Free The Soterion Mission by Stewart Ross Page B

he replied, brushing her ear with his lips as he spoke.
    She smiled and felt for his hand. Not long afterwards, still holding on to each other, they fell asleep.

    By the morning of the fourth day, the mission had eaten nearly all the food they had brought with them from Della Tallis. At lower altitude, there were plenty of wild fruits and berries; now the land was less fertile and the vegetation thinner. Taja’s skill as an archer meant they did not go hungry: she bagged a couple of plump rabbits that they skinned and roasted over an open fire lit with Cyrus’ flint and steel. Although the meat was nourishing and tasted good, the process took time and there was always a danger that the smoke would be seen by prowling Zeds.
    Corby had no such worries. He loved being in the open all day long, optimistically chasing birds, growling at snakes from a safe distance, and munching happily on the many bones he found lying about in the increasingly bleak landscape. He didn’t realise it, of course, but it was this bone-hunting that brought about a sudden and dramatic change in the group’s fortunes.

    Around mid-morning on the fourth day of the mission, Corby came bounding up to Navid with his latest snack firmly between his teeth. His master glanced at him and smiled. “Good boy, Corby! Got yourself a nice something to chew on, have you?”
    Navid stopped and looked at the bone again. Hang on a bit! That wasn’t from a wolf or even a deer. It looked more like…He called the others to take a look. Yes, there was no mistaking it. The dog was gnawing away at human thighbone.
    “Where’d you find it, Corby?” Navid asked, pointing at the bone. For once, the dog did not understand. Navid tried again. “Same!” he cried. “Go find! Bone!”
    Corby looked at him as if wondering whether he should reveal the whereabouts of his secret larder, then set off across the rocky ground to their right. Keeping a wary eye open for danger, Navid followed.
    Soon afterwards, the rest of the party heard him shouting. “Hey, Cy! Taja! Roxanne! Come and look at this! Quick! It’s amazing!”
    Navid was standing next to Corby on the rim of a small and shallow canyon, staring down into it. When the others joined him, they gasped in astonishment. Below, less than five hundred paces away, single-storey huts were ranged round a large hall. Nearby, glinting in the sunlight, was what looked like a gigantic mirror. All around, right across the floor of the canyon, stretched neat, bright green gardens in which men and women were working. Near the hall, children were playing, their shrill cries carrying easily up to where the mission stood in open-mouthed amazement.
    “It’s sort of…sort of how they say things were before the Great Death!” gasped Navid. “Like we’re looking at a little dream world. There aren’t any guards, either. I don’t understand. Why haven’t the Zeds got them?”
    Cyrus’ gaze moved from the huts and the garden to where the greenery suddenly ended. The abrupt boundary was marked by a wire fence as tall as two men, and the ground immediately beyond it was piled high with hundreds of human skeletons. Half a dozen bodies were sprawled across the bones. The corpses mummified rapidly in the dry heat, and two of these grizzled remains, which had lain there about a month or so, retained a layer of dried skin. It was from the leg of one of these that Corby had stolen his macabre breakfast.
    “Skeletons,” said Cyrus, speaking more to himself than to the others. “Human skeletons. Dozens and dozens, and they’re…”
    “All Zeds!” finished Taja with unusual enthusiasm. “At least, some of them are. Look at that one there, on top of the heap,” she cried, pointing eagerly. “It still has flesh on it, and the one next to it – you can see the tattoo from here!”
    Roxanne frowned and instinctively traced with her forefinger the ugly Z-shaped scar on her forehead.
    “Well, I suggest we go down there and find out