Rootless Read Online Free PDF Page B

pinched real tight. I reached out and took her hand.
    “Come on,” I said, and I tugged her back to the wagon.
     
    Zee didn’t want to leave right away and I was in no rush to find out what was happening back at Frost’s place, so I turned on the light inside the wagon and we sat in the front seats, our clothes all damp and salty.
    “You’d never get across,” Zee said, her eyes still staring at the blank space where the stars should’ve been. I followed her gaze.
    “Nope.”
    “So how do we get out?”
    “Out?”
    “Somewhere better.” She said it so quiet I could barely hear her, like the words had hardly worked their way loose. “The Promised Land.”
    “Right. Zion. Across the water.”
    I felt bad for mocking her. She slumped in her seat and balled her eyes up and then she let the tears come loose. She was real quiet about it. But somehow that made it even worse.
    “The rest of the pictures,” I said, not knowing what else to do. And besides, a deal’s a deal.
    “Fine.” Zee tried to clear her throat. She held her bag open and I grabbed it, rummaging through a stack of photos of the sky and Frost’s metal house, Zee’s mother and Sal. Even pictures of me, wiring up the understory.
    But that was it.
    I stared at her.
    “Screw it,” she said. “It’s not my fault.”
    “Screw it? Screw you. You got me out here for nothing.”
    “It’s all I’ve got. It was Crow’s camera.”
    “But the trees?”
    “Came with the camera. Crow fixed it and that picture spat out. You are going to give it back?”
    “What the hell do you think?”
    She twisted around in her seat and hacked on a cough. “You have anything to read?”
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m upset, and when I’m upset I like to read.”
    “Must be nice,” I said. I figured she wasn’t worth getting angry with, but at the same time I was fuming. Crazy girl had me all the way out here for nothing. And who could I ask now about that picture, about my old man who’d been taken and the trees that weren’t supposed to exist?
    I threw a bag of popcorn at Zee and fired up the wagon, turning it around to begin the long climb from the coast.
    “‘GenTech’s been putting Superfood on the table for more than a hundred years.’” Zee read it off the bag like the words were going to make her quit crying and coughing, like it was a story that would calm her right down. “‘Through good times and bad, we’ve found a way to feed people. Corn. It’s what’s for dinner.’”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Breakfast and lunch, too.”
    “I read books,” she said, wiping the tears off her face. “From when there were laws and governments. And there used to be a thousand companies making the food.”
    I’d heard that. But it makes no sense — everyone could have just grown food for themselves.
    Zee was quiet for a bit, shaking the bag of corn and gazing out the window.
    “So where else have you been?” she said finally.
    “I’ve been around.”
    “Vega?”
    “Almost.”
    “Far south?”
    “Never seen the Wall, if that’s what you mean.”
    “What about north?”
    “Built trees in Niagara.”
    “And past that?”
    “Ain’t nothing past that,” I said. “Nothing but the wastelands. Lava and steam.”
    “The Rift.”
    “That’s what they call it.” I stared across at her. “I’m telling you to drop it. Nothing grew back after the Darkness. Nothing but corn. You ever seen a locust?”
    Zee shook her head.
    “Better hope you don’t never do,” I said, like I’d seen one. “They’ll rip your skin off faster than you can piss your pants.”
    “Then Zion’s far off. Or hidden, somewhere safe.”
    “Grow up,” I said, wishing to hell she’d quit chirping on about it.
    “So how do you explain the picture? The trees and that sky so clear?”
    “Ain’t no explaining it,” I said. “That’s why I gotta find out how Crow got the camera.”
    “He got it from people he used to work with.”
    “A watcher job?”
    “No.