“Hello, Zee,” the old bastard said, his face dripping with a grin. He stood up, and she shrank away from him.
“We gotta hurry,” I said. “Is it ready to go?”
“Almost,” my mother said. She flicked a switch on the wall and a hollow black box began to come down off the ceiling, dropping toward the tank like a metal cloak.
“Banyan,” Zee said, her voice shaking. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“I’m taking you home,” said Frost. “You and the tree.”
I got up to the tank and started pushing it so it would be in line with the descending black shell. But in the glass I could see Frost reflected behind me. And before I’d spun around, I knew what had happened.
Son of a bitch had his gun on me.
“It’s over, Mister B,” he said. “It ends now for you.”
“No,” I whispered. But it was too late.
Last thing I saw was his pudgy finger squeezing down on that trigger. Then a flash of light made me blind for a second. And when I could see again, there was blood in the air.
The bullet had hit.
But not me.
She’d leapt in front of me at the last possible moment. And it was the last thing my mother would ever do.
I held her in my arms as we sank to the floor, me still breathing but all the life seeping out of her.
“What have you done?” I whispered, my voice like someone else speaking.
“Keep him safe” was all she said, every bit of her fading, her voice all in pieces. She started croaking and wheezing and she jabbed a finger at the glass tank behind me, and its golden light glowed and flickered in the wide blackness of her eyes. She wanted to say something more but I could tell circuits had been ripped loose inside her, and her mouth twitched and gurgled and I started to cry. And too late, I started to tell her I was sorry. But she was gone. Her thin shoulders cold already. Her skin stiff to my touch.
I stared at Zee crouched in the corner. Then I watched Frost lift his rifle back up, and he’d never dropped his smile.
“Now, tree builder,” Frost said, pointing the gun at me again, “it’s your turn to die.”
But before Frost could pull the trigger, Zee unloaded the nail gun into the side of his head, one nail right after the other, striding closer to her target as he crumbled and fell. And all of a sudden it was over. Frost was dead. Punched full of holes.
Except I knew it wasn’t over. Not quite.
Not yet.
Whatever kind of metal they’d made that fancy box out of, I was still scared a bullet could get through and smash the whole tank to hell.
That would end Pop’s trip back to the mainland real quick.
So we had to catch a break in the shooting before we took the tank out of there and made for the last hill, before we followed the trail that led up and over, before we could drop down and board the boat on the water below.
But the shooting was still raging. Back and forth. Neither side making much of a difference.
I sank back inside the Orchard but left the door open, the tank cloaked in the black metal and wheeled up against the wall behind me, out of the line of any shooter out there blowing up the dark.
Zee had pulled a jacket over my mother’s body, and the purple GenTech logo practically sparkled in the gloom.
“They’re cornered,” Zee said, glancing outside with me. “Trapped in the bunker.”
“Yeah. And they’re gonna run out of bullets before the agents do.”
“We need to do something.”
“I’m working on it.”
“We need to get Crow.”
“No, we don’t,” I said.
Because there he was.
The watcher was hobbling along on one leg and dragging the other behind him. He’d busted out of the other building and was cutting right toward the bunker, a sub gun in each hand and his head held high in the air.
He towered ten feet tall and his two guns drew the enemy’s fire, forcing the agents to scatter, and allowing the prisoners a moment to advance.
In that moment, the doors to the bunker burst open and a hundred naked bodies flooded into the night. Those who’d been sleeping now charged forward, fearless, surging like a wave of bones and skin.
The agents didn’t know which way to shoot — the giant tree man with wooden legs, or the shaved bodies with arms full of holes. And pretty soon, the agents were backed up against the far slope in their puffy suits. And we were winning.
For now.
I turned to Zee. “This is our chance,” I said. “We gotta get to the boat before they get reinforcements. There’s a lot more agents still at the burn.”
“What about all them?” Zee pointed at the uprising.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’re coming with us.” I grabbed the rifle out of Frost’s dead hands and I charged out into the battle.
I called for Alpha and I called for Crow, but all I could see was bodies and bullets in the night.
“Fall back,” I yelled. “Make for the boat. The boat.”
Some of the prisoners heard me and I pointed back at the trail that led to the water. “Get to the boat,” I told them. “Run.”
“Leaving so soon, little man?”
I twisted around and stared up at Crow. His damn legs were as tall as I was. “How you feeling?” I said.
“Oh, I been better. But I sure as hell been worse. Where’s Zee?”
“She’s over there. In the dome.” We took cover behind a crate of cargo as bullets drilled the ice around us.
“And Frost?” Crow said.
“He’s dead. Zee killed him.”
“Did she, now? Good for her.”
“We gotta get everyone back, though, to the lake. There’ll be more agents coming.”
“Then you better tell boss lady, if you wanting folk to move.”
Crow pointed and I spotted her immediately, and I wondered if planting trees and settling down was something that girl was ever meant to do. Because she was sure in her element, out here among the blood and fury.
Alpha had ripped up one of the GenTech cloaks and wound the purple fuzz around her. She had blood on her arm, a gash on the side of her leg, and she was kneeling down in the snow, hands reloading her weapon while her eyes scanned the hill.
“We gotta fall back,” I yelled at her through the sound of the gunshots. “Alpha. Fall back. Now.”
She stood and hollered and I pointed behind me at the hillside, toward where the bio vat rumbled and steamed. And then we were running that way. All of us. Fast as we could move.
At the Orchard, I told Crow to keep moving — he was pretty slow and all, slipping along on his new pair of legs.
“We’ll be right behind you,” I told him. “Meet you at the boat.”
“Aye,” Crow said. “Be quick about it.” I watched him head up the hill with the others. Then me and Alpha ducked inside the dome.
“Who’s this?” Zee said, staring at Alpha.
“I’m his girl.” Alpha grabbed the control pad. “Who the hell are you?”
“She’s my sister,” I said, and then I had Alpha help me pry open a panel on the metal box, and I pointed inside the tank where the saplings were springing out of the green remains of my father. “And this is my dad.”
“Got yourself one weird family, don’t you, bud?” said Alpha, swinging the panel shut. And I guess she was right. But you got to take what you can get, I reckon.
You take what you can get.
We busted out of the Orchard with the tank cloaked black and wired up, and Alpha sat above it with her hands working the controller and the wheels spinning in the snow.