Strangers Among Us

by Kelley Armstrong

  “We’ll do exactly as you say. Okay?” He plastered a smile on his face.

  The old woman wiped her face with her dupatta and stood still, gazing into the distance.

  Tanvi gathered more wood, moving slowly, stumbling over roots and stumps. She placed the fuel in small piles around the periphery of their camp. Jai thought he heard a soft scream as Tanvi put a match to each pile of wood but her expression remained blank as she lit them, one after another. Jai said nothing. If she didn’t hear it, then surely his ears were ringing.

  When all the fires—in the centre and around the periphery—burned brightly, Tanvi spread a threadbare blanket and made Kanika lie down. “Rest, Granny. I’ll be watching and the fires will keep us safe.”

  For a while. If Tanvi expected the fires to burn all night, she’d collected a woefully small pile of fuel.

  Kanika kissed her granddaughter’s forehead, then knelt clumsily and prayed, tears sliding down her face from under her eyelids. Jai felt a pang. Kanika was so old and yet so childlike. He hoped he’d never live to see this age, or this illness.

  He’d try to be gentler with her.

  “Help me keep the fires burning through the night,” said Tanvi, yawning till her jaws cracked. “And don’t let me fall asleep, please.” She untied her headband and shook out her hair. It was thick and black, cascading over her shoulders to her waist—the only beautiful thing about her.

  “You look tired,” said Jai. “A couple of hours sleep would do you good.”

  “No!” said Tanvi, sharply. “You city folk have no idea what you’re dealing with. If you get killed, there’ll be no one to help me get Granny to Camp. Gaia is watching and at the first opportunity, she will strike.”

  “I’ve heard all the stories about this place, but that’s all they are,” said Jai. “Toxic e-waste and carelessness have destroyed this forest, but you cannot seriously expect me to believe it comes alive and kills people.”

  “So you think everything you’ve heard is made-up?” She slumped heavily to the ground beside the fire.

  “Yes.” It felt good to respond honestly.

  “You believe what you want and let me do the same.” Tanvi yawned so hard, her eyes closed. After a moment, her head began to nod.

  “Tanvi?” said Jai,

  Tanvi’s head shot up. “Sorry.” She shook herself and walked about, staggered and almost tripped over her grandmother.

  “Sit down and talk,” ordered Jai. “It’ll keep you awake.”

  Reluctantly, Tanvi sat on the ground.

  “How long has your grandmother been like this?”

  Tanvi stared into the fire. “Three years. Give or take.”

  “And how did her dementia start?” While she talked, Jai patrolled the area just beyond the clearing. The fires burned bright, shredding the darkness with orange spears of light. He kept his back to the flames so as not to degrade his night vision. By now this place should be alive with nocturnal creatures but there was not a single yowl, roar, or screech. The silence was deafening, unnerving. A gaunt yellow moon hung in the sky, tinging the landscape in a sickly light. The air smelled and tasted foul, like something from the belly of a rusted machine.

  “Help!” someone called out.

  It was so faint, Jai barely heard it at first. He walked a few steps away from the clearing and listened hard.

  “Help!”

  Jai couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman but someone was in trouble. Could it be a villager he’d somehow missed?

  No, he was sure he hadn’t—

  Wait. The only reason he’d heard the cry was because of the silence.

  He walked back to the clearing. Tanvi was fast asleep, curled up in a foetal position on the ground. There were dark circles under her eyes and she looked dead to the world.

  Crap. There was no point in trying to wake her.

  “Please help me!”

  Jai turned and ran.

  The voice came from somewhere nearby. The women would be fine for a few minutes. He had to bring the other survivor back to the campsite.

  Even as he hurried in the direction of the swamp, dread grew in him. He shook it off. This was just a forest. Nothing but trees, bushes, and a swamp. No witchcraft, or ghosts.

  He reached the edge of the water. It was shimmery and viscous in the light of the yellow moon—like molten green lava. Bubbles rose to the surface and popped, releasing a stench so foul, Jai almost gagged.

  “Who’s there?” he called out, jamming his nose into the crook of his arm, taking shallow breaths. “Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you!”

  “Welcome,” a voice whispered.

  And then someone shoved him from behind.

  “Hey—” He fell, twisting to try to save himself, onto the surface of the swamp. He sank, his skin burning as the muddy water rushed over him.

  He managed to scream just once before he went under.

  Scorching mud seared Jai’s nose, his ears, oozed between his tightly-closed eyelids. His body convulsed as an electrical storm of images assaulted his brain—crying babies, a woman’s gang-rape, snarling dogs, a recipe for roast chicken, a group of men dressed in orange decapitated on a lonely beach, an earthquake, an air-crash, a tsunami—as if he’d been plugged into a gigantic mainframe downloading millions of terabytes of data into him all at once, erasing his own memory—

  Jolts of electricity pulsed through him. An x-ray image of the banyan tree imprinted itself on his neural network: millions of lines of code flowing down through leaves, trunk, roots, and into the soil and swamp, seeping through the earth for miles around.

  God.

  Kanika and Tanvi had spoken the truth.

  He’d been the fool. Gaia was—just as they’d described her—intelligent and malevolent.

  How? How . . .?

  And Gaia provided the answer to his question.

  Over the years, Jai, remnants of data from improperly discarded computers seeped into the land. My land. Me. I absorbed it. Assimilated it. Put it to use.

  A few more seconds and his brain would short-circuit. He couldn’t remember his own name.

  The harder he thrashed, the more data barreled through his head. His skin was on fire. His lungs burned from holding his breath.

  Don’t be scared, Jai. Relax. It will be over in seconds.

  No! I don’t want to die. Let me go!

  Be a man, Jai. Join us.

  And in the background were a cacophony of sounds: mouse clicks, whirring of camera shutters, bits of songs in various languages, and hundreds of cell ring-tones. If only he could plug his ears—but he could barely move his hands through the viscous mud.

  He flailed about and caught something solid.

  His brain lit up with an image—the skeleton of an elephant. He let go, choking back the urge to scream. More skeletons, human and animal, buried in the mud, surrounded him.

  Something with form but no substance grasped his right arm and twisted. Pain ignited his bones.

  With every ounce of strength in him, he clawed at the mud to reach the surface.

  Tidal waves of data crashed over, in, and through him.

  His heart slammed against his ribcage and blackness gnawed at the edges of his consciousness.

  Then—

  He thrashed free of the mud and raised his good arm above the surface. It connected with the tip of something hard.

  “Hold on to the branch!”

  Tanvi’s voice, barely audible over Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

  “Jai!” Tanvi yelled louder. “Grab the branch.”

  Gritting his teeth, Jai raised both arms and clasped the branch.

  His right arm throbbed and his skin felt freshly-ironed.

  He held on and was pulled forward.

  Jai’s head popped above the surface and he took a deep breath. The foul air had never tasted sweeter. He could barely open his eyes.

  His ears rang. But he focused on the words he wanted, needed, to hear.

  �
�Hold on, Jai.” Tanvi’s voice was close. “Don’t let go.”

  Jai swiped the mud from his eyes and managed to crack them open.

  Tanvi and Kanika stood at the edge of the swamp, barely a foot away, trying to haul him in.

  Mud sucked at him, like long, grasping fingers, trying to draw him under.

  Jai clung to the branch and fought his way to shore.

  At last, Gaia relinquished her hold with a soft sigh. Jai, with Tanvi’s help, dragged himself away from the swamp and lay, gasping for breath.

  Kanika held a burning branch above him. When he managed to struggle to his feet, dripping with swamp mud, the old woman slapped him. “You abandoned us and fell under Gaia’s spell,” said Kanika, spit flecking her lips, her eyes livid. “We should have let you die.” The old woman whirled and stomped back to camp.

  What!

  Mad with pain, Jai stumbled after her.

  A faint giggle burbled from the swamp.

  He glanced over his shoulder as he ran, his skin crawling and his heart stuttering. Gaia was going to drag him back in—

  No . . .

  The banyan tree stood still. But Jai would never forget the image he’d seen. Every part of it—the leaves, the trunk and especially the roots—now looked ominous.

  “What happened?” Wiping the mud from her hands, Tanvi fell into step beside him as he stumbled through the forest.

  “Who pushed me into the swamp?” Jai snarled, cradling his sprained arm to his chest. “Did your mad grandmother do it? If I find out it’s her—”

  “Don’t talk like an idiot,” Tanvi snapped. “Don’t you get it? We’re trying to keep you alive. Now, let’s get back to camp and clean you up. Then we’ll talk.”

  Her words shut him up.

  Once they reached the clearing, Tanvi made him strip down. Every inch of his skin was red and raw, as if he’d been doused in acid. Using some of the water Jai had carried with him, she washed off as much mud as she could. Jai took a deep swig and gargled, trying to wash the taste of the swamp out his mouth, but the burnt metallic taste was lodged deep in his throat. He dressed in his spare uniform and threw away the soiled clothes. Luckily his boots had been laced tight and he hadn’t lost them. Tanvi put his sprained arm into a sling she made from her own dupatta.

  All this while, Kanika sat by the fire, rocking back and forth, singing to herself.

  “Why would you want to kill me?” Jai sank down beside the fire, hugging his knees, and spoke to the old woman, unable to control the trembling in his voice. “I’m trying to help you.”

  The old woman stopped singing and stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time.

  “Tell us what happened,” said Tanvi.

  “I heard someone call for help,” said Jai. “The voice came from near the swamp. I was standing at the edge when someone whispered ‘welcome’ and pushed me in.”

  “I had no idea she’d be powerful enough to lure you to her,” said Tanvi. “This is very bad.”

  “Lure me?” snapped Jai. “It must have been your grandmother.”

  Without a word, Tanvi knelt behind him. She put a hand on the small of his back. “Did it feel like this?”

  Jai jerked upright, as if goosed by a branding iron. Even though the forest was steamy, it felt as if he’d been doused in ice water. The pressure of a human hand was not what he’d felt.

  The banyan had been behind him.

  Shit! He was going as stark raving mad as these women.

  But . . . no. They were right. “We have to get out of here.” Jai crawled to his feet. Pain snaked through his arm and exploded in his head. He staggered.

  “You’re in no condition to walk,” said Tanvi. “Rest first. Then we’ll move. You’re right though, we have to get out.”

  “No! Now!” A wave of vomit surged out of his mouth—green, and stinking of burnt metal and plastic.

  When the contents of his stomach were on the ground, Jai huddled close to the fire, shivering. He was so tired. He would close his eyes for just a few moments . . . just a few.

  Then they’d get out of this forest and never return.

  When Jai awoke, the sun was high in the sky and his clothes were plastered to his skin. The fires around him still burned. Tanvi must have been up all night, collecting wood.

  A deadly thirst raged in him and he sat up, searching for his canteen. His swollen arm lit up with a fiery pain and he fell back weakly, tears springing to his eyes. How was he going get out of here if he couldn’t even sit up?

  And where were Kanika and Tanvi?

  Ignoring the pain, he tried again to sit up and this time he succeeded.

  Both were gone. So were his backpack, machine-gun and the water canteens.

  They’d abandoned him. Of course. He was weak and injured, and would probably slow them down. If it hadn’t been for his orders, he’d have done the same to them. But they had no such constraints.

  A primal fear he’d not known existed, devoured all coherent thought and reason. He opened his mouth and yelled. “Tanvi!”

  The silent forest swallowed his voice.

  “Kanika!”

  Only the swamp whispered, in voices old and young, calling out to him. Jai’s stomach shriveled and his scalp shrank. With a sprained arm, no food, water or weapon, there was no way he’d be able to escape. He would die here.

  God, no. He wanted desperately to live.

  He thought of Kanika. How he’d looked at her. Contempt, that was the word. With every gesture, he’d given her a clear message that she was a complete waste of air. And Tanvi, with her speech impediment and deformity, who knew she was useless in today’s fast-paced world.

  Could he blame them for having done the same? Shame coursed through him.

  Almost blacking out, he struggled to his feet, hugging his right arm to his chest. He was a soldier. He’d had survival training. He would survive. He must survive.

  Jai laboured up the hill to get his bearings. He was leaving, and to hell with Kanika and Tanvi. They’d left him to die. All right, then. He would do the same.

  At the top, Jai took a moment to catch his breath. Shading his eyes, he scanned the horizon.

  Crap, no!

  The swamp was now to the left of the banyan instead of its right. The tree had moved while he slept or he’d gone insane. Now he’d completely lost his bearings. Without the GPS, he was sunk. He might be able to navigate by the stars, but the thought of spending one more night here, alone, sent his pulse racing.

  He stumbled back to camp on shaky legs, sank down by the fire and sobbed. He could not remember when he’d cried this hard before. He couldn’t stop.

  Something touched his shoulder. Jai screamed and fell back, almost tumbling into the flames. There was Tanvi, her face grimy, laden with parcels wrapped in soiled linen.

  And—all his equipment.

  Beside her stood Kanika, looking even more disheveled and wild than before.

  “Is the pain so unbearable?” said Tanvi, concern in her soft brown eyes.

  “Where—where did you go?” Jai managed to stammer, swiping at his eyes.

  “We went back to the village to get my special medicine which you refused to let me take earlier,” said Kanika. “For your arm.”

  “We had to take all your stuff with us,” said Tanvi. “Had we left it here, Gaia would have got it, one way or another. We knew you’d be safe as long as you stayed within the ring of fire.”

  “You . . . were planning to come back?”

  “Did you think we’d abandoned you?” she asked shrewdly, studying him.

  For a moment, Jai could not speak.

  Tanvi shrugged, her mouth quirking into a small, forgiving smile. She lowered her parcels to the ground.

  “The banyan is not where it was last night,” said Jai. “It moved. The freakin’ tree picked up its roots and walked while I slept or . . .” He stopped. He sounded nuts, even to himself. “I’m telling the truth.” This must be how they felt when he refused to be
lieve them.

  “Gaia loves to move around. To confuse people who try to leave,” said Kanika, busying herself opening up one of the parcels. “I told you she was smart.”

  Jai took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice steady. “So then, how do we get out of here?”

  “I told you before, but you weren’t listening,” said Tanvi. “This is Granny’s backyard, and she knows every inch of the forest. The path to the next village is imprinted up here.” Tanvi tapped her temple. “She may not remember our names in the next five minutes, but she remembers the way out. She could do it blind-folded even if all the physical landmarks rearranged themselves. In that respect, she’s special.”

  “Lay down,” Kanika said, smearing a sweet-smelling paste on her hands.

  Jai lay on the ground. The old woman’s touch was gentle and healing.

  He hadn’t noticed it before, but the earth seemed to be thrumming with a kind of manic energy, a current that flowed just under the surface, waiting for an opportunity to erupt.

  Gaia now had all the knowledge and data that humans had discarded. She had no reason to keep the humans who’d poisoned her, alive.

  Jai looked into Kanika’s old eyes as she slathered a poultice over his arm, bound it in stiff cardboard and retied the sling around his neck using Tanvi’s dupatta. She gave him something to dull the pain, and Jai felt sleep steal over him again.

  Kanika sang an ancient Hindi song softly, as she sat beside him.

  Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai (Today, once again, I want to live.)

  Aaj phir marne ka irada hai (Today, once again, I’m going to die.)

  He drifted off, clutching her frail hand tightly. As if he’d never let go.

  SONGBUN

  Derwin Mak

  KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  PYONGYANG, April 15, Juche 116 (Foreign Year 2027)

  Our Dear Leader has announced revisions to the songbun system to improve the coordination of Korean society to repel the invasion from the South. All songbun records will be consolidated in a new state office, the Ministry of Genealogical Records. All persons, except for those with Hostile songbun, will have the right to apply for revision of their songbun based on war service.