off into the woods now, we risk getting lost.

  “Can you run?” I ask him.

  “I can try,” he says, but the sickly sheen on his face makes me think it won’t be very far or very fast.

  “We’ll walk,” I say. “Quick as we can.”

  Alder opens his mouth, but I cut him off. “I’m not leaving you behind, okay? Stop telling me to.”

  We start out at a brisk pace, but before a mile is out, Alder is lagging again, and the wall shows no sign of ending. Somewhere behind it, a bird calls, an off-kilter sound, a warning. I don’t like this. I look back. Nothing emerges on the horizon, but I’m on alert, my heart pounding as if I’m on patrol. I can almost hear the soft crackle of Crake’s open com line in my ear.

  Another mile passes, the only sound our shoes on the pavement and Alder’s labored breathing. Mosquitoes buzz around us. I look up. A quarter mile away, the wall is lower and the land drops back into a gentle slope topped by pines.

  “Almost there!” I call back to Alder.

  He raises his head, relief written on his face for a brief moment, and then it’s gone.

  “Do you hear that?” He turns and squints back at the rolling road.

  “Hear what?” I say. But then I do. Engines. A glint of metal appears on one of the rises in the highway behind us.

  “Run!” I grab Alder’s hand and pull him forward. I can see the end of the wall. We can make it if we’re fast enough. Twelve hundred feet, a thousand, eight hundred . . .

  Alder stumbles and smacks the ground. The sound of engines grows at our backs. There’s more than one. A dozen, at least.

  “Go!” Alder yells. “I’m slowing you down.”

  I yank him to his feet. Blood seeps through his pants at the knees and covers his hands and chin. I point to the end of the wall. “There’s still time. We can make it.”

  “Tempest . . .”

  “Move!” I shout.

  We run. Five hundred feet, four hundred, three hundred. I look back. Two lines of tanker trucks crest the last hill between us and begin their descent, led by guards on motorcycle. We have a minute—maybe—before they’re on us.

  One hundred feet, seventy-five, fifty . . .

  “Almost there,” I pant. Please don’t let them see us. Let them think we’re a mirage.

  Thirty, twenty, ten . . .

  The diesel engines reach a roar. The wall drops to knee height. I link my arm through Alder’s and pull us over it. We hit the dirt a half second before an entire caravan of tanker trucks blares by. I lift my head as much as I dare and squint against the dust stirred up in their wake. Fourteen tankers, all with the AgraStar logo printed in green on their sides, surrounded by armed guards riding jeeps and motorcycles. They fly past, in close formation, and then they’re gone, their deafening blare fading with them.

  I lie with my head pressed to the dirt, heart pounding.

  “You okay?” Alder asks.

  I nod and make myself sit up. “You?”

  “A little banged up.”

  “Can you walk?” I offer him a hand.

  He takes it gingerly. “I think so.”

  We trudge along the road. My knees are jelly and my head aches. I keep my eyes on the pavement in front of me. We have to stop soon. Even if we’re nowhere near water, I need to rest.

  “You see that?” Alder says.

  I lift my head. Alder is pointing to something ahead of us—a rise and an overpass, an old highway exit, with the flat roof of a service station barely visible above the hill.

  “You think anyone’s up there?”

  Alder shakes his head. “Hope not.”

  I lick my cracked lips. “There might be water.”

  We look at each other, passing a silent calculation between us. No doubt scavengers and jackers have picked off whatever was left behind in the decades since stations like this one were closed down. Then again, someone could be using it to stash supplies. Or trap unsuspecting travelers.

  “We’ll be careful,” I say.

  Alder nods.

  “If anything’s off, we run for the woods.” I try to swallow. I don’t know what’s worse—making a bad call by accident, or doing something incredibly stupid because you have no other choice.

  The air is quiet at the top of the ramp. The covered filling area stretches out cool and empty against the glare of the sun. Our footsteps echo. Some of the pumps have been ripped out, and warped pine boards cover the windows of the building.

  I squint up and down the long strip of road beside the station. Other buildings and a series of transformer towers dot the gentle folds of the landscape, all half eaten by vegetation.

  Alder tugs at the boards. “They’re on tight.”

  I lean in to peer through a gap near the front door, and draw back in surprise. Sunlight floods the interior of the building. A section of roof has fallen through to the floor, and a circle of sourwood trees in full, feathery bloom has grown up on top of the pile of shingles, dirt, and leaves. Dust motes float in the column of light surrounding them.

  “What’s wrong?” Alder tenses beside me.

  “Nothing.” I move away so he can look, and s
can the horizon again. I could shoot out the lock, but anyone within a mile radius would hear it, and the last thing we want is the wrong kind of attention. There has to be another way in.

  “Like a fairy circle,” Alder says quietly.

  I glance up. “Let’s go around.”

  We find a utility ladder at the back of the building, its rungs sunk directly into the cinder-block wall.

  “Stay here, yeah?” I say, climbing until I can peek over the lip of the roof.

  “What do you see?” Alder calls.

  “Not much.” The top of the building is mainly dirt and concrete, except for the hole. A stack of empty mason jars with rusted caps sits jumbled in one corner of the roof. Someone might have been using this place as a stash once, but not anymore.

  I edge closer to the hole and peer down. It’s too dark to see anything past the sourwood branches. I lie flat on my stomach and lower my head and shoulders, ponytail dangling straight down. Slowly my eyes adjust. Empty metal shelves surround the trees, some at an angle, others knocked over. A wall of glass doors lines the back of the room, most of them spiderwebbed with cracks. There’s an alcove off to the right. The only things left that I can see are a stand of clear plastic key fobs, a stack of Styrofoam cups, and a broken analog clock on the wall, its hands frozen at three and six.

  Suddenly the roof gives beneath me. My stomach flips, and I tumble down head over heels. I land on my back, the wind knocked out of me. A flurry of dust particles and pollen swirls in the newly opened shaft of sunlight above me.

  “Tempest!”

  I turn my head and flex my arms and legs. Nothing broken. I sit up carefully and look around. A thick film of dust covers everything, from the counters near the front windows to the darkened track lights hanging from what’s left of the ceiling. Something rustles and then scurries by in a gray blur—a rat or a squirrel.

  Alder’s head appears in the opening above me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I roll my neck. “Don’t come any closer. I think the roof beams are rotten.”

  “Can you climb out?” He’s backlit, but I can hear the frown in his voice.

  I look around. The trees are too slender to climb, but I could probably scale one of the metal shelves and use it to boost myself back onto the roof.

  “I think so.” I squint up at him. “Maybe I should look around a minute, though. See if anything useful’s left.”

  “Hurry,” Alder says. “I don’t like how open this place is.”

  I find a single mud-stiffened work glove in the corner and a handful of strawberry-flavored gum packets scattered across the floor behind the counter. I gather them up and toss them in my bag. It might not be food, but it could be enough to trick our stomachs and give us a short burst of sugar.

  The door to what might be a utility closet or storage room is locked—something to come back to—but the pair of restroom doors in the back alcove swing open. Nothing but darkness and broken glass fills the women’s room. The mirror has been shattered. Bits of it glint on the tile like flecks of mica in the soil. I try the men’s room next. Something moves in the dark, and I nearly cry out before I realize it’s my own reflection in the mirror above the sink.

  I blink and let my eyes acclimate. The air smells like stale earth. I step inside. My foot catches on something, and I throw out a hand to steady myself before I look down. A leg, a shoe. A bundle slumped in the corner. I don’t go any closer, but the thing comes into focus as my brain sorts the shapes and shadows into a form. A partly mummified skeleton, skin stretched dry and yellow-brown over the bone, clothes loose over its rib cage and desiccated limbs.

  I want to move, but I can’t. I want to leave, climb back up into the sunshine with Alder, but I’m frozen. All I can do is shut my eyes. It’s only a body. It can’t hurt you. It’s just some bones.

  I crack one eye open and make myself look at the scene again. The man—I think it was a man—lies propped with his back to the corner and his legs splayed in front of him. A rusted syringe and a mostly empty bottle rest beside his hand. I pick it up, careful not to brush his skin. Morphine. I shove the bottle in my pocket and scan the room again. One of the soft ceiling panels above the body has been shoved aside, revealing a triangle of darkness and a dangling strap.

  I reach up and tug the strap. A shower of rat droppings and dirt falls, along with a backpack. I cough, dust myself off. I start to pull the zipper, but the fabric comes apart in my hands. I reach inside. A handful of loose nine-millimeter rounds. Three clean, plastic-capped syringes. A sweatshirt and a pair of socks. No water. No sat phone.

  “Tempest!”

  The urgency in Alder’s voice snaps me to attention. I race out into the front room, letting the door swing shut behind me, and look up at him through the hole in the ceiling. He points to the road. I hurry to the front windows and look out through a gap in the boards. As I watch, an armored truck, soot black with a golden AgraStar logo on its side, rolls up the off-ramp.

  I run back to the gap and look up at Alder.

  “Can you climb?” he asks.

  I shake my head. Not enough time. “Jump down here.”

  Alder looks at the road, then back at me, and nods. He sits on the lip of the hole, then pushes himself forward and drops. His feet hit the ground just as brakes squeak to a stop outside, and an engine shifts down to idle.

  .16.

  FIELD GOLDENROD

  SOLIDAGO NEMORALIS

  We huddle in the shadows beneath the boarded-up windows. Outside, the engine cuts off and boots fall on the asphalt. Faint voices reach us.

  “. . . still spreading . . .”

  “. . . have to call in another strike.”

  “Aim it right, and we’ll get two birds with one stone.”

  I finger the safety on my pistol. Alder goes up on his knees and peers out.

  I remember the man with the machete, the branch snapping, gunfire like rain on the trees. “Are they from the same convoy we saw back in the woods?” I whisper.

  “I don’t know.” Alder narrows his eyes. “Could be. But where are the rest of them?”

  Neither of us says anything. Have they run across the Red Hand caravan we saw last night? Is that why there are so few? Or is this a different group, evacuating south in the face of the blight?

  “What are they doing?” I ask.

  “I think . . . just resting.” He presses his lips together, and he swallows. He looks at me. “They have water.”

  I turn my head away. Water. A part of me wants to open the door, raise my hands, identify myself. Tempest Torres, perimeter patrol, compound SCP-52, sole survivor. But an undercurrent of doubt runs counter to that. I see my father outside the compound gates in the falling snow, downed by Rosalie’s bullet. I rub the twin pink marks on my wrist where my coms anchors used to be. Those pale spots are my only proof of who I am. Any deserter could have them.

  And that’s the simpler calculation. I can’t close my eyes without seeing the jets strafing the compound, lines of fire ripping through the dead fields. I can’t sleep without seeing Mr. Kingfisher bloody, hearing Juna whisper, “I’ll never be like you.” If they know who I am, will that save me, or earn me a bullet and an unmarked grave by the roadside?

  I look at Alder.

  “Don’t,” he murmurs, his eyes still on the group outside.

  I bite the inside of my cheek and look out too. A man and a woman with her hair in a ponytail like mine stand on alert, rifles in hand. The rest of the team sits in a circle in the shade, drinking from canteens and eating what look like dried protein strips from a package. My stomach rumbles.

  “I can’t take this.” I crawl away from the windows, sit back against an empty shelf, and unwrap a piece of gum. It crumbles in my mouth, stale and sweet.

  Alder stares at me. I hold out another piece.

  He stands to take it. At that moment, a shadow—not his—falls on one of the windows, shuttering out the strip of sunlight between the boards. I freeze, hand outstretched.
Alder sees my face and turns slowly.

  Outside, someone grunts. The board over the door rattles as someone shakes it, tugs it, tries to pull it loose.

  Alder drops and crawls the rest of the way to me. I pull him behind the shelves. The board shrieks.

  “I got one!” a man calls—young, maybe Ellison’s age.

  “Trey, leave it be,” a woman shouts back. “Why do you want to go looking in some nasty-ass heap like that, anyway?”

  “Go on and laugh,” he yells. The board rattles again.

  “He wants to earn a commendation for rooting out a jacker stash.” An older man’s voice this time, raw and broad. “Trey the glory hound.”

  They laugh, and someone starts baying. The others join in.

  “Shut up.” Trey lets the board snap back against the window. “Just wait till I get my own team. None of you are getting tapped for it. That’s for sure.”

  Alder lets out a shaky breath. I wipe my hands on my pants.

  “Time to roll out anyway.” Trey’s voice fades as he walks away.

  Engines crank and come to life again.

  “Load up,” the older man shouts over the hum.

  Boots clomp and doors slam. Then the pitch of the truck’s engine changes, and grit and pebbles scatter as it rolls away.

  We wait several minutes and then climb back onto the roof by way of one of the empty shelves. I’m hauling Alder up after me when a sonic boom claps the sky above us. A trio of jets streak by, heading north. I duck instinctively, but as high and fast as they are, we must look like nothing but ants. The planes disappear into the haze at the horizon. Everything is silent and still for a moment, and then fire expands to fill the space between earth and air.

  “It’s still coming.” I stare at the fresh smudge of smoke rising on the wind. “The firebreak—”

  “It’s not enough,” Alder says at my side.

  I squeeze my hands into fists. Three times AgraStar has razed the earth, and it still hasn’t stopped the blight. What if Alder is right? What if it’s not enough? What if it’s never enough? What if there’s no stopping it?

  We sleep through the hottest part of the afternoon in a concrete niche behind the pillars of an overpass. The rumble of thunder wakes me some hours later. I crawl out to prop up our water bottle and then hurry back into our shelter, with its carpet of dry leaves, dirt, and brittle plastic bags. The rain comes fast and hard, borne in by a sudden wind. It flattens the grass and tosses the trees. Lightning flashes, then, a heartbeat later, thunder booms all around us. Alder’s lurches up, panting.