Swab
Heather Choate
SWAB
Heather Choate
Copyright 2014 by Heather Choate
Published by Akela Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are a product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Also by Heather Choate:
“SKYWREN” chapter book series
“META BLACKWING” young adult fiction
“FRAYED CROSSING” adult fiction
See what’s coming next at: www.heatherchoate.com
For Jasmine, who always let me imagine.
CONTENTS
Chapter One: A Thousand Gallons
Chapter Two: Beetle Brains
Chapter Three: Body Guards
Chapter Four: Gone
Chapter Five: Troop Three
Chapter Six: Pantry
Chapter Seven: A Funny Way of Speaking
Chapter Eight: A Plan
Chapter Nine: I Can Still Fight
Chapter Ten: Owing
Chapter Eleven: Beetle
Chapter Twelve: Yoda Questions
Chapter Thirteen: Genesis
Chapter Fourteen: Nectar and Divish
Chapter Fifteen: The Rand
Chapter Sixteen: Glowing and Growing
Chapter Seventeen: Assets
Chapter Eighteen: Bearer
Chapter Nineteen: Double Death
Chapter Twenty: The Queen
Chapter Twenty-One: Not Purely Stupid
Chapter Twenty-Two: Traitor
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Atrium
Chapter Twenty-Four: Welcome Blackness
Chapter Twenty-Five: Long Enough
Chapter Twenty-Six: Beauty and Chaos
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Arizona
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Fleeing
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Veto
Chapter Thirty: Ray
Chapter Thirty-One: The Things That Don’t Change
About the Author
Preview of Origin
Chapter One
A Thousand Gallons
The scarb got her hand cinched around my left ankle and squeezed, breaking the bones. A scream ripped out of my throat. Adrenaline pumped into my veins, and though my foot now hung limply, I could still use my arms. Using all of my core strength, I twisted out of her hold and lunged for her throat. My nails dug into the weak flesh that grew over the armored chitin plates of her neck, causing clear liquid to stream down her pale green-tinted throat.
Her red hair whirled like long whips against my face as she spun out of my hold. She was just too fast. Pure energy and muscle. Like a cheetah, or a missile. Something beautiful, sleek, and deadly.
The heel of her foot made contact with my stomach before I even realized she had launched a kick. All the air whooshed out of my lungs, and my body flew backward. I landed on the dirt with a thud that rattled my insides. The end of my chin dripped with sweat. My head throbbed. I pulled myself back up onto my good leg to face her for what I knew was probably the last time. Because that’s what we did. It’s all we could do. We kept fighting.
Wiping blood from my nose, I raised my chin. She stood to my right, thinner than most of the others, but that seemed only to add to her strength. I didn’t expect her to be so hard to kill. If I blinked, she could drive her barbed elbow into my sternum or my skull and that would be it.
Her expression revealed nothing. There was no twitch of a smile on her lips, no cackle of laughter as she knew I’d been defeated. If she took joy in this moment, she didn’t show it. I looked into her green eyes. Like most scarb the irises were split into multiple irises. Hers had four each. I wondered what she felt. Joy? Pleasure? Pain? Could she feel anything at all?
She leapt into the air, like a bird in flight, her body aimed like a dagger at my heart. I knew the moment had come, and I closed my eyes.
*****
Mr. Blackwell paced in front of the whiteboard, eyeing the rest of us like we were to be the next meal on his plate. “When a scarb comes at you with the barbs on its elbows, like this”—he raised his arm and sent the point of his elbow flying at a kid in the front row, just barely missing the tip of the poor boy’s nose—“what do you do?”
The kid pressed himself to the back of his chair and blinked dumbly back at him. “Uh,” was all he muttered.
Pointy-nosed Cassandra answered matter-of-factly. “You deflect it with a block.”
Mr. Blackwell raised an eyebrow. “And let the barbs pierce you to your radius? If it has acid, the poison would enter your bloodstream, and you’d be dead in an hour.”
Cassandra flipped her long auburn braid. “That’s why you wear body armor, of course.”
I could’ve told her that body armor offered some protection, but not enough. The scarb were getting stronger. Poor Cassandra had all the textbook answers, but she had never actually fought a scarb. The last scarb she’d seen had been the one that took off her mother’s head. No, I wouldn’t correct her about the body armor. Given what I’d done three weeks ago, I’d made it a point to not say anything at all.
“Maybe you could soak them in acid?” Matt said.
Mr. Blackwell shook his head, and the class continued arguing. I just leaned my head back against my seat, twisted my fingers into my long blonde hair, and looked at the clock for the thousandth time that morning. I didn’t want to sit here talking about how to fight scarb; I wanted to get out there and actually do it.
“Have patience, Cat,” Ray had told me the night before, when we were the last two around the campfire. “Mr. Blackwell and the others are only doing what they think is best.”
“Maybe seven years ago education for kids was important,” I’d protested. “But now, knowing fifty facts about a scarb isn’t going to keep it from killing you.”
The instruction course had just been implemented, and everyone in the community under eighteen had to attend daily classes. Ray was already nineteen. I was the unlucky one whose eighteenth birthday was still six months away. It might as well have been an eternity. Morning classes were technical, a chance to study and hopefully understand more about the scarb: what they were and how to destroy them. Afternoons were supposed to be for practical applications, but Mr. Blackwell seemed to be avoiding it.
Not that sparring with these children would actually be a challenge. Most of them had never even swung an axe; I’d already smashed the plated-skulls of two scarb this year.
Ray tried to make it up to me with extra-long training sessions after evening meal. But he was usually tired from hauling lumber down from the hills all day, and I was so pent up, I went off on him like a caged animal. It’s not a very nice way to treat your boyfriend, but he took it.
Cassandra’s jarring voice brought me back to the class. “If you just bring, like, a thousand gallons of water that would get all of them.”
“Yeah,” I snapped, unable to stand their ignorance any longer. “And how are you going to do that? None of the fire trucks are working, and it’s a half-day walk to any town that might have parts. And you know what’s infested all of those towns? Scarb.” The class fell silent. No one wanted to speak. They all knew why I was there, and it actually had very little to do with my age.
My
cheeks were hot. I sealed my lips, cursing myself for being stupid enough to allow them to open. The guilt I didn’t want to let myself feel crept into my chest. Again, I tried to smash it down. It was Cassandra’s fault, I thought. She shouldn’t have made such a dumb suggestion.
Five awkward minutes later, Mr. Blackwell dismissed us for lunch. We filed out of the hut that served as our classroom and into the center of our make-shift town. Beside the school hut was the Post, the largest structure, where we stored our equipment and other supplies that needed to be kept out of the rain. The spring had been rough, though, and several of the main support beams had given out in the last rainstorm. The building now had a lopsided look about it. That was why Ray was helping the other men bring lumber down from the hills.
A small walkway divided the Post from the other half of the town, which consisted of rows of shabby hovels and army surplus tents we used as homes. Officers Reynolds and May brought them to Rimerock, I think. In fact, they had brought most of the supplies we had managed to hang onto.
Beyond the hovels was the lake. In fact, the lake was there if you walked more than twelve minutes in any direction. Rimerock subsisted upon a small island tucked away in the center of a high, Rocky Mountain lake in southern Colorado.
I followed the other students to a grassy spot behind the Post where Mrs. Nistler was serving trout on rye bread. The sight of the fish made my stomach heave. Fresh food was good, but I was too upset. So, I kept walking further into the aspens until the sights and sounds of the community faded behind me. A blue jay flitted across the path in front of me. It perched up on a tree and began singing. I found it kind of sad. The whole world had completely changed and yet the bird kept singing. It was then I realized it was only our human world that had changed.
That was when I came up with a plan. Mr. Blackwell would be expecting me—and I should have gone back—but then the water was before me and the men had left a boat behind that they didn’t need. I looked across the glistening water to the looming hills that surrounded the lake on every side. Ray. The tiny rowboat was beside the huge hand-made barge we used to transport the fire trucks back and forth to the island. I hopped in the rowboat and happily wrapped my fingers around the oars. Looks like I won’t be going back to class today. Let Cassandra spit out as many bad ideas as she wants.
I tied the boat up on the opposite shore. It didn’t take me long to find the workers. The sound of men shouting and the hum of our one working chainsaw led me right to where they were felling trees. The tall ponderosa pines would be of great use to the community. Though there were trees on the island, we avoided cutting them down; they helped conceal us. The real reason the scarb wouldn’t attack us there, though, was the lake. They would be hard-pressed to get at us with so much water around. Their plated chitin clammed up just like a beetle when they got wet enough, so we were pretty safe there.
Three hundred people currently lived on the island. Our biggest challenge was resources: food, supplies, medicine, that sort of stuff. Going off-island like this was dangerous but often necessary. I wasn’t worried. We were still a long way from the closest scarb colony, but it always set Ray on-edge. He gave me a stern look with his dark brown eyes as soon as he saw me.
“Ditching class?” he asked, the sun rippling on his bare back as he tied a thick rope around the base of a fallen tree.
“I have more important things to do,” I replied and grabbed another rope to help.
“Of course you do,” he sighed. Sweat ran down his sun-darkened skin.
I put my hands on my hips in a pout. “Don’t treat me like I’m your kid sister.”
He just laughed. “Stop acting like a kid.”
“You know you love me,” I said slyly.
“You’re right.”He scooped me in his arms and planted a kiss on my lips. “I do.”
His cheeks were sweaty. “Gross!” I exaggerated, wiping the sweat on his chest, which was only sweatier.
“How come they give you useful stuff to do, and I’m stuck in grade school?”
He poked the tip of my nose with his finger. “Guess that’s what they do with babies.”
I stuck my bottom lip out. “Nathan’s the baby, and even he’s out on a scouting mission. I’m supposed to be the big sister doing important things. It’s time to set it right,” I said, seriously.
Using a sailor’s knot, I tied the rope around the opposite end of the log. Ray called some of the other men over to help haul the log down to the boats, but before they got to us, I whispered to him, “I’m going back to the saddle tonight.”
His brown eyes narrowed. “Cat, don’t.”
I tried to keep my voice from rising. “Ray, I have to. The fire trucks have been down three weeks now. I can get the parts back, but not if I’m stuck in preschool all day.”
The men were almost there. “I really don’t think you should,” he said. Does he doubt I can do it? That just made me want to do it even more.
“Well, even if you don’t come with me, I’m going.”Please come. Please come.
His red lips pressed together in a tight line. Two other men asked him to grab the rope so they could haul the log down to the boats. “Just a minute,” he answered. Then he took me by the shoulders and walked us behind a large pine, just out of earshot.
“Listen, Cat,” he whispered, his breath tickling the tiny hairs on my cheek. “These guys,” he jutted his head in the direction of the working men, “are the best thing that’s ever happened to us. We have a measure of safety here. I don’t want to do anything to mess that up. What happened last time—” Ray ran his hand through his hair. “They can’t just overlook that. We need to play it safe and do what they say.”
My heart seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, and it sank down into my shoes.
“So, you’re choosing them over me?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it betrayed me. “I’m just trying to get the plan back on track, the plan they made,” I nodded toward the men to show him we were on the same side. “We have to get those parts back.”
Ray nodded. “Officer May and two scouts are planning to recover them this Friday.”
“Friday?” I whispered back harshly. “I can get them back tonight. Don’t you see how important it is that I fix this? I don’t want the others to recover them. I want to be the one to make it right.”
He ran his fingers through his shaggy black hair. That was a good sign; he was conflicted. Just a little more, and I can seal the deal. I spoke lowly and deeply to convey how much I needed him. “Please, help me.”
He held his breath a few moments, looking at me like I was a puzzle he couldn’t solve. Then, he let out a big whoosh of air. With a quick glance back at the men, he leaned in and whispered into my ear. “Fine, Cat, I’ll go with you. But we’ve got to be careful.”
“Good, I’ll see you tonight.”
*****
I packed a few vital things I would need for my journey up to the saddle that night. An LED flashlight and two extra batteries—I might as well have been carrying gold—I shoved two protein bars deep into my pockets, as well as Mrs. Weatherstone’s homemade granola wrapped in a plastic pouch that originally held the stakes of our tent, and a small canteen of water. I put on my hiking boots and put my father’s old leather work gloves. They still smelled faintly like the grass that used to grow in our yard.
Good. But not enough. I needed a knife. They kept them in the Post. That meant getting in and out without being noticed. Even an idiot would know what I was up to, and then the whole thing would be over. More classes with Mr. Blackwell for me. Running my hands down my pants leg, I tried to set that thought aside and focus on my mission.
That’s what really matters, I told myself. I caught my reflection in the small mirror Nathan had hung from the side of my two-man tent. My light, sky-blue eyes gazed back at me, hard and focused under the fan of my black eyelashes. Defined cheekbones gave my face a sharper look to it than the round, girlish one I use
d to have. Like a hawk. I sighed and puffed my cheeks out with air to try and see the person I once was; the one that might’ve been called pretty if life hadn’t made me so jagged.
The air whooshed out of my cheeks, and I tucked my blonde hair back into a low ponytail. It had grown long and ragged. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Weatherstone to cut it short for me. Like a pixie. That’ll look hot. I had to tighten my belt by another ring. My figure was diminishing more and more every day. I could’ve look like Cassandra if I sat around the island all day eating wild strawberries and never exerting myself beyond a brief sparring session. All curves and cleavage. But then I couldn’t kick a roundhouse as well. Or run seven miles without stopping for breath. No, I’ll keep this body. But I did pull on the straps of my bra to help lift the goods I had and unbuttoned the collar of my shirt. Better.
I ducked out of the two-man tent, and made my way quickly through the hovels, but after what happened three weeks ago, there seemed to be a target on my back. Mrs. Needler gave me a wary eye as she shook a rug outside her hut. I’m not the enemy here. Soon, I’ll show everyone I’m not as worthless as they think I am. Annoyed, I picked up the pace and weaved my way through the last row of hovels. It was then that I saw Mr. Davin coming out of his tent carrying a tray of dirty dishes to bring to the lake for washing. His right arm struggled to balance the toppling load while his left arm hung uselessly at his side. Crap.
It’s all my fault. Three weeks ago, Mr. Davin had gone on the mission to Durango to get parts to fix the trucks. Everyone was ready to head back as soon as we had found what we needed, but I had insisted on checking an old gas station for fuel. I was hoping to find a good stash to supplement the vegetable oil fuel we had to make by hand in Rimerock to power the trucks. Officer Reynolds thought it was a foolish effort; I couldn’t stand the thought of fuel just sitting there. I pushed the issue, and Mr. Davin agreed to come with me for protection. As soon as Mr. Davin and I got the cover off the fuel tank, we were attacked by two scarb. We chased them off, but one stabbed Mr. Davin’s arm. To make it even worse, the scarb tracked our group back down as we left Durango. They brought about fifteen more scarb with them and we were forced to abandon the heavy packs of parts on the mountainside just to escape them. If I hadn’t insisted on checking for fuel in Durango, the scarb wouldn’t have found us. We’d still have the parts for the trucks, and Mr. Davin would still have the use of his arm.
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