Survival Colony 9 (15 page)

By now I’d freed him from the ropes. He tried to push himself upright by bracing his back against the tree, but his bad leg gave out under him. Aleka and I each caught one of his arms and helped him to his feet.

“What is this?” he asked, looking around at the small group of rescuers. His eyes had lost all signs of sleep and regained their dark intensity. “Aleka, you know the plan, you know the need to save—”

“The plan has changed,” she said. “There’s simply no time. If we’d waited any longer, you might not be here.”

“Then so be it,” he said. “No man is worth taking that chance.”

I looked from him to Aleka. Their eyes locked, their jaws set. Ragged as he was, pale as she was, neither seemed ready to back down.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He remained silent. Aleka hesitated, her eyes dropping for a moment, then volunteered, “The plan, Querry, was to save you first. Then, and only then, to free Laman. We discussed this days ago, when the first real signs of trouble cropped up in camp. If ever the camp’s leadership were to change . . .”

“You’d have Querry on the first train out of here,” my dad finished. “And if it wasn’t feasible to bring me along, you’d leave me behind.”

“And return for you later,” Aleka added. “Which we may no longer have the opportunity to do. You know what they’re planning for you, Laman.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” he said.

“But why me?” I said. “What do you mean you have to save me? Save me from what? From the Skaldi?”

Both of them looked at me, then back at each other. I could sense a contest going on between them, entirely unspoken. But I still had no idea what they couldn’t or wouldn’t say.

“There isn’t time for this, Laman,” Aleka said at last, and I heard an uncharacteristic tremor in her voice. “I take full responsibility for what we’ve done. But we’re here now. What can you possibly accomplish by sacrificing yourself?”

“I can secure the future of this colony,” he said defiantly.

“By saving me?” I said.

Neither of them answered. Neither of them would even look at me. All the unexplained events of the past week came rushing back to my mind: how my dad had assigned Aleka to guard me that night in the hollow, how Petra had insisted the Skaldi were searching for something or someone, how the creature that had killed Korah had come looking for one specific victim. They’d driven us here, Petra had said, so they could take back what they’d lost. But the time was coming, Aleka had warned, when my dad might not be able to protect me anymore.

Not protect his camp. Protect
me
.

The question Yov had raised that night in the hollow bubbled out in words I knew as my own but in a shrill tone I hardly recognized: “
What’s so special about me
?”

“Funny,” a familiar, mocking voice spoke from behind us. “I was just about to ask that myself.”

Everyone whirled. In the split-second before she turned I saw the frantic look in Aleka’s eyes. Then I saw the owner of the voice, just as he spoke again.

“She’s a smart lady, Laman,” he said. “You should have beat it while you had the chance.”

The voice belonged to Yov.

He stepped forward. The silver pistol that had been Aleka’s flashed as it caught the traces of coming dawn. His usual crooked smile spread across his face, and a cruel light kindled in his eyes.

Petra instantly dropped the walkie-talkie and pointed the guards’ weapons at him. My hand reached for the gun at my belt.

“Put those down,” Aleka ordered in a voice I’d never heard from her before.

My hand froze. Petra wavered, her eyes flicking from Aleka to Yov. Aleka drew her gun, pointing it not at Yov but at the stunned scout.

“I said drop them,” Aleka commanded.

Petra did, the weapons clattering to the ground.

“Aleka,” my dad said, reaching toward her.

She held him back too. “I can’t allow this,” she said. Her gun swung in a circle around the small crowd, and we all backed away. Then she turned toward Yov, her gun still raised, her eyes pleading.

“We don’t want to hurt you, Yov,” she said.

His smile widened. “But we do want to hurt you,” he said. “So I guess that gives us the advantage.”

The dawn split with a sharp crack and a flash of light, but not from either of their guns. Yov’s face twisted, his features etched by the gunfire’s brief glare. Then he grabbed his leg above the knee and crumpled to the ground, his weapon flying loose. Aleka spun, shrieking, “I told you not to shoot!” I followed her frenzied eyes and saw Soon with his command group of Nessa and Adem, his gun raised, his face frozen in shock.

Yov rolled on the ground, gripping his leg and cursing. I heard footsteps in the distance, the faint sound of voices. Petra had recovered all three of the dropped weapons and stood facing Aleka, whose eyes gaped wide and whose gun hung limply from her hand.

“We have to go, Aleka,” Petra said. Her voice shook. “Now.”

“We can’t leave him,” Aleka said dully.

“We have no choice,” Petra said. She placed a hand on Aleka’s arm and gently pried the gun from her fingers. Aleka didn’t resist at all.

Petra turned to my dad. Two guns rested in her grip, two more at her belt. “It’s now or never, Laman.”

He stood rooted to the spot, his hands hanging in front of him as if he was the one who’d fired on Yov. His face looked as drained as Aleka’s, his eyes as empty as hers of will or decision.

“Come on, Dad,” I said, taking his arm. “Petra’s right. This is our chance.”

He didn’t budge.

“Dad?”

“He’s not your father!” Yov screamed from the ground, where he lay doubled over in pain. “You’re not his son!”

His words sliced through me like a blade.

“Yov,” Aleka groaned. She didn’t sound angry. She sounded like she was begging him.

“Ask him yourself!” Yov’s voice rose hysterically. “Ask him!”

“Dad?” I said.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even acknowledge me. Five minutes ago he’d looked like a man waking from a dream. Now he looked like a man unable to wake from a nightmare.

The sound of voices and running feet grew louder. Any second I was sure we’d be able to see them coming for us.

It was Aleka who finally got him to move. Shaking herself from her own paralysis, she grabbed his arm forcefully, tugged until his feet followed. “Come on, Querry,” she said. She cast a final look at Yov, whose body was contorted in pain, his face twisted with fury. The others trooped after her. We started running, the man who called himself my father hopping on one leg while grabbing hold of Aleka’s shoulder and mine to keep himself upright. We didn’t stop until the guards, the tree, the curses of the downed man, and the commotion of the roused camp vanished in distance and silence.

14

Past

We traveled through the brightening dawn until we reached the river.

A brief skirmish with a couple members of our former colony who caught us at the camp’s western edge turned into nothing when they abruptly retreated. Which was a good thing, because we had to stop many times to let Laman Genn rest. By the time we arrived at the rendezvous point he could barely walk, requiring the assistance of two or more of his rescuers to stay on his feet.

I kept my distance. He looked so weary, so frail, I had to fight the urge to dash to his side. The members of our colony who had joined us at the river came up to shake his hand, speak his name, pat him on the shoulder. Tyris helped him arrange his limbs on the ground, then knelt by his side to check his pulse and breathing, to massage his crippled hip with her skilled fingers. When she rose, I saw tears creeping down her cheeks. Nessa fluttered around him, bringing him water in a squashed and dirty canteen, holding her hand behind his head to help him drink. The whole time he was being fussed over, he met people’s eyes gratefully but with fatigue written in every line of his face. Beneath his knotted beard, his lips moved in what might have been words of thanks or merely mute acknowledgment of the company of the faithful.

As Aleka had promised, we found the little kids clustered by the riverbank, along with their parents or caregivers. It was Wali who’d rounded them up and led them away from camp when he was supposed to be guarding me, Wali who’d given Petra the information she needed to steal the weapons. Laman gripped his shoulder and looked long into his eyes before collapsing in exhaustion. The only child Wali hadn’t been able to rescue was Keely, who’d been sleeping at the command post with his father. It dismayed me to think of the youngest member of our colony left all alone in the rebel camp, but there was nothing we could do about it now.

Totaling everyone up, it seemed a little more than half the colony, or about twenty-five people, had decided to stick with their former commander, the rest choosing to take their chances with Araz and Yov. Whether the new leaders would consider our splinter colony enough of a threat or an embarrassment to track us down was up for debate. Aleka speculated they would, but she predicted they wouldn’t come after us until they could do so in force. Petra kept watch just in case. As soon as Laman got settled she slipped out of camp, dodging both the praise and the apologies Aleka tried to lavish on her. But even with our best scout on watch, we didn’t dare remain by the river long, not with both human and inhuman enemies who might easily track us there. We’d have to chart a course through territory Petra had already determined to be Skaldi-controlled, and hope we could elude not only the creatures we feared but the colony we’d deserted.

Walking through the new camp, avoiding and being avoided by everyone else, it quickly became apparent to me why the rescue operation had waited till near dawn. An enormous amount of preparation had gone on during the night, with much of the colony’s remaining food and tools spirited away along with the little kids. Petra, as usual, had gone well beyond her assignment, nabbing a couple flamethrowers and a second walkie-talkie to complement the one she’d taken from Kin. If nothing else, the depletion of their supplies might lead our former colony to hunt us down.

It occurred to me, too, that we couldn’t be sure everyone in our new camp was truly on our side. Maybe we harbored a rebel spy right now, someone waiting for their chance to report back to Araz. Wali sure had looked like he’d wanted to smash the prisoner’s head. And who had tipped off Yov about the escape plan? Aleka could say what she wanted about how many friends I had, but just hours before, she’d been ready to turn on her own people to protect Yov, while Laman Genn had spent a whole half-year deceiving me about who he was. Who
I
was. And it wasn’t just him: everyone in camp,
everyone
, had apparently agreed to play his little game. The only people who might be innocent were kids like Keely, and them only because they were too clueless to know whose father was who.

I still had no idea who I was. And now it turned out I had no idea who anyone else was, either.

We hung around by the river until late morning, when Laman’s eyes finally blinked open and his piercing gaze came to rest on the packs neatly lined up and ready for evacuation. All we waited for, I guess, was his go-ahead. So he and Aleka huddled like old times, their heads close together, his bushy and brown, hers close-cropped and silver-blond. Finally, they told us we were moving out. Figuring that the leaders of the rebel camp, once Yov could walk, would abandon their original plan and come after us, Aleka announced that we would chart a course to the east, with Petra scouting ahead, in hopes of doubling back on our former colony and getting behind them. We had to be careful, though. As always, we had to keep the river in mind if not in actual sight, and since the rebels had the same need, they might easily intercept us. Petra argued briefly with her commanding officers, reminding them that she’d found strong signs of Skaldi farther east after the attack in the hollow, but Aleka countered that the rebels posed a more immediate threat. The best we could do, she told our half-colony while her commander made a final, limping check of our preparations, was load up on water while we could, stay alert on the road, and hope to replenish our bottles by night without getting caught by either of our enemies. It wasn’t much of a plan, but then, what was?

Through the afternoon, as we backtracked under a murderous sun with only a couple hours’ break during the worst of the day, I kept wondering if the man at the head of the column was going to make the first move or if I should. That we would have to talk sometime soon I had no doubt. If only to justify himself, he wouldn’t let the opportunity pass. Yet as the day wore on and he kept silent, limping along beside Aleka with a stick to support him and without so much as a backward glance at me, I began to wonder if he was actually going to leave me in the dark about this. That would be just like him: expect me to follow his every word when his every word was a lie, then abandon me to my own devices when he finally had a chance to tell me the truth. By late afternoon, when Petra met up with us to report that the rebels were falling behind and he responded with his usual curt nod, my mind reeled with that familiar feeling of dislocation, as if the world refused to come into focus.

“Any sign of Skaldi?” he asked.

“What do you want to hear?” she said. “The real answer, or the censored-for-Laman’s-ears answer?”

He gritted his teeth. “Surprise me.”

“It’s a heavily infested area,” she said. “I haven’t seen anything on the move yet, but I’ve picked up way more signs than usual. They could be anywhere. Or everywhere.”

Aleka joined their conversation. “Did you see Yov?”

“They were carrying him,” Petra admitted. “But that must mean he’s okay,” she added.

“And is there any reason to believe they’ll be able to pick up our trail?” her commander said.

Petra smiled witheringly. “Kin’s their lead scout. There’s no reason to believe they’d be able to pick up the trail of a herd of buffalo if one bit them on the rear.”

And he nodded again, went back to his hobbling march, and left my world to tip a little more into a blur of unreality.

But it turned out my first hunch was right. Nearly eight hours after we’d begun our march, when we finally stopped several miles from the river to bed down in the last light of the vanishing day, he came over to where I was spreading out a towel-size scrap of canvas and prepared to sit across from me. His hip had taken such a beating in the past seventy-two hours that he had to reach out a hand to lower himself, his right leg held stiff and straight as his crutch. I didn’t look at him while he struggled to find a pain-free position, just kept to my chore far past the point when it was done. I smoothed the blanket, plucked rocks from beneath it, flattened it again. He watched me for minutes before he spoke.

“It’s about time for a water run,” he said. “You interested?”

I continued making my miniscule bed. That had to be the smoothest piece of canvas of all time.

“Or guard duty,” he said. “Petra says we’ve shaken Araz, but she’s extra-jumpy about Skaldi, and she can’t do it all by herself.”

My hands kept smoothing, smoothing, moving stones, flattening scratchy wrinkles into the blankness of the cloth.

“All right,” he said. “You’ve made your point. But we do have to talk.”

I still wouldn’t look at him. “More fatherly advice?” I said. “Not this time, Laman.” The name sounded ridiculous on my tongue, though I’d been practicing it in my head all day.

“I don’t expect you to forgive,” he said. His voice had the gruff sound it always carried when he gave me orders or grilled me on protocol. No concessions, no apologies. “But maybe you can understand.”

He shifted position, tried to sit cross-legged, but gave up, wincing as the hip snapped into place. He drew a deep breath and began.

“You came to this colony just over six months ago,” he said. “You and Aleka and Yov. You were the last survivors of a colony that had been decimated by Skaldi. Survival Colony Twenty-Seven, for what that’s worth. When we came across you in the desert you were just about dead. All three of you. Heat stroke, dehydration. And you . . . you were unconscious. Had been for three days, according to Aleka.”

My hands paused in their routine. I didn’t want to say anything, but the words spilled out on their own. “Aleka and Yov . . .”

“Yov is her son,” he said. “Her sole surviving child. She lost another during the attack.”

“She told me his dad—her husband I guess—was dead.”

“Consumed by Skaldi years ago,” he nodded. “I’ve tried to do what I can in his place, but . . .”

“You’ve tried to do that a lot.”

He let it pass. “I welcomed the three of you into the colony, as I would any survivors. But the adjustment hasn’t been easy. Aleka was the commander of Survival Colony Twenty-Seven. The last commander it ever had. And serving together has been . . . well, challenging.”

“So is lying to your minions a part of the job description?” I said. “Or is that just an added bonus?”

Once again he ignored me. “The first few weeks were the roughest. We both fought to protect our own, and we didn’t always see eye to eye. Still don’t, as you may have noticed. Her relationship with Yov has only complicated matters. I’ve had to walk a fine line with those two. And earlier today, when his life was threatened . . . Well, you have no idea what she’s suffered, watching him become what he’s become.”

I resumed my mechanical task, palming stones, only half listening to his words. Still, I couldn’t help trying to put Aleka’s face together with Yov’s, to think of him as her little boy, her baby, someone she’d held in her arms and rocked and sang to. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. All I could see were the hard lines of her face, the stony judgment of her eyes. All I could remember was how he’d pointed a gun at all of us, how she’d done the same.

“But her ultimate allegiance remains with the colony,” he continued. “Even after what happened today. As a former commander, she knows we can fight most effectively as a unit. I have no doubt she’d defend the colony, under . . . similar circumstances, if she was forced to make the choice.”

“You have a lot of faith in the colony,” I said.

“I have to.”

“More than you have in people?”

He kept silent for a moment, then said, “The colony is its people.”

“Enough faith that you’d lie to save it?”

“Querry . . .”

“That’s not my name!” I raised my head and found myself looking directly into his eyes. The stone I held seemed to pulse in my hand. “The least you can do is call me by my real name.” I swallowed. “Whatever it is.”

“That is your real name,” he said. “When we took you in, when we made the decision to treat you as my son, we kept your name.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“It wasn’t entirely for you,” he said. “We felt, Aleka and I, Tyris as well, that some continuity with your past might aid your recovery. Spark your memory.” He cleared his throat. “So far, it hasn’t seemed to help.”

He fell silent, but kept his dark eyes fixed on mine. I looked away, angry at myself that even now, I couldn’t return his gaze. But I knew the tension in my chest wasn’t all anger. My past hovered between us, perceptible if invisible. I sensed he knew what it was. I sensed, too, that he knew more than he planned to tell me. But less was more than nothing, and so I waited.

“This is going to be hard for you to hear,” he said. “Frankly, it’s hard for us to believe. But we’ve withheld it from you all this time, and it hasn’t done any good. Maybe the truth will.”

He drew another deep breath before continuing.

“The blow to your head isn’t what erased your memory,” he said. “At least, we don’t think it is. According to Aleka, you were showing signs of confusion before it happened. It was sudden, as it always is with Skaldi. But we’re reasonably confident you were deprived of your memory by a mechanism we’ve never known, one we didn’t think possible prior to this point.”

I expected him to finish, but he paused, forcing me to look at him once more. Shadow hooded his eyes, but their fire burned deep under his ragged brows.

“What?” I said. “What was it?”

“We believe,” he said, “that you were infected by Skaldi. That one had taken possession of you, however briefly. We believe that’s what stripped your memory away.”

I stared at him. “But that’s—”

“Impossible,” he completed. “We know. Or so we thought. No one’s ever survived a Skaldi attack, to our knowledge. No one, that is,” and a terrible smile briefly lifted the corners of his mouth, “until you.”

My stomach swooped in horror as a rush of images flooded my mind. Korah’s gray-white gums. Her tattered face, her otherworldly screams. The burned-out eyes of her ravaged mother. The monster in the hollow loping toward us, teeth flashing like knives in its blank, fixed face. No one had ever seen Skaldi outside a host, seen it and lived to tell what they saw. All we saw were the bodies they stole, and when they finished feeding, all we saw were the scraps they left behind. Danis. The officers. Korah’s father. Bodies without souls, bodies with barely enough left to count as bodies.