Blight Page 4

  We lapse into silence. I stare out at the fields and glimpse their reflection rushing along in the side mirror. A flash clips the corner of my vision. I turn and look back. Lightning? No, there’s a steady light behind us. Two lights, in fact. The high beams of another truck.

  “Will?”

  He stops teasing Danica midsentence and looks up, a goofy grin plastered on his face.

  “Did admin send out backup for us?”

  “No.” He catches the troubled look on my face. “Why?”

  “Nothing,” I say. I’m only being green again, probably. “I just wondered if that truck—”

  “Truck?” He snaps his head around, but the road bends and the cornfields swallow the headlights. He turns back to me. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s there,” I say. “Watch.”

  Raindrops hiss on the hood. We both stare back at the road reeling out behind us. It straightens again, and a few heartbeats later, the headlights strike our rearview mirror. They’re closer this time, close enough for me to count three figures riding in the cab.

  Ellison glances up and squints into the mirror. “Who’s that?”

  “Backup?” I try to make out what kind of vehicle it is, try to see the riders, but the rain is coming down harder now, and I can’t see anything in the gloom.

  “The substation didn’t say they were sending anyone.” Ellison spares another glance in the rearview. “Besides, if they’re backup, why haven’t they radioed us?”

  Will casts a look at our rifles, clipped securely into the gun rack at the back of the truck, and then at Danica and Marco. Should we go for them? Or maybe the other vehicle’s radio is simply broken, and they’re trying to catch up to escort us or share some news? After all, what else could it be in the heart of company territory?

  Ellison looks at me, and then up to the mirror again. “Another five minutes and we’ll be at the substation.”

  He tightens his grip on the wheel and guns the gas. The engine revs. We edge faster, but the truck behind us isn’t nearly as weighed down. It’s closing the distance. Fifty feet. Forty. Twenty-five. Fifteen.

  “What’s happening?” Juna’s brother tries to twist around in his seat.

  “Shh,” she whispers. Her eyes catch mine. “Stay down.”

  I look back again. Lightning crackles across the sky, illuminating our pursuers. An open-top Humvee, mottled with rust. The engine cranks and grinds as they move closer. Something is wrong. Very wrong. Any company vehicle making that kind of sound would have been retired, scrapped for parts.

  “Ellison . . .” My voice wavers.

  One of our pursuers rises in the front seat. Two hanks of white-blond hair hang down her shoulders, almost silver in the storm’s light. The girl steadies a rifle on her shoulder and takes aim at our back left tire.

  “Ellison!” I scream.

  He jams his foot all the way down to the floorboard and swerves, but it’s too late. A bang rocks our back end, and our truck careens across the wet road. Everyone screams. Juna’s brother latches on to my arm as we fishtail off the road and crash into a wall of wet green corn.

  Stalks snap against the truck’s grill and thump the windshield. Ellison jerks the wheel, trying to pull us back under control, but the ground is slick and uneven, and the back left side drags along on its rims. We hit a rut. I throw my arms around Juna and her brother as the truck tips up on two wheels. Everything slows. The ground comes up to meet us on Ellison’s side, a mash of mud and pulped corn.

  Impact. The front window splinters. The sudden change of momentum throws me and the kids against Ellison, and then, for a brief moment, my stomach drops and I’m weightless. I don’t seem to be in the cab anymore, but before my brain can process what this means, wet leaves brush my shoulders and I hit the ground with a thump that knocks the breath from my lungs.

  My head pounds. I stagger to my feet, but the world spins around me. Green earth, wet sky, fire. I close my eyes and stand still, waiting for the spinning to stop. The world has gone quiet without the grind of diesel engines and tires rumbling over the road. Rain patters on the leaves and spits in the crackling fire. All quiet, except for the voices.

  Voices yelling over the corn. The metallic thunk of a car door slamming. I open my eyes. Several dozen yards in front of me, our truck lies on its side in the mud, a small, acrid-smelling fire licking from its undercarriage. I drop into a crouch and run along the deep furrows our tires left in the wet clay, toward the wreck. I register dully that I’m not feeling much pain, but I’m pretty sure that’s going to change once the endorphins flooding my bloodstream wear off.

  Three of the rifles are missing from the jeep’s gun rack. I pull mine out and check its magazine, though the world is going to have to stop swirling before I can do much good with it.

  “Torres?” A hoarse whisper from the far side of the truck.

  “Who’s there?” I whirl, rifle up at the sound.

  Danica pokes her head over the vehicle’s upturned side. “Back here.”

  Danica, Will, and Ellison huddle in the jeep’s shadow, rifles at the ready. Juna crouches beside them with her hand clamped over her brother’s mouth to muffle his whimpers. Mrs. Kingfisher’s zip ties have been cut away, and she sits with her husband’s head in her lap. His left leg bends back at the wrong angle and blood soaks his pant leg. His eyes are closed, but he’s breathing.

  I kneel beside Ellison. “You’re okay.” I brush tears away. It’s only a physiological response to the wreck, that’s all. It’s not like I’m really crying. “Where’s Marco?”

  Ellison focuses his gaze over my shoulder and nods.

  I look up. Marco’s body hangs slack in the seat restraints. He looks fine from the ground—unconscious, maybe—but then I stand to get a better view. Blood cakes Marco’s hair and the right side of his face, and there’s an unmistakable stillness to his chest. I take in a sharp breath. I haven’t seen a dead body since my father’s, at least not up close. The disposal teams usually take care of the shirks we pick off, if their fellow scavengers don’t drag the bodies away first. I reach out and touch Marco’s shoulder, half expecting him to startle and blink awake, but he doesn’t. His body jostles softly and his head lolls back.

  Footsteps squelch through the mud. A man’s voice drifts over the corn.

  “. . . told you to be careful. You’d better hope Harry and his brood aren’t dead.”

  “How was I supposed to know he’d go off the road like that?” a girl’s says. “It’s not like I took out the driver or anything.”

  I drop down behind the truck.

  Mrs. Kingfisher’s head snaps up at the sound of the girl’s voice. Our eyes meet. She looks away quickly.

  “You know her?” I whisper.

  Mrs. Kingfisher shakes her head, but her eyes are open too wide. I start to press her, but Ellison signals for us to be silent.

  “Might as well have shot him.” Footsteps splash closer.

  The girl huffs. “How else was I going to stop them?”

  “Quiet, both of you.” A new voice joins in, a younger man’s. “There it is.”

  Ellison quietly thumbs his gun’s selector over to semi-auto and gestures for the rest of us to do the same. I try not to breathe. The world swims at the edges.

  Ellison holds up a hand and counts with his fingers. One. Two. Three.

  “Go,” he mouths.

  As one, we rise and level our rifles at the girl and her companions. Her eyes go wide, and they swing their firearms up at us.

  “Drop your weapons.” Ellison’s tone has gone hard and dangerous. “Now.”

  “You first.” The girl adjusts her grip on her gun. She wears the same ditch-water brown tunic she had on the night before, only with the hood thrown back, and a faded red handkerchief loose around her neck. She and the middle-aged man both carry automatic rifles, older versions of our own, but the younger man has only a heavy black revolver and a bandaged hand. I stare at it. The last three fingers on his ri
ght hand are splinted and bound with rags.

  “You,” I breathe.

  He stares blankly at me from beneath his ragged black hair. How could he know who shot the wire cutters from his hand last night? To him, it would have been a crack of pain in the dark, and then a mad dash through the weeds. My chest fills up with anger again. I never should have let him run, him or the girl. I should have aimed true, and then Marco would still be here.

  “Hand over the Kingfishers, and we’ll let you go,” the girls calls.

  Ellison laughs. “How about you lay down your weapons and I let you live long enough to face the disciplinary board?”

  She snorts. “Seems to me you’re not in much of a position to be making demands.”

  “You think so?” Ellison says. “Any minute now, a team from the substation’s going to be rolling along, wondering why we haven’t showed yet.”

  “And if you don’t hand over Kingfisher and his kids, all they’re going to find are your bodies,” the girl says.

  “Jesus, Eden,” the scavenger boy mutters.

  “We’ve got a job to do, Alder.” She takes her eyes off Ellison for a split second to glance at the boy. “Or have you forgotten what AgraStar does to seed savers?”

  I take my chance. Now, when she isn’t looking. I won’t make the same mistake twice. I shift my aim to her chest, hold my breath so the world will stop spinning, and fire.

  The shot goes wrong, but lucky wrong. Her chin jerks up, as if some invisible force has pulled her by the hair. She falls, squeezing the trigger convulsively and spraying an arc of bullets into the air. To the left of me, someone screams—Will?—and the field erupts in gunfire. The Kingfisher kids clap their hands over their ears and crouch in the mud. The older scavenger backs to the wall of corn, firing steadily. The younger one sends off a few wild shots, and then drops to his knees and crawls through the mud to the girl’s body.

  Bullets ping off the truck’s undercarriage. My mind and body snap together. This is what I’ve been trained to do. Calm breathing. Use your adrenaline. I focus on the older man. I’m no good for precision shots with my vision still skewed, so I fire in a sweep across his position. One of my shots rips through his neck—a flesh wound—but most of them patter harmlessly into the corn like hard rain.

  A bullet bites Danica’s shoulder. She grunts in surprise as it throws her back into the dirt, but that gives Ellison enough time to bring his rifle to bear and execute a neat shot to the center of the man’s chest. He drops.

  I let myself breathe. “Nice.”

  Ellison grins at me. “Thanks. I try.”

  A single shot cracks the air, a paltry sound after the air-ripping exchange. Ellison’s face goes slack.

  “Tempest,” he says in surprise, and falls.

  I whirl around, rifle up. The scavenger boy stands over the girl’s body, pistol raised and pointed at the spot where Ellison stood mere seconds ago. At his feet, the girl’s skin has gone pale as her hair. A dark ruby spot spreads steadily across her neck, blood mixed with rain and red clay.

  Ellison lies head back in the mud. One heaving, wet gasp wheezes out of him, and then he freezes midbreath. I keep waiting for him to draw another, but he doesn’t. The seconds keep going by, and he doesn’t. I stare at him. Ellison—good, even-handed, handsome Ellison, who gave me a chance to join his team when everyone else was snickering behind their hands at me—is dead. And it’s all my fault. My fault for not taking care of the shirks when I first had the chance.

  No. I look up at the boy. Scratch that. It’s his fault.

  I pull my trigger, but the rifle only clicks. Empty. I drop down behind the truck as he returns fire.

  A magazine, I need a fresh magazine. I grope at my waist as the bullets ricochet overhead. I normally carry several reloads and a spool of zip ties on my utility belt, but now the whole belt is gone. I glance at the Kingfishers, huddled together, trying to shield one another, and then at my teammates splayed out across the field. Danica lies in the mud five feet away, moaning. The others are dead. Ellison’s dead. I’m on my own.

  My eyes tear up again, and I swipe at them furiously. I have to focus, live through this, hold out a few more minutes until the team from the substation arrives. I can’t think about Ellison, about the pride and warmth in his smile the second before he fell, about what could have been. I glance at him. His utility belt is still in place, with its regulation spare mags.

  I don’t breathe. I don’t think about how he won’t feel me tug the magazine from him. I just make my fingers move closer and closer. Pop open the snap case. Pull out the extra mag. Ignore how his body rolls as I tug it free. Don’t look at his face. Mud and blood slick my fingers as I release the old mag and jam the new one in its place. I let out a breath.

  Silence drops over the field. The scavenger boy must have run out of ammo, too. The air rings with sudden quiet. Thunder still rumbles, but the downpour lightens, signaling the storm’s retreat. Juna lifts her head and stares at the bodies and churned mud around her, then over to me.

  “Hey, Cog!”

  It takes me a second to realize it’s me the scavenger is shouting for.

  “Cog Girl, you still there?” He’s close, on the other side of the jeep.

  I clear my throat. “What?” My voice comes out hoarse and shakier than I mean it to be. “You ready to surrender?”

  He laughs, but there’s something hollow to the sound. “No. You?”

  I look at Juna again, then over at Danica. She’s going to bleed out if I don’t do something soon.

  I close my eyes. “Listen, if you want the Kingfishers, take them. Just let me get my teammate to the substation. I won’t get in your way; you won’t get in my way. Deal?”

  He laughs again, then stops abruptly. “So now you want to deal?” A click and snap—he’s loading fresh rounds. “Eden . . .” He stops and starts again. “My people are dead.”

  Anger surges back through me. So is Will. So is Marco. So is Ellison. All because I thought I saw something human in a pair of shirks last night.

  I rise to a crouch, careful not to make a sound or lose my footing in the slimy clay. My heartbeat thumps in my ears. Slow, controlled. Like a viper in the grass. I pause and listen. A soft squelch in the mud. A metallic click and the unmistakable catching sound of the revolver’s cylinder snapping into place. He’s exactly on the other side of the truck from me. I dig in my feet. All I have to do is stand and fire down. Behind me, Juna draws a shaky breath.

  I rise and swing my rifle in an arc over the side of the wreckage. The boy looks at me, and in the second before I’m going to pull the trigger, I see his eyes. They’re dark, like mine, and full of the same mess of fear and anger and shell-shocked distance I know mine must show. But I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to put an end to this, once and for all. I’m going to—

  A whine rises around us. I glance up. A blinding flash, and then, seconds later, a boom rattles the air, and a thick column of awful light shoots from the earth to the lingering thunderclouds. A shock wave slaps past me. I stumble back onto the ground in time for the second explosion. The corn bows down suddenly, as if struck by an invisible hand, and far off, the emergency claxon winds into a blaring wail.

  I push myself to my feet. Several dozen miles away, across acres of prostrate corn, a column of midnight-black smoke tumbles into the sky. It fans out as the higher air currents catch it, sinking its fingers into the clouds and staining the sky a sickly yellow-green. I glance at my data band. Due southeast. What the hell is due southeast of mile marker 226 that could make a cloud like that?

  The research and development labs. The ethanol processing plant. The heart of the compound.

  Something begins falling from the sky. At first I think it’s rain, but then I see it’s ash and cinders. Ash and cinders drifting and sparking in the fields, like an awful mimicry of the fireflies that come out in the early summer dusk. The ashes land on the bright, spear-like leaves of the corn, and immediately, the leaves s
hrivel and wither. The early corn blackens in its husks and drops to the wet ground. Miles of corn, a whole season’s worth of work, falls to rot in a matter of seconds.

  And that’s when the scavenger’s pistol strikes the side of my head.

  .4.

  TREE OF HEAVEN

  AILANTHUS ALTISSIMA

  I come to on my knees. The ground rocks beneath me, and a diesel engine drowns out every other sound. A painful thud fills my head with each heartbeat, and my throat is raw, as though I’ve been inhaling paint thinner. It takes me a moment to recognize the smell flooding my nose. Vinegar. A deep cough wracks my chest. I open my eyes.

  I’m kneeling on the floor in the back of a Humvee, facing the bench that runs along the sides of its cargo area. A zip tie binds my blistered wrists to the safety bar above the seat. Juna sits beside me, a damp bandanna pulled up over her nose and mouth.

  “She’s awake,” she yells over the engine’s steady grind.

  Boots clomp behind me, and the scavenger boy—Alder? Is that what the blond girl called him?—drops onto the bench on the other side of me. Rust-colored splotches stain his pants and shirt; mud or blood, I’m not sure. He wears a bandanna over the lower half of his face. Above it, his eyes sag with fatigue. He still holds the gun in his uninjured hand, and I remember. Will and Marco dead. Danica dying. Ellison falling, and the blood and stillness that followed. He won’t ever grin at me again. He won’t ever guide my hand along the bolt action of a rifle.

  I muster what strength I have and glare at the scavenger boy. “Where are you taking me?”

  “The forest.” He shifts his gaze behind me. “You can thank Mrs. Kingfisher you aren’t dead yet. She spoke up for you.”

  I twist around, but it’s Harry Kingfisher lying on the bench opposite me, his broken leg propped up in his son’s lap, both of them with their mouths covered. Mrs. Kingfisher hunches over the Humvee’s steering wheel as we fly over the road. My team’s rifles stand barrel-up in the passenger seat beside her. All around us, the light looks wrong. I stare at the road receding into the spoiled rows of corn. A red line of fire burns on the horizon. Toxic yellow mist hangs over what’s left of the fields, muting the sun to a blurry white disk.