Blood Colony

by Tananarive Due

  Charlie knocked on her window, and Fana opened her door for him. Charlie kneeled to gaze at her at eye level, his face only two inches from hers. “You okay, negra?” Charlie said.

  Now it was Fana who felt paralyzed. Her heart pounded as she gazed at the boy whose allure surprised her with its intensity. Charlie’s eyes were hard to blink away from. The idea of leaving him felt tragic.

  “I can’t…go with you,” Fana said.

  Charlie’s jaw flexed in anger. He glanced at Johnny, who was hanging his head. “Why?” Charlie said. “Because he said so?”

  Caitlin’s window came down. “We have to go,” she hissed to Fana. “Come on!”

  Charlie touched Fana’s face, and she rested her chin against his strong fingertips. “Does he think he’ll call his parents and make everything fine?” Charlie said. “These are feds after us. They already have his parents. I’m sorry to tell you, Fana, but they probably have yours, too. If they catch us, they’ll send us to dungeons where no one will see us again.”

  Charlie didn’t know about the firefence. He didn’t know about the Life Brothers’ weapons. But he might be right about one thing: The police probably had questioned Johnny’s parents by now, and Johnny’s father had visited the colony. Even if Mr. Wright didn’t know exactly where it was, he knew enough. Homeland Security might send an army to Washington.

  “I have to warn my family,” Fana said.

  “Sí,” Charlie said, nodding. “And you can. In less than an hour. From México.”

  “The Railroad has a sat phone in Nogales,” Caitlin called. “Fana, please hurry.”

  Fana looked at Johnny, whose back was turned. The radio clamored Johnny’s name.

  “What you think, Johnny?” Charlie said. “Convinced yet?”

  Johnny stared at the windshield. “Mexico it is,” he said in a dead voice.

  Why had Johnny given up so easily? Fana probed Johnny again, and this time no invisibility blocked her. Johnny’s anger churned loud and clear. Johnny thought she had betrayed him, and now he felt trapped. I won’t let anything happen to you, Johnny, she whispered to him in the hidden recesses he might uncover only when he slept.

  Charlie smiled at Fana. “I’ll ditch my bike and ride in the car. Would that be better?”

  Fana hadn’t thought anything could make this day feel better, but she wanted Charlie closer to them. She didn’t want to keep looking out for him, wondering if he was in danger. Teka had taught her that Khaldun had stayed with the Life Brothers for more than five hundred years, postponing his Rising, because he had given them the Living Blood, so he considered them his responsibility. Caitlin, Johnny and Charlie were her responsibility.

  Fana nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Ride with us. That’s much better.”

  “Johnny, go get in the car,” Charlie said. “Sit up front. I’ll be in back with Fana.”

  Fana expected Johnny to complain about Charlie telling him what to do, but Johnny opened his car door and climbed out without a word.

  Fana tried to catch his eyes to apologize, but Johnny refused to look her way.

  At first, Johnny thought it was a stroke. Or a nervous breakdown.

  He had been holding a pocketknife in his hands, and suddenly he hadn’t been able to move. When he’d tried to give the knife to Fana, his arm had ignored him. When he’d tried to turn his head, his neck had felt like stone, bent as if in prayer. Panicked, he’d tried to blink; his eyes had stayed open, burning.

  What the FUCK?

  Johnny tried not to panic, racing through a medical checklist: Paralysis. Racing heartbeat. Had he had a stroke? After a day like today, it was possible. Nervous breakdown? Why not? He’d heard his name on the radio as a suspected terrorist. Caitlin had been accusing him of zoning all day, as if it was possible to overreact to a slaughter.

  Johnny had seen Fana’s hand swipe the knife away from him. She’d said something to him, but he hadn’t been able to hear her over the blood rushing in his ears as his heart had thrashed.

  A loud motor had revved had behind their car. It’s over. Police. Too late.

  Johnny had almost been relieved. At least someone would send him to a doctor.

  Johnny had felt his head turning toward the window, as if he’d been watching himself sleepwalk. He’d seen the gray hood of an unfamiliar car behind them, and Caitlin sitting in the driver’s seat. He’d wished he’d been able to get away before Caitlin had gotten back, but it would have been better to face Caitlin than the Department of Homeland Security. She would find help for him.

  Then, Johnny had seen Charlie climb off his motorcycle, or someone who’d seemed to be Charlie. He’d been dressed like Charlie, in jeans and a biker jacket. He’d had Charlie’s white-toothed smile. Charlie’s curly tangle of dark hair. He’d even walked like him; an easy, cocksure jaunt.

  But his face had been covered by a thick swarm of bees. Only his smile had shown through.

  If Johnny hadn’t been frozen in place, he would have trembled to his bones. Johnny had been able to make himself blink, and Charlie’s face had looked normal again. Charlie had winked at Johnny, puckering his lips in a mock kiss. Then he’d leaned over and knocked on Fana’s window.

  Don’t let him in Don’t let him in Don’t let him in Don’t let him in Don’t let him in Don’t

  Johnny had heard Fana’s door open behind him. “You okay, negra?” Charlie said.

  While Charlie had talked to Fana in a soothing tone, another version of Charlie’s voice had crashed into Johnny’s head. Unlike the voice talking to Fana, the voice in his head was in a bad mood:

  THE WITNESS WRITES THAT ONLY HE WHO IS WORTHY SHALL WALK BESIDE THE CHOSEN. YOU ARE WEAK, AND THEREFORE NOT A WORTHY DISCIPLE. THROUGH SUFFERING, YOU WILL BE CLEANSED AND LEARN OBEDIENCE.

  Distantly, Johnny had heard Charlie’s spoken voice sounding as gentle as a priest’s as he’d told Fana that her parents were probably in custody. Johnny had experienced the eerie sensation of Fana’s voice in his head in Berkeley, but he’d thought he had imagined it. Had he imagined it again? What’s happening to me?

  Only one thing had kept Johnny’s mind from drowning in confusion: He’d remembered the awe-inspiring white Spanish church they had passed while Caitlin had looked for a place to dump the car, almost a vision of Heaven. The memory of the church had felt like God’s message to him in the shadows, and his thoughts had miraculously cleared.

  His father’s mother, Nana, was a country woman who went to church every day, and her closed-door beliefs went back to slavery and beyond. Nana threw salt and red clay dust to ward off spirits, and she’d told Johnny a story about a man she’d known in childhood who’d walked the streets possessed by the devil for forty-eight hours straight. In Jordan, Jaddah Jamilah complained about evil jinns, devils called shayatiin. She blamed the Most Evil, Iblis, for the wars. Far from his mother’s homeland, Johnny had been raised in his father’s AME church. Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow. Johnny had sung in the choir since he was five. In high school, he’d seen himself in a dream standing at the altar in vestments of white, and he’d believed he was being called to preach. His friends and teachers had always said so. Even Omari had told him he should be a preacher. But he had fought.

  He wanted to have a normal college life. Get kegged. Get laid.

  As if God could wait. As if Good and Evil had not survived after the Bible’s scribes had died. As if Evil did not walk beside him wearing the face of a man. As if the King of Lies slept.

  “What do you think, Johnny?” he’d heard Charlie say, a disembodied voice in his brain’s fog. “Convinced yet?”

  “Mexico it is,” Johnny had heard himself say, a stranger’s words in his mouth. A new horror. help me help me help me help me Lord

  But no help came.

  Johnny was opening his car door. Standing. Walking. Johnny screamed and wept inside, and he understood how Jesus must have felt, nailed helpless on the cross. Forsaken. Opening the door to the new car, Johnny’s body paid
him no mind. His body climbed inside to sit beside Caitlin. He heard his name on the radio again, with the announcer emphasizing his middle name, Jamal. The car’s frigid air conditioner blasted across his face.

  Johnny felt Caitlin’s hand on his knee, and his heart surged with hope. He fought to pull his lips apart, to breathe out a puff of air. To whisper Caitlin’s name.

  Don’t go with him. He’s not who you think he is.

  “Don’t look so fuck-eyed,” Caitlin said to him. He could only see her face in his peripheral vision; a thin smile twisted her lips. “We’re almost there.”

  As the car carrying him pulled away with a lurch, Johnny Wright could only pray.

  Twenty-four

  The Colony

  12:35 p.m.

  Fana’s teacher was losing his composure. Jessica could see it in the constant drifting of Teka’s eyes, in the way he rubbed his temples as he stood over Alex’s bed. She had never seen him so worried. What if Teka was falling apart too?

  Dawit had called to tell her about the dead bodies in Casa Grande, and he had cooed comforts while Jessica had sat in her bathroom, hidden, and cried softly to his image on the video phone. Those tears had been long overdue, but she’d had to cut them short. The names of Caitlin O’Neal and Johnny Wright had already surfaced in the national news. Caitlin and Johnny hadn’t been caught yet, but the full force of the United States government and media was on their heels.

  Naive zealotry had gotten that poor family killed. How many others would follow?

  You need each other now, Fana. Please take care of yourself and your friends.

  Jessica could think of a dizzying array of mistakes she had made in only forty-eight hours. She wanted to scream for letting Lucas call Garrick Wright on his sat phone Tuesday night. Yeah, right. The damage was done as soon as you invited Garrick and those others here.

  Today’s trouble had started ten years ago, at her own insistence. In all, seven outsiders had come. She, Lucas and Alex had created a list of health care providers and journalists they had believed could be partners with her and the Life Brothers to distribute blood. How could God want them to do anything else with His gift to mankind? Jesus healed the sick, and so should they. But Satan has followed us step for step.

  How had she ever thought she could follow this calling and bring her loved ones too?

  Bea sat at the table stirring instant grits Jessica had made her, comfort food, but Bea wasn’t eating. Conserving her strength, Bea had hardly spoken since morning. She’d stopped protesting against the oxygen tubes in her nose, because she said the air underground was too thin. The tubes and Bea’s forlorn eyes made her look like a disaster victim, like the images that still haunted Jessica from Hurricane Katrina and the Salt Lake City bombs.

  “How are you, Mom?” Jessica said.

  “Tired, baby. Tired.”

  “Maybe you should go back to bed.”

  Slowly, Bea only shook her head. “Alex might wake up. I can’t help watching for it.”

  Alex still lay in her bed as if she were in a deep sleep, gaining nutrients from an IV Jessica had found in her medical supplies. She’d had to insert the IV herself, because Lucas wasn’t in much better shape himself. Not yet, anyway.

  Teka rubbed his temple again while he pressed one hand against Alex’s forehead.

  “Are you all right?” Jessica said.

  “A headache,” Teka said, without his usual smile.

  Jessica had never known Teka to have a headache.

  “My first in nearly three hundred years,” Teka answered her thought. “It’s…” He looked bewildered, another unusual expression for him. “It is strange.”

  Jessica’s heart jumped. Teka would not use that word lightly. “Strange how?”

  “It is as if Fana is trying to reach me, as she did last night. The presence feels like Fana, and yet…” He shook his head, troubled. “It does not. Now, a headache. Very unusual.”

  Jessica sighed. Don’t fall apart on me, Teka, she thought, hoping he could hear.

  I ASSURE YOU I WILL DO MY BEST, JESSICA.

  Dawit still had trouble interpreting thoughts she tried to send him consciously, but Teka could pick out her relevant thoughts like marbles in a field of grass. It felt like taking a bath with someone, or swimming together. No wonder the Life Brothers cared for each other so much: They lived in each other’s minds!

  Does your headache mean something has happened to Fana?

  IT NEED NOT.

  Is it anything like Fana’s headaches when she’s in a city?

  VERY MUCH SO.

  Could you become debilitated?

  I DO NOT ANTICIPATE IT, BUT ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.

  Jessica felt dizzied by the rapid exchange, and Teka’s admission made her heart shudder.

  If something happened to Teka, she and the others would be in trouble. Already, the Duharts had come close to getting killed last night—the whole family, even the babies! Nita still refused to open her door or talk to her. The problems with the Duharts wouldn’t go away.

  “What brought on your last headache, Teka?” she said.

  “I had an audience with Khaldun, and I was overwhelmed when he first shared his thoughts with me. Khaldun’s presence is large.”

  Khaldun! Yes, Jessica knew what it felt like to be swallowed by Khaldun’s presence. When Jessica had visited Khaldun’s chamber in Lalibela, the leader of the immortals had planted knowledge in her, showing her things Fana had done. Through Khaldun, Jessica had seen her daughter casually kill a soldier at the airport in Rome. Fana had killed the man under Jessica’s nose, but without Khaldun, Jessica never would have known. Jessica had been frightened of Khaldun at the time, and resentful of the burden he’d placed on the child he had called Chosen. Today, she would drop to her knees in gratitude if Khaldun appeared.

  “Is Khaldun trying to reach you?” Jessica said. “To help Fana?”

  “How I would welcome him!” Teka said. “But I think not.”

  Jessica hadn’t realized how high her hope had risen until Teka dashed it.

  “What about Alex?” Jessica said. Anxiousness slashed her throat. The panic she’d stuffed away all day yesterday was clawing its way out. The longer Alex lay unconscious, the easier it became to imagine that her sister might be gone.

  Teka shook his head, rubbing his temple again. “Alex is unchanged.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Jessica said. “Is it brain damage?”

  Teka seemed tired, speaking slowly. “Physically, her brain is unharmed, functioning as usual. Fana has placed her in a transcendent state, a high form of what Khaldun called the Rising. Only years of meditation would achieve a state this deep. Khaldun himself lived this way much of the time. But it is usually self-induced. As you see, Fana’s gift was great enough to impose it on another. It is a wondrous catastrophe.”

  Jessica’s head swam. “It sounds like…death.”

  “Death would be the highest form. In that instance, the mind rises, but the body dies.”

  “I would say that when our bodies die, our spirits rise,” Jessica said.

  “Our words are different, Jessica, but our meaning is much the same.”

  Bea cleared her throat from across the table. “‘Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life…,’” she said in a whisper, quoting John 3:16. Bea complained that the Life Brothers gave her ulcers, the way they worshiped Fana when they should be following Christ. “You don’t have sense enough to know where your own blood is from.”

  “When you Rise, madame, all will be clear to you,” Teka said.

  “Amen,” Bea said, nodding. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes sense all day.”

  There was a polite knock on the door.

  “Blessed Mother?” Fasilidas called gently from outside. “Teka has visitors.”

  Before Jessica could answer, Jima, Yonas, Melaku and Kelile came in, and her room was suddenly crowded. Eight Life Brothers remained in
the colony—these Council members and two other sentries like Fasilidas. The rest were out searching for Fana.

  Those remaining behind had changed into street clothes, preparing to be seen by outsiders. Jessica knew that the slim batons they carried on their belts were related to the firefence, using a similar energy field to act as both information-gathering tool and weapon. Teka had shown her the device in a display case once, but she had never seen them worn before last night, when the Brothers had come to evacuate her from the Big House.

  None of the men glanced Jessica’s way as they crowded near Teka. From their grim expressions and long gazes, they were engaged in private conversation within their silence.

  “I need to hear you, please,” Jessica said. “Any new developments affect all of us.”

  The three glared at her impatiently, but Teka nodded. “We are discourteous,” Teka said.

  Kelile scowled. “Shall we consult Teferi’s women and boys too?” he said with sarcasm.

  Melaku addressed Teka. “Their search is confined to woods southeast of us, so far, but their helicopters will reach us soon. Our window for escape is small.”

  “The firefence will fool their helicopters,” Teka said. “Our structures won’t be seen.”

  “But for how long?” Melaku said. “Relocation is the only sure course.”

  “Nothing is sure,” Teka said. “Access to our plane may be restricted.”

  “You sound fearful, Melaku,” Jima said. “The firefence will slay any comers.”

  “And thereby stoke their hysteria,” Teka said quietly. “Why should we kill when we can simply elude them? Shall we kill dozens? Hundreds? Would you have war declared on us?”

  “Perhaps, Teacher, you are last to know,” Jima said. “War already has been declared.”

  When Lucas opened his eyes, he saw Cal Duhart standing over his bed.

  “Well, you didn’t have to drive so goddamn fast,” Lucas said. His voice was hoarse.

  “You didn’t have to jump in my goddamn way,” Cal snapped back.