“You think they’re following us?” Alpha said.
“Most likely,” said Crow. “Unless you seen someone else out here to follow.”
“Maybe they’re just checking on the duster,” I said. “That could make sense.”
“Well, I say we ambush ’em.” Alpha peered up at the duster. “We got the high ground, after all.”
“That means getting out of the wagon,” I said.
“You want to sit here and wait, bud, you can go right ahead.” And with that, Alpha popped her door open and leapt out of the car.
Me and Crow just stared at her as she strapped the rifle on her back and began crawling her way up the duster, hoisting herself atop the rear wheels, then working her hands and boots along the engine.
“Told you.” Crow shook his head. “Girl’s a firecracker. A real live wire.”
“Not much of a plan,” I said.
“No it isn’t.”
“Guess today’s your lucky day, though.”
“How’s that?”
I threw my door open and climbed outside. “’Cause you get to drive.”
They say you can hear locusts a moment before you see them. A big buzzing rush of noise. The sound, I guess, of their countless tiny wings. So that was good. Because right now everything was silent. Except for the sound of my breathing as I hauled my way up that grimy machine.
Alpha was ahead of me, almost to the cockpit, clambering her way along a section of purple tubing, carefully remaining blocked from the other side. I scrambled to the top of the engine, getting a good look down at the sorting units — cobs in one, husks and stems in the other. Cleanly done. Efficient.
I was pretty high now, a good forty feet up. And I could see out above the rows of plants, see the waves of crops shimmering in every direction until they just merged with the sky.
“Take my hand,” Alpha whispered. She was just above me, hanging off the back of the cockpit, and she gripped my wrist and hauled me alongside her. We stood with our feet on a thin metal ledge, our hands grabbing hold of anything we could find.
“You see them?” I whispered.
“Yeah. Here.” She pulled me past her so I could poke my head around the cockpit. And there they were. Agents.
There were three of them. Two men and a woman. Dust masks on, even here in the cornfields where the dirt can’t blow so free. They were dressed identical — dark purple suits with the GenTech logo plastered all over in tiny white letters, as if the cloth had caught some disease. They matched their vehicle, too. A small round pod with fat purple tires and dark tinted windows, it sat fifty yards behind them. I watched the agents kneel and bend at the dirt, studying the tracks. Our tracks.
“You think there’s anyone left in the car?” I whispered, swinging myself back behind the cockpit.
“Hard to say. One more, maybe.”
“Well, you’re the pirate.”
Alpha grinned at me. “Here’s how it goes down. Even if there’s no one in their vehicle, we gotta immobilize it, in case they make it back there and try to get away.”
“All right.”
“So we wait till the agents are close enough for you, then you start shooting. I’ll take out their tires with the rifle.”
“Right.”
“You got it?”
“Got it.”
She worked her way into position, angling her rifle till she was all set and ready. Then she motioned me behind her and I kept low as I climbed around to the edge of the cockpit, holding on with one hand and laying out my pistol with the other.
The agents were pointing at our tracks and jabbing around at the corn, talking over something. Then the two men started for the duster. And the woman began jogging back to their pod.
“I’ll take homegirl,” Alpha whispered.
The agents pointed up at the cockpit, and for a moment I thought they’d seen us. My heart stopped but then thudded back into action — they were staring at the remains of the field hand, the bones must’ve been hanging right below me, just down the ladder on the far side.
“They gotta be in range,” Alpha said. And she was right. They got much closer and I’d lose sight of them behind the blades. But I was trembling now, and not out of fear. I told myself it was like the Harvester I’d plugged with the nail gun. But it didn’t feel the same. That was a war zone, and out here was so quiet. Those agents had no idea I was aiming to steal away their last breath.
“Banyan,” Alpha hissed. I clicked the safety off, aimed the gun right at the nearest agent’s chest, my heart pumping cold blood through my veins. I closed my eyes and pictured Pop needing me, his body wound up in chains and cuffed to the trees, and there was a gun at my father’s head and he was starving to death. Just like my mother had starved so many years before.
I squeezed the trigger. I’d barely pulled it tight when the agent slumped forward and hit the ground. The second guy pulled his weapon and took a shot at me, the bullet clanging off the side of the cockpit. Awful damn close.
I ducked back. Alpha was firing at their vehicle and the noise of her gun seemed to shake my brain loose. I needed to get back up. Take another shot. But suddenly I wasn’t real worried about it. Because there, beneath the boom of Alpha’s rifle and the thud of bullets on steel, there was another sound. A terrible sound.
The sound of locusts.
I screamed at Alpha and begged her to move. I grabbed her by the vest and dragged her with me around the side of the cockpit. I stumbled. Slipped. Almost lost it. Hanging on by one arm, my face staring down at the top of the dead field hand’s skull.
The noise was louder now, whining like a broken engine. I pulled myself up as Alpha yanked at the door to the cockpit. But she slipped back as the door flew open. And then she was hanging off the purple tubing below. Ten feet down. Ten feet too far.
The sun went black as locusts swarmed above us, spiraling out of the sky as I scrambled below the cockpit, inching out along a steel pipe, reaching down with my hand.
“Go,” Alpha screamed, but I just kept reaching for her as the swarm closed in above us. And then I saw locusts below, pouring out of the corn and across the service road, rising up the sides of the duster like a flood.
Alpha stretched up with her fingers, high as she could, and the locusts grew louder, wailing and buzzing and filling the air.
I locked my hand on Alpha’s wrist. Dragged her toward me, hauling her up. We slipped back along the pipe as it gave way beneath us, leapt for the cockpit as the locusts hit.
I felt their wings beat the wind through my hair and they bored through my boots as I shoved Alpha into the cab and spun around to seal the door tight behind us.
They hammered at the glass windows. They rattled at the walls. A black cloud. A blur of wings and sharp little mouths. We stamped dead the rogues that had made it inside, and then we pressed together in the middle of the cockpit, arms over our ears as we squeezed our eyes shut.
Then the roar became a buzz and it faded. Light broke back inside the cockpit. Sunlight. I opened my eyes. Stared out the window. I watched as the locusts drifted across the tops of the cornfields then swooped down all at once inside the plants, sinking into the crops like a stone. Gone to feast on some field hand, I guess. Or some other poor struggler who’d strayed into the corn.
“We’re okay?” Alpha whispered, shaking against me.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re okay.”
I stared down at the service road where the bones of the agents were splayed on the dirt. If there’d been another agent inside the pod, then they’d not made it — Alpha had shot the windshield clean through.
“We should get back,” I said.