Alone

by Scott Sigler

  Spingate steps out of the crowd. Her breathing is ragged.

  “Em said it’s making us do things,” she says to Kalle. “Is that even possible?”

  Kalle nods. “Definitely. Some parasites can change the behavior of their hosts, force them to do things that seem crazy. Maybe this Grub’s larval phase is parasitic, making the races fight to determine a dominant species, and then, when it’s a nymph, it becomes symbiotic.”

  Tears trickle down Spingate’s face, but she stands tall and stiff. Watching how this news strikes her, it rips my heart into pieces. She’s been hammered down by the guilt of killing Bello; it must be wrenching to hear that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t entirely her fault.

  “But how?” she says. “How could that thing control us?”

  “Maybe some kind of alteration to our neurochemistry,” Kalle answers. “For all we know, it could be releasing spores that infect us, change the way we think and act. Or more likely, it’s some mechanism far beyond our understanding. Em said the Echo claims its species is five hundred million years old. That’s two thousand times longer than humans have even existed. I mean, the Grub’s species could have evolved some form of control we don’t know about, or they could have engineered this ability into their own offspring—like how the Grownups engineered us to survive on Omeyocan when they can’t survive here themselves.”

  Kalle is just guessing. That’s clear to me, clear to everyone. But the matter-of-fact way she describes the possibilities—combined with what Huan and I saw—erodes disbelief.

  And if anyone should believe in intelligent life being modified, if not created from scratch, it is the Birthday Children.

  Someone begins to cry. I can’t see who.

  “But the church,” Borjigin says. “I don’t remember much of it, but…how could the church be steered wrong like that?”

  Still leaning against the throne for support, Huan shakes his fist.

  “Because it was a trick!” His words bounce off the room’s stone walls. “Our religion is a fake. Don’t you get it? The thing below our feet sent a signal, and when the Founder got that signal she founded the church. She made a religion so she could control people!”

  Everyone starts yelling at Huan, or at each other. The Grand Hall is awash in fury and confusion.

  Bishop steps out from the crowd. The crowd immediately quiets down.

  “Whatever this Grub is, we have to kill it,” he says. “If it’s making us do bad things, we must destroy it.”

  Farrar shakes his head. “We don’t dare. Just because we’ve seen it doesn’t mean it’s not really a god. Look what it did to Huan. If that was just a warning, what happens if we make an organized attack against it? I don’t like the idea of making a god mad.”

  He has a point. If I send people down there, they might die, and right now we can’t afford to lose anyone. I’m caught between two threats: the Grub rising and the Wasp army. Because of the Grub, I should get my people out of Uchmal, but we can’t abandon the Goff Spear, not with the Dragon still up there. And the city has walls, cannons on those walls—this is the best place to defend against the Wasps.

  Now Aramovsky shuffles forward, hunched over as if the weight of his past actions is too much to bear.

  “We have to face facts,” he says. “It’s not a real god. And Huan is right. Our church…it’s all make-believe.”

  No one speaks. Not even Walezak. Everyone in this room knows of Aramovsky’s devotion to religion. To hear him say such things is almost as jarring as me talking about the creature below the Observatory in the first place.

  “We can argue all we like, but look into your hearts,” he says. “Look at where we are, what’s happened to us. Everything Em describes matches what we’ve seen with our own eyes. The church…the Founder made it up.”

  Someone else starts to cry. I don’t blame them—I almost want to cry myself. Even though I know what’s happening, the way Aramovsky talks makes everything seem more real.

  The Birthday Children never had a choice.

  And those that didn’t give us a choice, they themselves were duped.

  I’ve never felt so hopeless.

  Bawden steps out of the crowd. She stares at her feet.

  “But that means our parents were tricked,” she says. “Everyone in the church was tricked. How can that be?”

  Aramovsky finally stands straight, addresses everyone with just a hint of his former vocal power.

  “Because the Founder needed to build a ship,” he says. “For that, she needed people. Lots of people. And money. I don’t pretend to know the details, but I can’t deny the truth any longer—the Founder invented a religion so people would follow her blindly, do what she needed them to do. And people fell for it. Thousands of them.”

  A heavy mood settles on the Grand Hall. Heads hang. My people don’t know what to make of any of this. Neither do I. We are in the eye of a storm of madness, trying to comprehend a power that is beyond anything we could know.

  The Grub is a problem we must solve, but as shocking as it seems, right now it is not our biggest problem.

  “No one is to enter those tunnels,” I say. “We’ll deal with the Grub as soon as we can. For now, everyone keep preparing the city defenses. Lahfah, let’s go, we have to ride hard to catch up with Maria.”

  Bishop gawks at me in disbelief.

  “You can’t leave. We have to deal with this, right now.”

  “It will wait,” I say. “If we don’t find out what the Wasps are bringing against us, we might not live long enough to deal with the Grub at all.”

  And on top of that, I just need to go. I need the jungle around me. I need to be free of this place.

  I raise my spear and thump it on the stone dais. The reverberating thunk draws all eyes to me.

  “I’m leaving, immediately. Borjigin, while I’m gone, you’re in command. Bishop, Farrar, Bawden, if anyone tries to go down into the Well, you are to put them in a jail cell. Do you understand?”

  “We understand,” Farrar and Bawden say in unison.

  Bishop glares at me for a moment. I glare back. I won’t give in to what he wants. The church might be fake, but the Wasps are real. We can argue about what the past means after we secure our future, and the only way to do that is to know what’s coming.

  Finally, Bishop nods.

  “I understand,” he says. “What about Aramovsky? Put him back in his cell?”

  I look at Aramovsky. He’s a beaten man. His religion took us to war. His religion caused so many to die. And now he knows, finally and for certain, that his religion was a lie.

  “He’s spent enough time in jail,” I say. “Put him to work.”

  I descend the dais steps and head for the exit. Lahfah joins me.

  I hope we find Maria before we find the Wasps.

  Lahfah and I left near dusk. We rode through the night. The twin moons lit our way as we passed through seemingly endless, overgrown ruins of hexagonal buildings. The sun was just beginning to climb when we finally entered untouched jungle. As big as Uchmal is, it is but a dot in the sprawling expanse of the former Springer city, which is itself but a speck in the infinite jungle.

  It took all of the next day to reach the rendezvous point, where we connected with Maria and the other hurukan riders. They hadn’t found the enemy yet, but they’d seen a big column of smoke on the distant horizon. I gave everyone a quick update on what Huan and I found. No arguments from the riders, no debate—they’re not ignoring my shattering news, but they know that if you don’t pay full attention to the jungle, the jungle can kill you.

  So can the Galanak.

  So can the Wasps.

  We’ll worry about the fake church when we get back. For now, we focus on the dangerous task at hand.

  I ride with Maria on Fenrir. I want Lahfah with me, too, so I changed up the two squads. Demons, Creepers…none of that matters right now. Nedelka Holub, a circle-star girl, rounds out our squad. We’re riding northeast, toward where Mari
a saw the smoke. The other three riders head due north, working their grids.

  Fenrir streaks through the jungle, powerful and silent. I hold tight around Maria’s waist so I don’t slide off and crash into the underbrush.

  Our way seems perpetually blocked by thick trees, dense bushes and dangling vines, yet the hurukan slides past all of it as if the yellow plants and brown trunks are mist, as insubstantial as the projected image of my father. I’ve taken hundreds of spiderback rides through the jungle, but there is a huge difference between riding a machine and being on the back of a powerful predator.

  Lahfah is off to our left, flashing in and out of the jungle’s cover. Nedelka is somewhere on our right. I hope she’s keeping up.

  The Grub…I saw it, yet I can still scarcely believe it. What are we going to do? Huan could have died. We could send people down with guns, but my instincts tell me that will get them killed. My false father said the Grub couldn’t defend itself, but it did.

  No…he said it couldn’t defend itself against all attacks.

  What did that mean?

  Fenrir cuts sharply left, banking around a thick stump caked with blue moss, and my butt slides to the right. I start to slip, but Maria reaches behind her and shoves me back into place. She’s so strong. A year in the jungle, a year taming these beasts…it has made her a different person.

  She talks to me over her shoulder.

  “You loosened your grip. Did your mind wander?”

  I’m embarrassed, but I tell the truth. “It did.”

  “Pay attention. Hold on tighter. You’re not going to break me. If you fall off and die, Bishop will have my head.”

  I do as I’m told. We’re just riding, but it feels good to hold Maria tight.

  The jungle envelops me. She’s right, I need to focus. And unlike an all-powerful alien baby, this is something I can actually control: war. Our enemy is out here somewhere.

  Maria leans back, pulls on the reins. Fenrir instantly slows—I can’t believe something so big can stop so quickly, so smoothly. Up ahead, Lahfah and her mount silently slip through a pair of wide yellow leaves and come toward us. The muscles of Lahfah’s mount ripple beneath its tawny fur. The long trunk is raised high. I can see its pink nostrils flaring open and closed.

  D’souza sniffs the air.

  “We’re close,” she says.

  I inhale deeply. It’s faint, but I smell it, too—the unforgettable odor of burned Springer flesh.

  Lahfah’s lithe mount stops next to ours. Nedelka and her hurukan melt out of the jungle without a sound, join us.

  “Smoke smell old,” Lahfah says quietly. “Fire dead?”

  We scan the trees above us, but there is no trace of smoke.

  “The fire must have burned out,” Maria says. “But if we can still smell it, we can find it. Spread out. Stay in visual distance.”

  She leans forward, scratches the side of Fenrir’s furry head. The snake trunk curls back toward her. Even though Maria said the beast “likes” me, I can’t help but flinch away from those lethal pincers.

  “Fenrir, my lovely,” Maria says. “Do you smell that? Smell?”

  The little nostrils on the trunk’s end open and close, open and close. The pincers clack together twice—Maria has taught it that one means “no,” and two means “yes.” These animals are not only big and lethal, they are smart.

  “Good boy,” she says, then sits up. “Em, you better hold on for real this time.”

  I wrap my arms tight around her stomach. Not that long ago, Maria D’souza was just a circle—an “empty,” like me. She taught herself the Springer language. She tamed these huge animals. She became a strong leader. I love Bishop with all my heart and respect his abilities as our greatest warrior, but Maria D’souza is my hero.

  She snaps the reins.

  “Fenrir, seek!”

  And with that, the beast plunges through the jungle.

  Since I awoke in my coffin, I’ve seen so many horrors.

  But nothing like this.

  The four of us stand side by side at the edge of a burned-out Springer village. A small stream runs through the center. Seven or eight bodies are piled up in that stream like a log jam. Water flows up and around the corpses, carrying with it streaks of blue blood and clumps of ash.

  Thin wisps of smoke curl from blackened boards and timbers. Even ten strides away, even though the fire has been out for hours, we still feel the heat.

  I don’t know if the wooden buildings were built after Barkah and I made peace, or if this place is far enough away from Uchmal’s spiders that these Springers never had to live below ground. I don’t think it matters. The village is broken: burned-out huts, smashed pottery, scattered muskets and hatchets.

  And bodies. So many bodies…

  Most of the corpses smolder, blackened and scorched by the same fires that leveled this place. The smell of charred flesh is so strong that I press my mouth against my inner elbow, try to breathe through the thick fabric of my coveralls.

  Some of the bodies are whole. Others are in pieces, blown apart by bullets or hacked up by blades. A few are smashed into bloody piles of flesh and clothing—something big ran them over. Wide, parallel, ankle-deep trenches run through dirt, mud, burned wood, even the bodies themselves.

  “Are those truck tracks?” Maria asks. “Like maybe they have a Big Pig?”

  No one answers her.

  All the colors of the Springers are represented among the corpses: blue adults, purple teenagers, red children. Some of the corpses are so small I could hold them with one hand.

  These were civilians. This wasn’t a battle—it was a slaughter.

  Lahfah speaks in Springer. Maria and Nedelka listen closely. I’m the only one here not fluent in that language.

  “What did she say?” I ask Maria.

  “She said this is the work of…the best translation is barbarians. Lahfah has experienced war. Even before we came, the Springer tribes fought with each other. She’s never seen anything like this. She says it’s like the stories handed down from her ancestors about the destruction of their big city.”

  From when Matilda’s machines attacked. From when my kind came from the sky and wiped out everything they could find, murdering thousands.

  Now the Wasps are doing the same thing.

  If they’ll do it to the Springers, they’ll do it to us.

  It’s easy to see where the attack came from. The tracks stretch northeast into the jungle. Trees were cut down—long fallen trunks stretch away from either side of the path; squat stumps lie between the parallel tracks.

  And it’s easy to see where they went: southwest, toward Uchmal.

  Nedelka’s hurukan stirs, tries to turn back to the jungle. She snaps on the reins, keeps her mount in place.

  “We should head back to Uchmal,” she says, her voice quavering. “This is horrible.”

  Maria looks at me, waits for my orders.

  “We have to know what we’re up against,” I say. “Follow them.”

  We don’t know exactly how many troopships landed, but we do know they carried more than just soldiers.

  A year ago, I was with O’Malley. Aramovsky had won the election and become leader. He’d taken my spear. He’d sent me out—alone—to talk to the Springers, hoping I would fail, hoping I would die. O’Malley snuck away from the others, risked his life to be by my side.

  O’Malley wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t good in the jungle. He had nothing to offer other than his love.

  I miss him so much.

  He was with me when we felt the ground shaking, when I climbed the tallest tree I could find and saw the long lines of the advancing Springer army. That sight made me feel like my people had no hope.

  I am again high up in a tree, looking out at an army—but this time, the enemy I see is far more terrifying.

  Nedelka is on the other side of this ridge, watching our mounts. Maria and Lahfah are in the tree with me. The tree is halfway up a steep hill, not at the t
op, where we’d be more visible against the backdrop of a darkening sky.

  Because if we’re seen, we’re dead.

  Utter destruction marches through the valley below us. Six huge armored vehicles roll along in a single-file column, their flat treads leaving the now-familiar parallel tracks. They are terrifying machines, much larger than our spiders. And so loud; we heard them long before we got close, which let us move off their trail and through the jungle so we weren’t seen by rear scouts. The rolling hulks are painted in irregular stripes of yellow and brown. Each of them has a cannon mounted on an armored turret, long barrel pointing forward like the stinger of a deadly insect.

  “I think I know what those are,” Maria says. “Tranks. No…tanks.”

  The lead vehicle has a horizontal saw mounted on its front. The column of tanks weaves around the biggest trunks, but most of the trees are simply mown down.

  Far to the left and right of the tanks are machines similar to our spiders, also painted in jagged streaks of yellow and brown. These are fatter, though, with eight long legs instead of five.

  Maria points to the one closest to us.

  “Em, do you remember what a tick looks like?”

  The word stirs up Matilda’s memories. The eight-legged machines do look a bit like those nasty insects.

  We count twelve “ticks.” Four groups of three: one group far out front, a group on either side, and a group in the rear.

  Behind the tanks are six lightly armored trucks, similar to Big Pig. These look like they are made to carry cargo more than fight—food, weapons and ammunition, I assume.

  Each truck tows something that disturbs me deeply—the biggest cannons I’ve ever seen. The black barrels are long and thick. They strike me as oversized rifles or muskets—I’m guessing they fire projectiles instead of energy. Big projectiles, by the looks of things.

  Tanks, supplies, artillery…and infantry. Wasp foot soldiers seem to fill the valley below me, their armor blending with the vines and trees. If they weren’t moving, I’m not sure I’d see them at all. They carry deadly rifles like the ones we faced in the city battle. A few of them carry thicker, fatter rifles that are as big as the soldiers themselves.