Survival Colony 9

by Joshua David Bellin

  I almost laughed because, really, there wasn’t much of an out. The thought that I might be inviting a Skaldi to the feast flickered through my mind, but I figured if there really was one loose in camp, there was nothing I could do about it. So I said, “Fine with me.”

  She came around the wall and sat where my dad had sat the first night here. Seeing her in his old place made my heart lurch, with what I wasn’t sure.

  “So how are you doing?” she asked.

  “All right.” Then, more out of habit than anything, I asked, “How’s my dad?”

  “All right,” she said, a tiny smile crossing her lips. It changed her face ever so slightly, made her seem less hard and remote.

  “He feels bad about what happened,” she went on. “He’s been under a lot of stress lately, and—well, he wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “So he sent you.”

  “He’s worried about you, Querry.”

  “What, that I’ll tell everyone about Petra?”

  “That was standard operating procedure,” she said, the hardness returning to her voice. “No commander likes to subject their people to the trials. But they do it for their colony’s safety.”

  I laughed. “Except when they decide not to.”

  Her face had settled back into stone. She braced her hands on her thighs as if she was about to stand, but then she spoke again. “Do you know how he injured his leg?”

  I shook my head. He’d never told me the story. I’d assumed it was old age.

  “He was trying to save a child,” she said. “From the Skaldi. He took a bullet in the hip. A wild shot from one of his own. It’s still there, from what I understand.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said, “So?”

  “So he knows he can’t protect you like he used to. He knows the time is coming when he won’t be able to protect you at all.”

  I brooded on that for a minute. It seemed like the kind of thing a grown-up would say.

  “Do you think it’s true?” I said.

  “Do I think what’s true?”

  “What Petra said. About the Skaldi. About them being in the driver’s seat.” I paused, not sure how much to admit I’d overheard. “About them knowing.”

  Her eyes widened, and for a second I thought she might reveal the secret she and my dad shared. But then the veil settled back over her features. “I can’t say,” she murmured quietly, almost to herself. “But I know it’s adding to Laman’s burdens. That and Yov’s little revolution.” She seemed to enjoy my look of shock, or maybe she was happy to change the subject. “That’s not news, Querry. It’s gotten worse recently, but it’s something Laman’s been dealing with for a long time.”

  “What does Yov have against him, anyway?”

  “Yov lost his father to the Skaldi years ago,” she said. “When he was only a child. He’s been angry ever since. Laman’s tried time and again to reach out to him, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But grief can twist people’s souls,” she said simply. “And sometimes we take our anger out on the ones we owe the most.”

  I wondered if Aleka had ever had a child herself, one she’d lost. I’d never thought of her that way, all hardness and sharp angles, but she sure seemed to have the parenting speech down. “And do you think . . .” I could barely bring myself to say it. “Do you think my dad’s one of them?”

  “I’m sorry I suggested that, Querry,” she said. “I wouldn’t have if I’d known you were listening.”

  “But do you think it’s true?”

  She didn’t answer at once. Her eyes searched mine, as if the answer to my own question was hidden there.

  “I don’t know,” she said at last. “But I do know this is what they do to us. Make us doubt, make us disbelieve. In that respect Petra’s right about their power: they kill the colony from the inside, lead us to do their work. I’ve believed in Laman since . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t want to stop believing in him now.”

  “Neither do I.” Saying it surprised me, but as soon as I said it, I knew it was true.

  We sat in silence. I replayed the memory of my dad’s hand coming at me out of nowhere, wishing I could dodge it, knowing I couldn’t. The image got tangled with Korah’s questions from two nights before: If they can copy our look, our voice, does that make them us? Do they think like us? Feel like us? Or is it all just counterfeit? I’d know if he was one of them, wouldn’t I? His eyes sure had looked like my dad’s eyes. His hand sure had felt like a human hand. My jaw could attest to that.

  He was my dad. How could I not know if he harbored a monster inside?

  “So what do you think he’ll do?” I asked.

  “Laman?”

  I nodded.

  The wisp of a smile played around her lips again. “He always has a plan. And sometimes that’s the problem.” Then she added, “He could use your help.”

  “My help?”

  “Is that so strange?”

  “I’m the guy who can’t remember,” I said. “The guy who can’t focus.” I said it the way my dad always did, like the word left a foul taste in his mouth. “And he made it pretty clear this morning he doesn’t want me getting in the way.”

  She said nothing for a long time. I had a chance to really study her face, to notice how thin it was, bony almost, how deep the hollows sank around her moon-gray eyes. You get used to seeing pinched faces in camp, so used to it you forget that’s not how people are supposed to look. But with Aleka it seemed that more than starvation had whittled away her flesh, bringing out her sharp jaw, her high cheeks, her broad forehead. Her face might be a stone, I thought, but even stones get worn down in time.

  After a minute she stood.

  “He failed, you know,” she said. “To save the child.”

  That was the first time I’d heard one of his officers talk about my dad failing at anything.

  “You’re becoming a man, Querry,” she said. “If you want others to accept that, I think it’s time you started accepting it yourself.” She nodded a good night, and I watched her walk off into the shadows.

  8

  Twist

  We buried Danis at dawn.

  Everyone filed downhill, hiked a mile into the baked land to the spot my dad had chosen for the gravesite, then stood in formation on the plain where two workers with bent shovels had prepared a small but deep hole. There would be no marker, nothing to prove any part of him lay beneath, nothing to attract the attention of the ones that had taken his life. There would be nothing but the flat and barren land, and in time, if we’d done our job well enough, even we would forget where we’d left the lost scout’s remains.

  I hadn’t really known Danis. Even before the Skaldi took him he’d been like a ghost around camp, flitting between solid objects, his frequent disappearances and reappearances so unremarkable you never knew when he was gone. I couldn’t remember him saying more than a handful of words to anyone, and those not to their face but to their shoes. Maybe that was what made him a good scout: he called so little attention to himself he was practically invisible. The only person he seemed the slightest bit comfortable with was Petra, who I’d sometimes seen ribbing him while he stood there with a big goofy smile on his face. Watching the two of them go out on patrol, him gangly and awkward and her squat and no-nonsense, a real mismatch, formed the clearest image I had of the man who had lost his life trying to safeguard our camp.

  So I’d be lying if I said I missed him, or even mourned him. But I felt terrible for the life he’d lost, and all for something that might be gone tomorrow.

  The ceremony was brief. The sun had risen, and we couldn’t afford to stand around, unprotected from its rays and from whatever might be watching us. We lowered what was left of him into the ground and stood there, uncertain what to do next, squinting against the light
and heat.

  My dad gave another of his famous short speeches. I hadn’t seen him since our argument the day before, but he showed no evidence it was still on his mind. I’d checked myself in the shard of mirror he’d given me six months ago, and to my relief, no mark had appeared to commemorate his hand’s encounter with my jaw.

  “Danis’s life and death remind us what we’re fighting against, what we’re fighting for,” he said. “We honor his memory, his years of service. He believed in the future, in the life of our colony. The best way we can remember him is by standing together to guard what he died to preserve.”

  People in the crowd bowed their heads. I’d have given anything to hear their thoughts.

  “Does anyone have something they’d like to say?” my dad asked.

  Silence held, lengthened. I looked over at Petra, whose eyes had closed and whose cracked lips moved wordlessly.

  Finally Aleka spoke.

  “He was a good soldier,” she said.

  At my dad’s signal, one of the officers stepped forward with a raised pistol. Though fanatically strict about not wasting ammunition, my dad had allowed this one gun to be fired in the scout’s memory.

  The officer held the gun aloft and pulled the trigger. A click sounded, but no explosion. He lowered it, glanced at it, and for a moment seemed about to raise it and try again. Then he changed his mind and, putting the safety back on, returned the gun to its holster.

  The workers with the mangled shovels began to fill in the hole. The rest of us turned for the march back to camp.

  That was how we buried Danis.

  * * *

  When we got back to camp everyone did their best to act as if nothing had happened. Routines resumed. Some people returned to shoveling dust, others to rearranging canvas windbreaks. The little kids played amid the ruins like always. Some new game they’d invented, something having to do with treasures and robbers, though like all their games it degenerated into pointless chasing and catching in the end. I saw five-year-old Keely trailing hopelessly behind the bigger kids, but I didn’t head over to help him out. Soon a work detail would have to start digging a hole to bury the possessions we wouldn’t be carrying with us when we left. I could tell by the way people shied from the officers that no one looked forward to being chosen for that assignment.

  But my dad surprised me by calling the whole camp together for a meeting. In the six months I could remember, he’d never done that before.

  We sat in front of headquarters on the remains of walls and foundations. People fanned themselves with hats or dirty strips of cloth. The compound formed a semicircle of houses around an open space, half of which had been swallowed by the crater. Now my dad stood at the center of the remaining space, his legs spread and his hands locked behind his back, keen eyes looking out at us on our makeshift bleachers. The sun never seemed to bother him. His expression was hard to read, brooding as usual but with an edge of something else, anger or excitement or alertness. He looked, to tell the truth, the way Petra had the day before when they’d led her off to the trials. Like he was expecting a fight. Maybe like he was hoping for one. My hand went to my jaw, which throbbed as if it remembered his blow.

  “Is everyone here?” His voice broke the silence. “Good.”

  I noticed that the officers sat by themselves in a clump, rather than standing beside him as usual. Aleka leaned against a building whose top had been sliced clean off. Her arms were crossed, her attention directed, like everyone’s, at my dad.

  “Look, people,” he said. “We’ve had some setbacks. There’s no point denying it. First the truck, and then worse, a friend and companion. Two losses, each difficult in its own way.”

  “You forgot about our prized collectibles,” Yov muttered under his breath. He sat hunched over, staring at the ground. None of his followers responded to his latest piece of wit.

  “But setbacks aren’t defeats,” my dad resumed, not looking Yov’s way. “Setbacks can be opportunities. Signs that it’s time to change. If we’re sharp enough to read the signs.”

  He licked his lips, his eyes flicking around the circle. A low wind had risen. It blew hot against my skin, moaned softly through the empty rooms.

  “I’ve read the signs,” my dad went on, “and I believe they’re telling us something. Something we haven’t wanted to admit. Something even I haven’t wanted to admit. But something I think it’s time we did.”

  “Cut to the chase,” Yov groused.

  If my dad heard this second interruption, he didn’t show it. “We’ve been running for years,” he said. “Running from our enemy. Maybe,” and I swore he was looking right at me when he said this, “running from ourselves. We’ve gotten so used to running, we’ve never stopped to ask if there’s another way. But maybe it’s time we asked that question. Maybe it’s time we found another way.”

  “Excuse me, Laman?” Petra spoke up from the crowd. I hadn’t noticed her before, but there she was, looking edgy and agitated, blinking up a storm. “Is there a point to all this? Because I’m kind of on a tight schedule here.”

  A few titters rose around the circle, mostly from Yov’s gang. Yov himself frowned and voiced something I couldn’t hear. I guess he didn’t appreciate anyone stealing his best lines.

  My dad, though, glared at Petra with mingled annoyance and gratification. If he’d been waiting for a fight, it looked like somebody had finally picked one.

  “As a matter of fact, Petra,” he said, “I was just getting to that. But if you’ve got more important things to do than assist in the survival of this colony, don’t let me stop you.” He raised an eyebrow in challenge.

  Petra, to my surprise, kept her mouth shut. And sat back down. She even stopped blinking for a moment.

  All eyes turned back to my dad. I had the feeling no one would challenge him now.

  “Petra knows better than most what it’s like to be constantly on the run,” he addressed the camp. His face glowed in triumph, but his voice had turned conciliatory. “Our scouts risk their lives every day so the rest of us can live in relative security. They’re out there, always on the move, not knowing half the time where they’ll find us next. Petra puts her life on the line to protect us. Danis gave his life to do the same.”

  I glanced at Petra, who showed no sign that she appreciated either the compliment or the reminder. Her gaze was locked on a space directly in front of her, her bloodshot eyes unblinking.

  “What would happen,” my dad continued, “if instead of expending our resources on running and hiding, we devoted them to standing and fighting? What would happen if, instead of thinking of this compound as a temporary bivouac, we thought of it as a base of operations to begin the work of rebuilding?”

  He waited for a reaction. I’m not sure people heard him right, or maybe they were too stunned by his final word to say anything.

  Finally Aleka repeated the word. “Rebuilding?”

  My dad nodded vigorously. For a second I thought his craggy face was about to split in a smile. He seemed like a kid who’d kept a secret for days and now couldn’t wait to spill it. He didn’t budge from his stance, but to my eyes he looked like he was practically dancing.

  Aleka pursued, “And when did you arrive at this decision?”

  “It’s a decision we had to make,” he said. “Sooner or later. Losing the truck forced us to make the decision sooner. But I’m not going to say I’m not thankful for that.”

  Across the circle, Araz swore softly.

  “Laman,” Aleka tried again. “The survival colonies abandoned reclamation projects decades ago. Mobility has been our ally.”

  “And our curse,” he said. “Our goad and our torment.”

  He raised his voice, addressing us all, silencing the objection I saw forming on Aleka’s lips. “We’ve been running too long,” he said. “Never knowing where we’d find shelter, never knowing
when we’d run out of places to run. For fifty years or more, we’ve had nothing like a place we could call home.”

  A few heads nodded around the circle. Far to my left, away from Wali and the other teens, Korah took a step forward. I hadn’t seen her since the day of the rain, but whatever had been wrong with her yesterday hadn’t done a thing to dampen her glow. Her blue eyes homed in on my dad, laser-sharp.

  “I’ve never had a place I could call my own,” he repeated, his voice oddly nostalgic. “None of us has. We’ve gotten so used to just passing through, we’ve never really looked at a site like this and seen its potential. But,” and his voice rose until the skeleton buildings echoed it back, “I see the potential here. The potential to make a stand. To win back some of what we’ve lost.”

  Yov jumped to his feet. “Then what was the point of forcing us to trash all our stuff?” He sounded genuinely angry. “What was the point of that little exercise if you were planning to park our butts here?”

  “Take your seat,” my dad growled.

  Yov reddened, his hands forming fists. But then, mouthing silent curses, he folded his lanky body back to the ground.

  “I’ve thought long and hard about this,” my dad said, his eyes raking the crowd. No one else stood, no one else spoke. “I’ve done nothing for the past twenty-five years but think about what’s best for this colony. And I think now the only reason I didn’t see it before was that I’d fallen into bad habits. Rituals. Maybe I was more vulnerable to that because I’ve spent so much time trying to sharpen our routines to perfection. But the worst habit of all is believing we have to follow the same habits forever. To the end, whatever that might be.”

  “Are you suggesting,” Aleka said slowly, “a permanent settlement?”

  This time, miraculously, he did smile. It wasn’t much, a crinkling at one corner of his lips, but it was definitely there. On that face that never smiled, though, it looked less like a smile than a leer.

  “I’m suggesting we’ve hidden in the shadows too long,” he said. “Hidden like insects afraid to venture into the light for fear of getting stomped on. This is our chance, people. It might be the best chance we get. Aren’t you sick of running? Sick of hiding? Sick of letting them call the shots?”