Blood Colony

by Tananarive Due

  “Oh, he is,” Fana said, and Caitlin gave her a puzzled look. Had she said it too eagerly?

  Caitlin shook her head. “You’re so seventeen.”

  “Too bad you never gave yourself that luxury.”

  Caitlin smirked. “Hey, I had my fun in college. For a while. But in my life, being childish gets you killed. Forget Dominguez, Fana. He’ll be gone by morning. We’ll be gone soon after.”

  Caitlin had slept with Johnny a few times at Berkeley. Fana had sensed their past intimacy from Johnny almost the instant he’d gotten in the car, a vibration beneath and above everything else. Johnny believed he loved Caitlin, and Fana felt sorry for him. As Gramma Bea would say, Johnny was barking up the wrong tree. Caitlin was convincing herself she would never love anyone the way she had loved Maritza.

  “Where are we going next?” Fana said.

  “Mexico. There’s a tunnel in Nogales. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

  Caitlin’s clipped, businesslike tone pained Fana. Tentatively, Fana let her thoughts reach toward Caitlin for what Teka called a “massage,” a subtle mood adjustment. She imagined herself fanning away thick clouds of smoke from Caitlin’s face until she could see a smile through the haze. Just a small one. It was a personal violation, but sometimes emotions were a barrier to the things that needed to be said.

  Fana noticed her friend’s shoulders slump. Unlocking.

  That’s it, Fana thought. Just relax. You’re my best friend, Caitlin. Don’t wall me away.

  “We have to talk about the priest, Caitlin.”

  Blue eyes fixed on her, unblinking. Stubborn. “Yeah. I guess we do.”

  “I know what you believe, and I understand why. You saw my father do something terrible, and I know he’s done awful things before. But why would he take the body?”

  “To destroy evidence. Why else?”

  “Be objective. Aren’t there other explanations?”

  “Like what?” Caitlin said. “Father Arturo got up and walked away?”

  Fana felt gooseflesh across her arms. “Yes,” she said.

  Caitlin’s jaw flexed. She didn’t want to listen, but she would. “Go on.”

  “The night before Father Arturo died, I had a dream. I saw you in my dream, and a priest I didn’t recognize at the time. In my dream, you were watching while my father broke the priest’s neck.” Amazement clouded Caitlin’s mind. Fana massaged Caitlin’s thoughts again so Caitlin would hear the rest of her story above her inner chorus of OHMYFUCKINGLORD. The memory of the damage to Aunt Alex haunted Fana; this time, Fana’s touch was as soft as a kitten’s fur.

  The cacophony in Caitlin’s mind quieted.

  “But that wasn’t all,” Fana went on. “At the end of my dream…the priest woke.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I wasn’t sure before, but now I think he may be like the Life Brothers. An immortal.”

  “Then why wouldn’t your father know him? You said they’re all from the same place.”

  “Maybe there are others.”

  There are others. How hadn’t she realized it before? She must have given too much credence to her father’s stories about Khaldun, the underground colony in Lalibela and the original fifty-nine Life Brothers. Others had never occurred to her. Dad would have mentioned the other immortals if he had known about them. So would Teka.

  I have to warn them, she thought. But she didn’t dare say it aloud.

  Caitlin shook her head. “I think you’re reaching. It’s denial, Fana.”

  “Caitlin, my father thought he had to kill Father Arturo to protect you. He sensed danger from him. And maybe there was more he didn’t see. Maybe the Railroad was infiltrated by other immortals who disapprove of Glow even more than my parents do.” Her voice was hushed.

  A sudden knock on the bathroom door made them both jump. Caitlin nearly dropped the bag she was holding. Three droplets of blood spilled to the bathroom’s unfinished concrete floor.

  “Fuck,” Caitlin said.

  “Hello?” Charlie’s voice said. He turned the knob, found it locked. “Hey, I know girls like to go to the bathroom together, but this is loca. Can I get a turn? I’ll pay five bucks.”

  Caitlin didn’t answer. She dropped to her knees, directly above the spilled blood, as if it needed protection from the bathroom’s flickering fluorescent light.

  “Please use a bathroom upstairs,” Fana said. “We’re busy.”

  Even through a closed door, Fana visualized Charlie’s flirtatious grin. “It’s none of my business, but I think this other dude is jealous.”

  Fana heard Johnny clearly from across the room: “Man, why are you trying to start shit?”

  “’Cause you make it so easy, that’s why,” Charlie said. “I’m just playin’, hombre.”

  Fana heard herself giggle. Even with the gravity of her conversation with Caitlin, she wanted a release, no matter how small. Dad had once been as silly as Charlie around Mom. She had seen glimpses of it in his memories, and sometimes even in her mother’s.

  Caitlin shook her head slowly, still gazing at the blood on the floor. I’VE DIED AND GONE TO HELL, Caitlin thought with so much force that Fana couldn’t help overhearing. I’M SURROUNDED BY INFANTS.

  Stifling her giggles, Fana put her hand on Caitlin’s shoulder and squeezed. Caitlin needed her touch. “Go away, Charlie,” Fana said to the door. “Please?”

  Charlie grumbled to himself in Spanish about flighty women, half joking. And left.

  Caitlin still held the bag of blood, her eyes darting around the cramped bathroom. “I need something to pick it up. To salvage it. Hold this.”

  Caitlin thrust the bag into Fana’s hands, careful not to interrupt the flow from the tube. She grabbed an empty plastic bag from the sink and knelt down, dabbing the blood. Her nose nearly touched the floor.

  “Caitlin, we have a whole bag. And lots more where that came from, remember?”

  Caitlin looked up at her, eyes disbelieving. “Do you have any idea how many people this could help?”

  “But it’s dirty. It’s on the floor.”

  Caitlin blinked, and tears came. She looked down again, working carefully. “You don’t get it, Fana,” Caitlin said, voice unsteady. “You completely take it for granted.”

  “Why do you think I’m here? I left my whole family. You think I don’t want to help people?” Fana was angry. If Caitlin didn’t believe in her, Fana never should have left the colony. Aunt Alex had been hurt for nothing.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Caitlin said softly. “To you, it’s a few drops of blood. To us, this dirty blood is somebody’s life.”

  Fana was tired of Caitlin’s Us and Them mentality. Tired of being treated like a child. Caitlin shoved everyone into categories; that was why it was so easy for Caitlin to believe the worst about Dad and the Life Brothers. Mortal. Immortal. Good. Bad. Nothing in between. The more Fana thought about it, the more annoyed she felt. She was tempted to revisit Caitlin’s mind and try to loosen up a few of those rigid places. But she wouldn’t, of course. It was wrong to mess with people’s heads. Not like that stopped you a minute ago.

  Fana closed her eyes. Like Mom would say, she should try walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Didn’t Caitlin have every right to be upset? Wasn’t her father a captive?

  Fana tried to make herself float the way she vaguely remembered from when she was very young. She could almost remember touching a cloud with her mind, coaxing rain. And if she could touch a cloud, how much farther could she travel? Teka had told her that Khaldun could send his thoughts across miles and see events across the ocean. Even the future! Teka thought she had that power, too. Only with stillness, he said, would she find it again.

  Had she found it when she’d broken the camera at McDonald’s?

  Fana didn’t think so. She’d only had a fearful impulse, just like when she was three, and what good was a gift she couldn’t control?

  As Fana felt her warm blood emptying into the bag in her palm, sh
e tried to be still. To see Aunt Alex. Caitlin’s father. Or Teka! Was Teka meditating now? Could they reach each other in the place where dreams meet?

  YOUR GIFTS IN THEMSELVES ARE NOTHING TO FEAR.

  Teka’s voice came alive. Was he talking to her now, or was it only a memory?

  ONLY IN STILLNESS CAN YOU BE CERTAIN THAT THE POWER YOU WIELD IS YOURS AND YOUR CREATOR’S ALONE. ONLY IN STILLNESS WILL YOUR PUREST GIFTS MANIFEST.

  When Fana imagined the woods, the colony, she thought she felt Aunt Alex’s sleeping mind, waiting to be released from its last moment of surprise and fear. And Justin O’Neal…changed somehow. But alive. The impressions were so faint that they might exist only in her imagination. Teka said she could regain her childhood gifts and more, but even now, when she needed her gifts the most, they were hidden from her. Fana breathed slowly, searching for stillness within the house’s havoc and her own doubts.

  Can you hear me, Teka? There are others like us, and they mean us harm. Warn your Brothers to protect the colony. Warn my mother and father.

  Silence taunted Fana. A white shroud of nothingness.

  Then a thought crashed into Fana with such power that her breath caught, trapped in her throat. Her eyes flew open from a ringing inside her ears that was so loud she expected Caitlin to look at her as if she’d heard it, too. But Caitlin was still kneeling, scouring the floor for blood.

  The thought was like none Fana could remember, yet it felt like a current carrying her somewhere she had been once, long ago. It filled Fana with a terror she had no name for.

  Four words, unmistakable, in an unhuman voice she did not know.

  AND BLOOD TOUCHETH BLOOD.

  “So, wait…,” Charlie said, exhaling sweetly scented clove cigarette smoke from the corner of his mouth. He lowered his chin and gazed at Fana with unblinking dark eyes, hugging a pool cue to his chest as he leaned against the patio wall. “Explain to me how someone survives seventeen years of life without ever playing pool.”

  “Where I live, it’s quiet,” Fana said. “No pool table.”

  “And where’s that?”

  An innocent question, but one Fana could never answer. Not for anyone. Even someone with fascinating, tight locks of raven hair spilling across his brow, resting above two lush eyebrows and lashes almost too long for a boy. Not even someone whose skin was dark bronze, or who was wearing tattered jeans revealing a patch of his thigh, tight enough to beg her eyes to examine the stitching more closely.

  “A quiet place,” Fana said with a coy smile. “There are a lot of things I’ve never done.” Her daring shocked her. Pleased her. She had never witnessed this side of herself. Charlie brought out aspects of her she could hardly believe.

  Only two hours ago, she’d been in bed again, where she’d been nearly all day trying to fight off the unsettled, claustrophobic feeling that had haunted her in the bathroom. She’d talked herself out of bed because she didn’t want Charlie to think she was an invalid. If he was really leaving in the morning, why waste the few hours they had left? Already, it was almost dinnertime. The scent of Sheila Rolfson’s vegetarian gumbo on the stove seeped onto the patio through the family room’s open glass sliding door.

  Across the patio, Johnny cleared his throat. He pretended to be ignoring them, studying the plants, but his attention rarely left them. Johnny was like her cousin Jared and Fasilidas in the woods. A guardian. “Where she lives is quiet, all right,” Johnny said with exaggerated familiarity, striding toward them. “Beautiful, too, right, Bea-Bea? Her parents are awesome.”

  Charlie smirked. “If it’s so awesome, what’s she doing here?”

  Fana felt her face flush. A lifetime of being ignored by the opposite sex, and now she had two boys hovering over her! Three, if she counted the shy approaches of Nate, who had never been more than a few yards from her since she’d come upstairs from the basement.

  Balls clicked on the pool table. Nate was bent over, already posed for his next shot, one eye closed, the other staring down the brown ball teetering at the edge of the corner pocket. Nate was a fast and sure player. When he gave Fana a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure she was watching, Fana realized he was showing off for her.

  Nate and Charlie were both good players, so they each had long turns. Charlie took advantage of his lulls to sidle beside Fana. Every time Charlie came within a couple feet, as he was now, Fana felt the strangest gentle burning sensation across whichever arm was closest to him. At first, she’d mistaken the feeling for another ailment after her sudden trip. But the condition only got worse each time he came near. And it wasn’t unpleasant. Not at all.

  So this is what it feels like when your skin wants to touch someone else’s, she thought.

  Charlie squashed out the last of his cigarette in the ashtray he’d made from a soda can. “Maybe I should ask the lady herself,” Charlie said, his eyes back on Fana’s. He shifted position suddenly, a hair closer, and her arm sizzled again. His faint accent was heavenly. “What would make you leave a quiet, beautiful place to live like this?”

  “I believe in Glow,” Fana said. “I believe in what it can do for humankind.”

  “And you’re not afraid?”

  “Of course I am,” she said. “We all are—even you. But like you, I won’t give in to fear.”

  Johnny was not only saddled with fear but he also felt deep shame because of it. Aunt Alex had been Fana’s first mistake, and maybe Johnny had been her second. He would have gotten hurt at Berkeley—Fana had no doubt—but she wished they had thought of another way to help him. Johnny felt the most alone of any of them, without any tribe.

  Nate took his shot, and the white ball went wild, jumping to the floor. He turned to walk up to her so fast that Fana wondered if he had missed the shot on purpose.

  “I’ve got a story,” Nate said. It was the first sentence he’d spoken to her all day. Nate waited for Charlie to leave her side, then he leaned against the wall in Charlie’s place before going on. The sizzling feeling died.

  Nate went on. “When we lived in New York, there was this kid at my dad’s school whose car crashed. The valedictorian, right? He’d been in a bunch of my dad’s classes, really smart. It was this huge tragedy, because he was in a coma and wouldn’t wake up. My dad was really down about it. So one day he talks to Caitlin…”

  Nate suddenly had Johnny’s attention, too. Nate only had to utter Caitlin’s name.

  “Caitlin went to the hospital with my dad to see this kid. They waited until they were alone, and”—he mimicked the motion of pressing the plunger of a hypodermic needle—“bam. He’s awake. Now that kid’s at West Point. That’s my Glow story.”

  “I have a story just like that,” Fana said quietly, smiling at him. “My cousin.”

  Jared had been in a coma when Mom had gone to him in Florida and brought him blood. Fana could almost remember talking to Jared even before she’d met him, in his sleep. They had been destined to become family; they had known each other before they’d met.

  Like her and Charlie, maybe.

  “AIDS is the big one for me,” Charlie said, studying the landscape of the pool table. He settled on the green ball Nate hadn’t sunk, readying his cue. He turned the cue over in his hands, fondling it like a friend. Fana noticed how wide his palms were, how long and slender his fingers. “It blasts the shit out of AIDS. That’s why we call it Blast, and that’s why the government wants to ban it. So we’ll stay sick. So we’ll stay poor while the rich party on.”

  Charlie didn’t say it, but Fana suddenly realized that Chalie had been diagnosed with HIV when he was fourteen. He had tried shooting heroin only once and had been infected by a friend’s needle, contracting the resistant strain pills didn’t help. Last year, he’d met Ethan at his high school, and Ethan had told him about Glow. Ethan had saved his life, and now Ethan was dead, murdered.

  Fana knew without trying; the story was practically on Charlie’s lips.

  “What about sickle-cell?” Johnny said.
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  Fana nodded. “Thousands of people have been cured of sickle cell in Africa. AIDS, too. It works best on blood diseases.” She almost blurted out Because it’s blood, but she stopped in time.

  “I have a friend with sickle-cell,” Johnny said. “I want to get him Glow.”

  Fana smiled. “He’ll have it. We just need a little time, Johnny. I promise.”

  No need to touch Johnny, or give his mind a massage; her words alone made his face lose a layer of anxiety, replaced by something like rapture. He believed her. Omari. That was his friend’s name. Just like that, Johnny found his peace. To him, whatever he was going through was worth it if he could help Omari.

  “Yeah, Glow’s worth fighting for,” Charlie said. He took his shot, and the green ball dropped as smoothly as if he’d blown it in with his breath. “But there’s still The Big Question…”

  “What’s The Big Question?” Johnny said.

  Charlie turned to scowl at him. “What do you think?”

  “Where does it come from?” Johnny guessed.

  “Exactamente,” Charlie said. “I have a theory. Ready to hear it?”

  Fana nearly squirmed. Her ears burned, and not in the pleasant way.

  “Scientist revolutionaries,” Charlie said. “They probably work for the U.S. government, which had the cures all along. So now these guys are giving it away to the masses. As my man Che Guevara would say, Viva la revolución.”

  He sounded like Caitlin, except that Caitlin knew the truth.

  “Yeah, that’s what my dad would say,” Nate said. “But check it: What if it’s like a care package from an alien civilization? They’re sharing their advancements with us, but they don’t want us to know they’re here.”

  “Why not?” Charlie said, giving Fana a private glance. Humoring Nate.

  “Simple,” Nate said. “If we knew, we’d destroy them.”

  “But you said they’re helping us,” Charlie said.

  “Haven’t you ever seen any sci fi movies?” Nate said. “The Day the Earth Stood Still? Come on. Welcome to Earth—POW. The aliens always bite it, whether they’re helping us or not.”