Survival Colony 9 Read online

  Aleka stepped in front of her before she reached my dad. Two of the officers flanked her. One held a flamethrower at the ready. Petra glared at him, blinking furiously. Her round face was plastered with dust, another of her camouflage techniques. She said it kept her scent down.

  “This is as far as you go, Petra,” Aleka said.

  Petra’s bloodshot eyes shone through her dusty mask. “Do you think I’d just stroll into camp,” she said, “if I was one of them?”

  “I’m taking no chances,” my dad said. “Hold her.”

  The officer with the flamethrower kept it trained on her, while the other stepped behind her and locked her arms. Her muscles tightened, and I sensed the people around her bracing for a fight. Without thinking, my hand went to the knife in my pocket, feeling its solid shape through the cloth.

  But then, to my surprise, Petra relaxed and let the officers lead her away. As they walked her off, my dad turned and said to Araz, “Get them back to work.” His gaze shifted to me for a second. Then he and Aleka followed the officers and their captive.

  I started across camp with the work group, keeping an eye on Araz. The big man was dizzy with the heat, his steps slow and sloppy, and I knew there was no way he was paying attention to his crew. When we passed by a truck-size chunk of wall that had somehow withstood the collapse of the house it had once belonged to, I ducked out of sight, peering around the edge to see if I’d been missed. But our new supervisor’s head drooped nearly to his chest while he walked, and everyone else trailed mechanically after him. I glanced over my shoulder one last time as I angled toward headquarters, but even Yov seemed too focused on putting one foot in front of the other to notice I was gone.

  Picking my way around the debris of broken buildings, I sidled up to the shell my dad had chosen as headquarters. It stood back from the crest of the hill, surrounded by other buildings, which I guess made it more secure than most. But it was a wreck like the rest. Its top story had been sliced in half, leaving jagged shards of brick and wood in a diagonal like a crooked smile. The front door frame stood empty, and canvas draperies hung over the three side windows to shield the interior from sun and wind. My heart hammered in my throat, but it was easy enough to hook a finger under the canvas that covered the middle window and lift it just enough to peek inside.

  The room lay in shadow. It took my eyes a second to adjust, and while they did, swirls and motes of dust danced in front of me.

  Then I saw my dad and Aleka standing before Petra. She rested on a slab that might have been a table once, except its legs were missing. The officers crouched at her sides, holding her wrists. The flamethrower leaned against the far wall. The rest of the room was empty of furniture or supplies, but the ground next to the tabletop held a collection of metal objects I couldn’t remember ever having seen. Petra breathed steadily through her nose and stared straight at my dad, her dark eyes like bloodstains in her dust-caked face.

  “Next,” he said.

  At his command, one of the officers held onto both of Petra’s wrists while the other took one of the metal implements from the floor. He clamped it onto the tip of her right index finger and tugged. Hard, hard enough to make her grit her teeth. He did the same to all the fingers on both hands, then nodded at my dad. When I looked closely at Petra’s hands, I saw the blood that had leaked from her torn fingertips.

  “Now the teeth,” my dad said.

  Petra shut her mouth in a firm line.

  Aleka said, “Petra.” My dad gave her a sharp look.

  “I swear I’ll bite them off,” Petra growled through closed lips.

  “Which will only prove you’re one of them,” my dad said. “So be my guest.”

  “Petra . . .” Aleka repeated. Her face showed nothing, but her voice sounded uncharacteristically soft, even pleading.

  Petra let out a breath. She looked at my dad with a hard expression, whether of disgust or respect I couldn’t tell.

  “Seems you won’t be satisfied till you’ve taken your share of blood, Laman.” Then she tilted her head back. “Just the teeth,” she said. “And be careful.” She opened her mouth wide.

  The officer holding her arms leaned his full weight on her. The other squatted by her head, picked up another of the metal instruments, and reached into her mouth. I couldn’t see well with all the bodies in the way, but it seemed he was wiggling and pulling her teeth. Once or twice Petra’s eyes tightened with pain, but she kept her mouth open, breathing sharply through her nose. The officer did the top row, then the bottom, then stood and nodded at my dad.

  “She’s clean,” he said.

  The other officer let go of Petra. She sat, rubbing her wrists where she’d been held. Blood coated her teeth and lips. “As if this proves anything,” she said.

  “There are other tests,” my dad said softly.

  “So I’m supposed to be grateful?” She held her fingers in her mouth, sucked hard until the blood stopped welling. Aleka held a hand out to her, but Petra shrugged it away, threw her legs over the side of the tabletop, and stood on her own.

  “You can poke and pry into my flesh all you want, Laman,” she said. “But that won’t stop them from coming.”

  “I’ll do what’s necessary to keep my camp safe,” he said.

  Petra snorted. “You have no idea. Living large up here in Hilltop Manor, spying on us mere mortals from the clouds. You think they’re playing by our rules? They don’t play by any rules but their own.”

  “Let me get you some water, Petra,” Aleka said.

  Petra ignored her. “We were jumped,” she said to my dad. “Danis and me. It came out of nowhere. By the time I knew what was happening it had already taken him.”

  “Even superwomen sleep.”

  Petra’s eyes smoldered. “I don’t sleep,” she said acidly. “But you keep believing that if it makes you feel like the big man. If it makes you feel like you’re in control.”

  “I’ve already gotten an earful of that from Aleka,” my dad said. “So why don’t you spare me the analysis.”

  “Fine,” Petra said. “I’ll make it real simple for you.” She took a step toward my dad, and I saw the officers tense. But she didn’t threaten him, kept her hands at her sides. Her bloody teeth flashed, her anger seeming to have changed into something else, something harsh and cold as a blade.

  “It’s no accident we’re here,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “The one you ran from was a messenger. A scout. I searched as far west as I could go, and they’ve left us only one way to run. They’re herding us, Laman. Putting us exactly where they want us, so they can recover what they lost.”

  “Ridiculous,” he said. But she didn’t stop.

  “I’ve been in the field all my life, and this is the first time I’ve seen them moving like this. Focused, targeted. Not like they’re just taking anyone they can. More like they’re on a mission.” Her eyes held his without blinking. “They’re closing in on us, Laman. They know.”

  Something about the way she said know made my blood run cold.

  “You have no proof of that,” my dad said. But for the first time ever, I thought I heard a note of doubt in his voice.

  “I have all the proof I need,” Petra said. “I have eyes. I had a partner.”

  “We’ve got a few tricks of our own,” he said, still in that falsely confident voice.

  “Those won’t help you,” Petra said. “They won’t help any of us. Danis was lucky. He went quick.”

  She reached for something at her belt, a small bag or purse I hadn’t noticed before. She untied it, dropped it at my dad’s feet.

  “I found this,” she said. “Better start planning the burial.”

  “Dear God,” Aleka breathed.

  “That won’t help you either,” Petra said, her voice breaking. She blinked, licked blood from her dry, peeling lips. “There’s not mu
ch left,” she said. “Like I told you, he went quick.”

  All of them stared at the bag on the floor. No one moved to pick it up.

  “You all enjoy your party,” Petra said. “Now where’s the mess in this hellhole? I’m getting something to eat.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she stamped toward the vacant doorway and left.

  I flattened myself against the wall as she stormed out, her head lowered and her lips moving without a word I could hear. Once she got clear of the house her posture broke down, her shoulders slumping once again and her steps dragging. I waited until she wandered out of sight, then lifted the canvas to peer inside.

  No one had budged. It seemed no one had spoken. Aleka and the two officers stood facing my dad, the bag that contained all that was left of the lost scout lying untouched at his feet. He wasn’t looking at it, though. Or at them. His head was turned to the side, his eyes veiled.

  “What if it’s true?” Aleka broke the silence. “What if the one that attacked our camp was—a decoy? A scout? What if they’re looking for . . . ?”

  My dad said nothing.

  “Laman?”

  Slowly, like someone waking from sleep, he raised his eyes to hers. “The one that attacked our camp did nothing we haven’t seen before. If Petra’s report was true, we would have observed a difference in its behavior. The Skaldi don’t scout, Aleka.”

  “The evidence is beginning to suggest they do.”

  “The evidence,” he said, “suggests that what happened to Danis was either a fluke or a mistake on his part. Or on Petra’s.”

  “Petra’s a good soldier.”

  “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “Except you?”

  “Don’t start, Aleka,” he warned.

  “We should have been under quarantine from the day we arrived,” she said. “And I don’t see how we have any option but to do so now. If there’s one of them among us—”

  “I’d know it.”

  “I don’t understand, Laman,” she said, and again the pleading note troubled her voice. “What is it about this place that makes you go against everything you know, every instinct you’ve ever had? What more evidence will it take for you to do something?”

  Her hands had formed into fists as she spoke. Now her eyes strayed to the flamethrower against the wall. His eyes followed. When they met again, I knew what both of them were thinking.

  “I could have you locked up for insubordination,” he said quietly.

  “If you’ll submit to the trials,” she said, “you’ll hear no more from me.”

  “I’m the one who orders the trials,” he said. “On any member of my camp I choose.”

  She faced him squarely, her expression showing neither apology nor fear.

  “I know what I am,” he said. “And I know what it takes to win this war. If we start turning on each other at every whisper and rumor, we’ll never make it. We fight the only way we know how. We fight with our courage, our will, our faith in the colony and each other. We fight until we find—” He stopped abruptly and pivoted to the window.

  I ducked out of sight, but not before his fierce eyes locked on mine.

  I flung myself against the wall, heart pounding so hard I thought it would explode from my chest. I had no idea what I’d done to give myself away, unless Aleka’s suggestion that my dad was the thing we were fleeing from had forced a gasp from my lips. My first impulse was to run, but then I thought, what was the point? Where would I go? I had put myself here. Maybe, without knowing it, I had wanted this all along.

  I pushed myself from the building and turned to face him.

  My dad rounded the corner, Aleka right at his back. His eyes blazed, and he swung his bad hip so violently it looked like it was about to tear off. Aleka’s face was composed, but not compassionate. If he was a meteor, she was a stone.

  If either of them was Skaldi, they were playing their parts to perfection.

  They stopped right in front of me. I opened my mouth to get the first word in, but his voice trampled mine into the dust.

  “You see enough?” he said furiously. “Feel like you’re up on the latest news?”

  “Hold on,” I began, but he kept right on going.

  “I told you to stay out of this,” he fumed. “But you never listen. You never learn.”

  “Dad—”

  “You want to be a man, Querry?” he said. “Want to make the big decisions around here? Want to tell me what to do when my scouts get waylaid and my officers lose their nerve?”

  I shook my head, not answering him, not knowing where to begin.

  “You want to prove yourself, you start by following my orders,” he said. “Otherwise, we’re all going to end up like this.”

  He whipped Petra’s bag at my feet. It landed with a smack that made me sick to my stomach. I looked over his shoulder at Aleka, but her face remained impassive.

  “I just wanted to know,” I said.

  “To know what?”

  “To know,” I repeated, hearing the echo of Petra’s voice in my own. “To not be so—in the dark. You say you want me to remember, but you only want me to remember what you say.”

  If I thought that would impress him, I was wrong. “There are some things you’re better off not knowing,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. To make the decisions you’re not ready to make.”

  He’d said the same thing about people’s belongings, and I was tired of hearing it.

  “I’m not a child,” I said. “I don’t need you to make decisions for me.”

  “No,” he said. “I can see what excellent decisions you make all on your own.”

  His breathing came out in ragged bursts, his face was flushed with red spots. He looked at me like he wished I’d never been born. Or at least, never been born to him.

  And in that instant I knew how he felt, because I felt pretty much the same way.

  “I’m through,” I said. “I tried to warn you last night, but you wouldn’t listen. Aleka’s right. You might not be one of them, but you’re sure as hell helping them get whatever it is they want.”

  His hand lashed out at me so fast I had no chance to stop it. It caught me across the jaw, an open-handed blow that made my teeth ring. Before he could repeat it Aleka grabbed his arm and pulled him away from me. He didn’t struggle, just stood there panting, his body wreathed in the dust he’d kicked up.

  “You’ve chosen your side,” he breathed. “Now get out of my sight.”

  I turned and left, ending the conversation, ending more than that. My face burned, my eyes stung. I didn’t look back.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the day dodging him and everyone else in camp. Word must have leaked that I’d spied on the interrogation, because Yov made a few cracks about me getting in hot water with daddy. His friends, Wali in particular, fell into their usual hysterics, but I tuned them out. Korah was still nowhere to be seen. Yov said nothing about my dad hitting me, so that part of the story must not have reached his ears.

  Night found us with a flimsy screen of tents edging the central compound and a camp full of blisters and sore backs. None of the officers had made more than a token appearance since afternoon, when one of them came out to check on the progress of the windbreak. He stayed no more than a minute and gave no more than a brusque nod before returning to the command building, where my dad and Aleka were holed up with the other officers. What they were doing in there, what accusations or transformations were taking place, I had no idea. And this time, I had no desire to eavesdrop.

  When night fell I found myself unable to sleep and unwilling to fake it. So I took a wide tour of the compound, starting by the barrier of tents. They flapped and snapped in the strong nighttime breeze. From there I roamed to the eastern edge of the hill and looked out over the invisible land. It was like standing on th
e brink of an enormous pit, infinitely bigger than the crater at my back.

  “That’s where he died,” a voice said.

  I jumped, then saw Petra sitting on a shattered wall not ten feet from me, her eyes fixed on the pool of darkness at our feet.

  “Danis?”

  She grunted.

  “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  She kept silent for a long time, her dark profile rimmed by the weak moonlight. Then she said, “Laman tell you how they get inside?”

  “I wish.”

  “They enter through your mouth,” she said softly, as if talking to herself. “You’ve got to keep your teeth clamped real tight. Any opening. Anywhere you let down your guard. They find a way in.”

  “You saw it?”

  “It was too fast,” she spoke to the night. “All I saw was the body after it was done. After it hollowed him out. Turned him into an empty shell with nothing but dust and sand blowing around inside.”

  Finally she faced me, and I saw the trails running silvery down her cheeks. “I watched his skin peel back, and I knew it was coming for me. I ran. I didn’t wait to see if it followed.”

  “That’s enough, Petra,” a voice spoke from behind us.

  I turned to see Aleka. She took a couple long strides and reached for the scout, but Petra jumped from the wall and backed away.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said dully, and vanished into the night.

  Aleka watched her go, then cast her eyes on me. The moon turned her face pale and still as a statue’s. The only thing that moved was her close-cropped hair, which ruffled slightly in the breeze.

  “You all right?” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “She’ll come around,” she said. “It’s always toughest right after.”

  I thought about Korah’s secret, buried for years. When would she come around?

  Aleka followed me to the sleeping area. She said nothing more, and I wasn’t about to start any small talk. I kept my eyes on the darkened hulk of the command building, where a single lantern glowed yellow through the downstairs curtain. When I reached my spot, she stopped on the other side of the crumbled wall. For a second I thought she was going to leave, but then she said, “Mind if I come in?”