Your One & Only(53)

Carson dropped her arm, seeing the same thing she did. Althea ran. It seemed to take forever to get to Jack, and when she did, she fell to her knees. Gashes of blood showed bright against his pale skin and a tinge of blue colored his lips as shallow, rattling breaths lifted his chest. The thresher continued on its path toward both of them now as if in slow motion, sluggish and measured, but inevitable. When it reached them, Jack would be devoured in its blades like so many ripe stalks of corn.

Ignoring that his arm was surely broken, and not concerned about other injuries, she pulled at his body, trying to drag him clear. She couldn’t budge him. He was big, and she wasn’t strong enough. “No,” she cried. “Jack, get up! You have to get up!” She turned her head to the Carsons. “Help me!”

They were already walking away again, heading back toward town. Only Carson-312 turned halfway round when Althea called, but he didn’t stop.

“You can’t let him die!” she yelled.

Althea tried again and again to move Jack, ignoring the exhaustion overtaking her. The thresher rolled closer. It had no key, no ignition, no driver behind the wheel. The field machines were mindlessly automatic, controlled by Hassans from computers in town. Althea turned her eyes from its onslaught, refused to let it scare her into giving up. But Jack was so heavy, a dead, unmovable weight. The ground vibrated, and the rumble of the engine grew louder. She hit him, her fists beating his insensible body. “Wake up!” she pleaded. The machine was so close now that the whirring blades fanned the hair from his eyes. With her forehead pressed to his chest, she whispered, “Please.” The word was lost in the roar of the engine, a torrent of noise louder with each second. “Please, please, please.” She closed her eyes and placed her body over his.

All at once, the noise stopped. Althea’s breath shuddered into Jack’s shirt. A bird chirped in a nearby tree.

She looked up and was met with the tall blades of the thresher, sharp and shiny as knives, mere feet from Jack’s leg. Carson-312 was standing beside the hulking box, a metal panel open at the side, a cattle prod still buzzing in his hand from where he’d fried the controls. With a last sizzling pop, the giant engine, so much bigger now that it was practically on top of them, gave a slow, drawn-out whine and settled harmlessly into the dirt.

Carson tossed the prod to the ground as if he was disgusted with himself. “That was for you, not him. Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“He would have died. Is that what you wanted?”

“It wasn’t . . .” Carson shook his head.

“It wasn’t what?” Althea said.

“It wasn’t supposed to go that far.”

“Really?” She tilted her chin at the cattle prod on the ground, the one the brothers had used against Jack. “How far was it supposed to go?”

Carson blinked at her, and Althea remembered what Nyla-313 had said, that Carson-312 was fracturing. His brothers had followed him to the fields, but they weren’t with him now. Only Carson-312 had come back. He was at risk, just like her. Althea couldn’t help Carson however, not now, not when Jack was bleeding next to her. She turned away from him. “Go home. Tell the Council what you’ve done. Let them deal with you.”

In the silence after Carson left, Althea sat on the ground next to Jack and waited. She didn’t know what else to do. When Samuel-299 finally arrived, he came with Nyla and two more Samuels from the clinic carrying a stretcher. A Hassan also came to repair the broken thresher.

Samuel’s hand shook as he checked Jack’s pulse.

“How did this happen?”

“Ask the Council,” Althea said bitterly. “They’re the ones who caused all this, with their secrets and experiments.”

“It was the Carsons,” Nyla said, her hand coming to rest on Althea’s arm, pulling her close.

Althea’s anger began to drift away as her friend’s calm seeped into her. She jerked her arm back, needing the anger if only to keep from crying.

The Samuels grasped Jack and lifted him onto the stretcher with no more care than if they were loading a cart with logs. Jack struggled unconsciously as they lifted him, as if he were still in the middle of a fight. Samuel-299 placed a hand on Jack’s chest and murmured to him. Althea couldn’t hear what he said, but Jack settled down again.

They carried him across the field and into the town. Althea watched them go, wondering if the feeling consuming her was what Jack felt all the time, this feeling of being alone. She remained crouched in the dirt, his blood drying on her arms, not trusting her legs to carry her back to town. Nyla knelt beside her then, and this time Althea let herself be taken in her friend’s arms. She leaned into Nyla, searching for anything to ease the pain before it swallowed her as completely as the storm clouds swallowed the Novomundo Mountains in the distance.





Chapter Sixteen


JACK


Jack remembered pain. He remembered the swerve of the sky as he was lifted from dirt. He remembered numbing cold, rough hands, and Sam’s voice as it had been years ago when he was a child. But mostly he recalled pain in every part of his body, pain that made him want to escape the world. And he held an image of Althea bending over him, her hair curtaining her face. You’ll be fine, she said, over and over.

He was in the clinic, in clean scrubs and pressed white sheets. Someone had washed away the blood and dirt. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been here. Two, maybe three days?