Survival Colony 9

by Joshua David Bellin

  “It was four years ago,” she said. “I had just turned twelve. Some people don’t keep track of dates, but I do. I was out training when I saw the officers come into camp with something wrapped in a blanket. Laman was there, and Petra, and Tyris, and a couple of others. My mom was working on the trucks, my dad was out scouting. I figured I’d tag along and see what was up.”

  She smiled humorlessly. “I was pretty stealthy even then. No one saw me. I watched them deposit the thing in Laman’s tent, and I got close enough to see through a rip in the fabric. They were unwrapping a body. Except it wasn’t a body, not completely. They must have caught the creature just as it got inside. Before it had a chance to take control. It was half-human, with arms and legs and a head. But the rest of it was . . .”

  I couldn’t stop myself from staring at her. “What?”

  “A horror.” She turned back to me, her eyes entirely dry. “It had taken over the man’s face, and it was like a mouth, except the wrong way. Up and down instead of side to side. Like it had torn him open from forehead to chin and then tried to knit him back together before they killed it. The whole body was like that, from his face down his chest. It was burned, parts of it had melted. The hands mostly. Those parts were red and scaly, but the rest of it was gray. A color nothing like anybody’s skin. The color your skin would be if you drained it of all color.”

  I tried to imagine that grotesque skin, but all I could see were Korah’s bronzed cheeks, her dazzling eyes.

  “And there was no blood,” she said. “Tyris poked around inside it for a good half hour, but there was no blood. It was like he was completely hollow.” An involuntary shudder ran through her. “My mom told me the first survivors tried to use guns against them, but their bodies kept moving no matter how many times they’d been shot. Like there was nothing inside them a bullet could kill. That’s when they discovered you had to burn them.”

  I’d been told that too. My dad had pounded it into me.

  “The next day we held his funeral,” Korah said. “I stood by the grave, and no one knew I’d seen him before they wrapped him back up in his shroud. I went up to the body and put a dried cactus flower where his hands would have been. My mom made me. I even kissed him through the cloth. I remember how scratchy it felt in my mouth.” Her blue eyes burned through me. “That man was my father. The Skaldi had ambushed him out in the field, and his partner had killed it before it could complete the takeover. That’s what I’d seen that afternoon in Laman’s tent.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t respond, didn’t acknowledge that I’d spoken a word. “It was Petra who killed it,” she said. “I’ve never known whether to thank her or not. And now it’s probably too late.”

  I realized I was staring straight at her. I also realized she was staring right back. My heart was a hammer trying to pound a hole in the wall of my chest. She rested on a single hand, her legs tucked underneath her, and for an unbelievable second I thought she had dropped her shoulder and was leaning toward me. Our faces came so close I could see every line and groove in her full lips. Up close, I could tell that they were ever so slightly chapped.

  Then her face fell away and she freed her legs to stand.

  My eyes rose to find Wali fifty yards behind her, in the space between houses. Moonlight shadowed his features, but fury radiated from his rigid posture and clenched fists.

  “I’ve got to be getting back,” she said. “You’ll be all right out here?”

  I nodded rapidly, keeping my head lowered.

  She stood above me. She took a step toward Wali then turned back, and I raised my eyes once more to hers. A steady breeze lifted her hair, surrounding me with her scent.

  “The old woman told me it was like everyone had gone crazy,” she said. “Like the whole world was determined to commit suicide. Like,” and her voice caught, “seeing what they’d done made them so sick they wanted to die.”

  I stared at her, unable to speak.

  “You’re lucky, Querry,” she said. “My mom always tells me I have to remember. But sometimes all I want to do is forget.”

  I watched her walk to where Wali stood, watched him grip her hand and pull her roughly toward the sleeping quarters, watched them vanish like wraiths into the darkness. I stared for long minutes at the spot where they’d disappeared, but she didn’t return. I knew she wouldn’t. I had the strange feeling she belonged to the dream I couldn’t remember, and when tomorrow came everything she’d said to me tonight would be gone with the rest of it.

  I wished I could erase her memory of whatever had come between her and Wali this night. I wished I could erase her memory of four years ago. I also wished I could bring back my own memory of what lay beyond that long lost game of catch, the days and years before the accident, the entire train of memories that tied me to my life.

  But I knew it didn’t work that way. You either remember or you forget, that’s all. You don’t get to choose.

  6

  Thirst

  The next day brought rain.

  Hard, scalding rain. My head had barely hit the bunched piece of canvas I used as a pillow when the drops began pelting straight down, hard as pebbles. I felt ragged from my sleepless night and shaken by what I could and couldn’t remember of it, but I sprang up instantly and headed for the supplies. My memory might be full of holes, my feeling about this place might be getting worse by the minute, but I knew rain was one thing you didn’t waste.

  In the six months I could remember, this was only the second rainstorm, and like the first it arrived without warning, without what the old woman called thunder and lightning, and it fell, as she put it, in buckets. The grown-ups who’d seen these sudden storms three or four times a year reported that they were always the same: they came out of nowhere and saturated the land, turned dust to brown slop and the sluggish river to a raging torrent, then retreated as if they’d been scared away by their own ferocity. As soon as they were gone the sun resumed its work, baking the land, leeching the veins of water that formed in the ground’s cracks, crinkling the river like a scrap of paper in a fire. An hour later you’d hardly know it had rained at all.

  As long as the deluge lasted, though, we did everything we could to capture it. The river was unreliable: we couldn’t count on being able to travel there because our own movements depended on whether there were Skaldi in the area. Plus its water was filthy, sludge brown, and smelled like sulfur and petroleum, the kind of water you wouldn’t dream of drinking without boiling it first. The water that fell from the sky couldn’t exactly be called clean either, it had a gritty quality that caught in your teeth and throat. But it was clean enough that you could hold up a jar full of rainwater and see the particles slowly swirling. Plus whatever happened in the clouds took some of the stink away, so you could stand to drink it without plugging your nose. My dad never talked about the rain, but I knew he was constantly on the lookout for it.

  This morning, the moment he heard the first fat, sizzling drops smacking the dry ground, he came charging out of headquarters, limping around like someone trying to put out a fire, shouting orders.

  “Let’s go, people!” he boomed. “No time like the present. Move, move, move!”

  Everyone threw off blankets, pulled on boots, and ran for the supply basement. I was one of the first to get there, and I grabbed a tin pot from the soiled, rusty pile. Other people fought over jars, cups, mess tins, anything they could get their hands on to collect the water. Those who failed to secure a container took off their boots and set them up in the rain, or spread out tents and rucksacks to soak up every last precious drop. We rolled empty fuel drums out into the cloudburst and stood with our arms held up to the skies, hot rain burning our skin more than cooling it, filling one vessel after another and dumping the water into the drums. Everyone worked, even the littlest kids filled cups or caps with ra
inwater, and people who had nothing at all to fill filled their hands or else lay on their backs with their mouths open and filled their mouths, again and again, spitting a mouthful of water at a time into the barrels. Within minutes everyone was drenched, but we didn’t let up. We knew that, once the rain exhausted itself and we fell, equally exhausted, into bed, we’d look out over the parched land and curse ourselves for losing far more than we’d managed to save.

  I found myself standing right next to Korah at one of the fuel drums. Her black hair hung in a shiny sheet to her shoulders. Even if there’d been anything to say, we were both way too busy to meet each other’s eyes.

  My dad circulated through camp while we worked, urging us on, his shouts as steady as the rainfall, his hair and beard plastered to his face. His limp seemed less noticeable in the rain, as if the water lubricated him, and his eyes glowed with passion, even excitement. He still didn’t crack a smile, but the lines around his eyes softened a little at the sight of the whole camp bristling with purpose, the teams laboring in unison to fill and ferry containers to the fuel drums. As the rain picked up, falling in a downpour so solid I could barely see Korah’s fluid form beside me, his voice rose with it, until he was hollering encouragement over the raindrops’ roar.

  “That’s right!” he shouted. “Don’t let up, people! We can do it!”

  And we doubled our already impossible pace, water pouring off our hair and shoulders in such wild cascades I couldn’t tell what we were dumping into the drums and what was spilling in on its own.

  But it lasted no more than a couple hours. One minute I was working blind, scooping and hauling and pouring, the sounds of rain and shouting and bodies all mixed together in one steady buzz of noise, and the next I recoiled from Korah in her skintight top the way people do when they almost bump into each other. It ended so abruptly and completely I couldn’t believe it. I turned my face to the sky and waited for the next wave, but all that struck my nose and cheeks and forehead was sun.

  My dad’s voice died with the rain, and like everyone else he looked up. His brow contracted, his eyes darkened. Fifty faces turned to him. He squinted into the sun for a second as it seared away the last wisps of vapor that hung in the air. Then he was all business.

  “All right, people,” he said. “That’s that. See if you can find any sources we’ve missed, then report back to me.”

  We slogged through quicksand up to our boot tops in search of traces we’d overlooked, but I could tell right away we’d been too thorough for that. What hadn’t dried already had turned to mud pudding, and that was hardening fast under the sun’s punishment. A few measly puddles glistened darkly in the bottom of the crater, but I knew that by the time we climbed down there, if we could climb down there, they’d be gone. Wali looked ready to try, until Aleka laid a hand on his arm. Korah, for once, said nothing, none of the usual chiding or teasing words she reserved just for him. In fact, she didn’t even look at him as he craned his neck to judge the crater’s depth. We found a couple basements where the water hadn’t drained through cracks in the foundation, and Aleka sent us downstairs to scoop what we could, but it wasn’t anything to brag about.

  “Next thing you know she’ll be telling us to take a leak and collect that too,” Yov grumbled as we trudged down the stairs. For once, I couldn’t argue with him.

  By the time we’d finished searching, the clothes on my back had stiffened and the heat from the ground bled through my boots. I looked around at the faces in camp. Everyone had their mouths half open, panting in the mid-morning sun like underwater creatures that had realized a second too late what a bad idea it was to come up for air.

  We trooped back to headquarters, and Aleka told my dad what he already knew. His hair had dried and hung on his shoulders in thick, matted tangles. He moved stiffly, his limp having returned in full force. He told us to sit, and people did, slowly, as if their bodies had hardened as much as the ground. The stone I sat on, the dust beneath my feet, radiated heat like a griddle.

  “Good work, people,” he said. “The shifts ran right on schedule. A real team effort.”

  Everyone looked at their hands, their neighbors, anywhere but at him.

  “This’ll pay off,” he promised. “Aleka, when did the barrels run dry?”

  “Five weeks ago,” she reported.

  “So we’ve been boiling river water for over a month,” he announced. “We can take a break from that now. Get our strength back until the next rainfall.”

  What he didn’t mention was that the last rainfall had been months ago, and that the rain that time had fallen a full day and part of a night. We got six barrels out of it, and we’d drained those six barrels, if Aleka’s numbers checked out, in roughly two months. We’d collected at most a half-barrel of half-clean water today. Which meant we’d be right back to gagging on river water in less than a week. If we skimped.

  I stole glances at the people around me, and saw nothing but sullen stares. Araz sat with the scout Kin, the driver hulking and pensive, his partner diminutive and alert, eyes flicking around the circle. To my surprise, Wali had chosen a seat next to Yov. The older teen whispered something in his ear, and I watched as a smile slowly spread across Wali’s face. I risked a sidelong glance at Korah, but she looked directly at my dad, her head held regally and her hair magically softened to its customary shine by the sun.

  And I knew we were in trouble for real. I didn’t know why or how, but I knew.

  “Take an hour to rest,” my dad’s voice intruded. “Then we need to get back to sorting personal items.”

  The grown-ups stared numbly as they realized that yesterday’s triage order had only been delayed, not revoked. But everyone seemed too exhausted to put up a fight. People rose and wandered off, seeking solitude or shade. My dad and Aleka, along with the other officers, clustered as usual.

  The only thing I felt like doing was collapsing into bed, but I forced myself to head over to the supply building. In my exhaustion, a fuzzy plan had formed to consolidate items to save space. The rational part of my mind doubted that would do much good, eventually I knew we’d have to separate what we could carry from what we couldn’t. I knew, too, that it would be my dad, not me, who made the call. But maybe, I thought, I could save some little thing.

  As I skirted the crater, I saw Yov and the other teenagers lounging in the shade of a crumpled building. Most had thrown themselves on the ground, but Korah sat apart, her legs pulled up on a half-toppled wall. Yov leaned against what was left of the house, resting casually on an elbow, his white-blond hair barely mussed from the rain. I was about to pass him by when he raised his voice.

  “Has anyone noticed,” he said, “that the whole camp’s been falling to pieces ever since Laman decided to take his little vacation here?”

  My heart skipped a beat, but I kept moving.

  “Yeah,” Wali said. “It’s like he’s got some thing about Crater Estates he’s not telling us.”

  “You guys found this dump,” a kid named Daren said to Yov.

  “But didn’t go all touchy-feely on it,” Yov retorted. “Hey Space Boy!” he called out. “What do you think? Daddy pick a cozy resort?”

  I turned back to him. “What do you want him to do? Make it rain?”

  I thought it was a pretty good line, but no one laughed. Korah gazed pointedly away from both me and Yov.

  “Typical,” Yov yawned. “You’re missing the big picture, Space Boy. How old is Laman, anyway?”

  “About fifty,” I said guardedly. Because truthfully, I didn’t know.

  “And how long’s he been running this show?”

  “What’s your point, Yov?”

  “Yes,” said Korah, swinging her legs from the wall and standing. “What is your point, Yov?”

  He grinned, showing oversize, yellow-brown teeth. “Who says I have to have a point? I’m just trying to establish some numbers h
ere.”

  He took a step away from the collapsed building and faced me and Korah. He stood nearly a foot taller than either of us, his neck and shoulders wired with muscle. The others seemed like they were still just lying around, eyes half-closed and bland looks on their faces, but I could sense their interest perking up. A few had raised themselves on their elbows or leaned forward, hugging their knees. Wali stared intently at the three of us. Yov’s expression hadn’t changed from his customary look of bored superiority, but something about his cool smile made me realize he wasn’t just messing with me like always.

  “You couldn’t do the numbers if your life depended on it,” Korah said quietly. “So again, what’s your point?”

  Yov held up his hands. “I’m merely suggesting,” he said, “that we’ve got a broken-down truck, two missing scouts, some shoeless dude creeping around camp, and a couple days worth of muddy pisswater. And instead of going into lockdown and quarantine, Laman’s worried about who’s packing too many tinker toys. I’m merely calling attention to certain, let us say, kinks in the plan.” He let out a sniffing laugh. “If, that is, the plan involves staying alive long enough to partake of our supply of muddy pisswater.”

  “You think you could do better?” Korah said.

  “Hey,” Yov replied. “I told you, I’m just pointing things out. I’m not as smart as you and Space Boy here. I can’t put two and two together on my own.”

  “I could tell Laman about this,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” he said, shrugging. “You won’t be telling him anything he doesn’t already know.”

  With that, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, like he’d just been hanging out catching some sun all along. The others relaxed as well, but Wali stood and said something to Yov too soft for me to hear, and Yov smiled wickedly, his eyes still closed, his head nodding in satisfaction.

  I walked off. My steps felt strange against the packed dust, as if my soles weren’t making contact with the ground. I heard Korah calling my name, but it was like her voice traveled out of last night’s forgotten dream. In a second she caught up with me.