Read Rootless for Free Online

He used to work for them. For GenTech.” She said it like it was the most normal thing in the world. But how do you go from being a Soljah to a GenTech agent, and then wind up as a Steel Cities watcher?
    It didn’t make sense. No one hates GenTech more than the Soljahs.
    “Crow worked for GenTech?” I stared at Zee. “You sure?”
    She held up a stack of photographs and showed me the back of each one. The GenTech logo in purple ink.
    “Don’t mean nothing,” I said.
    “You’re right,” she said. “It doesn’t. Not now I’ve seen the Surge. They’re crazy. The pair of them.”
    “Who?”
    “Crow. And Frost. They’re as bad as each other. Build a boat big enough. Frost and his stupid coordinates.”
    “Coordinates?” I said. My foot had eased off the accelerator and I pulled off the road as the wagon ground to a halt. I stared at her. “What coordinates?”
    “That’s why they’re working together, hunting their prize. Crow’s been searching for years. That’s what he did for GenTech, I guess. Chasing rumors and clues.”
    “Clues to what?”
    “The trees,” Zee said, staring at me through the darkness. “The last trees on earth.”

What if it existed? The idea jammed inside me. What if it was real? A place where wild things grew. Not just a photograph. Not just a trick or a dream. Trees. Real trees. Real enough that people were looking for them. That GenTech was looking for them. And somehow my father had wound up in their midst?
    I suddenly thought about Frost’s house, my understory of squeaky wheels. And if there were trees out there with roots getting deeper and limbs reaching high, then what good had it been building forests out of crappy bits of tin?
    I climbed out of the car and a rotten salt wind blew off the Surge and stung the dust around me. I felt sick. Swallowed whole. And I wished to hell I could just sleep. Shut myself down, shut myself up. But all I could see behind my eyelids was my old man’s face.
    I kicked the back wheel of the wagon. It just didn’t make any damn sense. None of it did. And though Pop was coiled up in chains in that picture, it made me almost bitter that the folk doing the taking hadn’t snatched me up, too. I’d been just left here in the dirt with the junk and the hungry. I kicked the wheel again. Then I slammed a fist at the wagon and damn near broke my hand.
    “Stop,” Zee cried, staring at me across the roof of the car. “We got to figure out what to do.”
    “Do? I’m gonna drop you off, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
    “Then what?”
    I stared back at the Surge. Then I looked west where the land crumbled like bits of cornbread. And I imagined soil bound with roots and wood for the burning and shade from the sun and a rest from the wind. And I pictured Pop, the metal chains wound around him, strapping him to the tree. Why? What was he doing there? It didn’t matter. If it were me in trouble, I knew my dad would come running.
    “How long you had that camera?” I said.
    “Crow tracked it down a few months back.”
    “And who was it he got it from? I mean what was their name?”
    “I don’t know. Want to ask him?”
    “I will if I have to.”
    Zee went to say something but the words got knocked out of her. She fell as the wagon slumped and the ground rumbled and the world split wide open.
    “No,” I whispered, staring back at the ocean.
    Zee’s holler rose up like a siren but I didn’t need another warning. I yanked open the door and jumped behind the wheel, cranking the engine as the ground let out a sigh and compressed again beneath us.
    The road sank about fifteen feet.
    “Get in,” I yelled, reaching across and tugging Zee into the car, slamming down the accelerator.
    I stared into the mirror, watched dirt rise like smoke across the night. Another boom and the wagon slipped, but I floored it, willingit to keep going. Zee was kneeling up on her seat now, spun around to stare behind us, watching as the cliffs disappeared in the