Survival Colony 9

by Joshua David Bellin

  And if she died, it would be on mine alone.

  “We have to go back,” I said haltingly. “To tell Araz. So he knows what to kill.”

  “We’d never make it.” The pressure on my arm became more insistent. “We have to hide someplace it won’t find us.”

  “But Wali and the others . . .”

  “Will have to fend for themselves.” In the firelight her face grew grave and tender. “I’m sorry, Querry. I loved your father too. But you know he would have wanted you to be safe.”

  I did know. I knew it to my shame.

  “Come on,” Korah urged, her fingers massaging my arm. “We can’t waste time.”

  I looked into her eyes. They seemed to create a light all their own. She had been one of my dad’s staunchest supporters, I thought bitterly. She had seen his actions as those of a leader, not a madman, not a monster. She had even forgiven him for what happened to her own father. If we survived this night, she would grieve with me.

  I threw one last look in the direction I’d heard the Skaldi speaking with my lost father’s voice, then I turned and followed her.

  She led the way past rubble, flattened herself against buildings, peered around corners before gesturing for me to follow. Bit by bit we made our way from the central area of the compound to the perimeter, where we’d started building the doomed wall. I could tell by the increase in wind that we’d neared the edge of the hill, but I couldn’t see the hole we’d made. The screams of the others grew fainter, and the sound of Araz’s flamethrower became little more than a pop or a hiccup, innocent as one of the blow-darts the little kids made out of hollowed branches.

  We skirted the cliff. For a minute I thought she’d found some way down and was leading me out of camp altogether, but then I realized our steps pointed toward the bomb shelter. The only building where we could lock the creature out. I couldn’t help admiring Korah for picking the shelter as the safest spot in camp.

  “This way,” she whispered.

  She eased the front door open, slipped inside, and pulled me in after her. For a moment I had a dim view of the empty room, then the door closed and plunged us into total darkness. I heard a click as she turned the deadbolt, then another click and a beam of light sprang from her hand. I recognized her flashlight as the one Mika had used when she’d tried to fix the truck.

  “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

  “She’s safe,” Korah said. “She’s the one who sent me to look for you.”

  The beam danced across the floor, showing me a room as bare as a pit. The light reflected off metal: the handle to the trapdoor that led to the basement. Korah lifted the door and shone the light down the stairs.

  “You first,” she said.

  Guided by the beam of her flashlight, I climbed down the stairs, which creaked beneath me as if they were about to break. The dirt floor felt shockingly cold against my bare feet. Korah lowered herself onto the stairs and started down. At the halfway point she stopped to pull the door closed and snapped the bolt. The sound echoed dully in the airtight room.

  The room itself was as blank as I remembered it, gray walls and brown floor and nothing else now that the crates of food had been removed. The sounds from outside had died the moment the front door slammed shut, and in the silence I heard the faint hum of Korah’s flashlight. She shone the light on all the corners of the room, ceiling and floor, checking in case anyone or anything had beaten us here. Then, satisfied, she sat cross-legged in the middle of the room and stood the flashlight beside her. I sat too, the light between us painting a yellow circle on the low ceiling.

  Now that I had a moment to think, I realized my heart beat wildly and my breath came in staccato bursts. The image of my father hollowed out by the monsters he’d spent a lifetime fighting wouldn’t let me go. Korah seemed surprisingly calm, resting back on her arms with her legs stretched in front of her, crossed at the ankles. She tossed her long black hair, which looked glossy and soft in the flashlight’s glow. I tried to inhale her scent, but the air seemed too stale to carry it. How she kept her hair in perfect condition when everyone else in camp had a nest like twigs and straw I had no idea.

  “How long do we have to stay here?” I asked.

  “Until it’s gone,” she said simply. “Why?”

  “You could go crazy in this place.” Then, realizing what a stupid thing it was to say, I felt my face turn warm.

  She laughed, the same unforced laugh I remembered from our conversation at the swimming pool. The sound echoed loudly. “Oh, Querry.” She reached over to squeeze my arm. “I’ll try to make the time go faster.”

  I thought she’d let go of my arm, but instead she used it to pull herself closer. The flashlight between us wobbled. Our hips touched.

  “Do we need this light?” she asked, reaching between her leg and mine.

  “I—” The thought of sitting there with her in the complete dark made my stomach lurch. “Maybe we should leave it on. In case anyone else comes.”

  “No one’s coming,” she said softly. “I’ve got you all to myself.”

  She turned to face me. Her lips parted slightly, but her amazing blue eyes stayed wide open.

  “Let me get this off,” she said, reaching for the flashlight without taking her eyes from mine. Her fingers brushed the cylinder and it clattered to the floor, but instead of picking it up she let her hand drop onto my thigh. The beam shining off the far wall gave me just enough light to see her flushed cheeks and soft eyes.

  “I’ve been waiting for this moment,” she whispered. “Ever since that night at the pool. I think you have too. Haven’t you?”

  Her hand stroked my leg. Her breath quickened.

  “Korah,” I said. “I thought you . . .”

  She put a finger to my lips. “Whatever you thought, it’s over now.”

  “But what about,” I gulped, “what about Wali?”

  “What about him?” she whispered back.

  Her mouth loomed closer. I felt her breath, strangely cold on my cheek. Her eyes didn’t even blink.

  I closed my eyes just as her lips met mine. They moved against me, far drier and rougher than I’d imagined. There was no warmth to her touch. I opened my eyes and found her staring straight back.

  That’s when I realized I really could see through those luminous blue eyes.

  And I realized at the same time there was nothing to see.

  I jerked away as her lips drew back in a snarl that revealed pale, bloodless gums. Her head lunged forward in a convulsive motion, her teeth barely missing my throat. I scrambled away from her, backpedaling on my hands and heels. The bare ground scratched my already scraped skin. She rose to a crouch and launched herself toward me, and her body seemed to thin and lengthen in midair like an elastic band pulled tight.

  She landed and slithered after me on her belly. Her arms and legs coiled against the dirt as if they’d been emptied of bones.

  I heard a booming noise overhead and ran for the steps, but her hand clutched my ankle with an icy strength and pulled me to the ground. The red-handled pocketknife leaped to my fist, blade extended, slashing wildly. I felt contact, saw the ends of two fingers fly, but there was no blood. What remained of her hand gripped my ankle so tightly I felt the fingernails sink into my skin, and though I grappled for the stairs she pulled me down toward her waiting mouth.

  It had opened so wide there was no face left, only teeth like strips of peeling flesh.

  Then I heard another boom, louder than the first, and saw a blurry shape come crashing down the stairs, narrowly missing me and the Skaldi as it landed with a metallic clang on the basement floor.

  I heard a puff of compressed air and another blur flew past me, and the thing that had been Korah fell back, its faceless mouth splitting in an inhuman scream. Sharp nails raked my ankle as it let go. Its arms and legs flailed wildly, its head twisted
nearly backward, but something pinned its writhing body to the ground. Through the dust and frantic motion I couldn’t make out what held it, but when its head turned toward me I could see its eyes again, all trace of blue gone, burning white-hot in its withered face with torment and loathing.

  A hand touched my shoulder. I flinched, looked up into the face of Aleka. A harpoon gun lay across her arm, a flamethrower was strapped to her back. Her fist closed on my shoulder and pulled me painfully to my feet.

  “Go,” she said hoarsely. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears.

  Trembling, I set my foot on the stairs. My knees wobbled but held. I looked back for a second at the creature that lay there, teeth bared in its once beautiful face. Then Aleka’s body blocked my view, and as she advanced on the Skaldi I turned and climbed. At the top of the stairs I heard the roar of the flames behind me, the screams of the thing they consumed. How Aleka could stand it I didn’t want to think. The heat burned through the uniform on my back, the screams seemed to penetrate my skull.

  I stumbled to the front door, which hung from a single hinge. Throwing myself through the open frame, I collapsed onto the ground, and my stomach emptied of what little was in it. But the screams followed me.

  The thing screamed and screamed. The echoes multiplied its scream into a thousand screams.

  For the first time since my accident, I knew those screams were something I’d never be able to forget, no matter how hard I tried.

  11

  Cost

  I stayed on my knees until Aleka exited the building where the Skaldi had burned.

  At first I shrank from the fire in her hands, the singed fabric of her clothes. But she wouldn’t let me stay down. With her help, I struggled to my feet, too shaky and sick with the loss of Korah to care about my soiled shirt front. I felt a trembling in my chest that I knew would turn to tears if I gave in to it.

  “Let’s go find Laman,” she said.

  My reunion with him was brief. We met midway between the bomb shelter and headquarters, along with a few others, including Araz. The flamethrower, still smoking, hung from the driver’s broad back. My dad approached me, looked me up and down, his face haggard in the first feeble light of dawn. His uniform was buttoned to the top just like the night before, his bearing in it as erect and unyielding as it had been then. The Skaldi had convinced me he was the infected one, but now I realized that had been another of its lies. He was battered and bruised, but he was himself. Why I’d doubted him so easily, why he’d made it so easy for me to doubt, were questions I couldn’t answer.

  But we had no time to ask questions, no opportunity for more than a bare acknowledgment that we were both alive. Before he had a chance to say a word, Araz stepped to his side and grabbed his elbow.

  “Game’s up, Laman,” the driver said. Next to him my dad looked like a child, or a very old man. “Come with me.”

  My dad didn’t respond at first. He simply looked at the man who’d been his chauffeur, his brow wrinkling as if he couldn’t imagine what the problem was. Then he nodded once, curtly, and let Araz lead him away. The rest of the camp straggled after them.

  Araz put him in the house that had been his headquarters. He took his gun away and posted Kelmen at the side window, Kin at the front door. He even stripped the cloth curtains away so the guards could keep a better eye on him. He also removed the canvas bedsheet to prevent the prisoner, so he said, from doing anything rash. The one officer who’d survived the night’s attack he sent to guard the weapons. Then Araz went to check on Keely and the rest of the little kids, to survey the damage to camp, to recover the bodies of the dead. To take charge of the colony my dad had once commanded.

  I went with him. He wouldn’t let me near my dad’s cell, anyway.

  As dawn marbled the sky we looked out over the wreckage of our camp. Long black streaks from Araz’s flamethrower scarred the ground, and the tents we’d strung up dangled from their lines, charred and smoldering. In some spots the floors of gutted houses still glowed like hot coals. Many of the fence posts had been knocked down in people’s haste to find or escape the intruder, while other sections had tipped over just enough to present lethal spikes. Wisps of black smoke twined around the building where the creature had met its end. The air hung heavy with the smell of oil and burned things.

  The ditch we’d started the day before had survived, parts of it collapsed from running feet. In the harsh light of dawn, it looked like a mocking smile.

  Six people had died in the attack: Korah, her mother Mika, three officers, and the man with the picture of the light tower, who’d fallen into the crater in his panic to get away. Had the creature gone after human victims immediately, the death toll would almost certainly have been much higher. But for some reason, it had attacked our equipment before seeking out its prey. The tires of the trucks were slashed, their fuel lines bleeding into the dirt. The water drums had been tipped over, spilling their contents into soil eager to lap up any moisture it could find. Shovels had been snapped in two, canteens punctured and torn. The weapons, stored high in the tower room and guarded by a single officer, had been spared, as had the flamethrowers, too risky for the creature to touch. But much of what we relied on to survive had been trampled into the dust. My dad had posted sentries, Petra included, in all the best locations: high in the naked windows of houses, out on the precipice of the hill. But his choices, I realized, were based on past practice. We’d never had to worry about our supplies before, because it was always our bodies we’d had to protect. And so, once the creature managed to slip past the sentries, it found itself free to go on its rampage. Considering how easily it had torn the camp apart, it might have finished us all off if Mika’s scream hadn’t sounded an alarm.

  The scream hadn’t helped her, though. We found her lying among the ruins, her head twisted crazily to the side, her mouth frozen open and her eyes wide and empty. When two workers tried to lift her they found there was no weight to her body at all, and her skin sloughed off like dust in their fingers. They wrapped her in canvas and set her aside.

  In the case of the officers, there wasn’t enough left to wrap. So far as we could reconstruct, the creature had started with them, moving from one to the next and depositing their tattered uniforms in the dust before jumping to Mika. She must have woken as it attacked her, giving her a split-second to scream. That had been enough to wake those lying nearby, whose own screams woke others, and the creature had fled to a new victim before it had time to consume Mika as thoroughly as the officers. It had made the jump to Korah probably for no better reason than that she had come first to her mother’s aid. Unarmed and unprepared, she’d been defenseless against its attack. It had taken her body as it had taken her mother’s, then grabbed the flashlight and set out to hunt for me.

  I wished Korah hadn’t been roused by her mother’s dying scream. I wished she hadn’t been awake when the creature scoured her soul.

  Aside from the man guarding the weapons hoard, the only member of the officer corps to survive was Aleka. She told us she’d been restless and unable to sleep, so she’d been roaming the outskirts of camp when the others met their fate. What she’d been looking for, and whether she’d found it, she wouldn’t say. While Araz shot blindly into the night and everyone else ran away, Aleka returned to the sleeping quarters and found Mika, and when she spotted boot prints leading from the body, she set out in search of whoever had made them. She had no idea, she said, that Korah housed the creature until by pure luck Araz’s flamethrower revealed the two of us heading for the bomb shelter, somewhere the real Korah had far too much training to go. “She knew we never lock ourselves in,” Aleka said, and though she said it without any accusation in her voice, I cringed to think how stupid I’d been. Arriving at the shelter, she’d been lucky once again to find the hinges so old and rusty she was able to force the door with the butt of her harpoon gun, lucky a third time that the creature had to
yed with me before striking. Otherwise, I’d have been its final victim.

  It sickened me when I thought of that, when I remembered the monster’s burned-out eyes and corpse-gray teeth. Twice now, counting the night at the swimming pool, I had been careless, letting my feelings for Korah override the caution my dad had tried to instill in me. My stomach twisted with shame and dread when I imagined what would have happened if Aleka hadn’t been there.

  But I couldn’t feel thankful for the way I’d been saved. The sounds of Korah burning, even if it wasn’t really Korah, haunted me and wouldn’t let go.

  And another thought made me tremble in the pit of my being: How had the creature known so much about us? How had it known the best way to cripple the colony would be to damage our supplies, kill our officers and mechanic? How had it even known who our officers and mechanic were? No one wore a uniform that distinguished them from anyone else, and even if they did, how could Skaldi know about chain of command or rank? Petra’s words resounded in my mind, forcing me to ask: How did the Skaldi know?

  Even more terrifying, how did it know so much about me?

  My attraction to Korah. Our talk at the pool. Even my suspicions about my dad. It had known all those things, had spoken just the right words to get me to go along with it. And it had used its knowledge to hunt specifically for me. I couldn’t believe it had sought me out simply because I was the single person in camp most likely to follow Korah wherever she led. Almost everyone trusted her. Almost anyone would have gone with her to their death.

  It made no sense, but what if the thing the Skaldi knew had to do with me?

  * * *

  We spent the first part of the day restoring what order we could to camp. Supplies the creature had failed to destroy we consolidated in a single corner of the commissary. Supplies it had damaged beyond repair we left lying in the dust. Mika’s body we moved to a secluded spot for later disposal. I felt her remains shifting like sand inside the wrapping and knew we’d never open it again. A brief debate took place about how to recover the body of the man at the bottom of the crater, but in the end we left him where he was. The empty uniforms of the fallen officers we folded and set beside Mika’s shroud. What we would use in place of Korah’s body when it came time for the burials was a mystery.