“We’re stranded,” muttered Alpha, staring out at the smoky wreckage.
“No,” I said. “My wagon should work, if it’s still where we left it. We’ll just have to find it on foot.”
We filled a couple of canteens with rainwater, salvaged a pocketful of cornmeal between us. And then the five of us headed north. Back toward the forty.
Must have looked like a right family of freaks out there, shuffling along the plains with our boots sticky in the mud. Old Orleans dissolved in the haze behind us, and ahead of us we couldn’t see a whole lot at all. Just the endless dirt and the washed-out sky.
Alpha took the lead, guiding us toward where we hoped the wagon would still be. And I hung back, behind the group, trying to figure out what the deal was between Hina and Sal and the man who’d once been their watcher. Hell, I guess I was trying to figure out which one of them I could trust.
Crow spent most of the morning switching between Hina in his arms and Sal on his shoulders, both of them too weak to walk too far. The fat kid had gotten real quiet when I told him about Zee. Caught him crying, too. But now he was warbling on about what happens when you die and if you go on to someplace different. Asking if we thought you head someplace better. Or if you wind up someplace worse.
But the kid should have been saving his energy — no one was paying him any mind. Probably they were too busy mulling how they’d wound up out here in the first place. And no one was more silent than Hina. She was grieving hard, and it got to me, seeing the pain etched all across her. But Zee hadn’t had much time left, that’s what I told myself. Not with how bad her lungs had gotten.
Truth is, part of the reason I kept pulling up the rear was because I thought Hina might drift back there with me. Figured I could comfort her. Talk to her. But slow as she moved, she always seemed to pick up the pace a little when she felt me getting close behind.
She was valuable, that’s what she was. And she was more than just a map. She knew about my father and maybe about the place he’d been hauled off. In that head of hers, there were answers. I tell you, I would have traded my last drop of water just to see what she had hidden inside.
So there we were, stumbling along. I’d told Alpha to make the weapons scarce and not let the pirates give one to Crow, no matter how many times he kept demanding one. So Alpha strode out in front of us stragglers, two pistols rammed down her belt and her rifle slung across her back. The only one of us who was armed.
Her tall boots made quick work of the mud, and her mohawk had returned to its former glory. Hell, even that fuzzy vest of hers was coming back to life. And I knew if I let myself, I’d do nothing but want her, and the wanting would turn thick inside me. But that would have to wait, I reckoned. Like everything else I was after. It’d have to wait.
Around noon, Sal got sick of walking and sat his ass in the mud. “I need a rest,” he mumbled when I caught up to them.
“Can’t you carry him?” I said to Crow, who had put down Hina and was rolling his eyes at me.
“I been carrying him half the morning. You carry him.”
I didn’t have it in me, and I whistled for Alpha to stop. She squatted down right where she was, fifty yards ahead.
“How’s your skin?” I said to Crow.
“Parched and broken.” He squinted at me, and I reckoned he was missing those big old shades of his right about now.
“You want water?”
“No. Give mine to the lady.”
I glanced across at where Hina was kneeling down in the mud, her face turned eastward. It was hot out there. Damn hot. I mean, it was supposed to be winter and all, and we sure could have used a little nip in the air down south of the forty.
“Hina,” I called, but she didn’t turn her head or anything. “You thirsty?”
“I’m thirsty,” Sal moaned. “But more I’m starving.”
“You ain’t starving,” I told him. “You don’t know what the word means.”
I trudged over to where Hina was sat.
“You should drink some.” I held my canteen to her. Her eyes flickered at me, held my gaze a moment. Then she took the canteen and knocked it back, taking a good long draw. She screwed the cap back in place and set the water on the ground.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I finished that statue,” I told her. “The way my old man would have wanted.”
She froze.
“The pirates said he loved you,” I went on, but Hina shook her head.
“He left me,” she said. “I wasn’t enough for him.”
“They said you both went to Vega.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something. She stared up at me. But then she dropped her eyes again and I’d lost her like the sun going down.
“How did he know about the Harvesters?” I said. “About how they got copied?”
She stayed blank, like I wasn’t even talking to her.
“Shit,” I said, picking up the canteen. “I get that you’re suffering. And I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. But you know something about where it is that we’re heading, you’d do well to spill it to me.”
“I try to remember,” Hina said. “I do. But all I see is that wall, the concrete rising up into clouds.”
“The South Wall. Yeah. That’s where they found you.”
“And I remember the statue. I remember your father building it. But more I remember him angry. And afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
She buried her face in her hands.
I tried to touch her shoulder, but she flinched like I was some sort of devil.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I just stood there for a moment, watching her rattle and cry.
When I got back to Crow, his face was smug. “You ready?” he asked, getting up off the dirt.
“Waiting on you, tough guy.”
“Just as long as you’re all taken care of.” Crow glanced over at Hina and then fixed me with a look.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Is it lunchtime?” Sal asked, tugging at Crow.
“Ask the boss,” Crow said, still staring at me. “He be the one in charge.”
“Get up,” I said. “We’re walking.”
But we walked until nightfall. And we still had not found the road.
“The stars are all I need,” Alpha said, pointing at the night sky. “We keep north. Keep moving.”
“Thought it was a day’s walk,” Crow said, looming over my shoulder. “You getting us lost, sweet thing?”
“It is a day’s walk,” she said. “If you keep at the walking. And call me sweet thing again, I’ll chop you in two.”
Crow chuckled. “Your little man here mightn’t like me and you get to wrestling.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “We’ll be at the wagon soon enough.”
“Soon enough? Soon enough for what? Ain’t no prize for seconds. Not in this race. How you think we gonna beat Mister Frost to the punch?”
“Depends on your shortcut.”
“Didn’t say it were no shortcut. Just said it was safe.”
Alpha pointed at where Sal and Hina were already curled up, passed out on the mud. “We’re gonna have to rest a minute. Or the two of them ain’t gonna make it.”
“Fine,” Crow said. “Rest. I’ll do the watching.”
“I ain’t sleeping,” I said.
“That right?” Crow laughed as he sank down on the dirt. He stretched his arms out, and stared at the stars. “Sleep with one eye open, boss man.”
I went and sat on the other side of Hina and Sal, trying to keep my back straight so my head wouldn’t fall.