Scavenger of Souls

by Joshua David Bellin

“I saw him,” I said. “In a dream. I saw Yov.”

  Her eyes brightened, gray as the moon.

  “Maybe you’ll . . .” My voice trailed off. Maybe you’ll see your husband, I was about to say.

  Her ruined face tried to smile.

  “I love you, Mom,” I said. “I won’t let them win.”

  Her eyelids closed, the skin as red and blistered as the rest of her face. I touched her cheek one last time as she died. Grief would have overwhelmed me if anger hadn’t burned it away. Not anger at her. This doesn’t begin with you, she’d told me. And it didn’t begin with her, either. None of this would have happened if not for Athan and Udain Genn. And none of the choices they’d made would have been necessary if not for the monsters that roamed the land above us, the creatures from beyond the stars. Forgiveness could come later—forgiveness for my creator, my people, myself.

  For now, vengeance was all I had.

  “Get the others,” I said to Mercy. “Tell them this is the night the Skaldi die.”

  17

  My first official act as commander of Survival Colony None was to order the destruction of the base I commanded.

  The None was Mercy’s idea. Something about how that was almost Nine, but with an O for “unknown.” Like most of her jokes, it didn’t make much sense, and it didn’t seem like the right time. But my next official act was to ignore that.

  We wrapped Aleka’s body in a sheet and eased her onto a storage shelf in the infirmary, where a sedated Udain slept beside his wounded soldiers, his feet spilling off the edge of a normal-size cot. From the location where my mother had fallen I collected the two things not so badly burned as to be useless: a pistol that had fallen from its holster—silver like the one she’d lost to Asunder’s colony—and the battered but still functional miniature protograph. A search of the war room turned up the remains of Doctor Siva, heaped on the floor beside the table, identifiable only by his white jacket. Everyone else was accounted for, which meant that the creature had infected him before he’d gone underground. To be certain there wasn’t another one, Mercy subjected everyone to the military version of the Skaldi trials: a flat black wand that hummed with the same energy as the guns. I wished Aleka had thought to use it on Siva before she locked the war room door, but I guess she’d had too much faith in the man who’d twice saved her life to suspect him. And she’d been too eager to show me the protograph recording to perform the act that might have saved her own life.

  I sat with Mercy at the war room table while she showed me the basics of the compound’s integrated network. She’d been clingy ever since Aleka’s death, snuggling up to me with her arms draped over my shoulders and her cheek pressed against mine. Not like she was trying to start something, just attempting to console me—or to scare off Nessa, who she practically hissed at every time the girl came near. Still, the touch of her hands seemed wrong, especially since I was the only one who knew why it seemed wrong. I wiggled uncomfortably, and she got the idea—or at least, the idea that I wasn’t ready for anyone to get close to me yet. Like so much else, the full story of who I was and why it would never work out between us would have to wait for later.

  “So the entire compound’s visible from here?” I said.

  She guided my hands to the proper buttons, and a glowing map appeared on the screen. Thousands of pinpricks of red light swarmed the surface compound’s outline like a disease.

  “That’s them,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I kind of figured that out.”

  We zoomed and scanned the image, focusing on the tunnel to the bunker. A handful of red dots sprinkled the passageway up to the first door, but after that there was nothing. Those few were probably holding the corridor while others searched for a different way in. At least for now, they hadn’t found it.

  “Is there another entrance?” I asked.

  “There’s a rear escape”—she moved my hands over the controls until a long, straight tunnel appeared—“right there. It extends for miles to the east, out into the desert. But our friends don’t seem to know about it.”

  “What about the drone?” I said. “Shouldn’t it show up on the map?”

  “Apparently not,” she said. “But I can work on finding it if you want.”

  “Hm.” Something about the way she said that told me she was just being something she never was: polite. “So we slip out the back way . . .”

  “And blow them to kingdom come before they know we’re gone,” she said with a smug smile. “Check this out.”

  She called up a map of the compound’s final fail-safe: charges set in a ring around headquarters that could be detonated by the commander, turning the area aboveground into an inferno. This could all be accomplished, she announced confidently, through the remote function on the wrist cuff I’d locked onto my right calf. But her glee turned to bewilderment, and then to fury, when she discovered the remote wasn’t working. She monkeyed with it far longer than I thought was prudent before spitting out that it had probably been damaged in the fire. Other hardware—the guns, the protograph—had responded to my signature and come back online, but the charges would have to be set by hand.

  My hand.

  “You’ll need a guide,” Mercy said when I told her the plan.

  “No way, Mercy.”

  “Oh, come on!” she said. “It’ll be just like old times!”

  Nothing will ever be like old times, I thought. “I’m your commander, you know.”

  “Ha!” Her expression was about what I expected, but the motion she made with her finger was new to me. “Command this.”

  I didn’t have the time or energy to fight her, so I gave in. I’d have to ask about the finger thing later.

  I assembled the others. All of the kids volunteered to join us, including Zataias, who raised his hand so high it was like he thought I was picking an “it” for a game of freeze tag. I ruled him and the rest of the kids out immediately, plus the injured colonists and medical personnel. Geller must have been high on Mercy’s praise from earlier in the day, because he volunteered too, but I told him I needed him to stay with Udain. Tyris tried to make a case that we might need her if the plan went wrong, but my answer was that if the plan went wrong, there’d be too many little pieces of us for her to do a thing about it.

  In the end I decided on just me, Mercy, and Ardan. Any more I was afraid would attract too much attention. Any less I was sure would produce my first mutiny. Nessa hadn’t said anything while I described the plan—probably because Mercy was staring daggers at her the whole time—but now she insisted on both her and Adem coming along. Though Adem looked like he was strangling when she volunteered his name, he didn’t refuse. I considered telling them no, which would have pleased Mercy, but I found myself saying yes. Maybe it was because I knew how solid Nessa was. Or because, with her hair cut short, she looked a lot like my mother.

  We took the bare minimum in terms of supplies. Energy guns, the miniature protograph to chart our course and keep track of Skaldi, the wrist cuff in case some of its functions still worked, a flashlight, a set of walkie-talkies. I left Aleka’s pistol on the war room table, asking Tyris to bury it with her if we didn’t return. Her team would exit the compound via the rear passageway, with Geller and most of the other guards transporting their former commander. If my team didn’t make it, the others would try to pry the drone’s location from Udain. If and when we regrouped, we would hold funerals for Siva and my mother.

  We arranged a meeting place and an “if we’re not back by” time. I was about to make one last check of everything when Mercy touched my arm. “Querry.”

  I stopped.

  “I’m sorry about your mom. I don’t remember her from when I was a kid, but she seemed like a great lady.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She was a lot like you.”

  She laid a hand on my cheek, looked at me with her dark eyes. When I looked back, it was like I was seeing the girl I’d begun to think about being with through the ghostly im
age of the girl I knew I never could. Then the first of those girls grinned.

  “With the possible exception,” she said, “of the lady part.”

  We finalized plans with the others, then turned the protograph on and headed back into the tunnels.

  No sooner did we set off than Mercy dropped behind with me and tried to sneak a kiss. Which I thought was kind of inappropriate, considering what had just happened. But like she said, she was no lady.

  I shook her off, edged away. That was hard to do in the narrow tunnel. “Not now, Mercy.”

  “Come on, live a little,” she said. “This is the first free moment we’ve had since you woke up.” She batted her eyelashes. “And for all we know, it might be the last.”

  “Later,” I mumbled. Ardan had turned his head and was looking suspiciously at us, so that gave me the excuse I needed.

  Mercy, though, didn’t seem fazed. “To be continued,” she said, giving me a quick kiss before skipping ahead to join her brother. “And just as a reminder,” she shot over her shoulder, “I am not exactly renowned for my patience.”

  Ardan offered me one last scowl before nodding to his sister and turning to concentrate on the road ahead.

  I walked right behind them, with Nessa and Adem in the rear. We marched for a half hour without a word, the brother-sister team consulting the protograph and communicating as quietly as our footsteps, with nods and glances and hand gestures. We’d just approached a door that looked identical to all the doors we’d passed when Mercy paused, letting out a breath. It sounded like a gale-force wind after all the silence.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked in a whisper.

  “Take a look at this,” she said.

  She held out the protograph, and we all clustered around it. She’d switched the view to the surface level, and what it showed was a mass of Skaldi surrounding what appeared to be Udain’s headquarters. “Uh-oh,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “The little buggers are standing right on top of the charges. They’ve shifted position since the last time I checked. Almost like they know we’re coming.”

  That was the last thing I wanted to hear. And the last thing I wanted to tell her was why the Skaldi always seemed to know when I was around.

  Nessa leaned in closer. “Is there another way?”

  Mercy gave her a look. “Another way to do what?”

  “To set the charges,” Nessa said. “Like, from underground.”

  I could see Mercy warring with a response. “There are tunnels all over the place,” she said through her teeth. “But the charges are at surface level. We have to be outside to get at them.”

  No one spoke for a long time. Then Nessa said, “So we need to create a diversion. We need to split into two teams, one to draw them away and one to set the charges.”

  “Them happens to be about two thousand Skaldi,” Mercy said. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And are you volunteering for this suicide mission?”

  I stepped between them before my first official action as commander ended in a fistfight. “Enough, you two,” I said. “Nessa’s right. Mercy, what’s the closest tunnel to the generator room?”

  Mercy muttered to herself while she scanned the protograph, making very little effort to prevent the rest of us from hearing what she was muttering. Ardan filled the space beside her, double her size but not half as vocal. She quieted down only when she found what I’d asked for. “There,” she said. “If we come up on the outskirts of the square, we’ll be within spitting distance of the generator. What’s your plan?”

  “Fire on the generator,” I said. “That should attract at least some of their attention. Meanwhile the second team sneaks over to headquarters and sets the charges.”

  “And which team is which, may I ask?” Mercy said.

  Before I could answer, Nessa spoke up. “Adem and I will create the diversion. The team that sets the charges will need Ardan’s strength and Mercy’s knowledge. How much time do you need?”

  Mercy glanced at her brother. She seemed to be having a hard time keeping her breath under control, though I had no idea why. It was obvious she didn’t like Nessa, but we were all in this together.

  Finally she answered. “We’ll need to set at least two to take out the Skaldi on the inside as well as the perimeter. Depending on our luck and how many flesh-eating alien monsters decide to get in our way, that could take us anywhere from ten minutes to forever.”

  “We can give you ten minutes,” Nessa said. Adem, I thought, looked pretty green, though the light in the tunnels was gray white. But he swallowed a lump the size of his fist and nodded.

  “Great,” I said. “Mercy, let’s go.”

  She held her hand out to Nessa in exaggerated politeness. “Right this way, princess.”

  Mercy and Ardan led us onward. After a few minutes Mercy signaled for another conference, the two of them poring over the protograph. Mercy’s brow knotted in concentration before she pointed the way. We wove through a new set of hallways that looked like the old set of hallways, and I could feel an angry silence radiating from Mercy that I couldn’t explain. Her mood was really starting to fray my nerves when she said, “Stop.”

  I peered ahead. The corridor was indistinguishable from any we’d walked in the past hour.

  “We’re close,” Mercy said. “Through that door and up the stairs.”

  Everyone held their breath and listened. The tunnel was absolutely silent. Mercy spoke my mind before I could.

  “No pulse,” she muttered.

  “You think the beam’s down?”

  “Possibly. The Skaldi might have taken it offline in the war room.”

  “My signature wouldn’t have brought it back?”

  “Depends on what the thing did to it.”

  “If it is down,” I said, “will that make a difference with the charges?”

  “It’ll sure as hell make a difference in terms of our ability to get to the charges.”

  Nessa spoke up again. “Not if we can anticipate their movements—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Mercy snapped, forgetting to keep her voice down. “There’s an army of Skaldi ten feet above our heads. You think you can anticipate them? What are you going to use? Tarot cards? Divining rods?”

  Nessa shook her head but said nothing. I reached out toward Mercy. “I think she just means—”

  “Bug off!” Mercy snapped, shaking me away and storming a short distance down the tunnel.

  I caught up to her. She didn’t make any effort to elude me. “Mercy, what is wrong—”

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong!” she exploded. “Every time Skinhead opens her smart-ass little mouth, you’re all, Wow, what a great idea! Since when did she become so high on your list?”

  “You’re . . .” I couldn’t believe I was about to say this. “You’re jealous?”

  Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. “You are such a flipping idiot,” she said. “It would be lovely if everything was about you, wouldn’t it? But it’s not. Did it ever occur to you this might be a trap?”

  Now she’d totally lost me. “A trap?”

  “Yes, a trap,” she said. “Designed to march us straight into their waiting arms. Or mouths, as the case may be.”

  She held out the protograph. At first I couldn’t make sense of it: where a moment ago there’d been a mass of red lights so dense it was like a puddle of blood, now there was only a single dot, pulsing weakly in the center of the screen. Then I realized what I was seeing: our own position. Underground. And with the red light of a Skaldi right in front of my eyes.

  “I’m kicking myself for not catching it before,” Mercy said, her voice finally under control. “But I was focused on where we were going, not where we are.”

  “Who is it?” I whispered, wondering if it might be me.

  She shrugged. “My money’s on Little Miss Diversion. That minx has been raising my hackles from the get-go.”


  I decided not to risk asking what a minx was. “But she passed the test.”

  “There’s only one test I’m convinced by,” she said, fingering her rifle. “The question is, do you want me to fry her cupcakes now, or are you in a gambling mood?”

  I glanced up the corridor at the three shadowy figures. Ardan’s posture appeared as stolid as ever, Adem’s as indecisive. But I sensed that Nessa knew what we were talking about. If, that is, it was really Nessa.

  “Contact Tyris,” I said in a low voice. “Don’t tell her what’s going on. I just want to know their position in case anything happens to us.”

  Mercy switched on her walkie-talkie, but only static filled the line. I took a deep breath and steered my gaze back to the end of the tunnel. Mercy waited, the light too dim to tell if it was expectation or annoyance I saw in her face.

  “This is what leaders are for,” she said, handing the protograph over. “To make the tough calls.”

  I deliberated a moment longer, then tucked the protograph in my pocket and nodded toward the door. “Tyris and the others will have to fend for themselves. Keep an eye on Nessa. But don’t shoot unless I say so. We’re sticking to the plan.”

  Mercy spoke no word of objection, but I felt her silence behind me like a blade in my back.

  We rejoined the others, and together we inched toward the door. It opened at the touch of my finger on the keypad. The stairwell beyond was unlit, and so dark I couldn’t tell if anything waited in the shadows. I thought of lighting our way with our flashlight, but I didn’t want to alert them. With me in the lead and Mercy gripping her rifle in the rear, we crept up the stairs. When we got there, I touched the button beside the door.

  It opened onto a courtyard swarming with Skaldi.

  Darkness blanketed the square, the perimeter fence visible only as black uprights against the dead gleam of the impact zone. But I could make out the humped shapes that filled the area in front of us, wriggling like an enormous hive. A rot worse than thousands of corpses emanated from bodies that had never been alive to begin with. They hadn’t detected us yet, but without the beam to immobilize them, it was only a matter of time before they did.