After the Red Rain (37 page)

Rose startled at the sound of the Truck’s engine gunning. He’d seen Markard run off, so what could—

“Rose!” It was Deedra, screaming to him. “Run!”

The Truck lurched forward, then gained steam. Through the windshield, Rose could make out Dr. Dimbali. The man’s expression was twisted into a rage unlike any Rose had ever seen. The rage of a man who has held infinity in his hands and watched it slip through his fingers.

“Run!” she shrieked again, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t run because—

The Truck bore down on him. Rose stood perfectly still. It was close enough now that he could count Dr. Dimbali’s teeth between his peeled-back lips, gritted in determination.

The Truck collided with him, full force. Dead on.

And—

And the entire front end crumpled like cheap foil, the windshield shattering into a million glittering fragments.

Rose didn’t move.

His roots. When the fight began, he’d sworn not to go.

You will not take me! I will not be moved!

And he’d meant it. Here, in the Arbor, in his place of power and peace, he could not lose. He’d sent his roots deeper than ever before, deep into the rich soil he’d cultivated. He’d thickened his skin, made himself like an oak.

The destroyed Truck bore testimony to the strength of not moving. He hadn’t fought back. Not this time. He’d stood his ground and let the world move around him.

And he was alive.

The Truck, sputtering and coughing out its last black clouds of noxious fumes, squealed as a door opened. Dr. Dimbali stumbled out, then collapsed to the ground. He was bleeding profusely.

The man could harm him no more. Rose walked to Dr. Dimbali, who could barely move, barely breathe. The impact had thrown Dr. Dimbali into the steering column, crushing his ribs. His face was a mask of contusions, abrasions, and dozens of gashes from flying glass.

Rose knelt next to him. Despite all Dr. Dimbali had done and planned to do, he felt no anger or hatred toward him. Only sadness. Confusion.

“We were going to do it together,” Rose said. “Like building this place. You didn’t have to try to control me. We could have helped
everyone
. With my powers and your knowledge, we could have—” He broke off. Rage threatened to overwhelm curiosity, and he tamped it down. “Why, Dr. Dimbali? Why?” He took the dying man’s hand in his own. “You could have helped the entire world,
changed
the world. But you got greedy.
Why?
I need to understand.”

Dr. Dimbali coughed. Blood welled up in the corner of his mouth, but he managed a weak smile. “I don’t expect a plant to understand human nature.”

And then he leaned up with obvious pain, reaching out for Rose’s face. Rose put an arm under him, helping him move. Dr. Dimbali touched Rose’s cheek and smiled. Then he leaned in farther and whispered in his ear.

Deedra limped over to where Rose crouched on the ground with Dr. Dimbali, her knife drawn. She didn’t trust Dr. Dimbali, who had his lips close to Rose’s ear. She didn’t trust death at this point. She only trusted Rose.

She needn’t have worried. By the time she made her way over to
them, Dr. Dimbali’s body had gone slack and still. Rose gently laid him back on the grass. He didn’t need to tell Deedra that the man was dead.

Standing over the two of them—Dimbali’s eyes unblinking, Rose’s head tilted down over his former mentor—Deedra rode a wave of cresting, incompatible emotions. Dr. Dimbali had tried to enslave Rose and steal something that could have helped the world. But he’d also taught her so much, helped her.

“I don’t know what to feel,” she admitted. “I think I’m glad he’s dead, but…”

“All I wanted was to learn,” Rose said, and the distress in his voice stabbed at her. “I just wanted to learn what I could, then use it to help people. That’s all I wanted. And this is what happens.”

It took a minute, but she managed to work around her hip and get on the ground with him. She put her arms around him.

“None of this is your fault,” she whispered. “And he can’t be the only one who could figure out how to use your powers to make things better. If there’s
one
person like him, there have to be more. We have to find someone else, someone
good
, who can really make a difference.”

“And we need to warn people. Warn the world. The Red Rain is coming.”

They sat like that for she knew not how long, just holding each other. She became aware of the silence, then of the nonsilence—the insects, the birds. The rustle of leaves in the breeze.

Had the whole world really been like this, before? Could it be again?

She didn’t know the answer to either question. She only knew this: She would
get
the answers.

“We should go,” she said. “More people will come. We can’t stay in Ludo Territory. It’s too dangerous. Markard will come back with more DeeCees. The next Magistrate will still want to control you.”

“I know.” He stood and helped pull her to her feet. She took one
last look around the Arbor. Its pristine green was now marred by the wreckage wrought by the Truck, the ground abused and furrowed and gouged. Max’s body and his splattered blood and brains. Dr. Dimbali. Shards of plastic and glass and fabric and armor. Dropped weapons. And the great, hulking, smoking wreck of the Truck.

As though the Territory had exploded inside the Arbor.

“It’s not beautiful anymore,” said Deedra. “It’s not perfect.”

Rose touched her cheek, then gently stroked his fingers down to her scar. “They’re not the same thing,” he told her.

As they walked toward the exit, she leaning on him to support her tender hip, she asked, “What did Dimbali say to you? Right before he died?”

Rose paused, as though deciding. Then he shrugged and touched her scar again, this time to loop his finger under her necklace. He pulled gently, lifting the pendant out from her neckline. The circle with the protruding cross.

“It was about this,” he said.

“This?” She looked down at it. “My pendant?”

“He said… it’s not a pendant. It’s a
key
.”

“A key?” She lifted it so that it hung between them. “You know the interesting thing about keys?”

“What?”

Her eyes widened and she grinned at Rose. “They can turn things on, but they can also turn things
off
.” She gestured toward the world beyond the Arbor. “Let’s get out there and see what this one’s good for.”

T
hey made their way out of Ludo Territory as dense clouds the color of old, grease-stained concrete roiled overhead, as though shielding them from the sky’s gaze.

Deedra wondered what color the rain would be when it fell.

For more great reads and free samplers, visit

LBYRDigitalDeals.com

and join our communities at:

Facebook.com/LittleBrownBooks

Twitter.com/lbkids

theNOVL.com

The authors would like to thank the many, many people who made this book possible: our editor, Alvina Ling, and her crew: Bethany Strout, Nikki Garcia, and Pam Gruber; Annie McDonnell and the entire Managing Editorial team, including copyeditor Tracy Koontz; all of Sales, Publicity, and Marketing, including but not limited to Andrew Smith, Melanie Chang, and Victoria Stapleton; publisher Megan Tingley; and everyone else at Little, Brown, for their faith and their hard work.

Also, of course, we must tip our hats to our agents and managers and sundry other folk without whom we could not survive: Kathy Anderson, Steven Fisher, Barry Littman, and Carlos Carreras.

And, individually:

Barry would like to thank his wife and early reader, Morgan Baden, for keeping him sane (well, as close as possible!), as well as moral supports Libba Bray, Paul Griffin, Sarah Maclean, and Eric Lyga. You all rock, both individually and collectively. I couldn’t get anything done without you guys.

Robert would like to thank Barry Lyga for embarking on this journey with us; Joseph and Alice DeFranco for their loving support: his brothers and sisters, Christina, Joe, Chris, Mike, Rich, Steve, and Barbara; the Drayton Family; David DuPuy; and Peter Facinelli for everything you all have done for me.

Peter would like to thank, first and foremost, Rob DeFranco, whose vivid imagination sparked the idea for this book, and Barry Lyga, for
the countless hours of conversations we spent hashing out this world in order to put it on paper. The experience was beyond my expectations. Thank you.

I’d also like to acknowledge my sisters, Joanne, Lisa, and Linda, for their unwavering love and support, and my parents, Peter and Bruna… Thank you for teaching me at a young age to use my imagination. Thank you also to Jaime Alexander for being my sounding board and best friend… ES.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Barry Lyga, Peter Facinelli, and Robert DeFranco

Cover art © 2015 by Tom Sanderson

Cover design by Andrea Vandergrift

Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

lb-teens.com

Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

First ebook edition: August 2015

ISBN 978-0-316-40604-8

E3