Survival Colony 9 Page 15

  “Give it back to her,” I yelled at his retreating figure.

  He barely turned. “Or what?”

  “Or you’ll have to deal with me.”

  Smiling, he returned to where I stood. A pistol, Aleka’s silver pistol, hung at his belt.

  “Getting pretty tough now that daddy’s gone, aren’t we?” he said. “Maybe you’d like to go along with him.”

  I tried to stare him down, but he wouldn’t blink. The old woman crouched beside us, mumbling words or nonsense more softly than I could hear. I’m not sure how it would have ended if Aleka hadn’t appeared and taken my arm.

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” she murmured as she pulled me away. “But now is not the time.”

  “Good choice, Aleka,” Yov called after us. “Little boys shouldn’t try to play a man’s game.”

  His mocking laughter surrounded me as I forced myself to focus on arranging my pack.

  They led my dad out of his jail cell after all the preparations were completed, so the whole colony could line up to see him. He blinked in the bright light after most of a day indoors. They’d tied his hands in front of him, and a guide rope circled his waist. Maybe in deference to his bad hip, or maybe out of sheer sloppiness, the man at the other end of the rope, Kin, gave him some slack. Not enough to let him fall behind, much less to formulate a plan of yanking free and running. Araz emerged after him, arms crossed in triumph. The only thing that spared my dad from total humiliation was the fact that they hadn’t tied the rope around his neck. That, and the fact that it was Kin, and not Yov, pulling it.

  He didn’t look humiliated, though. He held his head high and met people’s eyes with an expression so composed they ended up dropping theirs. The worst you could say was that he tripped a little as he tried to keep up with the pace the younger man set.

  Aleka was another story. As soon as she saw what they’d done to him, she charged at Araz, her pale eyes ablaze.

  “This is how you treat the man who led this colony for half a lifetime?” she said venomously. “You’re a child, Araz. You’re not fit to wear the same uniform as him, much less to bind him like a . . .” She paused, trying to remember the right expression. “Dog on a leash.”

  “We’ve been over this,” Araz said in a gratingly patient voice, like he was explaining a complicated procedure to a six-year-old. “The prisoner needs to be restrained for his own safety as well as the colony’s. While the investigation proceeds.”

  “You’re conducting an investigation?” Aleka said.

  Araz nodded.

  “By departing the site of the alleged crime?”

  Another nod and, this time, a smile.

  “And how do you plan to collect your evidence?”

  “The nature of the offense,” Araz said, still smiling, “is such that the evidence travels with the suspect.”

  “Which is another way of saying you have no evidence,” she seethed. “This is shameful. Utterly shameful. If you were half the man you claim to be—”

  “Aleka, let it go,” my dad broke in. His voice sounded as calm as his jailer’s, though cracked from lack of water. I noticed that, as with the day before, his words carried over the compound far more crisply than those of the camp’s new leader. “Much as I appreciate your help—”

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Laman,” she cut him off. She seemed as angry at him as at Araz, or maybe she was just angry, period.

  But now that he’d interrupted, she didn’t seem to remember what she’d been planning to say. “It’s shameful,” she repeated, spitting the words at no one or everyone. Then she stalked off, her face its usual mask, though her eyes could have bored through steel.

  Yov appeared at his boss’s side, grinning a lopsided grin.

  “That is one tough lady,” he drawled. “She send anybody to bed without supper?”

  The usual suspects laughed. I wished Korah could have been there to shut their stupid mouths.

  Kin handed the rope to Wali. He was joined by a second guard, Daren, another teenager who’d known nothing but my dad’s leadership all his life. Both of them seemed only too happy to drag my dad away like the thing Aleka had said, a dog on a leash. They didn’t give the rope any slack.

  Araz shouted orders at the rest of us, his voice thin and husky as it floated over the compound. Yov and Kin roamed through camp double-checking our preparations. I ended up being picked to take care of the little kids. Hand-picked, in fact. By Yov.

  “Querry-Werry can pway wiff da widdle babies,” he gibed.

  I didn’t mind, though. It wasn’t so bad being with them, the only people in camp who knew no more about the past than me. I liked to hear their silly questions, liked trying to answer them, knowing neither the questions nor the answers mattered. How big was the moon? Where did it go during the daytime? When I was with them, not remembering what had happened six months ago didn’t seem that important, and remembering what had happened just yesterday didn’t seem so awful.

  I leaned over them as they wiggled into their oversize packs. I pulled the bags up on their shoulders, tightened or loosened straps, moved an item or two from a smaller kid’s pack to a bigger kid’s. Keely wrapped his warm hand around mine. Araz appeared too preoccupied with his own importance to notice that his son was consorting with the enemy.

  “You ready to go?” I asked.

  He nodded. The pack on his back looked like it should be carrying him.

  “Where’s Korah?” he said.

  * * *

  We marched all day in the path of the sun, but we didn’t get far. We’d always known how important the trucks were, and we’d protected them and their fuel supply like living members of the colony. Even named them, if my dad was telling the truth. Turns out he’d been right to do so. We’d never experienced a march entirely without them, and it was grueling.

  People collapsed or threw up from the heat, and we had to stop to revive them with what little water we had, what little shade we could find, a lone tree or a ripple in the land the sun didn’t quite crest. I tried to keep the little kids preoccupied with stories or language games, but they fussed, threw tantrums I guess is the word for it, flinging themselves on the ground and refusing to budge, flailing at the dust as if they could pound it into submission. Nessa had to come help me pick them up and carry them, and even then, when they’d forced us to do what they were presumably trying to force us to do, they’d gotten so caught up in their grievances they would fight us off. Some would go boneless in their rescuer’s arms. It’s amazing how heavy a little kid can make himself. A couple times Yov came over and threatened them with what he’d do if they didn’t stop whining, which obviously didn’t help. And Araz was no use at all. He kept to the front of the column, his thick red neck visible between his cap and uniform collar, not turning his head once the whole time to keep tabs on the people he professed to lead.

  My dad stayed at the rear of the column under Wali’s watchful eye. They’d wanted to put him at the head where all could see, but his hip hadn’t allowed it. How he was doing under the forced march I couldn’t tell.

  By the time night fell we’d traveled maybe ten miles northwest of the compound. We looked back in the dwindling light, but the hill where the gated community perched had fallen below our line of vision. Some people had looked back earlier, in fact they hadn’t stopped looking back the whole day, stumbling and falling out of line. What they’d seen, if they’d seen anything, they didn’t say. I’d stolen a quick glance when we’d covered about a half-mile, and I’d seen a place that appeared as if we’d never been there: skeleton buildings standing squat against a dirt-brown sky, everything that used to be ours, trucks and tents and useless fence posts, hidden from view by the walls and the hill and the distance. Yov, seeing me look back, jerked his head and spat in the dust behind us.

  “Good riddance,” he said to the spoil
ed sanctuary he himself had led us to. His voice bore so much spite you’d have thought the buildings would topple at the mere sound.

  Our new leaders’ plan, at least as much of it as they would let the rest of us in on, was to follow the path of the river, which curved gradually northwest a dozen miles past the compound. Rumor had it that mountains rose beyond our sight in that direction, with caves and precipices to conceal us from our pursuers, cooler water and air to shield us from the butchery of the sun. No one in camp had seen this haven, not even the old woman, and the question of whether to prepare ourselves for a fifty-mile hike or five-hundred was totally up in the air. We’d always carried around a couple maps from the old time, maps so torn and patched and faded you could barely make them out, but whether they corresponded to the actual landscape no one could say. For all we knew, the mountains might not be there at all, or they might be so far from the track of the river we’d die of thirst before we reached them. Or—Petra’s warning sounded in my mind—they might be the exact place the Skaldi wanted us to reach. I didn’t know whether Araz had consulted with her, and I doubted he’d take her advice in any event.

  But compared to the alternatives, I guess the new plan wasn’t all bad. At worst, it kept us moving. And maybe that was better than standing still.

  It was certainly better than looking back.

  As darkness gripped the land, we shed our packs and sprawled on a patch of dead ground near enough to the river to reach it in a couple hours’ hike, but not so near we’d be sitting ducks for the Skaldi. The creatures didn’t seem to need water themselves. Whatever kept the bodies they stole going wasn’t fluid. But in the early days of the survival colonies, my dad had told me, they’d wiped out whole units that had been desperate enough or unwary enough to camp on the riverbanks. People who’d forgotten the world had changed. Or who had just liked the sound of the water at night, a flow and gurgle that seemed to wash everything away.

  Petra volunteered to scout out the land between our camp and the river, and our new leader gave her the go-ahead. Not that he had much choice. Everyone else was exhausted from the day’s hike, himself included. Araz had been driving a truck for the past five years, and though no better fed than the rest of us, he’d gotten pretty soft around the middle. He didn’t even bother giving orders before he staggered off to the spot he’d chosen as his command post, a bare crest overlooking the encampment’s western periphery.

  Once we’d set up what was left of camp and I’d made sure the little kids were tucked in for the night—lacking only their one storybook and the girl who used to read it to them—I followed Araz to the command post. I found him standing with Yov at his side, the two of them poring over one of our maps. It was almost comical to see them squinting and pointing at it like it held the answers to all our questions. But I swallowed the words that came to mind and approached them with what I hoped was a neutral, even a friendly expression on my face.

  “I’d like to see my dad,” I said before either of them had a chance to stop me.

  Araz lowered the map and frowned. “He’s not in a spa, you know. Or a retirement village. You do get that, don’t you?”

  I had no idea what either of those things was, and I doubted he knew any better than I did.

  “Space Boy only understands what he wants to,” Yov said. “Nothing penetrates that thick skull of his except his daddy’s sermons.”

  “I want to see my dad,” I repeated. I tried to keep my voice calm, but it wasn’t easy. Yov’s taunting words made me feel as if a hot bubble was trying to burst through my chest.

  Araz glared at me in the descending darkness. I noticed how close-set his eyes were, how square his head and jowls. His thick neck resembled the cactuses we sometimes found, his head the lumpy knob growing out of the base. We left those alone. They weren’t edible.

  “I’ll give you five minutes,” he said. “And don’t get any ideas. Kin and Wali will be there.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to add “sir,” but he didn’t seem to expect it. As I left, I saw him take out his walkie-talkie. Yov had already turned his back to me and was fingering the remains of the map like a talisman.

  I walked down the hill to the area where my dad sat. Without buildings or tents, they couldn’t put him in solitary confinement, but they’d moved him as far away from the others as they could. A dead tree, its bare branches densely tangled, stood on the eastern outskirts of camp, and Araz had set up the prison there. In the couple minutes it took me to walk to the site, I rehearsed what I might say to him. But I gave up as soon as I saw the guards clustered around him, weapons drawn. It turned out Araz hadn’t trusted Kin and Wali to guard one restrained, famished, exhausted prisoner, because Kelmen and Daren had joined the party, too.

  My dad did seem happy to see me, though. His eyes didn’t exactly light up and his face spared me the ghastly smile, but he sat straighter against the tree trunk when he saw me coming. He lifted his hands in greeting, the rope still binding his wrists.

  “Querry,” he said. “It’s good of you to come. Aleka was just by. They wouldn’t let me visit with her, though.”

  My eyes flickered over the circle of guards who ringed the tree. All looked smugly satisfied. Kin smiled an ugly, nearly toothless grin. I saw that, not satisfied with binding the prisoner’s hands, they’d tied his torso to the trunk as well.

  “How are you doing, Dad?”

  “Oh, not bad,” he said in an unconvincingly jovial voice. “A bit stiff. But they’re keeping me comfortable.”

  I stared at his bound hands and body, his ragged uniform, his right leg held ramrod straight. The lines of his face could have been carved with a knife. Wali hovered over him, gripping the butt of his rifle, and I could tell he was just waiting for the order to use it. But my dad met my eyes with a calm and even contented look, and I tried to compose my face to match the man I saw before me.

  I thought of all the things I wanted to ask him, all the things I no longer could. Why he’d made the choices he’d made, whether he regretted them now. How he thought this would all turn out, with him alive and back on top or with him gone and the rest of us no better off than before. Whether he blamed himself for what had happened. Whether he blamed me.

  If so, whether he’d ever be able to forgive me.

  “Dad . . .”

  He held up his bound hands, the right palm facing me in the familiar signal. “Focus,” he said. “Stay alert. You’re going to need that.” He forked his fingers and pointed them straight at me.

  Then he did something I’d never seen. With his fingers still forked, he raised them perpendicular to the ground, so they formed a V. He looked meaningfully at me for a moment, his dark eyes piercing the shadows that veiled his face. Then he dropped his hands and settled back against the tree.

  “It was good to see you, son,” he said. I watched his eyelids close before Kin interposed his body between us.

  “Time to go,” the scout said.

  I wandered back to my spot in camp, feeling flushed and dazed. He’d clearly been trying to give me a signal, something he couldn’t say in front of the guards. The “focus” gesture was a brilliant way to do it: familiar to everyone, but not so familiar they would notice the slight variation. My dad might be beaten down and worn out, but he’d still found a way to send me a message.

  The only problem was, I couldn’t make out what it meant.

  Victory? Vigilance? I racked my brain for V words, but none seemed to have anything to do with the two of us, the situation we were in, the survival of the colony. Maybe, I thought, it hadn’t been a V after all, but a way of pointing out something I should have seen, something in his captors’ hands or in the branches of the tree, something I had now missed my chance to see. Maybe it hadn’t been a V but a two. Or maybe it had been half a W, a sign for Wali.

  Not wanting to attract attention, I collapsed onto the
ground and turned on my side. Mechanically, I rubbed the spot in my jacket where the knife rested. Then, making sure no one was looking, I took it out, unfolding two blades to form a V. I stared at it for a long time before snapping it shut and returning it to its hiding place.

  Leave it to my dad, I thought as I prepared for another sleepless night, to make my life more complicated even after he’d been stripped of his power to command. Leave it to him to make even his best and most urgent attempt to communicate with me impossible to read.

  13

  Burst

  Aleka stooped by my side.

  Her eyes shone like silver moons in her pale face. I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, but she silenced me with a finger to her lips.

  “It’s time,” she whispered.

  “Time for what?” Darkness still draped the land, but it had the grainy quality of approaching dawn.

  “You remember your promise,” she said. “Now it’s time.”

  “To do what?”

  She probed my eyes. “To do what needs to be done.” She stood and held out a hand. “Are you with us?”

  It was then I saw the others standing in the splotchy darkness behind her. Petra. Soon. Nekane, a young woman with long, prematurely gray hair. The two teens who hadn’t joined Araz’s goon squad, Nessa and the big quiet guy named Adem. All of them eyeing me expectantly, as if they couldn’t do whatever they intended to do without me. Or at least, without knowing whether I would stand with them or stand in their way.

  “It’s my dad,” I said.

  Aleka nodded. “We have reason to believe Araz and Yov intend to carry out the execution first thing in the morning. Apparently, they’re concerned about information he may be spreading.”

  I thought about my dad’s sign to me last evening, a sign I’d been struggling to understand when I’d fallen into a restless sleep. Could it be that the camp’s new leaders knew more about it than I did? Or was it that they didn’t know, and that was what they were afraid of?