SWAB (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel)

by Choate, Heather

  “No!”I struggled to get to the blades on my ankles when a large fist hit my head. My body went slack and everything went dark.

  Chapter Nine

  I Can Still Fight

  A fat lime-green leaf.

  That was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. Soft fuzz covered the leaf’s edges. Yellow light came through it, exposing its neon veins. Beautiful. The air was warm and humid, like a rainforest. Am I dead?

  Some part in the back of my mind remembered flashes of a battle: fire engines blasting,

  waterfalls of drowning death, Nathan spearing a scarb through the gut, clear liquid hissing on my skin, thin wings and gorgeous long red hair.

  Where am I? I was lying flat on my back. Soft dirt cushioned me, a tree over my head. But it doesn’t feel like the mountain forest. The air was too moist and fragrant with magnolia blossoms, like the kind of perfume my mother used to wear. I rubbed a clump of dirt between my middle finger and thumb. It was soft, like it had recently been wet. I tried to get up, but I didn’t seem to have enough strength to do more than move my fingers.

  Next, I heard voices, low and faint like they were some distance from me. Their words were all garbled. At least I’m not alone. I think that’s a good thing.

  “Carla,” a voice said close to the crown of my head. “She’s awake.”

  For a moment, I panicked. I didn’t know who was with me in this humid place, and the fact that I couldn’t move scared me. But then, Mrs. Weatherstone came into view, her long gray hair hanging loose around her gentle face.

  “Oh, good,” she said softly, patting my face with what felt like a cool towel. I instantly felt at ease in her presence. If she was so calm here, then everything must be alright. “Bring me some of that honey nectar,” she turned and told someone behind her who I couldn’t see. Her hazel eyes looked back to me. “How are you feeling? Can you talk?”

  I took a breath and managed to answer in a gravelly voice, “Um, I feel okay.”Wow, I sound like I haven’t spoken for days. Again, I lifted my head to try to get up.

  “Don’t try that just yet,” she cautioned and put her hand underneath my head until I rested it again. “They brought you to us only this morning. It always takes a while for the effects to wear off.”

  Her words didn’t make sense. I must’ve hit my head hard or something. “Brought me? Who brought me?”I coughed. “What effects? Where’s Nathan?” Suddenly nothing else mattered. I started to speak really fast. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine dear, he’ll be back in a moment.”

  “The last thing I remember was the flying scarb. They got us in these… nets?” Was that right? It all kind of felt like a strange dream now.

  She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, dear. Here I am troubling you with more than you’re ready for. Just rest now. We’ll explain everything to you as soon as you have some strength. Now, where is that boy with the nectar?”

  Nathan’s face came into view, and he smiled at me. “Good to see you awake, sis.” He passed a large curved leaf to Mrs. Weatherstone. “This stuff tastes disgusting, but it will help you feel better, trust me.”

  Mrs. Weatherstone opened the cap and put the end of the leaf to my lips, pouring a thick liquid into my mouth. Nathan was right. It was nasty—thick, too-sweet and slightly fermented—but I trusted his word and swallowed it.

  “Uck,” I spat.

  “Ha, ha,” Nathan laughed. “Told you it was fun.”

  The liquid hit my stomach and made it lurch. I thought I might vomit and have to taste the horrid stuff all over again, but warmth seemed to spread out of my stomach to the rest of my body. It made my head feel light and funny.

  “What is that?” I asked. Mrs. Weatherstone was again running a cool towel over my forehead.

  “We call it honey nectar,” she explained, “though the insect that makes it is really more like a beetle than a bee. We’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  With the strength of the honey nectar in me, I lifted my head to take another look around me. Past the lime leaves above, I could see light coming through some kind of web-like net high above. It wasn’t a natural looking sky. Thick foliage surrounded us on all sides: bushes with leaves as large as the fire trucks’ tires and massive white-and-yellow flowers with orange centers. The ground buzzed with the sound of insects. A gurgle of water came from somewhere to the right. A firefly the size of a dinner plate zoomed over my head.

  “What is this place?” I asked, trying to take it all in.

  Office Reynolds answered, and I was surprised to hear his voice. “We’re not entirely sure,” he said crisply. He stepped into the clearing where I lay, still dressed in his military uniform, his badge pinned to his chest. He was always to be officer of the U.S. Army, no matter how decrepit that army became. “We believe it is a holding dome in the epicenter of the scarb colony.”

  Inside the scarb colony? Did I hear him right? My eyes grew wide, and my breath quickened.

  Mrs. Weatherstone tried to still me. “So much for not getting her too excited,” she muttered under her breath.

  Apparently Officer Reynolds heard her, because he said, “Tell her. She needs to know.”

  “Yeah, please tell me how we got here, inside the colony. I remember nets. Are we being held prisoner?” Then hope shot through me. “Is Ray here?”

  Nathan put a hand on my leg and looked up to Officer Reynolds. “I’d like to tell her if I can”

  He nodded, and I turned to Nathan. “Ray isn’t here. I thought I’d answer that one first, since you won’t listen to anything else I say until you know. We looked for him, but this place isn’t really that big. It’s like a giant fish bowl. We can’t get in or out. Only the scarb can. It’s like they have this web around us that responds only to their DNA or something. But I’m getting off-subject. Anyway, most of us woke up here nine days ago. I was with the first group, so I know. We looked for Ray and all the rest of you, but it was just us—”

  “How many were with you?” I interrupted.

  “Derrick,” Nathan answered. A sigh of relief escaped my lips. I needed my ally. Nathan continued. “And two other guys: Travis, the mechanic, and a little guy named Jorge. The next day two more showed up, Mrs. Weatherstone and Gray. Then, it was three days before they brought Officer Reynolds in. I thought I wouldn’t see you again, but then I remembered how torn up from the battle Officer Reynolds had been; several broken ribs and half his hamstring was torn out. It was weird, but when they brought him, he didn’t have a scratch on him. Same thing was true for us. All our wounds were healed.”

  For the first time, I realized it had happened to me, too. My body had been mutilated by the scarb. Chunks of my shoulder had been bitten off, and my thumb was half-gone. But now, it was as though nothing had happened. I touched my shoulder to feel where the flesh should’ve been missing, but it was smooth. There was no pain. The injuries I’d sustained should’ve taken weeks to heal, but here I was, totally normal.

  “You’re saying they healed us? The scarb?” I asked him, truly baffled.

  He rolled up his sleeve. I remembered the deep gash that had been on his bicep, but now there wasn’t even a scar. “It sure seems that way. We think that after they caught us in the nets, they must’ve taken us somewhere to be healed. When we were well, they brought us here. So, when I saw that they practically brought Officer Reynolds back from the dead, I had hope for you. But for five days, no one came, until today, when they finally brought you.” His green eyes creased as he smiled, and he gave my leg a squeeze.

  It made me feel good to see that he was happy, but the whole thing felt strange to me. “So, they just dropped me off in here?”

  “Yeah,” Nathan confirmed. “The guards come in and out only when they bring another human in. They just set us here on the ground, then they leave. And you know scarb aren’t much for conversation. They wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Guess I need to learn to speak scarb. W
e don’t see them any other time. But there’s food here: fruit and nuts. Mrs. Weatherstone discovered that the honey nectar helps with the effects after they bring us here. It sucked for me,” he laughed, “you had it way easier. I was like a zombie for two whole days.” I was glad it was funny to him, but I couldn’t laugh.

  My temples throbbed. It didn’t make sense. “Why would they heal us at all? They were killing us? Don’t they want us dead?”

  Officer Reynolds answered that one. “That’s what we thought all along. But now, it seems this queen has another agenda.”

  The queen? “Has anyone seen her?”It felt like a legitimate question. Heck, I wouldn’t blink if I saw E.T., but Nathan laughed.

  “No, we haven’t seen her. We may be the only humans to have ever gone inside a scarb colony and lived to tell, but we haven’t seen anything more than this room and a few of the guards.”

  “And we can’t get out?” I repeated just to make sure.

  Officer Reynolds reported, “The walls here are thick as steel and sticky.”

  “We’re flies in a freakin’ spider web,” Nathan added.

  “Whatever the colony wants with us,” Officer Reynolds continued, “we have no way of finding out or preparing ourselves. They took all our weapons.”

  “I can still fight,” I resolved. No one was going to turn me into a puppet—or a meal, for that matter. Maybe they were fattening us up to feed us to their pet monster or something.

  Nathan raised his eyebrows. “What are you going to do? Throw a coconut at them?”

  “There’s always something,” I said flatly.

  “We’re thinking of a plan right now,” Officer Reynolds assured me, but it didn’t seem like they’d come up with much. Without blades, we weren’t a match for the scarb.

  “We do have food, though,” Mrs. Weatherstone added, always looking for the positive. “And clean water. Everyone is in good physical condition. I’m practically going crazy without even a drippy nose to treat.”

  I set my head back down and stared up at the green canopy. “So no weapons. And no Ray.”

  “Sorry, sis,” Nathan said softly.

  I thought back to the day of the attack. “Did you see that green-looking scarb that caught me?” I asked him. “The one with red hair?”

  “The scarb babe?” Nathan asked, sitting up. He never misses a girl does he?

  “Yeah,” I gave a small laugh. “The scarb babe. You know she’s a scarb, right?” I teased him. He just gave a wicked grin. “Well, that was the same flier that took Ray when we were on the mountain.”

  “She was?”

  “Yes.”I sighed in frustration. “I just thought that since she took us, we would find out where she’d taken Ray. I was hoping he’d be here.”The same question ran over and over in my mind as I breathed in the wet, flower-scented air: What could they possibly want with us?

  Chapter Ten

  Owing

  When I felt like I could stand, then finally walk, Nathan wrapped an arm around my shoulders and helped me over to where the rest of the human captives had set up a make-shift camp. We passed the massive white-and-yellow blossoms I’d seen while lying on the ground and crossed over a little stream. That must have been the water sound I’d heard earlier. At one point, the stream pooled inside a bowl of steaming rocks, evaporating the water into the air. I breathed in the humid mist.

  Nathan pointed to it. “We think that’s what keeps this place so stinkin’ soggy all the time,” he explained, “ It never rains, but Its like this dome has its own ecosystem or something. Mrs. Weatherstone says its genius. I personally don’t see what the big deal is about some mossy rocks, bushes, and bugs.”

  I looked up to the top of the dome, where seemingly natural sunlight streamed through the net of webs. “That must be the surface, right?”

  Nathan squinted up and shrugged. “Seems real enough. The sun sets and rises the same.”

  I thought about that. “If that really is the surface of the mountain side, we must be at least three hundred feet deep into the mountain.”I wished that at least one human had been inside the colony before and had been able to tell us about it. A map would’ve been so helpful. I looked across to the far edges of the curved dome wall. What’s beyond that? How big is this place anyway?

  We turned around a dripping willow tree and came to a small clearing where the camp had been set up. “Home, sweet home,” Nathan murmured.

  In the center of the space sat a crude, open-air structure like a pavilion. Six tree limbs had been stripped of their leaves and pounded into the soft ground for support beams. The roof was made of cross-hatched bamboo limbs. A flat rock made a table. More bamboo leaves were spread across that, and some were bundled up and tied with thin strips of rope-like vines.

  “Dinner awaits.” Nathan motioned to the table. “This is where we store the food we gather.” Derrick sat at one end, sharpening a stick with a rock. His hat was mud-splattered and crunched in on one side. He smiled when he saw me and took off his hat in a gentlemanly gesture. His hair was so disheveled and matted from the humidity it looked like a blond rat’s nest.

  “Making weapons?” I asked him a bit slyly as we ducked under the pavilion’s roof.

  He shot back an iniquitous grin. “Always.”

  It made me glad that at least he was taking the offensive. I knew that arming myself was number one on my list no matter how nicely the scarb seemed to be treating us. We were still their prisoners, and they’d taken our weapons from us. They had even taken the obsidian arrowhead. That really pissed me off. Who are they to take my things? Derrick was smart to use his resources to his advantage. We seem to think a lot alike. He’s doing just what Ray would. Just thinking Ray’s name stabbed at my heart. Had he been here in this very dome? Had he been doing these same things, storing food and making wooden knives? What if he was just killed anyway?

  Either way, getting a weapon in my hands was the first thing I was going to do. I’ll fight those blasted devils until the end.

  Mrs. Weatherstone came over with a large armful of bamboo leaves, which she set on the ground. She proceeded to tear them into thin strips.

  “What’s that for?” I asked her.

  “Our beds,” Nathan answered for her.

  “Yes, and I’m working on yours right now,” Mrs. Weatherstone said, ripping another narrow strip.

  “Come on,” Nathan said, “I’ll show you.” He led me out of the pavilion and took me down one of the several narrow pathways to another, smaller clearing. Three mats made out of braided bamboo were on the ground. “It’s not much,” Nathan said, “but it helps keep the mud off you.”

  “So that’s what Mrs. Weatherstone is doing,” I said, understanding now.

  “This one’s mine,” Nathan pointed to the one on the left under four large leaves.

  “Who sleeps on the other two?” I asked.

  Nathan pointed to the one on the right side. “Gray is there and—”

  “And you, Cat,” Derrick said, suddenly behind us, “are sleeping on the other one.” He smelled so strongly of grass and dirt that I was surprised I hadn’t noticed him sooner.

  “What about the one Mrs. Weatherstone just started on?” I asked.

  Derrick smiled and brushed the fallen twigs and leaves off the mat. “You can take my bed. It’ll take Mrs. Weatherstone at least a day to finish the mat. I don’t mind sleeping on the ground tonight. We country boys are used to that sort of thing. Besides, you’ll want to be close to your brother.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” I told him.

  “No problem,” he answered, then lifted a rock beside his mat. “And I thought you should have one of these.”He handed me a stick the length of my hand with a sharp rock fastened to the end of it with strips of bamboo. “You never know when one of them will be watching.”He looked around the bushes like a scarb could be there lurking there right now.

  I took the weapon and s
lid it into my boot. “Thanks again,” I told him. He nodded once and left so it was just Nathan and me in the small clearing.

  “Tired?” Nathan asked, setting me down onto the mat Derrick had given me. “It takes a while to feel … normal again.”He plopped down onto his own mat.

  He was right. Whatever the scarb had done to heal me had also made me extremely lethargic, like I was constantly trying to swim through sand.

  After a moment, I looked at Nathan and asked, “Why do you think they have us here?”

  He leaned forward with his arms on his knees. “For a while, my best guess was that this place was like a nursery, where they’d bring their young after they’d hatched, or however scarb are born. You know, like in that ant farm I used to have. After the larvae are born, the older ants brought them into that little room with all the bread crumbs and gooey stuff?” I tried to remember what he was talking about, wishing I’d paid more attention to it. “Well, then if this is the nursery—”

  “Then we’re the bread crumbs,” I finished for him. Being baby food didn’t sound like a good idea to me.

  “But whatever this place is,” Nathan continued, scratching at a bug bite on his shin, “the scarb seem to be really good at growing things.”

  “Maybe this is their green house?” I offered, but that didn’t seem quite right. Why would they put human captives here, then? I sighed, frustrated. One thing did seem certain: The scarb had an agenda for us, else why would they keep us alive? Why would the fliers come, net us, and not just let their army destroy us? I thought back to the battle. The ground scarb seemed to have no problem killing us, but they stopped as soon as the fliers showed up. Then, instead of wiping us out, the fliers bagged us, apparently healed us, then put us in this dome. “Ugh!” I growled. “It’s so aggravating not knowing and just being stuck here!”I thought about Ray again. “I guess we’ll find out sooner or later.”