The X-Variant (The Guardians Book 1)

by Rosemary Cole

  Alex raised his head and regarded him curiously. “Hey, man—you all right?”

  Brandon looked past him, thinking of Jennie, blinking away rising tears. “The baby—where is she?” he cried out, and then flinched from the pain. How could he have forgotten about her?

  Victoria was suddenly there, holding the baby up in front of him. “Right here. She’s all right, see?” she said, trying to give him a brave smile.

  He sighed and let his head fall back.

  Victoria settled on an empty bunk, sitting cross-legged with the baby in her lap. “I’ll stay here and watch over you guys. Go to sleep.”

  Kala opened her eyes, knowing it was night even before Araka told her the time. Soft lantern light flickered on the rough walls of the cabin. She heard the baby crying somewhere outside and sat up.

  Brandon was asleep, but Alex was awake, watching her. “How are you feeling?” he asked anxiously.

  Kala rubbed her face. “I am all right, thank you. It is good to see that you are getting better.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you for what you did for me and my daughter. We owe you our lives.”

  Kala nodded. She never knew what to say when someone thanked her. From outside, the baby’s cries grew louder.

  Alex said, “She’s hungry.”

  “Yes. I will go and see,” Kala said. She got up, moving a little stiffly, and went outside. The night was cool, the air pungent with smoke from the wildfire. She checked with her drones and was relieved to learn that the winds had driven it toward the lake, where it was slowly burning out.

  Victoria was sitting by the camp stove, holding the wriggling baby while Wilm tried to feed her by lamplight. He had mixed and heated some powdered milk, to which he had added some nutrients. He was trying to get the baby to suckle some of it from the end of a wetted cloth, but she wasn’t having it.

  Kala sat down on a sawn log seat and put her head in her hands. Jennie was gone. The pain of it seeped through her veins like acid, and she felt like another piece of herself had died.

  The baby squalled in anger and kicked her legs, and Kala looked up through her fingers.

  “I need a bottle,” Wilm said in Unathi, “and some baby formula.”

  “I know,” she replied, and lowered her head again. A new problem: how to feed the baby. She was only three months old and couldn’t take solids yet, but all they had was powdered milk.

  Wilm said, I’m so sorry, Kala.

  She looked up at him blankly; his face was agonized.

  It was my drones that caused this. When I did the sweep to look for Ghal. It had to be; how else could he have found us?

  We don’t know that for sure, Kala replied. Anyway, it was my fault. I left you guys unprotected.

  Suddenly she thought of the creature that had been with the helicopter. She sent her drones out through the area, but there was no trace of it. She heaved a deep sigh and stood up.

  “You need to change into clean clothes,” Victoria observed with a child’s candor.

  Kala looked down at herself; she was still wearing her filthy, bloodied things from the fight.

  “Yes,” she said dully, and walked out of camp, Wilm and Victoria staring after her.

  Kala saw a form lying on the ground just outside the ring of light cast by the lamps, and walked over to it. Crisfer’s body; Wilm must have wrapped it up. She sat down next to it and tested with her drones, but there was no sign of life. She had been half hopeful and half afraid that his symbiont might bring him back, but there was no way they could have healed him before he had suffered permanent damage from lack of oxygen to the brain.

  “I didn’t want to do this, Crisfer,” she whispered in Unathi. “You made me. You made me kill, and I’ll never forgive you for that. And you killed Jennie. This is the last time I’ll say I’m sorry.”

  Wiping tears from her face, she walked down to the water’s edge and turned right, following the lake along its eastern shore until the helicopter came into sight, a hulk squatting on the flats near the water, blotting out the stars. Still no sign of any Xin around.

  As she drew closer, she saw the aircraft’s riveted olive plating and the empty rack that had held the missile that killed Jennie. The rack on the other side still contained its deadly cargo.

  So this was a military aircraft; Crisfer probably had gotten it from that base east of SanFran. She climbed up into the forward cockpit and studied the controls. They were complex, but she thought she could figure it out. Then she realized that the machine was programmed to start with triple bios: fingerprint, retina scan, and voice. None of hers worked. He must have found a way to lock it to his own bios somehow. She sighed. It seemed he’d been preparing for this for some time.

  Kala gazed vacantly out at the lake through the curved glass window. The moon wasn’t up yet, and the water glimmered faintly in the dim starlight. She jumped down from the cockpit and carefully examined the ground for footprints. They were mingled with her own coming to the aircraft, and Crisfer’s leading away, but there was another set that started near the cockpit door and led down to the shore, disappearing into the water. She waded in, holding her breath as the water closed over her head. The bottom dropped away and she began to swim, straining to see in the murky dark.

  There—a large, dark blob a few yards away, entangled in the thick weeds at the bottom. She swam toward it and grabbed it, pulling hard as she swam backward and up to the surface.

  She pulled a body from the water and laid it on the sand. She knew it was Liet even before she sat down next to her and wiped wet black hair out of her face. Liet’s eyes were closed and her face was relaxed, as if she had found some sort of peace at the end. Looking more closely with her enhanced vision, Kala could see telltale gray patches on the girl’s face and arms. Her defunct drones clung to her even in death.

  “Oh, Liet,” she whispered. “Oh, my dear. Thank you.”

  Kala sat next to her on the sand for hours, feeling as deeply submerged in pain and grief as she had been just now in the murky water of the lake. As the night wore on, her grief turned to rage. Clenching her fists, she let out a long scream that probably woke up everyone in camp. She slumped forward on the damp sand, pounding it with her fists, crying, “No! No! No!”

  After a while the anger died away too, and she was just empty.

  Early the next morning, as the sun was rising, Kala and Wilm had a huddled discussion. It was decided they should move again immediately. If Crisfer and Liet knew their location, other agents surely knew as well. The news of what had happened here was probably all over the Dronet, and they didn’t know what the other agents might do.

  They discussed how to handle the bodies. In Unathi society, after a ceremony the dead were brought to centers where they could serve science as needed. Here in camp, they had no shovels for grave digging, so they decided on a double cremation for Crisfer and Liet. The smoke column would be massive, but by the time anyone investigated, they should already be far away.

  Realizing that there would be nothing much left of Jennie to bury, they decided not to disturb her remains, but to hold a little memorial for her at the site of the missile strike.

  After a silent, somber breakfast, Kala and Wilm hauled dry pine logs from the forest, dragging them to an open area on the beach. After the pyre was built, they walked back to camp.

  Kala’s drones told her Brandon was still in bed, nursing his cracked ribs. Alex was up for the first time, sitting near the firepit. He held Little Kala on his lap, trying to spoon feed her a mixture of water and fortified powdered milk. The baby ate a little, but mostly cried. Victoria stood next to Alex, stroking the baby’s head. She looked up when Kala and Wilm entered camp, her big green eyes brimming with questions.

  “Brandon won’t eat or talk to anyone,” Alex said quietly.

  Kala nodded and went into the cabin where Brandon lay on his bunk on his good side, facing away from the door. She walked around and crouched down in front of him.

  �
�I am so sorry, Brandon. I have failed you both.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them away. “I hope someday you will forgive me.”

  He said nothing, looking steadily past her, his gaze unfocused.

  “We are going to cremate the Unathi soon,” she said. “Then we will have a memorial service for Jennie.”

  Brandon nodded and Kala helped him stand up and walk gingerly outside.

  Wilm had laid Liet’s body on the table, leaving the wrapping open around her face. He had cleaned her face and hair as best he could. Victoria had found a few small wildflowers and arranged them in Liet’s hair. Crisfer’s body remained where it was last night, still in its wrapping, on the ground at the edge of camp.

  Kala went to Liet and kissed her cold cheek. “Goodbye, my dearest one,” she whispered in Unathi. “I’ll never forget you.”

  She closed the wrapping around Liet’s face, and she and Wilm picked up the two wrapped bodies and carried them to the funeral pyre, the others following slowly. They arranged the bodies carefully on the log platform. Wilm soaked the bodies and the wood with fire starter, and then stepped back.

  Everyone stood still, silently looking at the pyre. The sun had risen higher in the east, its slanted rays lining everything with rosy light.

  Breaking the quiet, Kala began to speak in Unathi, committing Liet and Crisfer to the Oneness. As soon as Crisfer’s name left her lips, she heard Brandon suck in a breath.

  “No!” he shouted, and she stopped. Everyone turned and stared at him, astonished.

  He hobbled over to Kala, clutching his ribs and grimacing in pain. “You will not say words over that killer, that monster,” he yelled in her face. He limped up to the pyre and spat on Crisfer’s corpse. Then he turned and hobbled off toward the burned place in the forest where Jennie had died.

  Kala could hear his strangled sobs. She didn’t say another word, merely exchanged a glance with Wilm, and he set fire to the logs with a long-handled lighter. It caught quickly and the group backed away as the wood crackled and the flames mounted higher.

  Kala led them to the strike site in the forest, leaving the pyre to burn. There would be nothing left of those two beautiful lives but ashes. She wondered how such a terrible thing could be, how they could both be gone from the world.

  At the strike site, the ground was blackened and still warm. Brandon had fallen to his knees and was sobbing, bracing his ribs with one hand and covering his eyes with the other. Kala walked up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He jumped and then grew still, wiping his face.

  Kala nodded to Alex, who closed his eyes and spoke. “Jennie was a good person—decent, loyal and brave. She was loved by everyone who came to know her in her short life. She will be missed terribly. May the good Lord keep her happy and safe in heaven until she can be with her loved ones again someday.”

  Silence fell again, and there was only the sound of Brandon’s breathless weeping. After a time, Kala went to him and helped him up, and they all walked slowly back to camp.

  Kala thought about the humans’ faith, the way they believed in an invisible god and an afterlife as spirits in some unimaginable place. She remembered reading about human religion as part of her studies; it was thought to give them strength to endure their endless suffering. She glanced at Brandon. It didn’t seem to be much comfort to him right now, but maybe it would with time.

  As for her own suffering—there was no comfort for that. She would bear it and go on, as long as she had to. After that, nothing would matter.

  They broke camp as quickly as possible and got on the road. Kala was already exhausted, but it was more her spirit than her body. It was difficult to concentrate, and everything seemed to require a great deal of effort. She tried to plan the route as she drove. They had to find some milk or formula for Little Kala; that was the highest priority. She turned the Jeep west, toward the string of larger towns along NAU-5. The ones they had been doing their best to avoid up until now.

  The following days seemed endless. Kala moved through them like a sleepwalker, dealing with each crisis as it came up and somehow finding the strength to go on, pushing down her sadness, anger and despair. She navigated from empty town to empty town over the dusty, broken roads, skirting around larger communities. At times they were shot at by human survivors or attacked by roving Ghal. It was often quiet in the Jeep; a heavy blanket of misery and grief lay over its occupants, stifling all conversation.

  With Alex’s guidance, Kala sought out drugstores and they searched many that had been looted until they finally found formula and other baby things that made Little Kala more comfortable and everyone’s life much easier.

  The rough, jarring ride was hard on Brandon and he developed a case of pneumonia. They had to camp for a while in an empty RV park on the edge of an abandoned town while they frantically searched doctor’s offices and hospitals for antibiotics. The hospitals were the worst; badly decomposed bodies littered the buildings inside and out, like flotsam washed up by some evil tide. Kala tried not to think of the hope the humans must have harbored in their hearts that had driven them there, only to die alone and untended. At last they found an antibiotic that Brandon responded to, and he started to improve.

  As tired as she was, Kala found it hard to sleep and often wandered out at night, needing to be alone under the stars. She marveled at what her life had become. How different she had become from that innocent girl she had been before the X-crisis, whose biggest decision was which specialty to pursue. That person was someone else, someone who no longer existed. That person could never have harmed another. That person had had no idea how dreadful the world could be.

  She often wondered how she had ended up like this, struggling through a dead world with a scientist and a ragtag group of humans, no longer on the mission and without bondmates. Except for Wilm, she was completely cut off from her own people.

  She was deeply grateful that Wilm had come, and wondered why he had volunteered. When she asked him, he simply said that she was his friend and he didn’t want to lose her. Then he added, “I had a feeling you would need me.”

  “I do,” Kala had said, her eyes filling with tears, and she’d hugged him tightly.

  Kala looked up at the moon, thinking of the night they had jumped from the air train.

  These are my only people now, she thought, and I can’t even protect them. Some Guardian I am.

  She couldn’t figure out any goal except to survive and protect the others. Araka kept reminding her of her “special destiny,” but it meant nothing to her.

  The baby was miserable, hungry and missing her mother, and none of the humans were able to console her. One day Kala took the child uncertainly in her arms and began to rock her. Perhaps because Kala looked something like Jennie with her coloring and dark hair, Little Kala seemed comforted. Her tiny hands patted Kala’s face; her large, dark eyes stared up with every baby’s expression of stark wonder and surprise.

  Kala’s eyes overflowed and she dripped a few tears on Little Kala, then quickly brushed them away. “Don’t worry, sweetness,” she murmured in Unathi. “I’ll protect you. I may fail, but I’ll die trying.”

  Once Brandon was feeling better and Little Kala was eating more, everyone was happier, including Kala. She was a little less miserable, anyway. She began playing with the baby every time they stopped, holding her up on her lap, letting her dig her little toes into Kala’s thighs. She was almost four months old now.

  Brandon watched, thin and pale, smiling. “She really likes you.”

  “Sometimes I think she thinks I am her mother, and I have stopped nursing her for some reason she cannot fathom.”

  He was silent.

  “I am sorry; I should not have said that.” She sighed. “I will never forgive myself for allowing Jennie to die.”

  He sat down next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Kala, you did all you could. No one could have stopped that monster. No one could have done any better, and I’m still grateful to you fo
r all you’ve done.”

  She stared at him. “Then you forgive me?”

  “Hell, I already did—a long time ago.”

  She looked back down at the baby, struggling with conflicting emotions. He put his arm around her and she leaned into his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Chapter 25

  Southern Oregon

  August 8, 2016

  KALA SLOWED THE JEEP. Ahead on the highway, several cars and a pickup truck had collided long ago, and the tangle of rusting wrecks blocked all the northbound lanes.

  They were traveling north on NAU-5, moving into flatter, drier land. There were fewer than a hundred miles left on the electric battery, and Kala was hoping to make it to the outskirts of Eugene and find a place to camp permanently where there was more water and resources to scavenge. But first, they had to get through the long stretch of road ahead, starting with this roadblock.

  Alex scratched his beard. “Can we drive over the divider and cross to the southbound side?” he asked.

  Kala stopped the Jeep and they got out and looked. The southbound lanes lay beyond a short but steep drop and a strip of low, scrubby trees.

  “We could drive back and find a better place to cross,” Alex suggested.

  “Nah, we gotta conserve the juice,” Brandon said. “Looks like we’ll be moving cars again.” He went to get the winch cables out.

  But Kala wouldn’t let him help; he was still weak from his bout of pneumonia. Alex helped her move some vehicles around until they had made a path wide enough for the Jeep to get through. As they worked, she noticed Brandon searching through the wrecks, ignoring the rotted corpses in some of them. He stepped gingerly over a body lying on the road, where it must have been thrown by the collision. It wasn’t much more than a skeleton.

  Brandon gave a hoarse whoop and pulled a small crate from the trunk of one of the cars. “You won’t believe this,” he said, lugging it to the Jeep. “Caviar, pâté, cheese, all that fancy shit. And booze!” He held up a small bottle.