“It’s huge,” I said, studying the broad path cutting through the crops. Unpaved. Just packed dirt, the walls of corn towering on either side.
“Gotta be big enough for the dusters,” Crow said. “Get them in the right spots to start harvesting.”
“The dusters are that big?” I’d heard stories, but that service road was massive.
“Oh, they’re big,” said Crow. “Getting bigger every year.”
Hours passed. I counted two more turns, and at the fourth I cut right, pointing us west again.
“Here we go,” Crow said. “No more plains. Anyone needs to take a leak, you get one minute out of the car. Max. In fact, I need to take a piss, I might just be hanging out the back window, know what I mean? This here is locust country, people. Bad as it comes.”
We turned south. Then west. Then south again until we cut east. And by dawn we’d made so many damn turns that the only way I knew which direction we were heading was because the sun was coming back up.
“You get sleepy, I can drive.” Crow said, his head at my shoulder.
“I ain’t sleepy.”
“Just an offer, little man. No need to be so tough all the time.”
“You’re all heart. But you can stick it. It’s my wagon. And I’m the one who drives her.”
“Fine. I’ll stick to navigating.”
“Feels like we’re going in circles.”
“Aye,” Crow said. “Does feel that way, don’t it? Always does. Out here in the corn.”
“How the hell you end up working out here anyway?” I asked him.
“Oh, I worked all over.”
“As an agent?”
“Special agent, you might say.”
“Looking for trees?”
“Sort of. GenTech wants them trees bad, little man. They reckon there’s food growing in Zion.”
“And all that time you were looking for Zion, you ever heard of folk getting dragged off there? You heard of folk being chained to the trees?”
Crow stared out the window. “I saw the same picture you did.”
I watched the corn get its color as the sky grew light. Deeper into the fields, the crops got less dusty. More green.
“So how’d you end up with Frost?”
“Mister Frost had something I needed.”
“The tattoo.”
“Said if we found those trees, he’d split whatever GenTech gave us. Split it right down the middle.”
“And you trusted him?”
“Much as I trusted anyone,” Crow said. “And you could say I figured I’d have a little more leverage on old man Frost than with GenTech Corporation.”
“Didn’t work out too good, I guess.”
“It did and it didn’t. See, I’m not just aiming for the money. I want to bring me something back home.”
“Home?”
“To Niagara.”
“Thought you’d have given up being a warrior.”
“You born Soljah, little man, then you die part of the tribe.”
“So why’d you leave?” Sal said, from the back of the wagon. “If you just want to go back there.”
“You must know, I got myself thrown out of Waterfall City.”
“Banished,” I said. “Who’d have thought?”
“Bring a tree back, though,” Crow went on, “like a nice little fruit tree. I be back in the good graces then, no? Give the Soljahs something to trade besides water.”
“Reckon I’ll bring me one back to Old Orleans,” said Alpha. “An apple tree. Like in the stories.”
“You can’t go wasting apples in that shit hole,” Crow said, laughing.
Split up all the trees, I guess. That was the plan.
“What about you?” Crow said, fixing me with a look. “What you aiming to do?”
“He’s my father,” I said. “The man in the picture. The man chained in the trees.”
“Your daddy?”
“That’s right.”
Crow grinned. “And you don’t think he’s dead?”
“He ain’t dead in that picture.”
“True that,” Crow said. Then he pointed. “Here. Take this left.”
I made the turn and we started down a thinner service road, the dirt a little softer beneath the wheels.
And at the end of that road, not a hundred yards from us, towered a GenTech duster in all its glory.
I skidded the wagon to a halt, grinding up the dirt into a cloud all around us. The duster was as wide as the service road, twice as tall as the highest crops. And it wasn’t moving. Damn thing was just sitting there. Facing us.
The huge, rolling blades were rested on the ground, and behind the blades were rows of metal teeth that fed the compactor and the sorting boxes. And on top of it all, painted in GenTech purple, was the duster’s cockpit, windows bulging out the front of it like goggles on a steel face.
They’d seen us, of course. Whoever was up there. They were pointed toward us, staring right at us.
I cranked the wagon into reverse.
“Wait,” Crow said.
“For what?”
“Running ain’t gonna do us no good. And GenTech likes to keep its dusters moving. Check the grime on that thing.”
He was right. The machine was covered in a fine layer of dirt — the blades, the engine, even the windows. None of it looked like it’d moved in a while.
“Shift over,” Alpha said, climbing past Crow and squatting next to me. She had the telescope out, scanning the duster and the rest of the road. “Can’t see nothing else,” she said. “Nothing but that big hunk of steel.”
“I say we go closer,” Crow said. “See what we find.”
“What is it?” Sal was trying to squirm himself a view.
“Ain’t nothing,” I said, and Crow pushed the kid back down.
Alpha flipped the safety off her rifle and lowered her window a crack, just enough she could ease out the barrel of her gun. Then I popped the wagon back into gear and rolled slowly forward.
As we got closer, I could tell just how big the damn thing stood. The blades alone were taller than the wagon, and the duster was so wide I could barely squeeze between it and the wall of corn at the edge of the road. I steered through the gap, me and Crow and Alpha all staring at the engines and sorting boxes, peering up at the cockpit.
I pulled past the blades and teeth, brought us alongside the flank of the machine.
“Wait,” Alpha said. “Stop.”
“What do you see?”
“Up there.” She pointed at a ladder that stretched from the dirt all the way to the cockpit.
I stopped the wagon. Leaned across Alpha.
“You see it?” she said.
“Yeah. I see it.”
“Well, what is it then?” said Crow, trying to push his face at the window.
“It’s a body,” I said. Though I’m not sure you could really call it that. Just bones is what it was. Blood dried black and baked in the sun. Little tuft of hair, maybe. But no flesh. No organs. Poor bastard was gripped on that ladder, and he’d been almost to the top of it, too. Almost back in the cockpit. Almost safe. But almost ain’t enough. Not out here. Not with the locusts.
“And that,” said Crow. “Is why we do not leave the vehicle.”
“No shit,” whispered Alpha. She glanced across at me, more fear in her eyes than she’d shown before. She pulled her gun down and cranked the window back in place.
I turned the wagon around the back of the duster, heading for the next crossroads.
“Which way now?” I said to Crow.
“Stop,” he said.
“What?”
“Stop. Here. Behind the engines.”
“Why? What’d you see?”
“Agents,” Crow said. “Right behind us.”
I spun the wagon back around, pulled in behind the bulk of the duster. Then I cut the engine.