After the Red Rain (36 page)

Birds exploded from the undergrowth, ascending in a ferocious welter of squawks, twitters, and panicked music.

With Deedra tightly bound to him, he yanked them both to one side, zipping them at top speed through a thicket of bushes and then underneath Big Boy. The dull, echoing crack of gunfire overlapped itself in the confines of the Broken Bubble, merging with the birdsong
to fill the Arbor with a discordant, half-mechanical, half-alive throb of sound.

He hissed in a breath as he and Deedra collided with Big Boy. A bullet had creased his shoulder. Red blood welled there, bubbling like thick syrup. It captivated him, entranced him, and the spell was broken only by a groan from Deedra.

Releasing her from his vines, he leaned her against the tree trunk. A bullet had hit her, too. In her hip.

“How bad is it?” she asked, biting out her words against the pain.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” he told her. He examined her hip, careful not to touch too close to the wound. “It’s a bruise. I think they’re using plastic bullets. It doesn’t look bad.”

She nodded, her face pallid and slick with sweat. “I would hate to feel one that looked bad, then.”

“Might have a bone fracture,” he said. He couldn’t be sure. His own shoulder throbbed; the plastic bullet must have fragmented upon firing to cut him like that.

Her eyes refocused on his shoulder. “Damn. We’re a matching pair.”

“They don’t know what they’re in for,” he told her with a confidence that surprised him. “Can you move?”

She tested her weight on the wounded side. “Yeah, a little, but there’s nowhere to go. They—”

“There are
many
places to go,” he told her. “And we’re going to go to them. But first…”

“Where the hell are they?” Max Ludo cried. “What the hell is going on down there?”

Markard licked his lips as he stared down into the lush and vibrant greenery of the arena. The two kids had just
vanished
. The trees offered
excellent cover. He thought maybe one of his men had hit someone, but there was nothing to see, no way to tell. The plant growth was messing with the infrared drones he had hovering above the arena—they’d never encountered such abundant foliage and had never been calibrated for it.

“Send the men in there!” Ludo bawled. “Get their asses down there
now
and have them search under every goddamn
branch
if they have to!”

“Magistrate,” Markard said tentatively, “my men have never encountered jungle warfare before. No one living has—”

“Your men are very capable, I’m sure,” Dimbali interrupted.

Markard ground his teeth together. “Your opinion is noted, Doctor. But—”

“He’s right,” Ludo snapped. “Send them in. And…” He trailed off, then his eyes lit up. “Give me a comm. I have an idea. If the plants are a problem, let’s get rid of the plants, eh?”

Markard commed his men: “Abandon your posts and regroup on ground level for a sweep of the arena.”

Off to one side, Max Ludo was shouting into his own comm, and Markard couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“They’re moving down,” Rose said.

“What do you mean?” Deedra’s mind was clearing after the shock of being shot. She felt as if she were hearing him for the first time, even though he’d been talking for the past minute or so.

“The men who shot us.” He gestured up. “They were up there. Now they’re moving down. Coming down here.”

“After us.”

“Yes.”

Her hip pulsed with pain. She could put weight on it, but even
taking a single step lanced a hot bolt up that side. Walking would be difficult; running was impossible.

“You’re only shot in the shoulder. You can run. Go.”

He grinned at her. “That’s ridiculous. Then they would catch you.”

“And they won’t catch you. Better than nothing, right?”

“Worse than both of us getting out of this.”

“Don’t be an idiot. You can’t—What are you doing?”

He was staring up into the branches above them. “Can you climb?”

“I’ve been climbing my whole life. What do you mean?” And then she got it: the tree. He wanted her to climb Big Boy.

Unreal. She followed his gaze. It was possible, she figured. Her hip hurt, but she would mostly use her arms. The branches appeared sturdy and crisscrossed one another. It would be no more difficult than scaling a mountain of debris. Probably a good bit easier.

“I’ll give you a boost.” He squatted down, and once again she was reminded that he was so much stronger than he appeared or let on. In moments, she was perched on a low branch.

“Go as high as you can,” he told her. “Stay quiet. Hide among the leaves.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You have to trust me.”

She shook her head. “Whenever you say that, you end up getting killed.”

“Not this time. I’ve been thinking like a human this whole time. No more. Now it’s time to think like a plant.”

R
ose strode into the middle of the Arbor.

For the first time in his life, he felt
connected
. Connected to Deedra, yes, but also connected to the Arbor, to this place he had grown. He imagined he could feel through every flower petal, every blade of grass. Could sense motion in the tilt of a branch or stalk.

Not true. None of it true. But he felt it nonetheless.

They were coming for him.

They would want him alive, if at all possible. That was his only advantage. They’d shot at him from a distance because they feared him. They’d tried to wound him. And they had.

Now they would try to weaken him further. And take him down.

That wasn’t going to happen.

The first men spilled out of a doorway to his left. He didn’t even look their way as an amplified voice broke the new stillness of the Arbor:

“Lie down on the ground, hands on your head! Do it now and no one gets hurt!”

A lie, like all the others. Humans lied so easily.

He didn’t lie down. He didn’t move at all.

“Where is the girl? Down on the ground! Do it
now
!”

More men, now—from the north. He was being surrounded. Twenty of them that he could see, all armed, all crab-walking as they fanned out in a circle around him.

It was the stupidest thing they could do. Were they really going to shoot at him while directly across from their comrades? Had they thought of this at all? Even with plastic bullets and body armor, they would be risking injury to one another.

“You will not take me!” he called out to them. “I will
not
be moved!”

“
Get your ass on the goddamned ground!
” the voice wailed in a near panic.

They knew what he could do. Or thought they did.

They respected his power.

Good.

“Come for me,” he whispered, and it began.

M
aybe they thought he would attack. Maybe that’s why they were so slow in moving in on him, content to keep their distance. Maybe they were realizing that they couldn’t open fire in their current configuration.

He didn’t plan on allowing them to rearrange themselves.

Raising his arms to the sky, he closed his eyes.

“Get down, you freak! We won’t ask again!”

That was fine by Rose. Something else was already in motion.

The background hum of the Arbor intensified. Rose opened his eyes and looked all around himself. The men in the black body armor were advancing on him with slow, cautious steps.

One of them—just one—stopped for a moment, looking around.

Hey
, Rose imagined his muttering, as though to himself,
hey, do you guys hear something?

If they didn’t, they would in just a few seconds.

The buzz built in intensity. Behind and above the DeeCees rose a great, fragmented black cloud.

And then a swarm of insects overtook the DeeCees and descended.
The DeeCees were swallowed by a wave of buzzing, darting bees, flying cockroaches, and airborne stinging ants.

On their own, the insects couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do much of anything. Rose was counting on the men to panic, because that’s what humans did.

He’d been right to rely on them.

They immediately and predictably freaked out as the bugs swarmed them. If they’d stayed calm, the insects probably would have drifted away as the breeze shredded the cloud of perfume Rose had emitted. But once the men began to jitter and slap at the bugs, the bugs responded. They slipped into the crevice between the neck and the helmet. Yelps and cries of pain rang out as bee stings took hold on sensitive flesh.

The distraction was enough—the stings, the crawling, the bugs under the armor, the mass of them shrouding the air. Rose took advantage of the moment of chaos to whip out vines, snaking them along the ground and wrapping around ankles. He tripped half a dozen DeeCees who were flailing at their helmets before anyone realized what he was up to.

“Subject attacking! Flank him! Flank him!”

One gun went off. The shot went awry amid the hail of insects. Rose concentrated on his skin. He’d never tried this before, but then again, he hadn’t known until recently that he was Rose in more than name.

Some roses were delicate and fragile.

Others were not.

He thickened his skin to an almost bark-like consistency. He took on a woody appearance, his flesh mottling and deepening in color. His sepals, in tatters after the fusillade of bullets from before, grew and filled in, wrapping around him for an additional layer of protection.

Another bullet. This one chipped off an edge of his hip and whined off. He barely felt it.

Someone else did, though: “
Man down! Man down!
”

Followed by: “
Cease fire! No firearms!
”

Rose took no pleasure in knowing that their violence had downed one of their own.

Then again, he didn’t regret it, either.

W
hat are they
doing
down there?” Max Ludo shouted. He grabbed Markard’s arm and practically shoved him through the opening that led to a plunge down to the floor of the arena. “Shoot him already!”

“Magistrate—”

“Shut up, Dimbali! You can grow another one from the corpse! I’m not waiting any longer. Markard! Kill the damn thing!”

“Magistrate…” He extricated himself from Ludo’s clinging grasp. “They can’t fire without risking hitting one another. But don’t worry—these men are well-trained in melee combat. They’ll catch him. We’ve done it before—at the factory, at SecFac.”

Just then, the Magistrate’s comm bleated for attention. As he checked the screen, Max Ludo momentarily forgot his ire, and a wicked smile refolded his features. “Excellent,” he said. “The Truck is here.”

Deedra watched from midway up the tree as Rose stood his ground and fought with the DeeCees. The insects were still buzzing and spinning
around, providing a distraction. One DeeCee was down, possibly for good, hit by a ricochet.

The ache in her hip prevented her from going any higher, but the foliage was thick enough that she felt safely concealed. Parting a fan of leaves, she could watch.

Rose didn’t move at all. He just stood there, his skin thick and armored, as the insects choked the air around him and his vines whipped this way and that. Thorned, the tendrils ripped through body armor. The force of his blows lifted the men bodily and tossed them like discarded refuse into the air, arcing high before crashing into the ground or slamming against another tree.

It was quiet and violent and somehow beautiful all at once.

They came at him with bludgeons and blades, raised fists, pepper sprays. But it was like fighting a wall or a building. Rose remained in his spot, feet planted stolidly, and fended off every attack. The formerly pristine blanket of grass was now littered with specks of blood, torn pieces of body armor, discarded weapons.

The DeeCees—as though all bound with a common string—retreated in the face of Rose’s wrath, stumbling back and away, expressions of terror and disbelief evident through the cracks in their riot helmets. They ran or dragged injured comrades between them, and they didn’t look back.

It was over.

Or so she thought.

For just then, there was a rumble that nearly shook her from the tree, and she grabbed a branch and held on for dear life.

At the controls of the Truck, Markard experienced thrill and dread in equal measure. He’d played around with vehicle simulators back in his
cadet days, but he’d never actually driven one before. Personal vehicles were outlawed and too expensive to maintain anyway. The power of the roaring engine under his control was intoxicating. He gunned it and crashed through a thicket of shrubbery, casting leaves and branches in all directions.

The dread receded a bit. He’d worried about being able to control the Truck, but it was dead easy—two pedals for stop and go, a wheel for left and right. A child could do it. He hit the gas, and the engine howled in what Markard imagined to be pleasure. His tires cut furrows into the ground as he lurched forward.

The Truck was sturdy and plated with armor, the glass bulletproof. Mounted on the roof were massive speakers, and he hit the button for the PA system now as the boy—Rose—came into view through a patch of crushed bushes.

Deedra watched the mechanical monstrosity tear a dirt-spewing path just below her. It was as if the thing had teeth and had chewed its way through Rose’s beautiful Arbor. There was a curved window at the front of it, and she recognized the DeeCee inspector—Markard—through it.

He passed beneath her, slowly guiding his machine toward Rose. For a moment, she thought he would keep going until he trundled right over poor Rose, crushing him, but he stopped about twenty feet away, right at the edge of the clearing in which Rose stood.

Markard’s voice boomed out from the vehicle:

“Rose! Stand down! You can’t win! You can beat my men, but you can’t beat the machines.”

Deedra’s hip throbbed, but that wasn’t going to stop her. She began to make her way down the tree.

Rose didn’t move except to turn his head in the direction of the voice. It came from a large-wheeled construct that vibrated the ground and spewed forth a noxious gray-white cloud that made Rose want to choke even at a distance.

“
Surrender
,” the voice went on, “
or we’ll use this truck to wipe this place out. This place means something to you, doesn’t it?
”

He wasn’t sure if the man in the machine could hear him or not, but he answered anyway: “Every place means something to me. And it’s sad that nowhere means anything to you.”

“Like before—down on the ground. Hands on your head. No one else has to get hurt, and this place can go on.”

Rose clenched his jaw.

Deedra eased her way out of the tree, favoring her hip. She was behind the Truck and to the left. She didn’t know if it was possible or not, but she figured she could sneak up along the left side… somehow get that door open… disable Markard…

Her knife rested comfortably against the small of her back. “Disable” him for good, if need be.

She crept forward. The grass was soft, the ground giving and generous to her injured hip.

And then it happened.

A new voice, one Rose knew from broadcasts and his time in prison. This one not amplified, but loud enough to be heard, even over the Truck’s engine:

“Hey! Hey, look what I have!”

Coming around the Truck was Max Ludo. He had one arm wrapped around Deedra’s neck and was prodding her to limp forward. He held a gun to her head.

“It’s simple, Rose!” Ludo called out. “Go back to the lab, or you can watch me turn her head into—”

And Deedra twisted. Something flashed. Her knife. She plunged it into Max Ludo’s thigh, and the Magistrate screamed.

At the same instant, Rose shot a prickled vine in Max’s direction. It hit him in the face at full force and turned Max Ludo’s head into a mass of bloody pulp.

Magistrate Ludo’s body slumped to the ground.

Deedra, relieved, shaking with adrenaline, hopped to one side. Her hip was about to give out; she leaned against a nearby tree.

As she gulped in a huge, relieved breath, the door to the Truck opened and SI Markard tumbled out. He cast a panicked glance at Rose, at Ludo’s body, then back to Rose.

For a long, silent moment, no one moved or spoke. Then Markard, slowly, raised both of his hands above his head. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he called out, his voice quavering.

“You can’t hurt me,” Rose said. Not bragging. Just stating a fact.

“Look, maybe we—”

“You should go,” Rose said very calmly. “You should go now.”

Markard hesitated for just a moment, then glanced over at Max Ludo’s body again…

… and then ran in the opposite direction as fast as he could, disappearing back along the Truck’s path and vanishing through one of the exits from the Arbor.

Deedra closed her eyes and laughed.

It was over.

She thought that for a good five or six seconds.