Rootless - Howard Chris - Страница 11

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• 11/55
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“Did you need more supplies, Mister B?” Frost said. “Or did you get your grubby little hands on something else?”

I struggled but it was useless. My muscles barely twitched when they should’ve been beating his fat ass into tomorrow. He was sweaty and reeked and I wanted to gouge his eyes out, shove his ugly teeth down his throat.

I cried out. Tried to drain the fury from inside me.

“Quit your whining.” Frost whacked me on the head.

I screamed again, loud as I could. He sat off me and rolled me over, pinned my chest with his flabby knees. He was sucking at his filthy pipe, and the crystals were bright enough I could see him draw a knife with his right hand just as he pulled my shirt open with his left.

It all happened at once. The thin blade pressing at my belly and the tent peeling apart behind me. Sunlight illuminating the ugly look in the fat man’s eyes.

“Stop,” a voice screamed from the doorway. Zee’s voice.

Frost stared away from me and squinted at the gash of daylight. I felt the knife still pressed at my belly, breaking the skin now. Breaking my freaking skin.

“You can’t,” Zee said, and she let the tent flap fall thick behind her. “Let him go,” she hissed through the void. “The trees,” she said. “The trees.”

Frost kicked me in the head as he got to his feet. He thumped over to the corner and fired up a neon strip that hung from the ceiling. The tent pulsed with a cruel white light, and the walls bulged inward as the wind howled outside. Frost pointed his knife at Zee.

“Talk,” he said.

She ran up and pushed me over, everything happening too fast for me to glimpse her face, catch her eyes. I just felt her hands upon me, groping at me, digging in my pockets. She coughed as she stoked up the dusty floor.

“Here,” she said, trying not choke. And as she backed off me, I rolled on my side and watched Frost staring at the photograph, his eyes all stoned and wide.

“It’s his father,” Zee whispered.

“How’d you get this?” Frost jabbed the picture with his knife, his face scrunched and twitchy.

“His father,” Zee said. “Think about it.”

Frost thumped at the steel box. There was a clank, then a clicking sound, and then damned if the box didn’t start to open right there in front of us.

Frost probed his thumb at the bowl of his pipe, working up the crystal. Then he shoved the picture in his pocket and turned to the skinny broad with the gypsy earrings who was climbing out of the steel box like it’d just given birth to her.

I had a clear shot at the door and bolted for it. But Frost was too fast and seized the back of my neck with his pudgy claws. He dragged me across the dirt with my legs kicking, shoved me toward the steel container.

The gypsy woman was jabbering and waving her arms around, and her wrists shook with shiny bangles, her hands aflutter in the neon light. Frost just ignored her. He lifted me up like I weighed nothing and he threw me down inside the box, right on top of the woman I’d come looking for.

I was sprawled out on top of Zee’s momma but she didn’t move a muscle. My face was buried in her belly, pressed up against the tattoo tree, and I could breathe in the smell of her skin. I squirmed up, but Frost forced me down, keeping me inside that steel coffin and yelling at the gypsy woman to get back inside it with me.

“Your wife’s still in deep,” the gypsy said.

“Then leave her sleeping. But hook up the young punk here and tell me what you see.” Frost pushed the gypsy in on top of us so we were squashed tight.

“What direction?” the gypsy called, and Frost held up the door for a moment.

“His father,” Frost whispered, staring down at me. “Everything he’s got.”

There was barely room to breathe, let alone move. The inside of the container was bathed in a blue glow and I was jammed against Zee’s mother, wriggling my way upright.

I squatted against the ceiling and that was as tall as I was going to get. The gypsy sat across from me, cross-legged and stooped, and I realized the gypsy wasn’t a woman at all — it was a man. Dressed up in a skirt and everything. Stubble on his chin, chest as flat as dirt.

“You’re the Tripnotyst?” I said, like an idiot.

The gypsy just winked at me as he tapped a control pad, a few of the buttons giving him trouble as he jabbed and poked with spindly fingers.

What air was in there was stale and thin and I felt about as strangled as when Frost had sat on top of me. I glanced down at Zee’s mother, her tattoo eerie in the electric blue.

The woman’s face was shut down, her muscles loose and her jewelry dusty. Her eyes were guarded by a pair of goggles, the lenses made of old wires and bits of metal.

“Put those on,” the gypsy said, his voice as reedy as he was.

“What you gonna do?”

“Just put the goggles on. Ain’t neither of us got a choice about it.”

“You gonna drug me up?” I said, staring at the limp body beside me.

“Going under or not, that’s up to you. But once you start remembering, you’ll most likely want to shut down.”

The gypsy had me lie back on top of Frost’s wife. I tugged the goggles off her and started yanking them down over my own head.

“Try to relax,” said the Tripnotyst, which was about the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. I struggled with the goggles, my elbows whacking at the steel walls. And then I glimpsed the patterns drawn across the blue ceiling.

I stopped working at the goggles and just squinted up at the image that was stretched above me, floating and shaking, drifting in and out of focus on the screen.

It was a wall. A massive, cement wall. A thin section close to the ground had been scribbled on, blackened with graffiti, but the top of the wall was all hidden by clouds.

I knew it was the South Wall, though I’d never seen it before, not even in pictures. It runs all the way across, from the Surge on one side to the Surge on the other. Was built before the Darkness, to keep people in the south stuck behind it.

“Put your goggles on,” the gypsy said.

“It’s the South Wall,” I whispered. “Ain’t it?”

“Nope.” The gypsy punched a switch and the image disappeared from above me. “It’s just a memory.”

The goggles sealed tight and pinched my skin, blocking out any drop of the blue light. My face felt sticky and I tried to keep the panic within me, but I was blind now. Blind as well as trapped.

“Keep your eyes closed,” the Tripnotyst said. “Less you want to lose your eyeballs.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath as a thousand tiny spikes pricked my eyelids. I yelled out in horror but the needles stopped right where they were, not coming any closer, just locking me in place.

“Don’t move,” the gypsy said, his thin voice softer now, almost soothing.

Then music started. Strange, pulsing music. Gurgled beats and squelching bleeps and belches. The sound of bells rose up from the medley and I felt like I’d been stuck inside a wind chime, ringing and spinning and all blown to pieces.

“Welcome to the vibration of sound,” a voice said. It was the gypsy’s voice, but it had changed, each word booming now, bathed in echo. “Relax and let it ferry you away.”

Every part of me screamed to stay present, but I felt myself unraveling, the music opening me. Untying me. I tried to focus my thoughts on Frost, on escape, on getting myself out of this weird coffin and setting myself free.

Free.

That was how I felt as I slipped into nothingness. Better than sleep, better than dreaming. I tried to fight the feeling for a moment, but then I gave up.

I mean, who doesn’t want to be free?

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• 11/55
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