“Why?” said Alpha, coming up behind me. “So you can get caught by agents again?”

Crow turned to her. He licked his broken lips. And then he turned back to me. “The cornfields are a maze, tree builder. Big as the South Wall. And the forty ain’t the only way of crossing it.”

“There’s another way?”

“GenTech got plenty of ways. Some of them unguarded. Some of them unwatched.”

“Then why not just head there yourself?”

“Oh, I would, little man. I would. But where’s my wheels? Know what I mean? You get us moving, and I can show us the way.”

“What makes you think I got wheels?”

“The pirates got trucks. And this pirate girl likes you.” He stared at the two of us, lifting his chin as if that single motion made him in control of everything. “Course she does,” he said, his melted face suddenly bleeding he was grinning so hard. “Told you before, little man. You’re crazy cool.”

A mist rolled in from the south, and at the forest it was too dark to see. Just gray clouds moving through the metal, drizzle sprinkling at the trees. Alpha and Crow were passed out sleeping in the city, but I’d come back to retrieve Sal. And Hina.

I stepped through the slippery undergrowth, a dead Harvester’s plastic boots on my feet. I knocked at the base of the statue, called for Sal, but when there was no reply I rummaged through my soggy tools, found my headlamp, and then shimmied under the foot and pried the panel free.

They were all the way at the end of the outstretched leg, Sal curled up against Hina and both of them crashed out cold. There was a sweetness they held in sleeping that neither of them showed awake. They looked peaceful. Calm. I lowered my headlamp and rested against the curve of the statue.

I tried to conjure some feeling for the mother whose arms I’d once slept in. She’d been from the northern lands, Pop had told me. And she’d starved to death before I was able to remember her. But she’d taught Pop to read, which I’d always thought a real good gift. I guess you got to take what you can get.

I leaned back and tried to picture what had happened between my father and this woman who now slept across from me, her arms held tight around her adopted son. Pop must have loved her real fierce to build such a statue, and I reckoned that meant she must have loved him in return. But I’d really little idea about the way of such things. And whatever had happened, whatever had been felt, their paths had got split in the end.

Hina wound up gambled away and ended up raising a daughter with a fat junky bastard. And my father met my mother and then dragged me around the Steel Cities, faking nature in a world where none survived.

Or did it?

I thought of waking the woman, staring into those silver eyes of hers and asking her what she knew. Ask her about my father. About that tree curved around her belly. Because it seemed strange that this tattoo Pop must have known so well now led to the same place he’d been taken.

The night felt heavy and my eyes drooped. And before I could think anymore or get up or move, I was sleeping, my headlamp still shining, its batteries burning, and by the time I woke up the thing was useless.

But it didn’t matter. When I woke up, the sun was back out and I could hear Alpha calling my name from the forest.

“Where’s Crow?” I asked Alpha as I hurried out through the base of the statue, squinting at the sky.

“Still sleeping,” she said. “Like a dead man. If the dead could snore.”

“Good.” I didn’t want Crow to see the forest. Or the statue. I figured anything I knew that the watcher didn’t, just might prove useful somewhere down the line.

Sal crept out behind me, all sweaty and pale in the heat of morning. He slumped down, yawning.

“Your friend?” said Alpha.

“I guess.”

“So where’s the woman?”

As if she’d been summoned, Hina crawled out of the statue, all matted down and her muscles straining. I tell you, it was like watching that statue give birth to itself. And I remembered what Zee had said, how Frost had gotten this woman hooked on the crystal. So I reckoned Hina was now facing the worst kind of sober. Along with the fact that her daughter was dead.

“We’re heading to Vega,” I said, helping her to her feet. “And I reckon you should come on with us, but I ain’t gonna make you if you don’t want to go.”

“I can’t stay here,” Hina said, keeping her back to the statue. She seemed to shrink as the sun beat down. But her eyes were as cold as ever.

“You said something,” I said, dropping my voice. “About those fake Harvesters.”

She stared at me. Not blinking.

But I couldn’t talk to her about my old man. Not in front of Sal. He was someone else I might need advantages over, somewhere on down the line.

Every vehicle the pirates owned had been torched and left to smolder on the clay, their giant steel carcasses still steaming.

“We’re stranded,” muttered Alpha, staring out at the smoky wreckage.

“No,” I said. “My wagon should work, if it’s still where we left it. We’ll just have to find it on foot.”

We filled a couple of canteens with rainwater, salvaged a pocketful of cornmeal between us. And then the five of us headed north. Back toward the forty.

Must have looked like a right family of freaks out there, shuffling along the plains with our boots sticky in the mud. Old Orleans dissolved in the haze behind us, and ahead of us we couldn’t see a whole lot at all. Just the endless dirt and the washed-out sky.

Alpha took the lead, guiding us toward where we hoped the wagon would still be. And I hung back, behind the group, trying to figure out what the deal was between Hina and Sal and the man who’d once been their watcher. Hell, I guess I was trying to figure out which one of them I could trust.

Crow spent most of the morning switching between Hina in his arms and Sal on his shoulders, both of them too weak to walk too far. The fat kid had gotten real quiet when I told him about Zee. Caught him crying, too. But now he was warbling on about what happens when you die and if you go on to someplace different. Asking if we thought you head someplace better. Or if you wind up someplace worse.

But the kid should have been saving his energy — no one was paying him any mind. Probably they were too busy mulling how they’d wound up out here in the first place. And no one was more silent than Hina. She was grieving hard, and it got to me, seeing the pain etched all across her. But Zee hadn’t had much time left, that’s what I told myself. Not with how bad her lungs had gotten.

Truth is, part of the reason I kept pulling up the rear was because I thought Hina might drift back there with me. Figured I could comfort her. Talk to her. But slow as she moved, she always seemed to pick up the pace a little when she felt me getting close behind.

She was valuable, that’s what she was. And she was more than just a map. She knew about my father and maybe about the place he’d been hauled off. In that head of hers, there were answers. I tell you, I would have traded my last drop of water just to see what she had hidden inside.

So there we were, stumbling along. I’d told Alpha to make the weapons scarce and not let the pirates give one to Crow, no matter how many times he kept demanding one. So Alpha strode out in front of us stragglers, two pistols rammed down her belt and her rifle slung across her back. The only one of us who was armed.

Her tall boots made quick work of the mud, and her mohawk had returned to its former glory. Hell, even that fuzzy vest of hers was coming back to life. And I knew if I let myself, I’d do nothing but want her, and the wanting would turn thick inside me. But that would have to wait, I reckoned. Like everything else I was after. It’d have to wait.