Remnants 14 - Begin Again (3 page)

But maybe, just maybe, something would.

It came with the force of a gale wind.

First, strange lumps pushing violently up through the ash, one after the other, as far as his eye could see.

Sanchez felt one rise under his feet and leaped to flatter ground, only to find himself teetering atop another, larger lump, growing, pulsing.

And then Sanchez saw that the lumps were no longer gray ash — but darker and softer seeming —

and flattening out to make one giant new ground of —

The smell was new. It was overpowering and Sanchez had no word for it. It made him gag at first, until it made him inhale deeply, greedily. A word came to his head: soil, then another: fertile — words both familiar and unfamiliar.

But Sanchez had no time to ponder this wonder as he screamed and rolled to one side to escape the spiky, spiny green — things — shooting up through the dark stuff — all around him — ahh! —

between his very fingers!

Trembling with horror, Sanchez wiped his hands hard against his tunic — but he was safe, the skinny blades remained in the ground and none had pierced his flesh….

Carefully, slowly, Sanchez reached down and poked at one of the little blades — and it bent under his light touch. Another word in his head — grass — another term both familiar and unfamiliar.

Suddenly — Sanchez jerked his head back to find the source of the warming on his shoulders — and was horrified to see — He clapped his hands over his burnt eyes, blinded, and fell again to the grass-covered ground, weeping against the white circles dancing in his eyes. But then they were gone and Sanchez again felt a very pleasant warmth on his back, neck. Finally, he lifted his head and stood and looked around — not straight up — and saw — and saw —

THERE IS NO KINDNESS HERE.

Everyone was there. Every member of the Alpha colony except Echo and her blind baby and the smallest children were gathered in the meeting room.

Lyric sat between Mattock and Marina. She made it a point to sit very, very still. It was the strangest meeting she had ever attended.

It seemed to have a life of its own. Its progress was inevitable. It seemed nothing would halt the flow of disaster, no dissenting voice would drown out the roar of condemnation.

Echo’s DNA had been found wanting.

“Genetic purity is essential!” loud voices cried.

Weaker voices argued. “But historically, genetic diversity has been the key to a species’

survival!”

“Mutants are a danger to our world and must be eliminated!”

Those last voices were the strongest.

Lyric sat rigid with fear and loathing.

Finally, Shipper stood and looked at each member of the colony. “The decision is unanimous,” he said.

No, Lyric cried silently. It’s not!

Shipper paused before going on. Before stating the awful sentence. “Echo and the child will be sent away to live what is left of their lives with the Marauders.”

“Agreed,” Kosh said quickly. “And yet, there is a problem. We don’t know where the Marauders are at this point in time. Yes, we know they are on their way to the Source. But their current, exact location is unknown.”

A murmur ran through the Alpha colony members.

“The last time the Marauders visited us,” Marine said, her tone bitter, “they destroyed Woody and stole our food. Since then we have been weakened. Rainier has died. And now are we to support the lives of two defectives until the Marauders return to steal more of our food?

No. I say we eject them from the colony immediately!”

The sad news about Rainier made Lyric wonder. Had malnutrition contributed to Echo’s baby being blind? But she didn’t voice her thoughts. She didn’t think anyone would listen, not now.

Not when they were talking about sending Echo away.

Beside Lyric, Mattock sucked in his breath. Subtly, she poked his leg, urging him to keep still.

Silence hung heavy in the air. Finally, it was broken by Lyric’s mother.

“No,” Nile declared, but her voice was weary, defeated.

Lyric clasped her hands tightly.

Again, she said nothing. She was sick and paralyzed with fear. Who were these people she’d grown up among?

Mattock’s face was pale. Nile’s face was carefully blank. Almost everyone else’s face, including Westie’s, was set in a harsh and unyielding mask.

Still standing. Shipper cleared his throat. “Then it is final. Echo and the child will be locked away.”

Echo lay on her narrow bed, eyes open, staring into the middle distance. In a small crib by the wall, her baby slept fitfully.

The room was reserved for the very ill. There was nothing personal about it. Echo’s thoughts momentarily turned to the blond-haired boy from the ship. Jobs. The one who’d given her a few crumbly crackers. It was the first and only gift Echo had ever received other than her life on this Earth. She wondered if he’d thought of her since leaving the Alpha colony with the Marauders. She wondered if he had any idea of how much his small kindness had meant to her.

There is no kindness here. Echo reminded herself, sadly. She wanted to run away, right then, from the place that was no longer home. From the place that she’d once found simply boring but certainly never threatening. She could grab her child and go, slip up to the surface, take her chances on —

Echo turned her head to the crib where her baby lay sleeping and knew she could never run away. Echo was petrified of leaving the colony. No matter that it recently had become a scary place, it was the only home she’d ever known.

Besides, how would she find the Marauders? And if she did happen to stumble across them, who was to say they’d welcome two more mouths to feed?

Anyway, the journey would be horrible. And the baby was weak. Echo would have to be strong for them both, but how could she be with absolutely no experience of life on the surface of the planet?

A faint sound made Echo frown in concentration. What was that? Where had it come from?

Echo listened hard but heard nothing more. After a moment, her thoughts wandered back to her dilemma.

So, what were her choices? Did she really have any options? Or was she simply doomed to be a victim to the people who were supposed to protect her? Never love her. No, Echo had never known much about love, not before the baby, anyway.

Echo bolted to a sitting position. The noise — it was louder now — from the hall?

Footsteps? A shuffling … Coming closer?

And then — nothing. Silence for at least twenty beats. Slowly, Echo lowered herself again and sighed. She was becoming a nervous wreck. Why would anyone be sneaking around the bunker? There was nothing to hide, nothing to steal….

Echo’s eyes closed as a wave of exhaustion slammed her. The baby’s faint but now steady breathing lured her further into the abyss of sleep….

She barely realized it when the hand clapped over her mouth.

“Ahhh!”

Sanchez was flung back into consciousness with all the gentleness of a man being flung aside by a Beast. He shot to his feet — and crumpled, dizzy and frightened and thirsty.

He lay still for a moment until his head stopped spinning. Then, he rolled over onto his stomach, then up onto his knees.

Frantically, he clawed at the ashy ground, searching, hoping to find — hoping not to find —

the spiny green things he’d seen … but, no. Sanchez laid his hands flat. That ground, in the vision, it was — brown. Impossible! And moist, and when he’d taken a clump in his hand and squeezed, it had formed a lump. Sanchez grabbed up a handful of the gray ash. When he opened his hand the ash sifted through his fingers.

Dry.

He squinted up at the sky, afraid he’d be blinded by the sudden appearance of that too-bright ball. He didn’t think he’d ever really seen “yellow” before, though he’d heard that the sun, back before the Rock, was called “yellow.” In the vision it had hurt his eyes and frightened him — and yet, for some reason he couldn’t articulate, more than anything Sanchez wanted to find that bright yellow ball screaming down at him now.

That and — water. Could those blue expanses have been … Blue? Sanchez didn’t really understand that word, either, and yet it came to him to describe the vast areas he’d seen in his vision….

Sanchez grasped the small chunk of metal that hung by an old strip of leather around his neck. It had been given to him by his predecessor, Rexer, the one who had recognized and nurtured Sanchez’s spiritual gifts. It was very ancient, a piece of the Source. Now, Sanchez desperately hoped it would give him strength, help him to understand the wild things he had seen in his vision.

Thirsty, hunger clawing at his belly, his mind riddled with fears, and pursued by the image of the bright yellow ball, Sanchez hurried on after his people.

“J’OU ARE NO LONGER THEIR PROBLEM.”

Echo was too frightened to protest. Her throat felt squeezed shut, unable to let out a cry even if she wanted to. Which she didn’t. She didn’t want to resist, she didn’t want to stop stumbling along, blindfolded, gagged by a dirty cloth, gripped by whoever it was with the strong fingers.

Fear could do that, she’d heard. It could make you just sit there and take it.

But for how long?

A tiny mew from the baby reached Echo’s ears. If the baby is hurt… The thought seared through her mind and an amazing protectiveness exploded into a fierce anger. She stumbled and the big toe on her right foot jammed into the floor. The minor accident added fuel to the fire of Echo’s anger and with a violent motion she tried to jerk away from her captor.

But it was no use. The grip hardened and the captor stepped up their pace.

Suddenly, her captor stopped cold. Echo bumped into him — or her — and heard the faint creak of what she thought must be a door opening. She knew intuitively that someone was there, waiting for them.

Her captor pushed her ahead of him — her? — and once again Echo heard the faint creak.

The door had closed behind her

A whisper reached her ears now.

“Don’t shout. No one will hear j’ou, anyway. But don’t shout.”

Hands from behind untied the blindfold and released the gag. Echo blinked and worked her jaw. She felt suddenly dizzy and must have swayed because another set of hands were now supporting her …

And then, she could see.

Westie. Mattock. Lyric.

“Oh. Oh. J’ou …” Echo’s mind raced. “What’s going on?” she whispered harshly, reaching for her baby. Lyric handed the tiny, murmuring bundle to Echo without hesitation. Oddly, it was only now that Echo noticed Lyric, too, was clothed in the long, hooded garment Mattock wore.

“Why are j’ou dressed like that?” she asked.

It was Westie who answered. Her face was grimmer than Echo had ever seen it. “We’re getting j’ou out of here,” she said. “They were going to let j’ou die. J’ou and the baby.”

“What?” Echo’s mind refused to absorb this information.

“The elders’ decision was unanimous,” Mattock said with a bright flush of shame. “It’s true.

Echo. The colony voted to starve j’ou and the baby to death, rather than feed j’ou until the Marauders could take j’ou with them.”

Oh,
Echo thought.
Oh.

“My life wasn’t worth sparing,” she said then, a crazy giggle escaping her lips. “Not even until I could be cast out.”

Lyric sobbed and clapped a hand to her mouth.

Echo turned to Westie and fought back a sneer of contempt. Anger bubbled up in her brain.

“Lyric and Mattock have always been my friends,” she said. “But j’ou! Why are j’ou helping me? J’ou’ve always seemed so —”

Westie grimaced. “Harsh? Yes. No one would ever expect Westie, the stern one, of being a traitor to the cause of genetic purity.”

Echo looked deep into Westie’s eyes. “Tell me,” she said. “All of it.”

Westie opened her mouth, closed it again.

“Go ahead,” Echo said. “I need to know.”

“I was a child at the time.” Westie sighed before going on. “J’our mother was — my friend.

Neither of us really understood what was happening. But — there was a scare. A man named Tap developed symptoms of a terrible, debilitating disease. I suppose he had been born with it. The disease must have lain dormant for years….” Westie rubbed at her eyes before going on. “The result was that other people were tested for — impurities. Suddenly, everyone was afraid. Even we children were afraid though we didn’t really know why. The fear grew. The yield was poor that year and that made people panic. And then …”

“Then?” Echo urged.

Westie’s eyes were dull with an emotion Echo had never seen her display. Grief.

“And then, j’our grandmother — my friend’s mother — was — eliminated. She wasn’t the only one. But — she had always been so kind to me. Eventually, the yield increased and the panic died down. By then, j’our mother and I had learned the truth about the — hunt. We didn’t know what good it would do but we set out to find and destroy j’our grandmother’s file.

We succeeded.”

“And no one ever knew?” Echo challenged, her heart pumping madly.

Westie laughed bitterly. “I don’t know. Afterward, everyone was embarrassed by what had happened. No one even talked about it until j’our baby came. They thought silence would erase the sins of the past. But it never does. Echo.”

Echo nodded. “And the baby came when the Marauders cheated us out of an already poor yield….”

“I argued against them developing this baby,” Westie said fiercely. “I said it wasn’t fair to bring another person into the world at a time when the yield was so poor. But that was not the real reason for my not wanting j’ou to have this baby. My Echo. I knew there was a strong chance the baby would be — not perfect. I did not want to see this suffering come to pass.”

“And j’ou couldn’t tell the truth to anyone,” Echo said woodenly. “Not even to me.”

Westie nodded.

“Why are j’ou helping me now?” Echo knew her voice was cold but didn’t she still have a right to be angry? To be suspicious?