Blackbirds

Novel Sights, Ch. 12

"What's the trial?" Xander questioned, as he dawdled behind Bert and Pete. They'd been trekking through The Bundu for hours, in a northerly direction, and hadn't yet stumbled across any novel sights. There was only the baked ground, narrow fissures and the miserable sky to admire.

"Are you going to answer this one, or am I?" Pete queried, squinting at Bert.

"Please, be my guest." Bert panted as the hike evidently began to erode away at his stamina.

"It's a process we go through to decide if a Blackbird is suitable for our farm." Without warning, an irrepressible cough possessed Pete, as a few maverick dust particles abseiled down his throat. The volume of his cough surpassed that of a foghorn.

Bert halted and heaved a Bergen rucksack from his chafed shoulders. He set the rucksack down on the ground and rummaged through it, eventually grasping a plastic bottle and launching it in Pete's direction.

Pete intercepted the bottle, unscrewed the cap and emptied the meagre amount of water into his mouth. His lungs had been churned up, but his coughing fit had ceased.

"I thought you were gonna kick the bucket right there and then," Bert said in jest, as beads of water climbed Pete's lower lip and slid down his chin, choosing not to slalom between the fresh thickets of facial hair. "Mind you though, it's a good job you didn't – digging a grave for you would have taken one hell of an effort. And quite frankly, you're not worth it."

Pete grinned at Bert's taunt, but wasn't going to take a wild chomp at the bait. He then lobbed the bottle back at Bert, but Bert anticipated the trajectory and snatched it out of the air. "Don't try and catch me off guard." The cocksure Bert muttered, with a smirk sketched across his face.

"It looks like you've nearly finished off the water." He then observed, shaking the bottle. "We're not far from the lake, though. We should be fine." He shoved the bottle back into his rucksack, guided his arms through the shoulder straps and dragged the rucksack up from the floor and onto his back.

The next hour trickled by at a leisurely pace, with none of the Blackbirds seemingly willing to initiate a conversation.

"I've been wondering," Xander mumbled with caution, keen not to fracture the silence into a mosaic. "If it's always windy and cold, why is the ground dry? It's as if the sun is always shining on it."

"That's The Coda for you, Xander. It wasn't systematic or methodical, it was just ruthless. Nothing could stand in its way, not the sky, not the ground... not even humans." Pete expressed, his voice unusually tinted with emotion - melancholy lingered on the ridges of his tongue. "I really can't tell you how powerful it was. No one or thing should ever be prescribed that amount of force."

"But what was The Coda? What exactly was it?" Xander interrogated.

"Xander, enough - we're here. We're at the lake." Bert declared. Xander transferred his gaze from Pete to the area in front of him. The lake was of little depth and was no larger than a football pitch. The colour of its surface was a dim, unlit indigo. "It's definitely shrunk since the last time we were here." Bert's lips formed a pout, as agitation began to burrow into his thoughts.

Pete scampered over to the edge of the lake and assumed a hunchback position, with his knees bent and spine arched.

"Something's not right," Pete slurred as he inspected the surface of the lake. He submerged his ring finger into the water and dragged it round in circles. "The water is thick, Bert." Pete hauled his finger out of the mucous liquid and pressed it against his tongue. His taste buds initially struggled to identify the treacly substance. "It tastes like brine," Pete exclaimed, his face contorted after sampling the vile water.

"No, no, that's not good." Bert remarked. "If that water is turning saline... we need to go. We need to move, right now. We need to check-"

"-Wait! Was Gabe killed at this lake?" Xander spontaneously asked.

"Just be quiet!" Bert squawked, halting Xander's unrelenting pursuit of answers. "Please, we need to move very, very quickly and we can't keep stopping to talk. I'll tell you everything you want to know later, okay? Deal?"

Xander could detect that Bert's voice was glazed with distress, like dew on a veined leaf when the morning hatches into life. "Deal," he complied, simultaneously exhaling to exhibit his displeasure.

For the next couple of hours, the three Blackbirds all elected not to exercise their ability to speak as they journeyed further north. The conversation had been smothered, like stamping on smouldering shards of charcoal.

"There!" Bert announced suddenly, raising his spindly left arm and pointing towards the horizon. "Can you see it?"

"What? What is it I'm looking for?" Xander yelled as he galloped to Bert's side.

"Align your eye with my finger." Bert instructed. "There's a tree. It's unique, so I bookmarked it in my mind. You kind of can't miss it." The tree was indeed distinctive: it rose to the height of a circus tent and was crimson in colour, with only three branches veering off from the stout, central trunk. "This should be it, right here. The patch of land we told Jesse about."

Pete began to stomp on the ground, hoping that there would be a marshy area under foot. "It's dried up," the downbeat Pete conceded, lowering his head like a drawbridge. "The ground has hardened since last time."

Xander danced across the ground, consuming the metres.

"Are you sure about that?" A beaming Xander remarked. Pete glanced at Xander's feet, a few metres away, to see a boggy patch of earth nibbling away at his toes.

"Bert! Bert!" Xander cried. "Have you seen this?"

Bert scraped past Pete's immense frame and scurried towards the miry blotch.

"That's it - that's what we're after!" Bert yelped, seemingly spellbound by the find. He then thrust his hand into the right pocket of his trousers, which appeared to have been dissected at some stage, and produced a milk-white, netted bag. The bag perched in Bert's right hand was equal in size to a cork cricket ball.

"What's in there?" Xander probed.

"Seeds," Bert chirped as he tore the bag open. "They're where trees come from. Well, came from, before The Coda. Such huge plants have such minute beginnings. But they need soil that is just right, like Goldilocks' porridge."

"Like what?"

"Nothing, Xander." Bert stifled a condescending laugh.

"I didn't know Jesse gave you the seeds, Bert." Pete commented. "I remember him saying they were only to be planted when the ground was ready."

"He didn't give me them," the unperturbed Bert confessed. "I took them from Martha's chest when I collected her notebook."

"You what?" Pete roared, saliva foaming from his mouth, like a dog plagued with rabies.

"Look, with these pips, we wouldn't even need the Haulers. Forget our pipe dream – we could restore Earth to its past state, from before The Coda. Just a single tree, to begin with, that bears fruit. Then more pips, more trees, more fruit. A fresh start, Pete."

"This isn't your choice to make!" Pete countered.

"Look, Jesse isn't making the right decisions. He should have killed Tim yesterday. So, I've taken this decision into my hands."

"And what if the soil isn't quite right?" Pete proposed. "What if all of those seeds go to waste?"

"Oh, don't you worry Pete, my conscience is clear. There are plenty of people, in fact, the whole human goddamn race, who screwed up before me." Bert's assured tone was unwavering. "I'll be able to sleep just fine at night." Bert clamped his eyes shut for a smattering of seconds. "I'm looking at the bigger picture here, Pete. If we don't make it to tomorrow, or the day after, then someone might stumble upon this tree. From then on, it's in their hands."

"So we're gonna plant those pips, and head back?" Xander confirmed, seemingly endorsing Bert's reasoning.

"Exactly. Jesse doesn't need to know." Bert uttered, as Pete glared at him with the torridity of a thousand summers, yet the hostility of a thousand winters.