Lotus and Thorn (5 page)

“It’s not enough!” I said, coughing as the insidious sand still found its way in. Edison grabbed a crate and started building a makeshift wall, and I joined him, stacking anything I could find, until finally, we’d barricaded ourselves in. I let myself sink to the floor and Edison put the jug of water in my hands—threading my fingers through the handle, like he did before. Making sure I could hold it.

“We made it.” He smiled again, but this time it was a quiet smile. And he nodded to himself.

But I didn’t find any comfort in his words. After all, I understood what we’d just done.
Barricaded ourselves in.
Now all I could hear was the howl of Tierra Muerta as it buried us alive.

“OKAY,” EDISON SAID
after I’d caught my breath. “Let’s see this radio of yours.”

He upped the brightness on his headlamp and the shuttle was illuminated around us.

“What the hell?” Edison’s breath rasped against his microphone as he took in the terrible scene.

I’d known what to expect, but that didn’t make it any less grisly. The dead were everywhere—their mouths pulled tight in fear. Skin still covered their bones, stretched and molded like leather over the shape of their skulls. The desert had taken all the water from them but nothing more.

Their matching clothes were still bright. Green jackets still buttoned up and khaki pants still creased. Like any second they would just get out of their seats and walk through the door.

“May God find you worthy,” I murmured.

Edison’s light reflected against a necklace on one of the corpses. He gingerly unfastened the clasp, pulling the necklace off so he could see it better.

A black metal tag dangled from a chain of tiny silver beads. And
I didn’t need to get any closer to know what was printed on it. It was a twin of the one in my pack. Lotus’s naming gift.

“Ad Astra Research Colony.” He read the tiny letters engraved on one side, then flipped it over. There was a simple outline of a flower and more engraving. “LOTUS 900167845003.”

“They’re all wearing them,” I said.

“Maybe they’re for identification,” he said.

“But they all say the same thing. Same words. Same number.”

“You can read this?” Edison sounded surprised.

“Not all Citizens believe curiosity to be a sin.” Just most of them. Very few Citizens could read. Writing was considered to be one more relic of the Colonists’ arrogance. The Abuelos preached that illiteracy was a sign of humility. And to be honest, there was very little opportunity to learn. But my mother had taught us in secret. Thinking of the book, heavy in my pack, I didn’t know whether to hate her or love her for it. Either way, the book had brought me here.

Edison and I moved farther into the claustrophobic space. I tiptoed past the bodies, like I was afraid we’d wake them. I brushed against one of them, knocking off its hat. There was a crunch of glass and Edison looked down to see what he’d stepped on.

“Don’t touch it.” I knew Edison was wearing an isolation suit, but all I could see was the scene playing itself over again. Edison’s eyes growing bloodshot. The fever raging though him. Blood leaching out of him until there was nothing left.

“What is it?” He peered down at the shards.

“It was a glass tube . . . from that box.” I pointed to the fluorescent orange plastic case lying open on the floor. Thick black foam lined the inside, with a space hollowed out for the now-broken
glass tube. There was a second orange case nearby. This one was still closed, but a huge crack ran across the lid. And there was an emblem on the broken case too—three overlapping circles with a fourth in the center. Judging by the passengers in the shuttle, that didn’t mean anything good.

“I was up front trying the radio when Suji opened the thing.”

“Tell me everything that happened.”

I shut my eyes, and as I told him about that day, it replayed in my mind. Like a vivid nightmare before it fades. How I’d spotted the shuttle after a dust storm—silver against the bluish sand. How Suji and I had pried off the door and pushed our way inside while the rest of the crew worked to uncover the body of the shuttle. How we played with the radio, pressing buttons until we found something. At first, it was just a recorded voice playing over and over.

“Lotus Colony, this is Homebase. You are under temporary quarantine. Enter verification and transmit on priority frequency so emergency evacuations can be coordinated.”

“Emergency evacuations,” Suji snorted. “Probably been saying that for five centuries.”

“Then why didn’t anyone ever answer?”

“Maybe they did. Maybe Earth didn’t give a shit.”

“Then why keep playing the message?” It didn’t make sense. Everyone always assumed that contact with Earth had been cut off when the plague started. That Earth had abandoned us. And yet, here was this message, traveling through the stars to reach us. “Someone must have heard it.”

“Well, these folks weren’t in any shape to do anything about it.” She looked over her shoulder at the desiccated corpses.

“But surely someone else on Gabriel had a radio.”

Suji shrugged. “Maybe no one had a chance. Imagine it, Leica. There were millions of people in this colony. Not hundreds. Or thousands like Pleiades, but
millions
. The fact that anyone was spared the first wave of Red Death was a miracle in itself.”

“Then, at least
we
should answer it.”

Suji rolled her eyes, but she played along anyway. We took turns pushing glowing buttons and twisting knobs and shouting “Hello? Hello?” into the microphone.

Suji gave up first. “No one’s gonna answer. Not after all this time.” She turned away and I could hear the bitterness in her voice. “They probably think we’re all dead.”

But I kept trying. It was impossible not to.

Suji went into the back and I remembered hearing the pop of the brackets on the orange case. And an explosive hiss of air. I was just about to ask Suji what she’d found when the message cut out and a real voice blared across the radio.

“Ad Astra? Is that you?”

I stared at the flashing dashboard light in shock.

The shaken, high-pitched voice spoke again. “Hello? Is someone alive out there?”

There was a sudden crunch of glass and muttered swearing as Suji hurried to the front of the shuttle to join me. “Was that a real person? Was that Earth?”

I grabbed the microphone. “Hello? This is Ad Astra. We’re alive!”

Static poured through the speakers. But no voice. I twisted the knob and repeated myself. More static.

“Put it back where it was!” Suji ordered, and as I turned the knob, a man’s voice emerged from the noise. “Identify yourself. What is your location and stat—”

That voice cut off as well, and the recorded message started repeating again.

Suji grabbed the microphone. “Hello? Hello?” She started mashing buttons. “Come back!”

That’s when I noticed the trickle of blood dripping down her fingers. I grabbed her hand, and when Suji turned to me, her wide eyes were already streaked with pink. And her skin had flushed a coppery red.

I closed my eyes, forcing the tears to stay locked behind them. I would not allow them to come in this place. In this moment. No. Right now, I would be the Leica I needed to be to get through the sandstorm. To survive. To find a way home.

“Then that’s what made your crew sick.” Edison nudged the broken glass with the toe of his boot. “And these unlucky suckers too.” He squatted by the broken case. “I mean, why have something like that on board a shuttle? You think they brought it from Earth? Or maybe they meant to take it back with them?”

“Do you think they even knew what they were carrying?” I shuddered, thinking of the dead people around us. Of Suji. “The thing is . . . the fever came so fast. Minutes, not days. As soon as we figured out what’d happened, we abandoned the shuttle . . . before I started showing symptoms too.”

“But you never
did
show symptoms.”

“No. That’s the funny part.” I gave him a grim smile and I recited the words of the Remembering.
“But God is merciful. He saved some. Made them immune. Made others strong enough to survive the plague. Scattered that strength through the generations.”

There was irony in the idea of God wasting immunity on someone he’d already damned. And there was that wheedling thought again:
What if I’d been marked for another purpose?
But that would mean God had just let everyone else die.
Why?

I was shocked to realize that I didn’t care what the answer was. I wasn’t sure
what
I believed anymore, but I was certain of one thing: if God did exist, he was a bastard.

“Suji pretty much collapsed before we made it to the ravine, and by the time we made camp, two more of them”—I refused to say their names, refused to see their panicked faces—“had fevers. It came for them one by one . . . but not for me.”

Edison reached out for my clenched fist, trying to loosen it, to soothe me. I had the urge to punch him—my anger, my pain, was mine to feel. I had no wish for it to be soothed away. I glared up at him and was surprised to see my own pain reflected in his eyes. And I reminded myself that I had no idea what Edison might’ve lost in his own life.

I let him ease open my fingers. He ran his gloved thumb over the five half-moon indentations I’d left on my palm.

I pulled away and swiped at my face. Forcing myself back to the here and now. “So the upside is, I should be perfectly fine in here until I run out of oxygen.” I breathed in—hot and musty. It was a big shuttle, but the air wouldn’t last forever.

“Well, I certainly don’t want that happening. I mean, these guys don’t look like very good company.” Edison put on a cheesy grin and said, “Let’s see if we can’t use the radio to get ahold of the Curadores . . . see if we can’t talk them into paying a visit and hauling us out of this thing.”

“Right.” I headed back up the aisle to the front of the shuttle. Then froze.

“What’s wrong?” Edison asked.

“One of the bodies. It’s been moved.” When Suji and I had first investigated, there’d been a corpse sitting in the front seat, straight
up, like the others. But now the dead woman was sprawled across the aisle.

Edison’s headlamp illuminated the cockpit. Instead of panels of lights and dials and glowing screens, there were only loose wires and gaping holes.

It was all gone. I felt like I’d been punched in the throat. That radio had been my way out of exile. Its link to Earth had been my way home.

“Dammit.” Edison’s jokes disappeared fast. He slammed his fist into the ceiling of the shuttle. The whole thing shook—dust kicking up into the air, plastic windows rattling against their frames.

“Careful,” I hissed. “All we need is for this thing to fall in on us.”

“Sorry.” His face was contorted in what almost looked like pain. This was more than simple curiosity about Earth or yearning for open sky. And I wondered again if the Curadores wanted to find a way off Gabriel too.

Edison closed his eyes, breathing deep. When he opened them again, the frustration had been cleared away.

I was glad. There was something untethered about his anger.

“Someone else beat us to it.” I stepped over the woman’s body, looking for anything useful that might be left. But whoever’d been here had done a good job of it. They’d gutted all the electronics for salvage and snipped the wires close to the ends. There was nothing left to work with. “Does that mean whoever did this got sick too?”

Edison considered for a moment. “Probably not. The hiss you heard when Suji opened the case was probably some kind of coolant system. The case must’ve had its own power source . . . and even then, after all this time it’s surprising the virus was still
alive. If Suji hadn’t cut herself on the contaminated glass, I doubt it would’ve been strong enough to infect any of you. My guess is that any trace of the disease died minutes after the test tube broke. But as it was, the virus went straight into the bloodstream, allowing it to hit hard and fast.”

It made it worse somehow—the happenstance of Suji’s death.

“Now what?” Edison asked, looking at the scavenged cockpit.

“Now?” Sand had climbed past the tops of the windows, muffling the Hwangsa until it was only a faint moan. I sat down on the floor, leaning against the slideboard and the makeshift wall of bags holding it tight against the hatch. “
Now
we wait.”

Automatically, I slid the knife out of my belt. When you were exhausted . . . when you were resting . . . these were the times to be at the ready. Only then did I relax enough to have some water and jerky.

Edison sat against the opposite wall, leaning forward against his bent knees, facing me. He was trying to make himself as small as possible in the cramped shuttle—putting as much distance as he could between himself and the dead. He was like a giant from the pages of my book, only folded up and shoved in a cupboard.

In the quiet, I could feel the weight of the sand bearing down on us—blanking out the world. How long until we were just another piece of salvage buried beneath the sandline? But it was a different question that kept going around and around in my head until it spilled out. “What if that was our one chance and we missed it? What if we can never contact Earth again?”

Edison shook his head. “I don’t believe that. I won’t. You know how I told you that we couldn’t understand the reply from
Earth . . . that the signal was garbled over our radios? It wasn’t the first time we’ve heard unidentifiable transmissions like that. In fact, we usually have to avoid that channel on our coms.”

“Do you think the transmission was garbled on purpose?”

“I think it was some kind of code.” He nodded, his eyes bright. “And more than that, I think there was something about this radio and this shuttle that let you ungarble it.”

His excitement was contagious. I tried to picture all the buttons and flashing lights and switches Suji and I had hit. There’d been much more than just a radio on that dashboard.

“And something that allowed us to respond.”

“Exactly!” A grin spread across his face. “A descrambler.
And
when the exiles who took the equipment bring it to an Exchange, we’ll have it! Then we can try again.”

We.
We
can try again.
We
is the problem. Because I wanted the radio for Pleiades and Edison wanted it for the Dome. But the Rememberings said nothing about Curadores. Even if I no longer believed God had much to do with all this, the Abuelos certainly did. And if I wanted to see my sisters again . . . if I wanted to prove myself a devout Citizen . . . I would need to play by Pleiades’ rules.