“Wait,” she said. “Look.”
I peered west across the top of the cornfields and there, jagged and dark on the horizon, I could see the towering mess of Vega. The bulging skyline of the Electric City.
“We’re getting close,” I said. I turned to Alpha and her eyes were bright. Her lips were just inches from mine.
“You know what we’re supposed to do?” she whispered.
“Just keep on till we get there.”
“No.” She made our noses touch. “I mean now.”
She pulled me to the floor on top of her, and my heart was pounding and my mouth got thick. I felt wired up. Full of juice. And then we were kissing, something inside of me exploding as I felt her lips on mine.
She took my hands and wrapped my fingers beneath her thighs. Her legs were strong. Smooth. And she was so warm. I’d never felt anything near as soft as her skin. I kissed her jaw and her neck and then her mouth again, and kissing that girl was like the whole point of living.
Her eyes were closed and trembling and I closed mine too. Dark now. Like we’d been sucked inside some tunnel leading down through the earth.
“Damn, bud,” she said, when I stopped kissing her.
I just lay there, breathing her in.
She reached to her vest and unclipped it, as if she was unlocking herself for me. I stared into her brown eyes as she took my hand and pressed it on her chest. I felt her heart beat strong. But then Alpha grinned, like being serious had suddenly become foolish.
I went to kiss her again, but she was already grabbing her gun and standing, buttoning back up her vest. “Come on,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “They’ll be worried about us.”
She winked at me as she threw the door open, and then she slid down the ladder, blowing right through the bones of the field hand and kicking his remains into dust. I just stared after her for a moment, my body still hungry and light. Then I shot down the ladder and we hit the ground running, our eyes watching the sky for the darkness, our ears peeled for that horrible sound.
Crow shoved the door open and we dove into the wagon. Ended up in a sweaty pile on the floor by the driver’s seat, Crow just staring down at us, shaking his head.
“Your car’s tougher than it looks,” he said.
I saw Hina and Sal cowered in the back, holding on to each other, and Hina was giving me some new look I’d not seen before.
“What’s left out there?” Crow said.
“Nothing,” I told him. “Just their vehicle.”
He arched his eyebrows. “Their vehicle? Unattended?”
“Right.”
Crow sparked the engine and backed up the wagon, pointing it around the far side of the duster.
“What are you doing?” said Alpha, and Crow laughed out loud.
“I be going to see what Jah has provided for us on this fine morning. A GenTech pod ain’t salvage,” he said. “It’s gold. Solid gold.”
Crow tore through the dirt and plowed the wagon through those three piles of bones, and what was left of the agents just fizzled like smoke. We pulled so close to the GenTech pod that the two vehicles were almost touching. Then Crow cut the engine and waited until everything was silent.
“We leave this door open,” he said, pointing at the passenger side. “We’re quick. And we’re quiet. Anyone hears anything, the door closes in ten seconds. Right?”
“All right,” I said, then I turned to Sal and Hina. “You two stay in here.”
“I want to come,” Sal said.
“You’re too slow, kid.”
“It’s all right,” Hina said, giving me that strange look again, like her eyes were trying to tell me something. “I’ll watch him.”
Alpha popped open the door and we fell into daylight, the sky blue above us and the corn a deep green.
The pod had sunk on busted tires, bullet holes riddled the paint job, and all its glass was shattered. We lifted up the side hatch. And then we dropped down inside a whole different world.
GenTech purple. Everywhere. Everything clean looking, shiny, like it had been snatched from a dream. They had gadgets down in that pod that you could tell were a whole different league. None of it was sprouting wires or had been taped together or was rigged backward and falling apart. These gizmos were tidier than the console in Harvest’s ship. Sleek and small and silent.
“There it is,” Crow said, kneeling on a seat, getting up close to a glittery console on the wall.
Alpha still had her head out the top of the hatch, watching the skies.
“What is it?” I said to Crow.
“This here’s the main hub,” he said. “And the readouts. But there’ll be another one around somewhere.” He yanked open some panels and rummaged inside.
“You see anything?” I said to Alpha, giving her leg a squeeze.
“Quiet,” she said. “I’m listening.”
I stared around the pod again. Picked up a foam hat with the GenTech logo plastered across the front of it.
“Fancy shit,” I said.
“As fancy as it comes,” said Crow, digging inside a box of tools. “Look in the back for their guns, little man.”
I stuck my head back there and found a spare set of suits all neatly folded and stacked in place. And there, hanging off the ceiling, were two purple handguns that looked a whole lot better than the one I’d been using. The guns were clean and smooth, looked like they’d never even been used. I unclipped them, grabbed them off the ceiling, then I scooted back to the front of the pod.
“I got it,” Crow said.
“What is it?” I stared at the small box in the palm of his hand.
“This,” Crow said, his grin broad as I’d seen it, “is a GenTech Positioning System. Agent types in coordinates, it tells them where to go. This is it, little man. This is what we been needing. This right here is our GPS.”
Sal couldn’t believe it. His eyes grew as big as his whole head. Hell, I could hardly believe it myself. But there we were, heading west, winding through the service roads, weaving our way through that maze of corn, and when we popped out the other side, all we’d have to do is enter those numbers, the north one and the east one, and then we’d just glide right on through. My old man seemed close all of a sudden. Like he could be waiting around the next bend in the road.
Alpha wanted to enter the numbers right then, see how far away we’d be heading, but Crow just dangled the gadget off his fingertips, holding it away from us. Had to conserve the battery, he said. Better to wait till we were out of the maze.
I drove through till the sun went down, and when it got dark I pulled over next to the corn and shut the engine off. We couldn’t risk using the headlights, and the absence of moon made it too dark to see.
The five of us clumped in the back of the wagon, all rammed together as we guessed about the future. Closest thing to family I’d known since Pop had been taken. A team, all of a sudden. A real team. Hell, even Hina seemed to be smiling, though she also kept stealing strange looks at me. I paid that no mind, though. We had food in our bellies and tomorrow on our brains. And the next day, and the next one. And every day after that.
“What do you think they look like?” Alpha said.
“Like that, you dummy,” Sal yelled, pointing at Hina’s belly and laughing. “What do you think they’re going to look like?”
“But do you think there’s just a couple?” she said. “Or a whole big stand?”
“There’s a stand,” I said, picturing the photo of my father. “Whole forest.”
“You bet there’s a whole forest. And I bet there are oranges and coconuts and almonds, too. Imagine the flavors.” Sal let out a shriek. He slapped me on the thigh. “We’re going to be so loaded. So rich we won’t even know what to do.”