Just like a snake, she had a moment to think.
Perhaps The Watchers had been right, after all.
Neena gritted her teeth, aiming at the moving piece of skin. Her hand shook as she put her finger on the piece of metal. This was it. Her last shot before she’d need to reload the device.
If she failed… She couldn’t think about that.
She took a breath, waiting until the beast’s mouth was fully closed before pressing the metal on the device’s handle.
The spear flew from the device; the weapon recoiled.
Metal pierced flesh.
Black fluid sprayed out of the creature, splattering the Comm Building roof with gore and darkening the swirling sand. The foul substance pelted Neena’s body, covering her clothes and her goggles. A screech louder than any she’d heard emanated from deep within the beast, rising above the wind, echoing off the rounded dome.
Reaching up a shaky hand, Neena smeared her goggles clean, certain that she’d find the monster wriggling higher and about to swallow her. Not this time.
The creature’s mouth opened and closed once more, as if the beast might score a last, grisly meal. And then its mouth stayed shut.
Dark blood spewed from the gaping wound on the side of its neck.
Neena’s heart pounded.
For a moment, the world went silent, save the storm.
And then she heard a groan—not the beast, but the edge of the building, creaking under the weight of an enormous, dead thing. The beast rolled sideways, sliding down the stones, pitching off the roof, and disappearing from sight.
An enormous thud rippled through the landscape.
More broken stones toppled.
And then Neena was alone on the roof once more.
Chapter 99: Neena
For a long while, Neena sat in place, covered in brackish sludge, staring into the wind. At any moment, she expected the creature to leap up again, crash against the building, and resume its savage attack. It took a while for her to believe it was over.
After a while, she slid across the dome, taking care for the new holes and cracks that surrounded her. The creature’s fetid odor wafted from her clothes, filled her lungs and nose, and gagged her. Fighting back her feelings of sickness, she moved toward the edge of the building from where she’d climbed, but she didn’t descend.
Not yet.
Hands shaking, she rose to full height instead, scanning the ground, as the wind petered out. The storm seemed done at last.
So was the beast.
The Abomination lay in a massive, unmoving heap.
A sigh that felt as if it had been stuck inside her for weeks escaped.
Neena turned, slowly lowering herself down the side of the broken building. With each precarious step, she anticipated a noise from the creature that would change her course and prompt her retreat. Nothing.
And then she was on the ground.
Neena’s boots crunched over broken stone and sand, as she approached the creature through the calming wind.
The long, scaled beast lay half in and half out of one of its many trenches, occupying most of the path, extending all the way to the edge. A thin layer of sand—the last debris from the storm—dammed up its bloodied wounds.
In a strange, sickening way, it had prepared its own burial ground.
For a time, she held her unloaded weapon, staring at the Abomination’s enormous jaws, which were motionless, and would never move again.
Neena opened and closed her eyes. A relief she couldn’t process washed over her.
Covered in the beast’s gore, she spun in a slow circle, taking in the ruined path, the newly destroyed hovels, and the shattered hulk of the Comm Building. Farther out, she saw only more ruined structures.
Relief turned to panic.
Where were Kai, Roberto, and the others?
Keeping a buffer from the beast—out of instinct, rather than fear—Neena hurried over the path, avoiding piles of fallen rubble and searching the holes and trenches. She scanned the ground underfoot, and the alleys she could see. She yelled Kai’s and her people’s names. Nothing. With each fruitless step, her pace quickened. After a while of ineffective searching, she walked to the head of the main path, staring down the trenched middle. She saw no evidence of Kai, Roberto, or any of her people. Nor did she see Isaiah’s Watchers.
Neena blinked hard.
They couldn’t all be gone.
She searched for a while longer, unable to believe their deaths.
A bubble of despair stuck inside her throat.
Her thoughts turned in wild circles.
Eventually, they landed on something.
Raj.
Finding him was the only thing she could think to do.
Maybe the others were somehow with him.
Changing direction, she hurried for the hovel where she’d left him, praying her brother had survived the chaos with the others. With each step, she convinced herself that Kai and her other comrades had somehow made their way back to him. Panic strangled her breath. She no longer felt the sticky blood of the creature on her body, or smelled its foul innards.
Traversing the colony felt foreign and strange, with so many holes, and so few hovels. Twice, she backtracked, changing her path. Eventually, she spotted what she thought was the right hovel.
Neena’s heart pounded when she saw the partially collapsed roof. Stones littered the outside of the structure; cracks fissured the walls. The door was gone. Shadows surrounded the doorway, which was cracked and partially covered by a pile of sand.
Falling to a crouch, Neena dug at the buried entrance, screaming for her brother. She’d scooped only a few handfuls away when she saw someone crawling toward her.
“Neena?”
Raj came from the shadows.
He immediately leapt for her arms.
Sand matted his hair. A few scrapes marred his face. But he was alive. Alive!
Neena hugged him so tightly she never thought she’d let go.
Stepping back from the doorway, she saw Salvador, Maria, and the others crawling out, revealing themselves, taking her in with shock.
It took her a moment to realize what they must see: a woman, covered in the creature’s black blood, and dirt and sand. It wasn’t until she spoke again that they believed it was her.
“Neena!” a woman cried. “You made it!”
Neena hadn’t known the extent of joy until now. Heaving a sob of relief, she embraced them all.
Chapter 100: Neena
Neena and Raj walked alongside Salvador, who hobbled between Maria and another man, while the others walked alongside them. Slowly, the storm clouds receded and the light of the sun returned, illuminating the ruined paths as Neena and the others threaded back through them.
Eventually, they made their way back to the Comm Building path, taking in the horrid scene. The women gasped. Raj and Salvador stood with their mouths agape.
Silence fell over the group, as they studied the creature from its giant maw to the end of its tail. Neena wouldn’t have believed it was ever alive, if she didn’t know better.
The smell of blood filled the air. The carcass was fresh, but in a short time, the sun would bake its body.
“Were you the one to kill it?” Raj asked.
“Yes.” She nodded with emotion. “I used the device from the roof of the Comm Building. It landed there, before I shot it and it fell.”
Neena didn’t need to tell any more. The story was written in the creature’s massive carcass, and its gaping wounds. It was written in its blood, which covered her, and in the rubble-strewn wall of the Comm Building. It was spelled out in the sections of the roof that had collapsed, or been damaged.
“Where is everyone else?” Raj asked, staring at the distant structure. “Are they inside, searching for survivors?”
His words trailed off. Everyone could see the damage the building had suffered, and the piles of rubble. Neena shuddered as she imagined the crushed bodies inside
.
No sound came from within.
“I don’t think anyone’s in there. I haven’t heard anyone,” Neena said, hoping to protect Raj from what was surely an ugly scene.
“Then where are Kai, Roberto, and Samara?” he asked, spinning around.
His words reignited her panic. Neena hurried back to the nearest trench. She couldn’t accept that Kai, Roberto, and the others were dead. Not like Samara. She’d search everywhere twice, or three times, if she had to: every hole, every hovel, every pile of sand. She needed her hands busy, so her heart wouldn’t process something she didn’t know if she could take. She scanned from one end of the trench to the next.
“We’ll search the Comm Building,” said Maria, leaving Salvador in the care of a few others, while she and another man hurried toward the fallen structure.
“Be careful!” Neena yelled.
She had only searched for a few moments when Maria called her name.
“Neena!”
She looked over to find that her and the other man had halted near one of the cracks in the building. They took a few steps back, startled. Through a gap in one of the Comm Building walls, Neena saw shadows.
Moving shadows.
Surprise struck her, as a nervous line of people worked their way out from the building, staring between her and the monster. Men and women filtered outside, holding one another up. The people kept coming, until nearly eighty survivors were standing outside in a large group, huddled together in disbelief.
A Watcher named Nicholas stood at the head of the group, watching Neena and the others as if they were ghosts.
“It’s okay!” she called over. “The beast is dead.”
The line of people stayed in place, riveted by the massive carcass from which no one could look away. What had once been a threat had become a spectacle. Men and women held onto one another, talking and pointing. A few of the bravest people talked about getting closer. Others gaped at the arrows embedded in the creature’s side. Neena could already smell the reek of its insides, wafting over the area, prompting some people to cover their mouths.
After inspecting the creature for a long moment, Nicholas walked away from the others and drew up to Neena. Gone was his look of disdain. In its place was a look of wonder.
“You did it,” he said incredulously.
Neena nodded.
At the same time, sorrow dulled her celebration. Before Nicholas could ask another question, Neena asked, “Did you see anyone else out here?”
“This is all of us,” Nicholas said, reinforcing what she feared. “We hid in some of the side rooms on the other side of the building, where we were protected from the cave-in.”
Tears swelled up in Neena’s eyes. She spun again, searching the landscape, but nothing else moved. The sorrow in her gut turned to emptiness.
So this is our price for killing the beast, she thought.
Still, she wasn’t through. She’d search the colony for days, months—however long it took until she verified the awful truth.
She’d gone only a few steps when a voice shouted from the gathered crowd.
“Over here! I see something moving!” Raj said, pointing into a trench.
Chapter 101: Neena
Hope stirred in Neena’s heart as she raced toward Raj and the ditch, fighting to move faster in her sticky, blood-drenched clothes.
“Over there!” Raj yelled, as she approached. “Do you see it?”
Neena followed his pointing finger to a collapsed hole at the bottom of the trench, where a hand poked from the sand, clenching and grabbing. A stream of people gathered behind them, peering down at a new spectacle, talking loudly.
Another hand appeared, and then a head. Groaning, a sand-covered person tried pulling himself from out of a collapsed hole, blinking through his sand-covered face. Neena’s heart leapt as she recognized him.
“Roberto!” Neena cried.
She, Raj, and a few dozen others skirted down into the trench, heading for the battered man and helping him the rest of the way out. Roberto tried standing, but his legs wobbled. A circle of people helped him stay upright. The next words he spoke made Neena’s heart leap.
“There are more people down here!” Roberto rasped, coughing and spitting sand.
While some people assisted Roberto, Neena, Raj, and a bunch of others knelt and dug, throwing back sand, exposing more of the hole from which Roberto had crawled.
Voices emanated from within. Neena and the other, digging people shouted back to them.
“Can you hear us?” Neena cried. “Keep crawling! Follow our voices!”
A groan echoed from somewhere deeper in the tunnel, but no one could make out the words.
“They’re stuck!” Raj worried.
Neena, Raj, and the others pawed frantically at the ground, tossing away sand and debris and widening the hole. While they dug, they continued calling out to whomever was inside. Soon, they’d made a larger opening. Neena peered into it. Far below the top layer of the sand, the ground became a harder mixture of dirt. With dismay, she noticed that tunnel narrowed for a long while before it widened again. She’d never fit past a few feet.
“I’ll go in!” Raj said, looking at her and the others with wide eyes. “I can get to them quicker, while you all continue digging.”
“Raj…” Neena protested.
“I’ll be careful,” he assured her and the crowd. “I’ll just need a torch!”
Hearing his words, a few of the people behind them scrambled up the hill, heading quickly for the Comm Building, while Neena, Raj, and some others kept tunneling. After a little while, a man scampered down the hill, handing Raj a lit torch. Before Neena could argue, Raj hurried into the hole.
Neena’s pulse beat fiercely as she watched his light recede.
“Keep talking to me!” she called, while continuing to clear away sand.
Neena’s heart hammered as she and the others worked frantically to catch up. Raj might be crawling into a dark space from which he’d never return. If the tunnel collapsed…
“Raj? Can you hear me?” she called after him.
“I’m okay!” he called back. “I think I hear where they are!”
After a handful of nerve-wracking moments, she’d widened the tunnel enough to follow.
“We shouldn’t have too many people in the hole,” someone warned. “The tunnel might collapse.”
“I’ll go in!” she said.
“Take a torch!” someone said, handing one to her.
With the blazing light in one hand, Neena scurried into the hole, taking care not to brush the sides. Her pants scraped against a firmer, darker layer of soil. The restrictive hole smelled like waste and wet rock. With a shudder, she imagined the monster tunneling through it, leaving a trail of excrement.
She kept going, shining the light and looking for her brother.
“Raj?”
“Over here!”
After a while of crawling, she caught sight of him, hunkered next to a woman from the Right Cave. The woman coughed and spat, her hair covered in sand. Behind her was another man whom Neena recognized from the last, tense battle with the creature.
“We fell down here when we tried helping you,” the man explained, smiling through his obvious pain. “We’ve been trying to get out, but it’s dark and hard to breathe.”
“The tunnel collapsed a few times,” the woman added. “We kept digging, hoping we’d find a way out.”
“We heard all the noise above,” the man said with fright. “And then it stopped. Is it over?”
Neena nodded. “It’s over. You’re going to be all right. Are you injured?”
“We’re scraped and bruised, but we can move.”
Neena shined her light past them, trying to see more of the tunnel. “Is there anyone else here?”
“I think,” the woman said, after a cough.
Neena looked over at Raj, who took a flask from his side and offered the people a drink, while ushering them in the directi
on of the surface. He traded a look with Neena.
“I’ll lead them out,” he offered.
He handed her the flask, in case she needed it.
And then he was herding the people back the way they came, crawling through the tunnel on hands and knees, clenching his light. Neena watched them go for as long as she could, before turning and using her torch to battle more blackness. The tunnel narrowed again. At one point, she had to dig through more dirty rocks and sand, uncovering a better place to crawl. Perhaps the man and woman had been mistaken, and they were the last survivors.
Claustrophobia made her stomach clench. Still, she forced herself onward, taking a turn in the dark tunnel.
A figure lay at the fringes of her torchlight, sitting upright against the wall.
“Hello?” she called, to no response.
A shimmer of fear wormed through her gut, as she realized her luck had ended. She crawled until she reached the person, holding the torch out and assessing their condition.
The person’s hands lay idle on their lap. Their head sagged in the other direction.
Reaching out, she gently moved the person’s sand-covered face toward her.
Kai’s cheeks were splattered with mud. His eyes were closed. He looked strangely serene, as if he’d made peace with his death before succumbing to his sandy grave. Tears slid down Neena’s face. Her heart felt like it might hurt forever. Reaching up, she brushed a strand of hair from his forehead, revealing his markings, before reaching down and holding his hand. Sorrow and guilt ached in her stomach.
So, this is the cost of victory, she thought.
“Neena?” he croaked, opening his eyes.
Her heart leapt. “Kai? Can you hear me?”
Kai nodded, groaning and turning his head. “I can hear you.”
“Can you move?”
“I think,” he said, wiggling his fingers and then his legs. “I crawled for so long that I got tired. I could use a drink.” He coughed hard, and then looked at her, his eyes as blue and wide as the first time she’d met him.
Neena smiled through more tears, reaching for the flask Raj had given her. “Take it.”
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