Survival Colony 9 (14 page)

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?

I took Aleka’s hand and stood. “We’re going to free him,” I said.

“We’re going to try.” She pressed something into my hand. My fingers closed around its handle, still clammy from her touch. I’d held guns before, my dad had insisted I learn how to take them apart, keep them clean, load and aim. I’d never fired one, though. He was adamant about not wasting ammunition, and they were no good against Skaldi anyway. Even when he’d showed me his secret arsenal, I’d never thought a day might come when I’d have to use one against a member of my own colony.

“How did you . . . ?”

“There’ll be time for that later,” she said. “Now it’s time to listen.”

She signaled for us to huddle close. I looked around the circle at their eyes, shining and intense in their shadowed faces. I could hear everyone breathing, though they tried to suppress the sound.

“Remember,” Aleka said, “we don’t shoot unless we have to. Our plan is to free Laman quickly and quietly, then head for the river. If anyone gets separated from the group, we rendezvous at the following coordinates.” She held up a series of fingers in rapid succession, and I strained to remember what they meant. “Querry will stay with me. The rest of you know what to do.”

The others nodded and, led by Petra, melted into the gray darkness.

We waited a minute before Aleka gave my arm a gentle tug. I tucked the gun into my belt, and we headed east, the same direction the others had taken. Though they couldn’t be far in front, it seemed Petra’s knack for invisibility had cloaked them all. “They’ll deal with the guards,” Aleka whispered to me. “It’ll be up to you and me to free him.”

“Why us?”

“Because he won’t trust anyone else.”

“And you trust them? Petra, the others? Nessa is one of Yov’s—”

“I trust them,” she said. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Querry. A lot I haven’t been able to tell you.” She didn’t look at me, but I saw the strain and sadness in the twin curved lines around her mouth. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to prepare you for this. But you’ve been watched closely. Until tonight. Wali was assigned to keep track of you. What they don’t know is that Wali is one of ours.”

I remembered Wali’s rifle jabbing into my dad’s back, looming over his head. I remembered his fury the night at the swimming pool, his anguish the night Korah died. One of ours?

But then I remembered him hanging around my resting place after last night’s interview. I’d wondered if he planned to question me about my conversation with my dad, threaten me with his muscles or his gun, but he’d wandered off before I settled down to sleep. At the time, I’d been too preoccupied with my dad’s cryptic signal to think anything of it.

“But how—?”

“There’s no time to explain,” she said. “Just remember, Querry, things aren’t always what they seem. You have more friends than you know.”

I nodded, trying to believe her. “What’s the plan?”

“Kin is on guard duty with three others,” Aleka said. “Araz and Yov are, to the best of our knowledge, stationed at the command post, there,” and she signaled across camp to the hill where I’d met them the evening before. I could see nothing from that distance, no lights or movement to indicate their location. “They’re in communication with Kin via walkie-talkie, so we don’t think they’ll put in an appearance at the prison site until the time they’ve chosen for the execution. If they do show up, that may complicate things.”

I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed a grimace flickered across her face as she said that.

“The others will flank the camp,” she continued, “and Soon’s contingent will seek to draw off as many guards as possible. If the guards follow the protocol they learned under Laman, they’ll leave at least two of them behind. It’s possible Kin will contact Araz at this point. If he does, the plan is off and we’ll have to try something else.”

Her frown deepened, but she went on.

“If all goes well, we’ll have a few minutes’ opening to make our move. Petra’s team will have the tougher job. They’ll need to overpower the remaining guards with a minimum of noise and fuss. Then you and I will release Laman and make for the river, where other members of our colony will be waiting for us.” She sniffed, an almost laugh. “At least, that’s the plan.”

I was no tactician, but I’d spent enough time around my dad to recognize that their plan was as full of holes as my memory. What if the guards didn’t bite at the decoy, what if Kin did contact the camp’s leaders or one of them made an unscheduled visit to check on their prisoner, what if shots were fired, what if my dad insisted on peppering us with questions, what if his hip, stiffer than usual from cramped sitting, wouldn’t allow him to keep up? “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Because we still believe in him,” she said. “And in the colony. We don’t know for certain what Araz and Yov are up to, but we know it can’t be for the good of our people.”

A sudden fear gripped me. “The kids—”

“Are meeting us by the river,” she said in a soothing voice. “Everything’s been taken care of. All you need to do, and this might be the toughest part of all, is convince Laman Genn to go along with a plan he didn’t personally develop.”

I caught her eye, caught that hint of a smile I’d seen on her lips once before. It seemed like months ago, though I knew it had been only days. I realized she knew as well as I did how risky the plan was. Probably better than I did. She’d served as Laman Genn’s second-in-command, and the man wrote the book on risk. But she was willing to risk her life, they all were, to rescue a man who’d given them every reason to doubt.

“Thank you,” I said.

She stopped for the first time since we’d left the others, her eyes searching my face. Then, unexpectedly, she reached out and laid a hand on my cheek. Her touch lingered for a second, warm and surprisingly gentle, before her fingers slid off.

“Save that for an hour from now,” she said. “If we pull this off, we’ll all have reason to be thankful.”

We resumed our silent journey to the prison site. The sky remained a peppery dark, but the first hints of amber rimmed the horizon. We’d left the main body of camp behind, which meant less chance of discovery, though we needed to take care not to call attention to ourselves by tripping on the rough ground. Having arrived at this place only a few hours before, I hadn’t had time to learn its layout, and it would have been easy to lose my way. Everything looked different in the dark. But Aleka glided forward with confidence, never slowing or glancing to either side, and I felt sure that if I stuck with her I’d be all right.

Before long I saw the solitary tree where they’d set up their prison, its twisted outline stark against the dim glow on the horizon. I couldn’t make out human figures, but it occurred to me that if we got much closer we’d be totally exposed to their eyes.

The thought must have occurred to Aleka, too. “This way,” she whispered, and led me to a low hill that broke the ground to our left. We crouched behind the natural barricade and peered over the edge, but the distance and the tree’s silhouette made it impossible to see the people we knew must be there.

“We’ll wait here,” Aleka said. Her eyes scanned the sky, looking, maybe, for some sign or signal, or measuring the time till daylight.

“How will we know?”

“We’ll know. Be still and listen.”

I noticed the walkie-talkie hanging at her belt. Apparently, Petra had been busy tonight. “Couldn’t we call them?”

“Araz might pick up the frequency,” she said. “Hush now.”

I held my breath and closed my eyes, trying to reach out with my ears into the undisturbed night. All I heard was Aleka’s steady breathing beside me. That comforted me somewhat, though I still felt a knot of tension in my stomach. The pressure built as the moments passed by. Not knowing what to listen for, I thought nothing of it when a sound like a rising wind sighed in the distance.

“That’s it,” Aleka said softly, her voice startling me after the long silence. “Soon’s group has been successful. Let’s go.”

“Are you sure?”

“That was Soon’s whistle. He carved it himself. Very ingenious, very useful. Let’s go.”

We rose to a crouch and started off in a long arc, staying always to the left of our target, where rocks and the occasional tree stump broke the open ground. We kept low and used what cover we could find. I still saw nothing except the prison tree, but Aleka always seemed to know when to pause and when it was safe to move again. Within a minute of stop-and-go running we had drawn near enough to the tree for me to make out two figures standing in its larger shadow, a third seated at its base. Soon’s group, as well as the two other guards, were nowhere to be seen.

“Get down!” Aleka hissed, and I dropped to the ground beside her. We’d fallen in open ground with no cover to speak of, but I hoped that with the distance and speckled darkness we might be mistaken for a part of the landscape. She placed a cautioning hand behind my head as we rose on our elbows to survey the scene. Her fingers prickled along the spot where I’d had my accident six months ago.

The guards’ backs were to us. They’d taken a couple steps away from the tree, so my dad’s shape could be seen as well, resting against the trunk. He seemed to be asleep. One of the guards was obviously Kin: short and stumpy, with bowlegs and arms that barely hung to his waist. His head jutted forward as he sighted into the predawn gloom. The other, tall and broad, was Kelmen. I hoped he’d prove as slow-witted about the rescue as he did about everything else.

“We wait for Petra,” Aleka breathed in a whisper hardly more audible than Soon’s wind whistle.

We waited. Each second seemed like an hour. I didn’t dare move, didn’t dare ask any questions. But my mind raced like my dad’s on overdrive. I ran down a long list of worries: why we’d put this off till dawn, when Petra would show up, how we’d know if Kin had called for backup, whether Soon’s group had managed to detain the other two guards, what would happen if they hadn’t. Still nothing moved in the dim light. I saw Kin confer with Kelmen, their voices too low to make out words. Then I heard a distinct rustling, and the guards spun, weapons drawn, aiming at the branches of the tree.

Not fast enough.

A dark shape fell from the knot of branches, swept their legs from under them, chopped at their arms. I heard the guards cry out in pain. Aleka leaped up and ran, and I followed a step behind her, sprinting low over the rough ground, keeping my eyes on the confused jumble of bodies at the tree’s base.

We pulled up in front of the tree as Petra disentangled herself from the guards and stood, pointing their pistols at them, one in each of her hands. The pale darkness disgorged another figure: Nekane, whose look of surprise showed that Petra had decided to wing it as usual. How the scout had gotten into the branches without us seeing her or the guards hearing her was beyond me.

“Well done, Petra,” Aleka said. She sounded as impressed as I was.

“Piece of cake,” Petra said blithely. She tucked one of the guns in her belt and, keeping the other trained on Kin and Kelmen, dangled their walkie-talkie in front of their eyes. “Or should I say, like taking candy from a baby.”

Kin’s eyes bugged with rage, but he kept his mouth shut. Kelmen, as usual, looked like he’d just heard something in a completely different language.

“Bind and gag them,” Aleka said. She leveled her own gun at the prostrate guards while Nekane produced the rope and rags. Within seconds the two were lashed together, the scout looking like an underfed twin that had grown out of its giant brother’s back.

“You’re on, Querry,” Aleka said.

I took out the red-handled pocketknife and squatted by my dad. A single glance told me how exhausted he was: though the ruckus of Petra’s one-woman show had started to rouse him, his eyes had yet to open. His face appeared pale and drawn, his hair seemed to have grayed even further in the hours since I last saw him. No visible cuts or bruises marred his face and hands, but I suspected Kin and Kelmen had spent the first part of the night working him over, the former for malicious fun, the latter out of some dim sense of duty.

His eyes finally struggled open as I sawed at the ropes around his wrists. At first he looked confused, even frightened. I thought about the many times he’d stood over me, silently watching before shaking me from sleep, and I wondered what he’d seen those times.

“Querry,” he said now. The confusion in his eyes registered in his voice as well.

“It’s okay, Dad,” I said. “We’re getting you out of here.”

“Out,” he said dreamily. Then his eyes snapped into bright focus and his voice sharpened. “No!” he said. “It’s not safe. You’ll be—”

“Laman,” Aleka said, stepping beside me. “Querry’s with us. We’re all here.”