“We can’t trust him,” Alpha whispered, kneeling beside me.
“I know. But he needs us if he wants to find the wagon.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll have to keep our eyes on him.”
“I’m keeping my eyes on him now.”
“So am I.”
And I did. For about five minutes. Then my head plunged and my eyes sealed up and I was lost in a shadowy sleep.
I dreamt about Zee, and a nightmare is more what it was. She was on my back and I was crawling out of the Surge, soaking wet and my lungs tight, limbs all made of mud and crawling for the high ground. I held Zee on my shoulders, in the middle of a dusty city, and she began building, her hands weaving my hair in her fingers and tying my hair to the trees.
When she’d finished, she began on something different and I sensed someone watching us, but I couldn’t see who it was, and then Zee’s trees began falling, one by one, only I couldn’t catch any one of them because my hair was all tied in the branches and they were pinning me in place as Zee wandered free.
I could see now she’d been building a statue, broad shouldered and faceless. It grew a beard and it was Crow, and then its belly sagged and it was Frost. But then its body was Frost and its face was me and finally the statue was my father, and he was staring down at me as if he were sorry for something.
And then the statue fell in pieces on top of us and I watched as Zee was crushed beneath the steel and wires, her face howling silently and my hands reaching for her. And I wanted to tell her something.
But she was already dead.
When I came to, the stars were so bright it was like they’d pricked me awake. But it wasn’t the night sky that had caused me to stir. Alpha was stood above me, her face peering into the distance. And Crow was right beside her, his eyes so focused it filled me with fear.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Don’t know,” Alpha said, and I could hear the sound now, faint but growing louder. The sound of an engine, something moving. A vehicle out on the plains.
“The forty?” I asked, standing beside them.
“No.” Alpha cocked her rifle, jutted her head. “Forty’s that way. This is out of the south.”
“From the south?”
“That’s right, bud. And if I had to guess, I’d say it’s coming straight out of Old Orleans.”
Soon as we could see it, we knew it was too big to try messing with. It was taller than it was wide and the whole thing seemed to be spinning, a broad beam of light arcing off the front side, setting the mud flats ablaze.
“We should get down,” I said. “Take cover.”
“Take cover in what?” Alpha said.
“In the ground.”
We woke Sal and Hina and had them stretch flat on their bellies as we scooped at the clay and smeared it upon them. Then we dug in the dirt and laid ourselves flat, painting our faces and squirming down till we were drenched in the soil.
Alpha stretched the rifle out, pointed it right at the vehicle that was now just a hundred yards away. It was trundling and buzzing right along, angling itself to the right of us, heading northwest, I reckoned. And I hoped with all I had it’d just keep passing by.
“You ever shot a gun before?” Alpha shoved one of the pistols in my hand. “One that ain’t full of nails?”
I shook my head, and she grabbed the gun back and showed me how to pull the safety off and get the thing ready to fire.
“There’s one more of those,” said Crow. “I’d say it best go to someone who can use it.”
“Forget it, Rasta,” Alpha muttered, and then we lay there, still and silent as the engine grew louder and the vehicle spun close.
There was this moment when that big moving shadow seemed to alter its course right for us, and I couldn’t understand it, but that’s what it did. We’d not made a move or a sound and it was dark as all hell out there, but I swear it seemed like the thing was coming dead on. Damn near was going to be right on top of us.
“Give him the gun,” I said to Alpha, fear seizing me up inside.
“What?”
“Give him the gun. It’s no use if we’re dead.”
I heard her scrabble for the last pistol and then she threw it at Crow. And now all three of us were armed.
Crow clicked off his safety. But then the vehicle turned again, steering itself westward, the engine screaming and grinding and us just watching as the thing sailed by.
It was a wheel. A giant wheel. Giant tire tread churning up mud as it rolled through the night. And inside of that wheel, suspended so as not to be spinning, was a cockpit built for a few dozen people.
There was only one thing big enough to spin wheels like that one. Only one thing I’d seen, anyway. The Harvester transport. The Ark. And that’s where this damn thing had come from. No doubt in my mind. Some kind of escape pod. Get out clause. Transport all blown to hell and that wheel just rolling free, moving fast, jetting off in the night.
“Holy shit,” I said, sucking myself out of the mud, staring into the distance where the Harvest wheel grew quiet and its torch beam got small.
“Give it up, Rasta,” Alpha said, and I turned to see Crow shoving his pistol in what was left of his pants.
“I ain’t no Rasta, sweet thing,” he said. “Not technically speaking. But I do believe in the Promised Land.” Crow grinned, patting the butt of the gun. “And we all be heading there together. Ain’t that right, little man?”
The mud turned to sand and the sand turned into the forty, and when we hit that old strip of tarmac we turned west.
“The wagon’s this way,” Alpha said. “If it’s still out here at all.”
Dust clouds picked up around dawn and for an hour we had to hold on to one another as we choked and stumbled through the dirt. And then, when the winds quit, the sky just started cooking. Sweat ran down my face and stung my eyes all grimy and swollen. Both canteens were dry. But the five of us just kept on walking. Looked like we were made out of sand.
My old brown wagon had dissolved into the dirt, and it wasn’t until we were almost to it that I spotted the thing, half-buried in the earth.
I broke into a run and exhausted myself, my pistol jabbing me as I jogged down the road, the sun burning like winter wasn’t ever going to come. My skin was crispy and my limbs were sore but you can bet I had the biggest damn grin on my face. No soul’s ever been more happy to see a junky old pile of metal. I could hardly believe it. My old jalopy. Still there, waiting on me like a friend I didn’t deserve. And it was only after a half day of digging we came to realize the wheels were gone.
We’d worked right through the afternoon and I’d discovered early that the inside of the car had been stripped. All the doors were open and the corn and juice had been taken. The passenger seat had been yanked right out and someone had peeled the nylon off the inside of the doors. But the engine seemed as intact as I’d left it looking, and we worked brimmed with hope until Crow scooped out around the first wheel and found it missing. I clawed the dirt out from beneath the rest of the car and uncovered the same sad story. Sons of bitches may as well have hauled off the whole damn thing. What good’s a wagon without wheels?
“So what do we do now?” Sal said, plopping down in the dirt. The sun had done the kid no favors — beneath the dust, his bloated face was a chapped shade of purple, blisters puckering his skin. Still, he was nothing next to Crow. The watcher’s burns had shriveled and glazed in shredded patches, like he’d decided to just unpeel his flesh and start over.
“We wait,” Alpha said. I’d given her my dad’s old sombrero and she’d punched a whole through the lid so her mohawk stuck out the top. You’d think I’d have minded, her messing up my old man’s hat. But I didn’t. I liked seeing her wear it.