Colony 41- Volume 2

by S J Taylor

  She dropped to the ground, unconscious.

  Swinging the club around I took my first attacker in the side of the head. He fell to the floor just like the woman had, the difference being… he was dead.

  A few of our would-be attackers set on the dead man, biting through the fleshy parts.

  I didn’t dwell on it. If I hadn’t killed him, I would be the one lying there, being eaten by these bastards. It revolted me to think that people could let themselves come to this. Did survival justify this?

  The thought was there and gone again as more of them moved in on me. In my peripheral vision I saw Jadran, still up and moving, fighting off his attackers in hand-to-hand combat. He was having less luck than I was. The stun stick was already gone and there was a gash in his side dripping blood. The pulse rifle he had so carefully salvaged had been lost when Callesco blew out that section of wall, same as my stun pistol.

  Then there was no more time to worry about Jadran. Too many white-painted bodies were coming at me, all at once, and I needed to be in the moment completely if I was going to live.

  When my sixth attacker went down, her own studded leather whip wrapped around her neck, I realized I couldn’t remember anything I had just done. Bodies lay on the tunnel floor, dead or bleeding or trying to crawl away. I had done that. I had torn through them like a living weapon.

  And, I wanted more.

  Jadran was holding off two of the attackers, both female, both of them looking feral and wild and deadly. There were still others coming for me, and I couldn’t help him.

  Side strike with my hand to the nearest brute’s neck, the soft cartilage crushing and crackling, blood spurting out of his mouth.

  That gave me the space to look back at Jadran. One of his attackers was dead at his feet. The other had her arm locked back painfully behind her head and as I watched, Jadran planted a boot against her ass and shoved her into the savage lunging at me. They fell to the ground in a tangled heap, snarling.

  One of them bit down hard on the hand of the other, chewing off a finger.

  Through the calm, I smiled like a madwoman. Even with the odds against us, we might just get out of these tunnels after all.

  “That’s enough,” Callesco said, sounding way too unconcerned for someone who just had their miniature army of cannibals taken out by a sixteen-year-old girl and a guy with no shirt on.

  When I turned around, I saw why.

  The pistol that Callesco was holding against the back of Jadran’s head was one I didn’t recognize. An older model, I think. Something that would have a wide dispersal beam and an unnecessarily high energy output. No way could Jadran move fast enough to avoid a shot. No way could I ever get close enough to do anything about it before this monster from Jadran’s past pulled the trigger.

  He had us.

  So much for escape.

  “Well,” he said in that annoyingly smug voice, “I suppose this answers my question about who your travelling companion is, Jadran. Era Rae, I presume?”

  My blood went cold. The calm shattered like so much fine crystals, leaving pinpricks all along my skin as it did.

  How did this man know who I was?

  Era’s Journal, entry #3124

  Would it surprise you to know we trained for tunnel warfare at the Academy?

  We did. In fact, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anything they didn’t prepare us for, in terms of combat. I can fight battles on several different fronts.

  What my teachers never prepared me for was what to do with my emotions. It was just kind of understood that we wouldn’t have them, I think. If you felt sad, you kept it to yourself. If you were happy for someone you smiled at them and said 'good job’ or whatever and then went on with your day. If you loved someone…

  You just didn’t.

  Only, I’m a girl, and I’m sixteen now, and I have feelings. Feelings of attraction and need and love. How do I keep emotions like that from getting in my way? How do I keep from getting hurt by them?

  I could have fought my way through Callesco’s painted children. I could have run back down the tunnel and found the spot where we had fallen through. It would have been hard to get back up but I would have managed it, somehow, and now that I knew what to look for I could even avoid the traps that had gotten us here in the first place.

  In other words, I could have escaped. All I had to do was leave Jadran and Laria here. That’s what my Academy instructors would have expected me to do.

  Only, I couldn’t make myself do it.

  When the calm left me I was flooded with these feelings that nearly brought me to my knees. I was scared. I was angry. Shocked, too, because this man knew me. He knew my name.

  Most of all, I was terrified that Callesco was actually going to pull that trigger and end Jadran’s life.

  Maybe if it had been Laria standing there I would have felt different. I might have been able to leave her behind. Maybe not. I don’t know.

  No. That’s a lie.

  There, I said it. I’m lying. To you, and to myself. The emotions knotting in my chest weren’t there because Callesco was threatening just anyone’s life. Those feelings were there because he was threatening Jadran. That was what I was really feeling. It was like there was some invisible line attaching me to him, keeping me there, unable to leave without him.

  I couldn’t run away and save myself, because I couldn’t leave without Jadran.

  Because I still loved him.

  Emotions surged in my chest and wrapped around my heart.

  Hellfire.

  What am I supposed to do now?

  “Don’t kill him.”

  The words hung in the air after I said them. I caught the look Jadran gave me, moving his eyes without turning his head. His chest was heaving after our fight—mine too—but he made sure to stand very still otherwise.

  Neither of us knew what Callesco’s next move would be.

  “I don’t plan on killing Jadran,” the scarred man assured me. “Not yet. I have so much more planned for him. I have to tell you, Jadran, I never thought I’d see you again. Ever. I figured on a few idiot travelers out here but my main source of income would always be the Enforcers. Or, so I thought.”

  He laughed like that was the funniest thing ever, then turned his cold eyes on me. “Then again, you aren’t the big prize here, are you Jadran? It’s this girl here. How’d you find her?”

  “How do you know me?” I asked him. “How do you know my name?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  I hadn’t expected that. I just needed to know! “You obviously know something you aren’t telling me.”

  “Learn to live with disappointment,” he told me drily. “I was pretty high up in the Restored Society echelon. I was a Third Marshall, once. I know a lot of their dirty little secrets. I know we dropped the bombs to clear away the filth that was infesting humanity. I know the real reasons why we’re purging the Earth. I even know all about our projects to improve the human race. Which was where you entered our reports, Era Rae.”

  I had this sensation of being made of glass, like this man could see right through me and examine every one of my parts to see how they fit together to make me tick. I did not like him looking at me like that. I knew I was the product of a genetic experiment. At least, now I did. That was one of the Restored Society’s secrets, kept hidden even from me until recently.

  At least, I thought it had been some big secret. The man who told me about it was dead. I guess it made sense that other higher-ups in the Restored Society knew about me… it was just unnerving, I guess. Like I was on display.

  Why was he looking at me like I was so important?

  He read the questions on my face. “You know the Society wants you back.”

  “I know that. They want to recondition me and make me into one of their mindless soldiers.”

  For just a fraction of a second, his eyes widened. Then he shook his head and I got the feeling there was something else he wasn’t telling me, but
I didn’t have time to ask.

  “We’re going to move now,” he said, pushing the gun harder against Jadran’s head for emphasis. The bulb torch was still shining in his other hand. “We’re going to a reunion between you and your other friend.”

  Laria. That’s who he meant. Well, now we knew she was still alive.

  “What about your friends?” Jadran asked Callesco, pointing to the few cannibals we’d left alive.

  Callesco looked down at them, and shrugged. “They’ll take care of their own.”

  It was sickening, but I saw what he meant. The living were hungry.

  The dead were food.

  “March,” he instructed us.

  I kept my eyes turned away as we walked past the brutes. They growled at us, hunching over their meals, protecting what was theirs. My stomach churned but I kept down whatever was left in there.

  By the light of the orb in Callesco’s hand we made our way up the tunnel, further in, me in front, Jadran with a gun to his head behind me. Now I started to see side tunnels and chambers, a whole warren. It was a city, I realized, an entire city underground without the tall buildings that had been everywhere in the wreckage of Jacksonville. In some of the rooms, back in the shadows, white ghosts moved. Just a few. More of the painted savages, hiding from the light.

  “It’s amazing how little time it takes for human beings to become savages,” Callesco remarked. “All of these, um, people here are barely teenagers. As young as twelve, some of them. The oldest is eighteen. I think. Hard to be sure. Communication with them is difficult at best. They have their very own language that mixes English and Spanish with some words that are just grunts. Near as I can get the story, they were the kids of some doomsday cultists. When the Event happened, the grownups left the kids in these tunnels to keep them safe. They never came back. So the little kids raised themselves. This is the result.”

  I let that sink in, watching a couple of shadows move and scurry away inside a room we passed. These were just kids. Under the white paint it had been impossible to see it. They had all been born about the same time as me, which made us all the same age, give or take. But they hadn’t been raised by the Restored Society like I had. They were savages. I wasn’t.

  Would I have been like them, without the sheltering hand of the Society?

  I’d spent so much time hating them that I’d nearly forgotten about the things they’d done for me. I had grown up safe and secure, with opportunities that the rest of the world had lost.

  No. Not lost. Taken. I would have grown up just fine without them meddling in my life and breaking the world. These kids would have, too.

  Wouldn’t we?

  Thoughts within thoughts, and questions without answers. Shadows within shadows.

  Jadran stopped at a fork in the tunnel where the carved-out rock branched to the left and the right, waiting to be given a direction. “How are you even here, Callesco?” he demanded.

  “You mean, because you left me for dead?” He moved the barrel of his heavy pistol around to Jadran’s temple and pressed it there with cruel intent. “You threw me into the incinerator, Jadran. Not a nice thing to do to a friend.”

  “If I had known you were fireproof, then I would have done worse.”

  “Oh, poor Jadran. Do you need to hear how I crawled out of the fire pits? Would it make you feel better to know how badly it hurt?”

  Jadran shook his head slowly against the steel of Callesco’s weapon. “That is not what I meant.”

  “I don’t give a blistered damn what you mean. Because of you, I had to leave my position in the Restored Society! They would never accept me like this. Damaged. Ruined. Diseased! If I had stayed they would have sent me back to Quarantine to finish what you started, my good friend Jadran. No. I had to come running here, to the Outlands, and feed off the leftovers the Society threw away! I had to kill to survive. These savages were a means to ensure my own survival. Look how I’m living, Jadran. Look at me! See what you’ve done to me?”

  It took me a moment to grasp the meaning in Callesco’s words. Out here, this far into the Outlands, there could be only one place that he could be getting supplies from the Restored Society. Supplies, and people to feed his ignorant savages.

  “The genetics facility!” I couldn’t help it. The words rushed out of me. “You came out here because you knew that installation was here, in the Outlands!”

  “Of course I knew that. I was sent here.” He favored me with a wink from the blistered, fire scarred side of his face. Then his eyes widened in mismatched surprise. “That’s why you’re here? You’re going… No. No, you can’t go there.”

  The gun turned from Jadran, to me.

  I don’t know if Callesco meant to shoot me, or just threaten me. Jadran didn’t wait to find out.

  Twisting sideways, snapping his hands together around Callesco’s wrist, Jadran sent the pistol flying out of the former Third Marshall’s grip and clattering along the floor of the tunnel. He followed that with an elbow to Callesco’s face.

  The impact broke Callesco’s nose. I heard the cartilage pop from where I was standing. I saw the spray of blood.

  Callesco backed away, hands flying to his face, the orb of light arcing through the air as he dropped that, too.

  He stumbled into me.

  As I took a grip on the tubes of his leather outfit I had a quick flash of Saskia, dying in my arms, the wires and implanted controls trailing out of her flesh.

  Then I rammed his head into the side of the tunnel wall as hard as I could. A sickening, wet squish was the only sound for a long moment.

  He went down, and he did not get back up.

  Jadran picked up the ball of light before he grabbed my hand, and then we were running. “Come, Era Rae. Taking us to Laria, is what he said. She has to be close.”

  “How do you know she’s down this tunnel? What about the other way?”

  “I recognize the pattern of these tunnels now,” he explained. “On Colony 16, Third Marshall Callesco had a favorite training exercise. A maze. He made us run it over and over. This is the same pattern.”

  Then he stopped so suddenly that I ran into him.

  “What are you doing?”

  He turned, looking back down the tunnel. “I shouldn’t leave him. Not again. The last time… nearly cost me my life today. Nearly killed you, it did.”

  I spread my fingers across the center of his naked chest. “We’re all right, Jadran. We’re still alive. But we need to move now before that changes. There’s still more of those… children down here, even if Callesco is dead.”

  That seemed to settle him a bit, and we started onward again. There were rooms that were thankfully empty, and then there were more tunnels. Jadran took each turn like he knew where he was going.

  Which apparently he did.

  The path he took us on ended in a round chamber furnished like an office. That was the thing that surprised me the most. A heavy wooden table, padded chairs, shelves that held boxes of different sizes and shapes. A lot of those were marked with a chemical hazard sign, and the label “cyaflouricane.” The chairs were torn and scratched. The table had one corner broken off and was covered with odds and ends. Some of it I didn’t even recognize. The Restored Society’s refuse, repurposed by an insane man.

  One thing I did recognize laying there on the desk was a slotted vibroblade. I snatched it up and felt the heft of it in my hand. Its power pack was spent, so instead of conducting electricity into a victim it would just be a knife, but the blade was strong and held a good edge. I slipped it into the laces of my boot.

  Muffled shouts turned our attention to a little space beside the shelves, an alcove cut even further into the stone, dark with shadows until Jadran lifted the light higher.

  Laria stood slumped against the wall, her weight hanging from the ropes that held her hands tied together over her head and secured to a metal ring in the stone. The strips of cloth tied around her mouth to gag her looked filthy. Her eyes flashed in th
e light, the tracks of her tears leaving streaks down her face. She turned to me, and her gaze hardened into a glare.

  What was she angry at me for? I hadn’t left her here to rot, even if I had maybe wanted to. It wasn’t like I meant it.

  It was obvious that Callesco was saving her for something. Food for his savages? A pet for himself, maybe. Whatever it was, we were here to rescue her from it and it wouldn’t hurt her to have just a little bit of gratitude.

  Then her eyes flicked back to Jadran and the way she was looking at him made it obvious why she was so angry. Jadran had his shirt off. He was alone with me, and half naked.

  “Oh, for the love of God,” I muttered. “Jadran, just get her down so we can get out of here.”

  Was that a smile I saw on his face? It better not be.

  Except I knew it was, because I had a little one curling my lips now, too.

  Jadran had Laria’s gag off in a matter of seconds. The ropes cutting into her wrists took longer. I saw the raw skin under those ropes. I knew she had to be in pain and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

  “Waited long enough to save me, didn’t you?” she snapped at us. “What were you two doing? Where are we? Ow. Take it easy!”

  She was complaining about how Jadran was loosening her bonds, and us not saving her fast enough

  So much for feeling sorry for her.

  “Couldn’t you have left her gag in just a little bit longer?” I asked.

  I was only joking.

  Well. Mostly.

  “Funny, is what you are,” Laria snarked at me.

  Somehow I didn’t believe she was sincere.

  “Enough, both of you.” Jadran had moved back to the entrance to the room, holding the light out into the tunnel, checking to see we were still alone. “If you want to live, be quiet now.”

  “We need to go back,” Laria said, her voice hushed. “Go back to where we fell in and get out of this place, is what we need to do.”