The Colony Book 2: Revolution

Chapter 3-2

Life in the Colony had not prepared me for what I saw on the other side of the dunes. I had some vague notion of what buildings had looked like before the war—tall skyscrapers, all metal and glass, hemmed in close on blocks surrounded by streets paved with asphalt. Though the Colony had no streets, there were white sidewalks between the white buildings, and almost colorless sand filled any empty spaces. I had assumed whatever lay beyond the Colony would be fashioned in much the same way. Whoever designed our world had to draw inspiration from somewhere, right?

Well, whatever might have inspired those who created the Colony was long gone. In its place was rubble strewn amid crumbling walls and littered streets. The pavement had deteriorated into chunks of gray, scattered across what must have once been flat, open roads. Poles leaned dangerously above us, some trailing dead wires like limp hair. A few buildings rose from the mess, but only a story or two above the ground; then the roofs caved in and the walls tumbled down, leaving only broken rooms exposed to the elements.

As we crested the dunes, I felt as if the war hadn’t happened hundreds of years ago but last week, and the remains stretching before us were what was left after bombs had decimated the population.

One thought raced around my head, crowding out all others. We left the Colony for this?

“Where is everybody?” Kyer asked, his hand tightening in mine.

Sinda threw us a sardonic look over her shoulder. “Hiding. Don’t worry, though. They’re watching you. Make any sudden moves and you’ll be surprised how fast they take you down.”

I didn’t ask who “they” were. I didn’t want to know.

Instead, I asked, “Where exactly are you taking us?”

“Somewhere we can eat in peace.” Her voice dipped down to disappear on the word eat, but I read her lips as she mouthed it. If we were being watched like she said we were, I was sure someone else read the word, too. I looked around in concern, afraid of being attacked, but we were still alone.

For now.

Sindra stepped quickly down a rubble-strewn path, moving with unusual grace and speed. She didn’t pick her way through the mess so much as walk on top of it, and I had to let go of Kyer’s hand so we could follow her example single-file. As we walked, I felt Kyer’s touch on my lower back, then my shoulder, then my hip, trying to keep his balance as he kept up with me. When Sinda moved too far ahead, I called out in the hope of drawing her back to us. “Is the whole city like this?”

She stopped on what remained of an old sign, facedown on the street where it must have fallen from a nearby storefront. “This is nothing,” she said with a laugh. “You should see downtown. They strafed the hell out of that back in the day.”

“There she goes talking all weird again,” Kyer muttered.

I didn’t know what the word strafe meant, or what day she was referring to, or even where downtown might have been. In the Colony, our homes had been downtown, below the business sector. Hoping to find some common ground between us, I asked, “Is that where everyone lives?”

“You live where you can,” Sinda said. She started moving again, leaping from the sign to a small stretch of concrete sidewalk that seemed almost intact as long as I didn’t look too closely at the cracks spidering across it. “I have a pallet at Old Faye’s place. Don’t think she has room for you, but we’ll see. Maybe she knows of a place you can bed down. You only need one, right?”

“One what?” Kyer asked.

Sinda shook her head as she waited for us to catch up. “One bed, jeez. You said you two were together, right?”

Actually, what I had said was he was my Other, but I didn’t really feel like explaining what that meant to her, particularly since then she might realize it wasn’t quite the full truth. “Yeah, we are,” I just said, and Kyer nodded in agreement.

“Then you can bed together,” Sinda told us. “Just don’t do it where the rest of us can hear.”

I reached the sidewalk and stopped. A moment later, I left Kyer’s hands on my hips as he came up behind me. “Is s*x the only thing everyone talks about out here?” I wanted to know.

“s*x and food,” Sinda said with a shrug. “I mean, seriously, what else is there?”

I never thought I would admit it, but I was beginning to miss the Colony more with each passing minute.

Running ahead, Sinda leaped onto the back of an old-fashioned vehicle. It was a truck of some sort, with an open back like a metal bed. Using it as a stepping stone, she jumped onto a low wall, then vaulted onto the roof of a nearby shed. “Come on,” she told us, waiting until I jumped into the truck before moving on.

“We’re going to lose her,” Kyer warned.

I wondered if that might not be her plan. Worse, I thought it might not be such a bad thing, either. At least then we wouldn’t have to share our food.

But just as I climbed onto the wall, I heard the squeal of rusted metal and saw a door swing open on the upper floor of a building not far from the shed. Sinda ducked inside, then pivoted in the doorway to wait for us. “Come on,” she said again. Then, almost mouthing the words, she lowered her voice and added, “I’m hungry already.”

So much for her not wanting our food.

Kyer helped me up onto the shed’s roof, and I stooped to pull him up beside me. Then we jumped over the gap between the shed and the other building, where Sinda waited. As she pushed the door open wider, I grimaced at the painful sound the hinges made. “What is this place?” I asked, following her inside.

“The way to Old Faye’s,” she explained. “Really it’s sort of the back way in. It’s a bit convoluted but it’s better than just waltzing in the front door.”

Inside, a narrow catwalk led down a steep flight of metal stairs. Sinda took them rapid-fire, her boot heels echoing off the steps with a crazy rat-tat sound. Kyer and I followed more slowly, careful. “Better how?” Kyer asked.

“Better in a lot of ways,” Sinda said. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

I sort of did, but I didn’t think she’d tell us until she wanted to. So we let her lead us through a maze made up of rows of boxes stacked so high, we couldn’t see over them. A lingering smell of rotting food hovered over us—whatever had been in the boxes once had spoiled a long time ago, leaving behind nothing more than traces of unpleasantness. “What is this place?” I asked.

Sinda didn’t respond. Ahead, a metal door stretched to the ceiling; she stopped and yanked it open, displaying a maw of darkness within.

“Where are we?” I asked.

She threw me a withering look. “You talk too much, you know that?”

“I only wanted to know—”

“It wouldn’t matter if you did,” she shot back. “This is all new to you, right? You’ve never been here before. You’re from ‘the island’.”

The way she said it made a mockery of the place, and a dull anger flashed through me. When she stepped through the metal door, I stood my ground. Kyer bumped into me, but when he saw I wasn’t moving, he stopped, too.

I crossed my arms in front of my chest and waited for Sinda to turn around and see we weren’t following any longer. Then she’d come back and apologize. She’d beg us to come along—we had food, didn’t we? We had something she needed. I wasn’t going to be treated like this, not by someone we just met.

She disappeared into the darkness. Long moments passed. “We should follow her,” Kyer murmured softly.

“Just wait,” I told him.

A full minute later, Sinda’s voice carried back to us. “Come on or don’t, I don’t give a s**t. But at least shut the door so the rats don’t get in.”

Rats.

I had seen mentioned of the rodents in the Archives, of course. Vicious, disease-carrying vermin, with beady eyes and sharp teeth, and an almost supernatural resistance to fear. Before the war, rats had been a pestilence, and had even been known to attack humans.

The thought of rats crawling through the maze of boxes towards us goaded me into action. Taking Kyer’s hand, I surged through the door and into the darkness beyond.

Kyer started, “I thought you said…”

“Just come on,” I told him.

Sand fleas. Rats. This place was looking worse by the minute.