Free Survival Colony 9 by Joshua David Bellin Page B

colony of giant ants.
    “The old woman told me it was beautiful,” Korah said. “But I don’t think she really wanted to remember. Not like the others. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded of what was gone.”
    I turned to look at her. She held her head high, and she watched me with the look of determination I’d gotten so used to seeing in camp. But in the second before I dropped my gaze, I thought I saw tears glistening in her incredible blue eyes.
    “I’d give anything to get my memory back,” I said.
    “That’s what you think.” Her voice was gentle, but her words cut through me. “But that’s because you haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”
    I felt my heart thudding. “What have you seen?”
    “I’ve never told anyone this,” she said. “Not Wali, not my mom. Not anyone. They wouldn’t understand. My mom says I have to get used to horror if I want to be an officer someday.” I saw the proud tilt of her head. “I want to be an officer. I plan to be an officer. But horror is just horror. It doesn’t make you strong. It only makes you dead inside.”
    She turned from me to talk into the night. I watched her profile behind the curve of her hair, caught her words as they formed and fell from her perfect lips.
    “It was four years ago,” she said. “I had just turned twelve. Some people don’t keep track of dates, but I do. I was out training when I saw the officers come into camp with something wrapped in a blanket. Laman was there, and Petra, and Tyris, and a couple of others. My mom was working on the trucks, my dad was out scouting. I figured I’d tag along and see what was up.”
    She smiled humorlessly. “I was pretty stealthy even then. No one saw me. I watched them deposit the thing in Laman’s tent, and I got close enough to see through a rip in the fabric. They were unwrapping a body. Except it wasn’t a body, not completely. They must have caught the creature just as it got inside. Before it had a chance to take control. It was half-human, with arms and legs and a head. But the rest of it was . . .”
    I couldn’t stop myself from staring at her. “What?”
    “A horror.” She turned back to me, her eyes entirely dry. “It had taken over the man’s face, and it was like a mouth, except the wrong way. Up and down instead of side to side. Like it had torn him open from forehead to chin and then tried to knit him back together before they killed it. The whole body was like that, from his face down his chest. It was burned, parts of it had melted. The hands mostly. Those parts were red and scaly, but the rest of it was gray. A color nothing like anybody’s skin. The color your skin would be if you drained it of all color.”
    I tried to imagine that grotesque skin, but all I could see were Korah’s bronzed cheeks, her dazzling eyes.
    “And there was no blood,” she said. “Tyris poked around inside it for a good half hour, but there was no blood. It was like he was completely hollow.” An involuntary shudder ran through her. “My mom told me the first survivors tried to use guns against them, but their bodies kept moving no matter how many times they’d been shot. Like there was nothing inside them a bullet could kill. That’s when they discovered you had to burn them.”
    I’d been told that too. My dad had pounded it into me.
    “The next day we held his funeral,” Korah said. “I stood by the grave, and no one knew I’d seen him before they wrapped him back up in his shroud. I went up to the body and put a dried cactus flower where his hands would have been. My mom made me. I even kissed him through the cloth. I remember how scratchy it felt in my mouth.” Her blue eyes burned through me. “That man was my father. The Skaldi had ambushed him out in the field, and his partner had killed it before it could complete the takeover. That’s what I’d seen that afternoon in Laman’s tent.”
    I didn’t know what to say, so I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
    She didn’t