He let a long string of brown liquid drip to the ground. “Our fearless leader,” he said. “Can’t you talk some sense into him?”
“If the work’s a problem . . .”
“It’s not the work,” he snarled. “And you know it. It’s this place. The place he’s apparently decided to turn into his own little personal nirvana. It’s crazy.”
“How so?”
“God damn it!” With his cheeks coated in dust and his hair sticking out every which way, his face looked wild and desperate. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. This place is dangerous. It’s been dangerous since the day we arrived. And yet here we are, in plain sight of anything that happens to be snooping around, and what are we doing? Prancing around like a bunch of Boy Scouts, building a fence that won’t ever get built! What are we going to do next, sing campfire songs? Roast marshmallows?”
I had no idea what Boy Scouts or marshmallows were. They might be things I’d forgotten, or they might be things everyone had forgotten but still talked about. There were a lot of those things.
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
“Talk to the man!” His arms shot out and caught my shoulders. The stench of his breath bathed my face, hot and fetid. “Talk some sense into him!”
I shook free, more easily than I expected. In the second his hands had gripped me, I’d felt their strength, far greater than my own. “Back off, Yov.”
He fell away from me, looking appalled. His breath came in husky bursts, and for the first time I could remember, he seemed unable to look me in the eye.
“Tell him,” he said heavily. “Just tell him, for God’s sake.”
“He won’t listen to me,” I said. “He never has.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient.” His red-veined eyes seemed to bulge beneath his brow. “Must be nice to always have that excuse. Crazy old man won’t listen to poor little Querry. And so the rest of us have to pay the price.”
I looked into his furious, miserable eyes, and for an odd moment I was moved to tell him what festered in my own mind. To tell him I knew what had happened to his father, knew why he was so angry at my dad, why he wanted others to suffer and rage too. More than that, I almost told him I agreed with him, that my dad had gone off the deep end and put all of us in jeopardy. I almost told him what I’d overheard during the interrogation of Petra, almost told him of Aleka’s doubts, as well as my own. For that single moment, it seemed possible to tell him we had something in common: a common fear, a common enemy, maybe even a common purpose.
But I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t. Tell him I understood, sympathized, felt sorry? Tell him we were more alike than he realized? More alike than I had realized until this moment?
Yeah. And what would we do next? Sing campfire songs? Roast marshmallows?
“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “But don’t expect any miracles.”
His lips drew back as if to bite me, but he didn’t try to stop me as I turned and walked away.
“You’ll be sorry if you fail, little man,” he spat at my back. “You’ll all be sorry.”
I left him standing there, coated in dust as red as blood. I was already more sorry than he could possibly know.
* * *
The sun stood too tall to continue our work, so we spent the rest of the day puttering around camp and planning for tomorrow.
Muddy as we were, we couldn’t really clean ourselves. The best we could do was chafe our bodies with crusty rags that removed as much skin as dirt. The camp crazies collected the dust, scooping it into their palms and looking around for their jars, only to remember they’d been stowed away and the officers had failed to return them despite my dad’s change of plans. So they stuffed the dirt in their pockets for a later time. Then there were those who withdrew from the group, took off their uniforms, and beat their clothes against walls and fence posts until the air grew cloudy with miniature dust storms. Wali and Kelmen whacked their uniforms the hardest. Watching them, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out who they’d rather be beating.
But lots of people, probably the majority, seemed too exhausted to wipe down at all, and they went through the remainder of the day coated in a second skin of dust. As evening fell they sat by the bomb-scarred wall of the building we’d designated as the commissary and waited with clenched hands and drawn faces for Tyris to dole out another paltry serving of canned rations. There’d been a time, recent enough for me to remember, when people had stood in an orderly line to receive their food. But that time now seemed as distant as my own forgotten past.
Yov didn’t make an appearance at dinner. In fact, he vanished right after our conversation, leaving the tools behind for me to pick up and deposit in their basement storage space. While people sat in silence and wolfed down their meager meal, while they prepared for bed, some of them unsure what to do now that their rituals had been interrupted and their pockets hung with their own dirty skin, Yov kept to himself, hidden away somewhere. For the rest of the day I kept an eye out for him, but he never showed. His absence brought a knot to my stomach that grew larger and tighter as the day dragged into night.
It wasn’t just his threat that made me anxious. It was my pledge.
By the time we finished dinner, I knew I couldn’t delay any longer. All meal long, my dad had pulled me around as he congratulated people for their hard work and bucked them up for tomorrow’s repeat performance. He shook hands, patted backs, told everyone from the oldest and weariest to the youngest and most oblivious that we’d made a great start and we really needed to pour it on now. He exchanged quiet words with his supporters, reminding them of the sacrifices people like Danis had made, telling them they were honoring his memory by fulfilling the dreams heroes like him had died for. To those who remained unconvinced, disgruntled, or openly hostile he changed his tune, challenging them in a soft but unyielding voice to have faith, to work for the benefit of the colony, to put aside differences in the name of the common good. No one said a word back to him. Those not too angry to speak seemed too tired to think and too busy licking their fingers for the last greasy traces of food. All he got were grateful smiles from disciples like Korah, ominous glares from holdouts like Araz. Petra was harder to pin down, what with all the blinking and her natural ability to evade. Aleka he didn’t bother trying to convince, which was just as well, since she kept her thoughts, and her person, to herself.
The whole time, while I stood by his side, unable to say a word and not invited to anyway, the speech I knew I would have to deliver gathered in the back of my mind, in the part of my memory not too damaged to call back. Every so often in the middle of a conversation he’d turn to me, nod, brace an arm behind my back, and I’d look at him evenly, the effort to control what I couldn’t show making my lip tremble. Then he’d grab my elbow and steer me to the next person crouched over their meal, and the whole thing would start all over again. The worst was when he launched into his speech in front of Korah. I saw the light beaming from a face she’d somehow restored to its flawless beauty, and I couldn’t do anything but squirm.
“This is what it means to be a leader,” she whispered to me, her breath warm on my ear, her hand squeezing my arm. When our eyes met, I thought I saw the soft promise I’d never seen her show anyone but Wali. Whether my dad heard her, whether he saw that look too before he dragged me away, I couldn’t tell.
When it was finally over, when we’d visited every last clump of exhausted, famished workers, he walked me to the crest of the hill and we stood looking out over a land drained of light and life. “You’ll have to learn to do this,” he said. “Someday.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I’m gone,” he said, speaking so low the wind tossed his words almost beyond my hearing. “They’ll need you then. To carry on.”
To carry on what? I almost screamed. “Dad . . .”
“Come on,” he said
. “It’s getting late.”
We strolled over to the group of officers who sat apart from the workers, their faces growing shadows in the twilight. Aleka stood to the side, so still and silent she might have been one of the pillars left over from the time before.
“Tomorrow it’s Querry’s turn,” he said. His voice took in the group, but his eyes rested on her. “He can supervise the fence construction. Take charge.”
“Dad,” I protested.
“Aleka will help you,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”
“No,” I said. “It won’t.”
Aleka turned her gaze to me. The other officers stiffened as if I’d burst open and let loose a stream of Skaldi. Only my dad seemed unfazed.
“It’ll be all right, son,” he said quietly.
“Dad,” I said. “I’m sorry I—I’m sorry about what happened. I should have listened. But this isn’t the way. The way to win the war.”
He faced me squarely, his eyes showing not triumph but something else—weariness, sadness, maybe respect. It was too dark to tell.
“You’ll learn, Querry,” he said. “All of us remember that time. The time when you have to make a choice. No matter how dark it looks. When the alternative is much, much worse.”
“I don’t know how . . .” I began. I don’t know how to tell you, I recited in my head. All the things I have to tell you, all the things I never have. . . . But my riddled memory failed me, and I couldn’t complete the thought.
He stepped closer, his eyes boring into mine. I couldn’t mistake the sorrow in their coal-black depths. “Then it’s time you learned,” was all he said. He signaled to the other officers and strode away.
I turned to Aleka, but her gaze held neither promise nor encouragement. Her face and eyes blended with the gray of her uniform.
“I did try,” I said.
“I know you did.”
“He’s gone crazy, hasn’t he?”
She opened her hands in bewilderment. “I don’t know what to tell you, Querry. All I can say is that the Laman Genn I know wouldn’t do this.”
“Maybe you don’t know him anymore, then.”
“Maybe neither of us does.”
“Maybe,” I said, “this isn’t him.”
She opened her mouth as if to respond, then turned away and wouldn’t say another word.
I went to bed sure I’d wake to a night terror. Almost looking forward to it. Wishing for a nightmare I couldn’t remember to cancel out the one I could.
10
Lost
Screams woke me.
At first I thought they lived in my head. Then I realized they were coming from all around me. Screams, magnified by the stillness of the night, rebounding off the ghost-town buildings. Screams of people I knew. Maybe. It was impossible to tell. Screams are just screams.
I sprang to my feet and searched the moonless dark for the source. I could barely make out shadowy figures in the distance and hear the slap of running feet. A gunshot sounded, an unidentifiable voice responded with shouts and curses.
Then a jet of fire bloomed in the night. In its glare I saw Araz standing on the edge of the crater holding a flamethrower, others in camouflage uniforms racing in every direction. Some darted between the pillars and walls of crumbled buildings, others plunged deeper into the night. Some I thought I saw stumble and fall into the crater. I couldn’t tell whether they were escaping from the stream of fire or from something else. I couldn’t tell if they were the people I’d known for the past six months or something else.
But I did know one thing.
This was no night terror.
It was real.
Without a thought as to what I was doing, I leaped over the wall and ran toward Araz. My feet, bootless, suffered the piercing sting of rocks at every stride. In the swirling dark I nearly collided with a group of little kids who appeared out of the night, running in the opposite direction. Their screams of terror chilled my blood. But I kept moving toward Araz, dodging piles of brick and stone I could sense more than see. My lungs drew air laced with the smell of gasoline and burning wood, though nothing seemed to be on fire. The only things clearly visible in the whole camp were the driver and the outlines of the buildings into which he shot flickering tongues of flame.
“What is it?” I screamed at him over the rush of the flamethrower. Sweat covered his face and his eyes shone wildly in the orange glow.
“Skaldi!” he screamed back. He shot another gout of flame at something only he could see, or at nothing at all.
“Where’s my dad?”
He didn’t answer. He sent a long, sweeping arc of fire toward the buildings closest to him, and I had to jump back to avoid the flames. My skin prickled and felt as if it was blistering.
Half-blinded by the firelight, I spun and headed for the building where my dad had set up his quarters. I could just make out its shadow, separate from the other dim shapes that rose around it. I slammed against rock, pitched blindly forward. For a horrifying second I thought I had tumbled into the crater, but then my hands hit solid ground. Ignoring the pinpricks of pain from my scraped palms, I scrambled to my feet and ran toward the command building. Blurry figures brushed past me, too filmy to see clearly but firm enough to bruise my shoulder and spin me from my feet. I had no idea if they were people fleeing the Skaldi or Skaldi fleeing the man who flourished the flame gun.
“Dad!” I yelled into the night. “Dad!”
I thought I heard a weak voice answer, “Querry!” But before I had a chance to listen for a repetition, the flames erupted again and swallowed all sound in their exultant roar.
I reached the door of headquarters, pawed for the empty frame, swung myself into the front hall. For a moment I stopped short in total darkness. Then, moving as cautiously as my rising panic would let me, I picked my way past broken pieces of furniture to the room where I’d witnessed Petra’s interrogation. My gut twisted as I remembered that day. Nothing stirred in the dark, no sound of voices or anything else. I passed through the archway that led to the back room where my dad slept, but it was as dark and silent as the rest of the house.
“Dad?” I breathed. “Dad?”
Nothing.
I slid one foot forward, then the next, groped for the place where I knew he’d laid his mat. I fell to my knees and felt around on the ground in front of me. My fingers found the mat, a coarse and scratchy piece of canvas, but no one lying on it. I thought I felt some lingering warmth from a body, but my feverish hands might have been playing tricks on me.
I stood and peered into darkness my eyes refused to penetrate. I wondered if he’d started sleeping in his third-story armory, if he was up there right now watching the chaos on the ground.
Or worse, if he was the cause of it.
The flamethrower sprang to life once more, and the outline of the room’s sole window came into focus. The throaty noise emerged in bursts, the sound of screams resuming every time the weapon fell silent. The window flickered black and orange as the flames rose and fell.
Then I heard a voice, in the gaps of flame, faint but unmistakable. “Where’s Querry?” he shouted over the other noises. “Where’s Querry?”
“Dad!” I ran for the archway, knocking my shoulder against the wall, and sprinted blindly through the interrogation room. The flamethrower gave me just enough light to detect the front door and fling myself through it.
Araz remained visible in the distance, flames seeming to spout from his arms. Small fires had sprung up in the ruins of the buildings around him, so he looked like a gardener tending bushes of flame. What had caught fire, whether fuel or bodies or our meager supplies, I couldn’t tell. No other figures were in sight, though the sound of their voices, calling for help or for each other, could still be heard when the flames fell silent. I couldn’t determine what direction my dad’s voice had come from,
and I didn’t know whether to risk another race across the compound’s courtyard, another close encounter with the gaping crater. So I stood still and lifted my voice as loud as I could make it.
“Dad!”
No answer.
“Dad!”
“Querry!” The voice came from the direction of my own sleeping place. We must have run past each other in the dark.
“I’m coming!” I yelled, but then I felt a hand grip my arm and I spun, a scream about to form on my lips.
“Shh!” a voice said. “It’s me.”
The voice was Korah’s.
She stood so close I could feel her warm breath on my ear and see the sweep of her dark hair blurring the night. Then Araz’s flamethrower exploded again, and in the brief burst of brilliance I saw her face, soft and comforting yet full of concern.
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” she whispered. “Before that thing finds us.”
“How did it . . . ?”
“It’s been here all along,” she said. “We just didn’t know it.” She tugged my arm. “Come on. This way.”
I resisted. “My dad . . .”
She stopped pulling. Even in the dark her eyes seemed to melt with sorrow and pity.
“It is your dad,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
I staggered, caught myself against her shoulder. I thought I’d prepared myself for this, but hearing the words from her lips, it felt like the world had ended.
Aleka’s instinct had been right. The Skaldi had taken my dad. When it had infected him, why it had waited till now to strike, I might never know. But he was gone. The madness I’d thought was his was the creature’s madness, thwarting our will, forcing us to stay until it was ready to spring its trap. If I’d only been able to stop it, maybe this night would never have come. I couldn’t have saved him, but maybe I could have saved his camp.
But I hadn’t stopped it. I had helped.
I hadn’t wanted to, but I had. Aleka and I had been the only two who might have been able to expose the monster in our midst. But we’d failed, and so whatever happened tonight would be on my conscience as well as hers.
Survival Colony 9 Page 12