Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (44 page)

“What is it?” I say.

She presses a button or two and looks again.

“What do you see?” I ask.

She hands the binos to me.

I look downriver, following the rapids, the foam, right to–

Right to the end.

A few kilometres away, the river ends in mid-air.

“Another falls,” I say.

“Looks way bigger than the one we saw with Wilf,” she says.

“The road’ll find a way past it,” I say. “Shouldn’t bother us.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What then?”

“I mean,” she says, frowning a bit at my denseness, “that falls that big’re bound to have a city at the bottom of them. That if you had to choose a place anywhere on a planet for first settlement, then a valley at the base of a waterfall with rich farmland and ready water might just look perfect from space.”

My Noise rises a little but only a little.

Cuz who would dare to think?

“Haven,” I say.

“I’ll bet you anything we’ve found it,” she says. “I’ll bet you when we get to that waterfall we’ll be able to see it below us.”

“If we run,” I say, “we could be there in an hour. Less than”

She looks me in the eye for the first time since my ma’s book.

And she says, “
If
we run?”

And then she smiles.

A genuine smile.

And I know what that means, too.

We grab up our few things and go.

Faster than before.

My feet are tired and sore. Hers must be, too. I’ve got blisters and aches and my heart hurts from all I miss and all that’s gone. And hers does, too.

But we run.

Boy, do we run.

Cuz maybe (shut up)–

Just maybe (don’t think it)–

Maybe there really
is
hope at the end of the road.

The river grows wider and straighter as we rush on and the walls of the valley move in closer and closer, the one on our side getting so close the edge of the road starts to slope up. Spray from the rapids is floating in the air. Our clothes get wet, our faces, too, and hands. The roar becomes thunderous, filling up the world with itself, almost like a physical thing, but not in a bad way. Like it’s washing you, like it’s washing the Noise away.

And I think,
Please let Haven be at the bottom of the falls.

Please
.

Cuz I see Viola looking back to me as we run and there’s brightness on her face and she keeps urging me on with tilts of her head and smiles and I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it’s dangerous, too, that it’s painful and risky, that it’s making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?

Please let Haven be there.

Oh please oh please oh please.

The road finally starts rising a bit, pulling up above the river slightly as the water starts really crashing thru rocky rapids. There ain’t no more wooded bits twixt us and it now at all, just a hill climbing up steeper and steeper on our right side as the valley closes in and then nothing but river and the falls ahead.

“Almost there,” Viola calls from ahead of me, running, her hair bouncing off the back of her neck, the sun shining down on everything.

And then.

And then, at the edge of the cliff, the road comes to a lip and takes a sudden angle down and to the right.

And that’s where we stop.

The falls are huge, half a kilometre across easy. The water roars over the cliff in a violent white foam, sending spray hundreds of metres out into the sheer drop and above and all around, soaking us in our clothes and throwing rainbows all over the place as the rising sun lights it.

“Todd,” Viola says, so faintly I can barely hear it.

But I don’t need to.

I know what she means.

As soon as the falls start falling, the valley opens up again, wide as the sky itself, taking the river that starts again at the base of the falls, which crashes forward with whitewater before it pools and calms down and becomes a river again.

And flows into Haven.

Haven.

Gotta be.

Spread out below us like a table full of food.

“There it is,” Viola says.

And I feel her fingers wrap around my own.

The falls to our left, spray and rainbows in the sky, the sun rising ahead of us, the valley below.

And Haven, sitting waiting.

It’s three, maybe four kilometres away down the farther valley.

But there it is.

There it ruddy well is.

I look round us, round to where the road has taken a sharp turn at our feet, sloping down and cutting into the valley wall to our right but then zig-zagging its way steeply down in a twisty pattern so even it’s like a zipper running down the hillside to where it picks up the river again.

And follows it right into Haven.

“I want to see it,” Viola says, letting go of my hand and taking out the binos. She looks thru them, wipes spray off the lenses, and looks some more. “It’s beautiful,” she says and that’s all she says and she just looks and wipes off more spray.

After a minute and without saying nothing more, she hands me the binos and I get my first look at Haven.

The spray is so thick, even wiping it down you can’t see details like people or anything but there are all kindsa different buildings, mostly surrounding what looks like a big church at the centre, but other big buildings, too, and proper roads curling outta the middle thru trees to more groups of buildings.

There’s gotta be at least fifty buildings in all.

Maybe a
hundred
.

It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

“I’ve got to say,” Viola shouts, “it’s kind of smaller than I expected.”

But I don’t really hear her.

With the binos, I follow the river road back from it and I see what’s probably a roadblock with what might be a fortified fence running away from it and to either side.

“They’re getting ready,” I say. “They’re getting ready to fight.”

Viola looks at me, worried. “You think it’s big enough? You think we’re safe?”

“Depends on if the rumours of the army are true or not.”

I look behind us, by instinct, as if the army was just waiting there for us to move on. I look up the valley hill next to us. Could be a good view.

“Let’s find out,” I say.

We run back down the road a piece, looking for a good climbing spot, find one and make our way up. My legs feel light as I climb, my Noise clearer than it’s been in days. I’m sad for Ben, I’m sad for Cillian, I’m sad for Manchee, I’m sad for what’s happened to me and Viola.

But Ben was right.

There’s hope at the bottom of the biggest waterfall.

And maybe it don’t hurt so much after all.

We climb up thru the trees. The hill is steep above the river and we have to pull on vines and hang on to rocks to make our way up high enough to look back down the road, till the valley is stretching out beneath us.

I still have the binos and I look downriver and down the road and over the treetops. I keep having to wipe spray away.

I look.

“Can you see them?” Viola asks.

I look, the river getting smaller into the far distance, back and back and back.

“No,” I say.

I look.

And again.

And–

There.

Down in the deepest curve of the road in the deepest part of the valley, in farthest shadow against the rising sun, there they are.

A mass that’s gotta be the army, marching its way forward, so far away I can only tell it’s them at all cuz it looks like dark water flowing into a dry riverbed. It’s hard to get detail at this distance but I can’t see individual men and I don’t think I can see horses.

Just a mass, a mass pouring itself down the road.

“How big is it?” she asks. “How big has it grown?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Three hundred? Four? I don’t know. We’re too far to really–”

I stop.

“We’re too far to really tell.” I crack another smile. “Miles and miles.”

“We beat them,” Viola says, a smile coming, too. “We ran and they chased us and we beat them.”

“We’ll get to Haven and we’ll warn whoever’s in charge,” I say, talking faster, my Noise rising with excitement. “But they’ve got battle lines and the approach is real narrow and the army’s at
least
the rest of the day away, maybe even tonight, too, and I swear that can’t be a thousand men.”

I swear it.

(But.)

Viola’s smiling the tiredest, happiest smile I ever saw. She takes my hand again. “We beat them.”

But then the risks of hope rise again and my Noise greys a little. “Well, we ain’t there yet and we don’t know if Haven can–”

But she’s shaking her head. “Nuh-uh,” she says. “We beat them. You listen to me and you be happy, Todd Hewitt. We’ve spent all this time outrunning an army and guess what? We outran them.”

She looks at me, smiling, expecting something from me.

My Noise is buzzing and happy and warm and tired and relieved and a little bit worried still but I’m thinking that maybe she’s right, maybe we did win and maybe I should put my arms round her if it didn’t feel weird and I find that in the middle of it all I do actually agree with her.

“We beat them,” I say.

And then she does stick her arms round me and pulls tight, like we might fall down, and we just stand there on the wet hillside and breathe for a little bit.

She smells a little less like flowers but it’s okay.

And I look out and the falls are below us, charging away, and Haven glitters thru the sunlit spray and the sun is shining down the length of the river above the falls, lighting it up like a snake made of metal.

And I let my Noise bubble with little sparks of happy and my gaze flow back along the length of the river and–

No
.

Every muscle in my body jolts.

“What?” Viola says, jumping back.

She whips her head round to where I’m looking.

“What?”
she says again.

And then she sees.

“No,” she says. “No, it can’t be.”

Coming down the river is a boat.

Close enough to see without binos.

Close enough to see the rifle and the robe.

Close enough to see the scars and the righteous anger.

Rowing his way furiously towards us, coming like judgement itself.

Aaron.

“Has he seen us?” Viola asks, her voice pulled taut.

I point the binos. Aaron rears up in them, huge and terrifying. I press a few buttons to push him back. He’s not looking at us, just rowing like an engine to get the boat to the side of the river and the road.

His face is torn and horrible, clotted and bloody, the hole in his cheek, the new hole where his nose used to be, and still, underneath all that, a look feroshus and devouring, a look without mercy, a look that won’t stop, that won’t never, never stop.

War makes monsters of men,
I hear Ben saying.

There’s a monster coming towards us.

“I don’t think he’s seen us,” I say. “Not yet.”

“Can we outrun him?”

“He’s got a gun,” I say, “and you can see all the way down that road to Haven.”

“Off the road then. Through the trees.”

“There ain’t that many twixt us and the road down. We’ll have to be fast.”

“I can be fast,” she says.

And we jump on down the hill, skidding down leaves and wet vines, using rocks as handholds best we can. The tree cover is light and we can still see down the river, see Aaron as he rows.

Which means he can see us if he looks in the right place.

“Hurry!” Viola says.

Down–

And down–

And sliding to the road–

And squelching in the mud at the roadside–

And as we get to the road he’s outta sight again, still up the river–

But only for a second–

Cuz there he is–

The current bringing him fast–

Coming down the river–

In full view–

Looking right at us.

The roar of the falls is loud enough to eat you, but I still hear it.

I’d hear it if I was on the other side of the planet.

“TODD HEWITT!”

And he’s reaching for his rifle.

“Go!” I shout.

Viola’s feet hit the ground running and I’m right behind her, heading for the lip of the road that goes down to the zigzags.

It’s fifteen steps, maybe twenty till we can disappear over the edge–

We run like we’ve spent the last two weeks resting–

Pound pound pound
against the road–

I check back over my shoulder–

To see Aaron try to take the rifle in one hand–

Try to balance it while keeping the boat steady–

It’s bouncing in the rapids, knocking him back and forth–

“He won’t be able to,” I yell to Viola. “He can’t row and fire at the same–”

CRACK!

A pop of mud flies up outta the road next to Viola’s feet ahead of me–

I cry out and Viola cries out and we both instinctively flinch down–

Running faster and faster–

Pound pound pound
–