Survival Colony 9

by Joshua David Bellin

  His ghostly face recoiled. “I was trying to . . .”

  “To protect me,” I said. “I know. I just wish you’d told me the truth. I could have handled it. I could have helped.”

  I looked at his stricken face, regretted what I’d said, but knew I’d had to say it.

  “The truth,” he said. “You want to know the truth.”

  I nodded, though the way he said it I was no longer sure.

  “The truth,” he said again. His eyes were on my face, but they were no longer on me. “I’ll tell you the truth.”

  I waited.

  “The truth is . . .” He drew a deep breath, and his eyes locked on mine. “I was a father. Once. I had a son. Just before you arrived in camp.”

  Now it was my turn to be shocked. “What happened to him?”

  His eyes rolled away. I saw the tears sparkling in their corners.

  “He gave up,” he said. “And then he died. He was about your age. A couple of years older.”

  “He killed himself?”

  “He gave himself to the Skaldi. I couldn’t stop him.”

  I stared at him, speechless. “How?” was all I could say.

  “It was how we found you,” he said. “You and Aleka and Yov. He had—wandered off. Disappeared. We had fought. I didn’t realize the depths of his despair.”

  Tears flowed freely down his wasted cheeks.

  “We went to find him,” he said. “And found only this.”

  His bony fingers unclenched, and I saw the red-handled pocketknife resting in his palm. Its letters had been wiped clean of last night’s filth, but I knew this was the blade I’d used against the Skaldi.

  “His knife was in your hand when you came to us,” Laman Genn spoke through his tears. “The Skaldi that destroyed your colony must have used his body to travel to you. It was the same creature that attacked you and Yov. The same creature that stole your memory.”

  My mind moved at lightning speed again. I remembered what Aleka had told me: Laman had injured his hip trying to save a child. But he had failed. What she hadn’t told me, what she possibly hadn’t known, was that the child he’d failed to save was his own.

  “So what was I?” I said. I tried to keep my voice soft, but I knew my words might wound. “Another experiment? Or a replacement?”

  “No,” he said vehemently. “A second chance. A chance to—save you. To teach you. All the things I couldn’t teach him.” His eyes pleaded with me, or with someone else, for understanding. “You were a blessing to me, Querry. A chance to atone for the sins of the past. You were so much like him. It was a foolish hope, but I felt the creature had left a part of him in you. A part I could still reach. One so seldom gets a second chance. And when one does . . .”

  It usually goes the same way as the first, I thought, but didn’t say.

  “I hope you can forgive me,” he said. “I know I was never a true father to you. But my wound was so raw when you came to us. If it was true you carried a trace of my son, it was also possible you shared in his despair. That you might give up as he had. You were too important to the colony to let that happen. I needed to protect you, to—heal you. To keep you alive, to keep him alive. Even if that was only a memory.”

  The hand that held the knife groped in the dust for mine. I took it, felt through my bandages the ice his skin had become. I squeezed gingerly, hoping he could still feel my touch.

  “His name,” I said. “Was it Matay?”

  He nodded. “In one of the old languages it means ‘gift from God.’”

  A spasm stiffened his body. I rose to one knee to find Tyris.

  “Don’t,” he whispered.

  I sat again and gripped his hand. The knife’s plastic handle felt as cold as the flesh that held it.

  We stayed like that for a long time, while the sun marched across the sky, and his breath became a rumor and his face turned to chalk. I didn’t know if he realized whose hand he was holding, or if he cared. He was silent for so long I had decided he would speak no more when I saw his lips move and heard his voice emerge in an almost noiseless mutter.

  I leaned close to hear.

  “. . . never left you,” he said. “Petra followed you all the way. We stayed close, and she called us when the time came.”

  “She was willing to die for me,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And Korah.”

  “We all were.”

  “Even you.”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  His eyes found my face. Whether he could see me anymore I couldn’t tell.

  “We waited,” he said. “At the nest. Watched. I wanted them all to see. Aleka too. To see and believe.”

  My eyes opened in wonder at his final stratagem. “You let me leave camp.”

  He nodded again.

  “You let the Skaldi attack me.”

  He had no strength left to nod, but his lips parted in a gentle smile.

  “What if I’d failed?”

  His dying eyes showed no doubt. “I knew what we would see. And I knew, once they’d seen, they would follow you. No matter what happened to me.”

  I was staggered, but not by the risk he’d taken with my life. By his faith.

  “It was luck, Laman,” I said. “Just luck.”

  “There is no luck left in this world,” he whispered. “There’s only power, though we may not understand its source.” With his free hand he reached up to touch my cheek. “You can’t choose the life you’re given, Querry. But you can choose the kind of man you want to be.”

  I nodded fiercely, my tears falling on his face. They blurred my vision, erased the whole world. I could no longer see the man whose hand I held. All I could see were the sons who had come before, the three sons of Laman Genn. His own son, seeking forgetfulness in the Skaldi’s pitiless embrace. My brother, taken by the monster that had tried to destroy us all. And me, the one son who had lived. The one who’d been given a future, even though I’d forgotten my past.

  I closed my hands over Laman Genn’s, brought them to his heart. I felt his restless spirit stir.

  “Dad,” I said without thinking. “Tell me . . .”

  But his eyes had closed forever.

  20

  Last

  We laid Laman Genn to rest on a day like any other.

  His grave faced the river, close enough to hear its trickle as we stood by the gravesite, far enough to keep it from washing away on one of those rare days when storms caused the water to overflow the banks. I had suggested the spot. I’m not sure why. We’d situated the other graves on higher ground, but something about the river appealed to me. I thought it was a more peaceful place, I guess.

  We’d worked all night to bury the others. The row of graves seemed endless, but little rested inside: the bodies we’d brought back from the nest, the occasional intact uniform top of Araz’s followers. Wali removed a twisted nugget of gold from his pack, the remains of a ring he’d given Korah, and buried it in memory of her. Aleka had found it in the bomb shelter the night after Korah died. In place of Petra’s body we planted a stick bearing a patch of uniform. The way it flickered in the wind reminded us of her blinking. That made us smile.

  Yov’s grave was as empty as the rest. Aleka stayed by it a long time. I put a hand on her shoulder, felt the silent grief wracking her body. Then I left her and went to help the others prepare for the burial of the man who’d led us for so many years.

  We worked methodically but quickly. With the nest gone, we stayed by the riverbank all night and morning, digging with cups and shovels until dark, resuming our work as soon as the sun cleared the horizon. When our skin began to blister we wrapped his body in canvas and laid it in the shade, but we knew we had to get it in the ground before long. We also decided to erect a headstone, something the old woman who
’d survived it all said they’d done in days long past. While the colony’s remaining adults pried a slab from the riverbed and used a hammer and stake to chip it into a roughly rectangular form, while the little kids played in peace by the waterside, it fell to me to come up with something we could carve into the grave marker.

  Aleka had suggested me as the writer. A few words to honor him, she’d said. To remember him. A line or two for anyone who might happen upon the grave, from our colony or another, to read if they could and reflect on the life he’d lived and lost. At first I objected, telling her it seemed wrong for me to do it, the one who’d known him a shorter time than anyone in camp. But the others insisted, and I couldn’t tell them no.

  So I spent the morning hours by the riverbank, at the spot where he’d breathed his last. Not that I expected to find any inspiration there. The mark of his body on the ground, the semicircles of my heels, were all that remained of our final interview. Wind and water would remove those signs too in no time. And we’d move on as well, in search of something none of us could name. If ever we returned to lay dried weeds on his grave or to check how the inscription had weathered, we’d find the place exactly as it was now, unchanged except for the disappearance of the little things, the marks and scratches that commemorated our passage across the land.

  Now that the secret had leaked and the man who’d kept it from me was gone, I’d asked the members of his camp about his son. From Soon and Tyris and Nekane, I heard stories of a Laman far different from the man I’d known. They described this younger Laman as tough but compassionate: a commander who used to laugh, to tease the little kids, to forgive people’s faults and run his colony more like a family than a boot camp. Next they told me about Laman’s wife, a woman they called Asheh, who had died giving birth to Matay. After her death, they said, Laman Genn had changed. They told me how from the time Matay could walk, Laman had drilled his son morning and night, kept him from joining the other kids in play. Kept him from everyone, really. They spoke of midnight battles in Matay’s tent, two shadows confronting each other across the canvas screen, overheard reprimands and accusations. Nessa described Matay to me: aloof, alone. A boy in a man’s uniform, the perfect soldier. Forced to relive a past he’d never known. And when he couldn’t take it anymore and sought oblivion with the Skaldi, it was as if Laman Genn’s last dream had died with him.

  But I knew, in a way the others could understand but never truly feel, that a part of Matay had survived. I knew what it felt like to be the man’s son, even if he wasn’t really my father. I knew the dream he’d died to preserve.

  I knew because the dream was me.

  So I wrote what seemed to me needed to be written. I hadn’t written a word in all the time I could remember, and the letters came slowly, but they came. I wrote them in the dust with Matay’s pocketknife, then erased them and wrote them in my thoughts. I told them to Nekane, one of the few left in camp who could read and write, and she nodded in approval. I kept them in my mind for the time to come.

  Which led to me standing by his grave in the late afternoon sun, watching as his shrouded form descended into the hole we’d dug. What was left of our colony watched with me, sixteen out of the fifty-one I’d woken to six months ago. The headstone stood in place, a chipped and angular piece of rock sticking from the ground like the foundation of a wall waiting to be built. I’d draped a piece of cloth across the inscription, so only Nekane and I knew what she’d carved there. Aside from that, we performed no ceremony, no dressing this burial up to look different from any of the other funerals we’d held the day before. We didn’t have the means, and besides, I didn’t think he’d want it to be that way.

  When the ropes that had borne his body during its final descent were pulled back up and coiled on the ground, Aleka took her place beside the headstone and spoke a few words.

  “Laman wouldn’t have wanted us to give up,” she said. “He would have wanted us to go on without him. His only wish all these years was for his people to survive, to triumph. He knew there would be sorrows, losses we’d have to endure, sacrifices we’d have to make. He denied himself so much for the future of this colony. That we’re standing here today is proof he succeeded.”

  I smiled a little to myself when I heard that. Not because it was untrue. But because it was unfinished.

  “Querry?” she said, and stepped away from the stone.

  I took her place and felt everyone’s eyes on me. I wondered if this was how Laman had felt the many years he’d been the center of attention, the focus of his colony’s hopes and dreams. Maybe Matay had felt this way too. Exposed. Unsure. With nothing to say, and so much that needed to be said.

  So I tried to keep my words to a minimum.

  “Um,” I started. That was one word I could have done without. “The thing about Laman was . . .” I swallowed. “He loved us. That’s all. I don’t think I realized that until he was gone. I hope he knows I realize it now.”

  My wrapped hands shook as I reached for the strip of cloth that masked the headstone. I fumbled with the knot I’d tied, took what seemed minutes before I got it undone. It fluttered into the hole where his body lay.

  Nekane had carved his name in bold, uneven letters: LAMAN GENN. Beneath that she’d cut the words: AGED 52 YEARS. BELOVED LEADER OF Survival Colony 9. And then a single word, the only word I’d written: FATHER.

  It’s enough, I thought.

  The smiles and nods of the people around me told me they agreed.

  One by one, the survivors stepped forward to say their good-byes. Wali placed his mess tin in the grave, the one Laman had chewed him out for burning. Aleka saluted, her eyes fixed on the late-day sparkle of the river. Nekane lowered the crutch she’d carved for him in his final days. Those who had no gift to give scooped a fistful of dirt from the pile beside the grave, sprinkled or tossed it onto his body. Keely knelt and used both hands to gather his offering. The old woman chattered away about what a shame it was that Laman hadn’t kept a collection jar. That, she said, would have been the best way to commemorate his life. She still fondled her husband’s, the one she’d saved all this time. Neither Laman’s commands nor Araz’s threats had been enough to pry it from her.

  I was last to approach the grave. I knelt beside it and bowed my head. In my mind I saw all the people who were gone. Laman, Petra, Mika, Danis. Korah. Araz and Kelmen and Kin. Asheh. Matay. People I hadn’t known. The older brother I would never know. All of them, like the world before us, a world we’d lost before we had it, had lapsed into memory. When the old woman died, her world would be utterly lost too. And if none of us made it, then all memory would come to an end.

  A sob shook my chest as the grief of all the things we’d left behind swept over me. I covered my face with my hands, squeezed my eyes shut, but the tears wouldn’t stop. I sensed the others standing silently around me, witnesses to my sorrow. Then I felt hands on my shoulders and saw that Aleka had knelt beside me. In moments the others joined us, forming a circle of linked arms and bowed heads around the grave. The tears none of us had had time to shed flowed freely now, and I felt as if my tears had joined a river of tears. As if I was truly a part of Survival Colony 9 at last, and I was crying with it for all its lost children.

  We stayed like that a long time, while the sun wheeled overhead. Gradually our tears dwindled into the sound of the murmuring river, the sighing wind. Deep down I felt the hole within me, the part I’d never get back. I knew none of them could fill that hole. Not Laman, or Aleka, or Korah, or Keely, or any of the others. The only thing they could do was exactly what they’d done: be there. Live with me, live for me. Fight for me. Even die for me. If that wasn’t enough, then I had a much bigger problem than not knowing who I was. If that wasn’t enough, then whoever I was wasn’t a person I wanted to be.

  We said a final prayer for our family, then left the grave.

  * * *

  We stayed by the river
for three days. No sign of Skaldi disturbed us, no threat of rupture arose within our ranks. We rested by the river to restore our souls, to let the memories soften a little under the quiet lapping of the water and the twinkles of sunlight on its surface. Some found solace sitting by Laman’s grave, others found it playing with the little kids, who now nearly outnumbered the rest of us. At night we lit campfires and spent the time sitting together, sometimes talking, mostly gazing around the circle in silent thanks for those who remained.

  I spent a lot of those three days by the river at the spot where he’d died. Skipping stones, watching their trails punctuate the water like an arc of stars. I remembered playing that game, connect-the-dots, with the little kids when Laman first assigned me to watch them. It was a way to keep them busy, a way to keep them from worrying about what was going on. I’d scratch holes in the dust, then they’d use their fingers or a stick to draw lines from hole to hole. I was no artist, and the drawings that emerged didn’t look like much of anything: a lopsided tent, a crook-eared bunny, a person with stick-figure arms and gargantuan head. Half the time the kids would connect the dots in the wrong order and it wouldn’t look like anything at all. Or they’d trample the drawing in their eagerness to finish it and end up with something that was part drawing, part footprint, part smudge. They didn’t seem to care, though. Kids that age, they’re not looking for answers. They don’t even know which questions to ask. They’re just drawing lines in the dirt, making it up as they go along.

  I wished I could be like that. I wished I didn’t know how much I didn’t know.

  But I did know I’d come too far to go back.

  And because I knew that, I also knew this hiatus couldn’t last. I knew, if not today then tomorrow, if not tomorrow then the next day, we would have to leave this place behind. The canned goods wouldn’t last forever, and there was hunger to think of, the hunt to feed our bellies. More than that, there was the hunger that came from years of running, the fear of staying put, the hope of finding something better over the next rise. Years of running hadn’t fulfilled our need, but that hadn’t stopped us from searching. Deep down, in our blood, in our history, we were an unsettled people, always on the move, always on the lookout for more. Our restlessness had doomed us in the past, but it was all we knew that might save us in the future.