SWAB (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel)

by Choate, Heather

  Chapter Thirty

  Ray

  Veto’s steps were awkward and uneven as he walked us away from the warmth of the bonfire toward the darkness of his shack and the bed he intended to take me to. His arm was heavy on my shoulders. He was so drunk, I was sure I could take him out pretty easy. But then Veto’s rangers would kill my scarb.

  Veto’s rank breath filled my lungs. He was singing some song in Spanish that I didn’t recognize. There was no way I was going to let him touch me. I just had to think.

  Veto lost his balance, and his arm slid off me when he fell. He lay there laughing on the ground, insisting I help him up. Free of his weight on my shoulders, I felt the urge to run. But then there was the tip of a barb on the back of my neck.

  “Don’t even think about it,” one of Veto’s sober guards said lowly, the tip of his elbow pressing against me. “One word from me and your scarb are dead.”

  The other guard helped Veto back to his feet. “I’m normally much more coordinated than that,” Veto slurred, sending spittle onto my face. “Don’t you worry about that, madre.”

  He forced me on. The wind mill’s silhouette was like a skeleton against the night sky. Veto’s large shack was a mound to the right of it. The red fabric in the doorway flapped like a shipwrecked sail. The hut gaped at me like a hungry mouth.

  Please get me out of this, I prayed to the stars high above us. But they seemed to pay me no mind.

  “After you,” Veto said, grinning widely as he held the door flap open for me. I couldn’t move my feet. The guards pressed in behind me. Nathan, Iva, Derrick, and my other scarb’s faces flashed in my mind. Could I send them to their execution?

  Just then, there was a loud commotion back at the bonfire, the sounds of war. Did my scarb revolt? But the sounds were strange in my ear. It wasn’t the high pitched screeches of scarb. It was deep and guttural. It sounded very…human.

  A ranger ran up the darkened path to Veto.

  “We’re under attack!” he yelled.

  Veto cursed and told the guards to put me in the tent. He turned back toward the bonfire, and I knew this was my chance. I had to hope that this distraction was enough to save my scarb. Dark shadows moved among the houses. Before the guards could lay their hands on me, I punched one in the jaw and launched a quick roundhouse kick into the stomach of the other. The first was knocked out cold, the second, however, came at me with sharp elbows raised. Before he could bring them down, his back went rigid, fluid gurgling out of his mouth. He fell down dead, a knife wedged into his back.

  Without pausing, I darted down the pathway, the low light of the bonfire allowing me to dodge around the shadows that quickly filled the settlement. Rangers fought them the best they could in the alleyways and doorframes, but most suffered from their intoxication. Their fighting was slow and awkward. These were the perfect conditions for us to break out, if we could do so without this new threat detecting us. I just need to get to my scarb quick enough.

  I made it to the last shabby dwelling and paused in its shadow. In the dying remains of the bonfire, the scene looked like a page out of hell. Scarb and demons danced and fought before the flames. But I realized these weren’t demons at all, as the fire light revealed their smooth faces and bright eyes. They were human. And they were winning.

  My scarb were just past the bonfire against the mesa wall, but the space between was full of humans and rangers. I waited for a chance to cross. “Don’t fight the humans,” I told my scarb.

  In moments, the humans had killed all the drunken rangers by the fire. I wonder what happened to Veto. I hadn’t seen him at all. He was probably dead. These humans worked quickly. Now was my chance. I took one step out of the shadow and froze.

  “Boss, look at what we have here,” one of the humans near the mesa wall called out.

  One of the taller humans directly in front of the bonfire pulled his knife out of a ranger and turned. “What is it?”

  “More of them over here in a pen, sir,” the first answered. After some hesitation he added, “They don’t seem to want to fight us. They’re just huddled against the wall like a bunch of frightened sheep.”

  “Well, they’re scarb, aren’t they? Kill them.”

  “Wait! Don’t!” I tried to say, stepping out of the shadows and fully into the fire light, but the words just came out garbled and strange, as they always did when I tried to use my throat to speak. The tall human turned toward me.

  Surprise, then horror, filled his dark eyes. Eyes that I knew so well. I couldn’t believe he was here.

  “Ray!” I cried, but again only a rough gurgle came out of my mouth.

  “No,” he whispered. He raised the bloody knife in his hand, putting his weight on the back of his heels. I knew that stance well. He was the one that had taught it to me. He was going to kill me.

  “Please,” I tried again, but it still came out mangled.

  “Use your mind!” Iva said quickly to me. I remembered how she had once spoken to me mentally when I was a human.

  But I couldn’t reach him with the connection. He wasn’t a part of it. The moments seemed to slow. He flexed his calf muscles, and he sprang toward me. I closed my eyes. Though I couldn’t sense him, I had to try to reach him. I could hear the soft thud of his footsteps on the ground.

  “Ray,” I said firmly. “It’s me, Cat. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  There was a rush of wind. I opened my eyes. Ray had stopped inches from my face. His knife poised above me in the air. His mouth was open, set into rigid lines, the same mouth that had once kissed me so sweetly. Carefully, I sent an image of that memory to him.

  His hands pressed into his ears. “Get out of my head, scarb!”

  His scream made me jump. “It’s me, Ray,” I told him quickly. “It’s Cat.”I let a thousand memories flood both of us: nights on the run in Denver, catching fish in streams, playing tricks on Nathan while he slept, counting stars on the lake by the island. “You have to see,” I told him. “It’s me.”

  He was shaking now. His mouth closed into a hard line. “No,” he said through gritted teeth. “Cat is dead. You’re nothing but the monster who took her from me.”

  Something inside my chest shattered into a thousand pieces. He didn’t believe me. I could see from the way he gripped his knife that he wasn’t going to take any more of this.

  “It’s us, Ray” Nathan said, suddenly behind Ray

  Still shaking, Ray turned slowly to face Nathan. Again, there was the same look of horror as he took in my brother, the boy Ray had worked so hard to protect all those years.

  “We’re scarb,” Nathan said, gently but diligently. “There’s nothing any of us can do about that now. But we still have choices, Ray.” Ray paused. “Cat isn’t like other scarb. She’s a queen. They tried to use her and all of us.” Nathan motioned back to others in the pen. “But we fought back. What they’re doing to humans is wrong.”He paused and dared to take a step closer to Ray. “But killing us would be wrong too. We aren’t going to harm you or any of your friends. Maybe we can even help you.”

  Pride and gratitude filled me. Nathan spoke with just the right amount of forwardness and compassion. It was working on Ray, too. His shoulders lowered a bit, his grip on the knife loosened. A long moment passed. “We don’t need help from scarb,” he said lowly. “Get out of here, and go back to wherever you belong.”

  My mouth hung open. He was turning us away.

  “He’s letting us live,” Nathan emphasized. “We should go.”

  I couldn’t believe Nathan was going along with this. Didn’t he see that Ray was right there? I wasn’t just going to leave him. “No.”

  Nathan put a hand on my arm. “Cat, look at him. Look at how quickly his squad killed those rangers.”He shuffled his feet a bit. “Things aren’t the same anymore. You have to accept that.”

  I could sense the urgency of my scarb. They wanted to get out of there, too.

  Ray spoke
lowly. “I’ll give you two minutes to leave this canyon. Otherwise, no promises.”He gave me one last quick look, then turned away like I had some disease he might catch if he stayed a moment longer.

  “Search the huts,” he called out to his men and then disappeared into the darkness of the settlement.

  I stood rooted by the bonfire, staring after him.

  “Cat, please, let’s go now,” Nathan said, tugging at my arm. My feet started moving at my brother’s command and not my own. I couldn’t believe we were walking away from the very person I’d been searching for.

  My scarb and I moved like a flash flood through the narrow canyon. Within minutes, we were out of the canyon and back into the open desert. The space felt too open, too exposed. But my scarb seemed to relax with every step we took away from the mesas. They thought we had just escaped something awful. I felt that the nightmare was just beginning.

  Ray doesn’t want my help. He doesn’t want me. It was a reality I couldn’t accept. After running several hours in the darkness, we stopped by a small grove of oak trees that grew along a dried creek bed. Their long branches swayed like deformed arms in the night breeze. The others were content to settle down and try to get a few hours of sleep. All I could think of was how I had to see Ray again.

  *****

  I didn’t sleep that night. I told Derrick I could take watch but he insisted I try to get some rest. Nathan snored loudly. Tomorrow, he and the others would demand a plan out of me. I wished I had one.

  Sometime in the early morning hours, I decided to get up and do what I needed to. Pale light from the crescent moon would guide me until sunrise. Gray was up for the next watch, but as soon as I stirred, Derrick was on his feet.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to tell him, but in a moment he read it from my thoughts anyway.

  “Are you sure going to the human settlement is a good idea?” he said, not hiding the worry in his voice.

  “I have to,” was all I could answer with.

  “They kill scarb. We barely got out of that canyon last night. I don’t think they’ll be merciful twice.”

  He meant Ray. Well, he doesn’t know the first thing about Ray. Or me either for that matter.

  A chill moment passed.

  “At least let me go with you,” Derrick finally said with a sigh.

  I thought about that, and then shook my head. “No. I’d better go alone.”A bit of anger slipped from Derrick and entered my thoughts. He thought I was foolish for chasing after a human who clearly wanted nothing to do with me or any scarb. I didn’t want to hurt Derrick, but if that’s how it had to be, then fine.

  “Tell everyone to wait here when they wake up in the morning,” I told him. “I’ll be back by evening.”

  “And if you’re not?”

  That stung. “I’ll be back,” I said hotly, then stepped over Nathan’s sleeping body and walked away from the camp.

  Low silver moonlight illuminated the barren desert in front of me. Using the stars as a compass, I headed south. The settlement was only an hour or two away, but I quickly felt the loneliness of the desert. Every leaf rustling or rush of wind made me jump.

  Just as the horizon was turning a pale blue, I made out the border of the human settlement. Fifteen-foot stone walls encircled it and when I stopped at a scrub oak, I saw several figures patrolling them. They even had a large searchlight that came on and off intermittently perched atop a tower. When it was on, the bright light scanned the desert. I wondered how they had the means for electricity, but after seeing Veto’s water wheel, I imagined they could use something like that to create it. Scarb and the rest of the world were slowly coming back to the technology that had once run everything.

  But the settlement had the feel of a fortress to it. This must be how the humans have lasted here so long. They were militaristic. How am I going to get inside? I couldn’t disguise the barbs on my head or my double irises. Going out in the open was my only option.

  I left the shelter of the bush and started walking toward the large wooden doors that seemed to be the only way into or out of the settlement. Three humans guarded them. Fear, but also intense anticipation, filled me. After a minute, blinding light hit my eyes. I put one arm up to shield them and I put the other over my head. Speaking with my mouth would do nothing. I had no choice but to reveal myself and speak to the humans’ minds.

  “Please,” I said to the three guards on the wall above. “I’m alone, and I won’t harm you. I only want to talk to Ray.”

  First, silence.

  I stood still in that bright light.

  “You want to talk to Ray?” a female voice with a think Latino accent called out.

  “Yes, please. I knew him before, when I was human.”

  “Why would he want to speak with you?”

  I bit my lip. “He doesn’t,” I answered honestly. “But still, I need to see him.”

  “He told me about you,” the woman said after a pause. “You were the scarb he let go last night.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He shouldn’t have done that,” she said crossly. “You say you bring us no harm? You endanger us just by being here.”

  “I don’t mean to cause you any more trouble,” I answered. “Can I please just have five minutes?”

  A long silence. I didn’t know if they were planning to kill me right then.

  The large wooden doors slowly creaked open. Six humans came out, spears pointed at me. At the center, came a small woman with fierceness to her beautiful Latino face. Long, black hair fell to her mid-back. She was not much older than I was.

  “I’m Sophia,” she said with a sharp upturn of her chin, “the leader of this settlement. I’ll take you to Ray. You’ll say what you have to say, and then you’ll leave.”

  I nodded, and she kept her humans with their spears aimed at me. She led us into the settlement. Even in the dim light, I could see that this was nothing like the ranger’s camp, or even Rimerock. All the buildings were made of stone or cement, sturdy against the elements. The streets were clean and orderly. Garden patches grew between every building. A low hum buzzed in the air.

  “Is that a generator?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Yes,” she answered. “It’s powered by our windmills.”She pointed further east to where I could make out the spinning blades against the morning sky.

  “Amazing,” I breathed. I appreciated everything about the settlement, from the comely houses and structures to the herb gardens growing in the windowsills. It was structured, efficient, and very human. Part of me very much wished I could stay there.

  “How do you keep all this safe from the swabs, like Maria? Aren’t you in her territory?” There had to be more to their survival than stone walls and spears.

  “We have one of the last missiles,” she replied without hesitation. Was that a hint of warning in her voice? “If a swab tries anything, I’ll blow their colony to pieces.”

  “But won’t most of the scarb just come back? Like cockroaches?”

  “Yes,” she said, and then with a smile, “but their precious little colony will be destroyed. No queen wants to see everything she’s worked on for years wiped out like that.”She snapped her fingers.

  Ruthless, that’s what she was. I suppose she would have to be to survive this long against such incredible odds.

  A Jeep crossed the road in front of us. They have running vehicles, too?

  Sophia stopped to let the Jeep pass, and she shot me a sharp look. “I don’t like scarb,” she said bluntly. “My instinct is to kill on sight. You’re a tyrannical species. You kill my people without a second thought, but what’s worse is another human settlement in Brazil has told me Senhora Maria is taking their children.”

  “Why?” I frowned.

  “I don’t know.” Her mouth was set in a thin line. “But I’ll let my heart be gouged out before I let any scarb touch our children.”


  I could understand why she usually killed scarb on sight.

  “I’m going to do something to stop it,” she said resolutely. “I hate swabs.”

  “So why did you let me come in?” I asked, feeling even more mystified about how easily she had opened the gate for me. Was it a trap? I glanced around, suddenly worried that coming here wasn’t such a great idea.

  She twisted her mouth to the side. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “There’s something different about you. Something that feels more…human, somehow. I’ll admit it, I’ve been looking for that sort of thing in scarb…hoping. Maybe its just wishful thinking.”

  We stopped in front of a large, two-story building. Red magnolias lined the upper balcony. I could tell from the wrought-iron bars and copper roof that this building had been here before the settlement, the remnants of pre-scarb time.

  “Wait here,” Sophia said, leaving me on the walkway with the six humans. I held my breath. I was finally going to see Ray and show him that becoming scarb hadn’t changed anything for us.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Things That Don’t Change

  After Sophia went inside the two-story building, I heard human voices coming from the upper balcony with the red magnolias. I couldn’t help but be excited. One voice was deeper, male. He sounded angry. Ray. Sure enough, Ray’s tall figure appeared on the balcony after a moment. He looked down over the edge at me, a deep scowl furrowing his brow.

  “Why’d you bring her here?” he turned on Sophia sharply. “You want her to learn all our secrets so she can march here in a few months and try to take us out? If she lives that long,” he sneered. It was insulting that he thought so little of me. He was the one who taught me to survive. Why should that change now that I was scarb? I’m fully capable of taking care of myself.

  “She couldn’t even escape a pack of desert bandits,” he spat. He was right. If he and his humans hadn’t shown up, I don’t know how I would have gotten us out of Veto’s camp.