Final Days: Colony Read online

  “There are guards everywhere,” Kendra whispered. “We’ll have to wait for tomorrow.”

  Andrew nodded. “She’s right. We could be shot sneaking around after dark. Especially if it’s who we think it is, and this is part of a cover-up.”

  Tony perked up. “I might have an idea.” Everyone looked his way, and he went on. “There are fire alarms in all of the sections. We just have to trigger them, and everyone will be forced to evacuate outside. With all of that going on, the guards will be expecting to see colonists outside after dark, so no one will shoot us.”

  “That’s actually not a bad idea, kid.”

  “He’ll have to be the one who triggers it,” Kendra pointed out.

  “Me?” Tony asked in a shrinking voice. “Why?”

  “Because you might be able to pull off that stunt, but none of us would.”

  “Just a teenager acting up,” Andrew mused. “That could work. You up for it?”

  Tony nodded uncertainly.

  Roland blew out a shaky breath that steamed the cooling air between them. “As soon as you hear the alarm, get outside and slip through the crowd. I’ll meet you guys at the lake.” With that, he darted away, saying, “Time to eat, Tony!”

  “Coming!” Tony said before dashing after him.

  Andrew stared after them with a furrowed brow. “You’d think they’d have lost their appetite after finding a dead body.”

  Val looked between them with worry shadowing her eyes.

  “Come on,” Andrew said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and guiding her toward Eden One. “Let’s try to get a few winks in. Something tells me we won’t be sleeping much tonight.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Andrew

  Andrew exited the communal bathroom and hurried down the curving corridor with a handful of others, toweling off his hair as he went. He emerged in the cargo bay, where everyone had their sleeping bags set up. Val was sitting on hers, reading a book by the light of a battery-powered lantern.

  “What you reading?” he asked, still towel-drying his hair.

  Val shut the book on her thumb to reveal the cover.

  Andrew read the title, his lips curving into a wry smile. “Stranger in a Strange Land. Whatever else you can say about Hound, he obviously has a sense of humor.”

  Val shared his smile and nodded. “It’s pretty good.” She shut the book as he sat on his sleeping bag and laid his towel out to dry over his survival pack.

  “No alarms yet,” Val whispered. “Do you think he was caught?”

  “Maybe he chickened out. Cowardice—that’s a great quality to have in a boyfriend on a dangerous new world.”

  Val set her teeth. “He’s not a coward.”

  “You sure?” Andrew asked.

  Val drew herself up. “Are you done?”

  “No, actually, I was just getting started. He’s not right for you, Val. You’re more of a man than he is! Give him a gun and he’d probably shoot himself in the foot with it.”

  “He’s sweet, and smart, and funny. Who cares if he doesn’t know how to use a gun?”

  “I care! Do you have any idea how dangerous it is out—”

  The shrill blaring of an alarm interrupted them, and Val smiled smugly. “You were saying?”

  A maddeningly calm female voice boomed out from the ceiling. “Alert. A fire has been detected. All personnel please evacuate the section in an orderly fashion. This is not a drill. Repeat. This is not a drill. All personnel...”

  Andrew jumped to his feet, and dragged Val up with him amidst the rising chaos of people abandoning their sleeping bags and rushing for the exit. On the way out, they saw actual smoke curling along the floor from the farthest recesses of the section.

  “Looks like Tony did one better than a false alarm,” Val said, sounding more smug than ever.

  “It won’t be better for anyone if he burns the whole place down,” Andrew growled. “Gonna be real fun sleeping in tents under the stars with those monsters out there.”

  “You just don’t want to admit that you were wrong,” Val replied.

  Andrew glanced at her.

  “You owe me an apology. And Tony, too.”

  “We’ll talk about this later,” Andrew said.

  “Yes, we will,” Val replied, holding his gaze. Andrew shook his head. He had enough to deal with without Val challenging him like this. Armed guards were waving them through. “Keep moving!” one of them said as an older woman stumbled. Andrew noticed with some satisfaction that it was the reverend. He pulled alongside her as they walked down the landing ramp. “Hey, Rev, what’s that the Bible says? ‘Walk in the light, lest ye stumble’?”

  “The Bible doesn’t say that,” she replied.

  “No? Seems like it ought to. Then again, I guess you should know what it says now that you’re rewriting it all.”

  “Dad...” Val grabbed his arm with a warning squeeze.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Morris said.

  “Yeah, maybe, but ignorance seems to be a prized quality in religious leadership. So I’ve been thinking, maybe I should start a church of my own. I’ll call them Followers of the Real Gospel. You know, the real Bible. I bet there’s still one around here somewhere. Maybe you can give me yours? You don’t seem to have any use for it anymore.”

  “In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires,” the reverend said.

  “Is that from your book, or the actual good book?” Andrew asked as he joined the milling crowd outside Eden One.

  Morris smiled. “They are one and the same.”

  Andrew nodded. “Blurring the lines. Smart. I need to be taking notes. One question: if the last days are behind us, how does that verse apply to me?”

  “The scoffers received their judgment already. All but one.” Morris’s eyes glittered with sudden intensity.

  Andrew’s skin crawled, and he fought off a sudden shiver. He understood exactly what she meant by that. Taking a quick step toward her, he shook a finger in her face. And before he knew what was happening, four people swept in and grabbed him, their eyes mirroring the hate in the reverend’s stare.

  Andrew struggled. “Let me go!” he roared, throwing two people to the ground. He rounded on the other two with his fists balled.

  Kendra stepped between them. “Do the police need to be notified about this problem?”

  “No problem, officer,” Reverend Morris replied.

  “Good.”

  The ones who’d grabbed Andrew stepped back and melted away into the crowd with the cult leader.

  “You really need to stop provoking people,” Kendra muttered. “Come on.” She led him away by the hand, heading for the lake. Before he knew it, they were racing down the sloping field to the water treatment facility.

  Val ran up alongside them. “Where’s Tony?” she asked, scanning her surroundings.

  “Probably at the plant with Roland,” Andrew said.

  “Or they caught him,” Kendra replied.

  They reached the square facility, and walked around the front to find Roland waiting there in the silvery-blue light of one of Eden’s two moons.

  “Tony’s not here,” Val cried, taking one last glance at the crowd they’d slipped away from.

  “We’ll find him,” Kendra soothed. “Right now we need to make his distraction count. Roland? Show us.”

  “Yeah. Right this way...”

  He led them inside the water treatment plant. Yellow lights snapped on automatically as they walked. They ducked beneath pipes and moved between clusters of humming and whooshing machinery to a shadowy corner of the facility. A blue tarp was pulled over a suspicious-looking mound.

  “Ready?” Roland breathed, bending beside the tarp and squinting at them before peeling it back.

  “Look away, Val,” Andrew said.

  She seemed ready to argue, but then turned around and crossed her arms over her chest. Andrew gestured impatiently to Roland, and he remov
ed the tarp to reveal a pale, bloated face. A shock went through him as he took in her stringy blond hair, plastered to her scalp, and those wide, staring eyes.

  “Is it her?” Kendra asked.

  Andrew heard Val gasp, and he glanced at her. “I told you—”

  “She looks like she died in pain,” Val interrupted.

  “She’s right,” Kendra said. “Get that tarp off her. I need to examine the body.”

  Roland complied, and Kendra bent to inspect her.

  Andrew considered Kendra’s question. “It’s hard to be sure, but I think it’s her. Same hair. Same eyes. Same build. Shit, I didn’t even know her name. How can someone just go missing like that and no one notices?”

  “Maybe they did, but they’ve been scared into silence,” Roland suggested.

  “There,” Kendra said, lifting a tattered piece of the woman’s blue jumpsuit, just above her abdomen. “See that?”

  There was a ragged hole in her gut, with the glistening purple ropes of intestines peeking out.

  Val gagged and spun away. Andrew crouched beside the body with Kendra.

  “What if a fish did it?” Roland asked, staring at the hole in the cadaver’s stomach. His hands were visibly shaking as he wrung them together. He reached into his pocket, and Andrew heard pills rattling. He grabbed the kid’s wrist and shook his head.

  “Not worth it,” he said.

  Roland gave in with a glassy-eyed nod.

  “Look,” Kendra said, pointing to the edges of the wound.

  “What?” Andrew asked.

  “It was cauterized. This was a burn.”

  “A burn? Since when do burns vaporize flesh?” Andrew demanded.

  “They do when they’re hot enough. Plasma would do it,” Kendra said.

  “You mean like a cutting torch?” Andrew asked.

  “Or a laser,” Roland replied.

  Kendra conceded that with a nod. “Possibly. A cutting torch seems more likely, though. I haven’t seen any weaponized lasers, and I’d think that even if her killer had one, it would have left a pinhole entry wound and not a gaping one like this.”

  Andrew grimaced. “Either way, she was executed.”

  “And painfully,” Kendra replied. “A gut shot isn’t a pleasant way to die.”

  A loud rustling sound came from outside. Andrew jumped and spun around to see Tony stepping in under low-hanging pipes.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “You made it!” Val rushed over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. She said something that was muffled against his neck.

  Andrew watched with a scowl as they broke apart and walked over together, holding hands. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “We said to meet up—”

  “Yeah, but you’re late.”

  “He could have been followed,” Kendra said.

  “We need to leave,” Andrew added. “If they find us with this body, we’ll be next.”

  “So she was killed?” Tony asked with wide eyes. “It wasn’t an accident?”

  “Does that look like an accident to you?” Andrew thrust a finger at the wound.

  Tony’s eyes bulged at the sight of the woman’s bowels spilling out. “Gah!” he cried, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He’d grown pale, as if he might pass out or throw up.

  Andrew looked to Kendra, while Roland pulled the tarp over the body.

  “You take the kids and head back. Roland and I will stay and make sure this body stays hidden. We’ll be right behind you,” Kendra told them.

  “Fine,” Andrew said. “Be careful.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Kendra

  The night air was sweet and fresh tonight, but all Kendra could smell was the corpse. She and Roland carried the body deeper into the woods, and she felt like a killer trying to hide her latest victim.

  Roland was struggling, and even though her shoulder was far better, the strain was causing her to gasp in pain.

  “Is this far enough?” Roland asked. “We should have made Andrew help.” He lowered the feet to the ground, and leaned against a tree. It was dark under the canopy of the forest, where only a meager amount of light from the moons pierced through from above.

  “Where did the predator take Penelope?” Kendra asked, glancing around the darkness. Her heart hammered in her chest as she saw the eyes in the distance. They were yellow like a wolf’s eyes, and another set blinked open beside the first.

  “It was somewhere…” Roland stopped, and Kendra assumed he’d spotted the dangerous animals as well. “What do we do?”

  “We dump the body and get the hell out of here,” she told him.

  Roland didn’t have to be told twice. He was already moving, running through the forest toward the lake’s edge. Kendra took one last scan for the predators and followed him, her shoulder barking as she bounded across the forest bed.

  They didn’t pause at the treatment plant; instead they moved for camp, Kendra anxious to put as much distance as she could between her and the watching eyes.

  A few minutes later, Roland slowed, and she bumped into him as he raised a hand. “They’re still outside.” Roland was panting heavily, and Kendra tried to catch her own breath as she stepped forward.

  “Follow my lead,” she told him.

  There were at least fifty people outside the mess hall, and she spotted Andrew with the kids. Diane clung to Valeria’s hand as she approached. Andrew’s eyes sprang wide, and he shook his head at Kendra, but she saw the signal too late.

  Her sister turned to face her, and she looked at Kendra and Roland. “Where have you two been?”

  “I thought I saw…”

  “The alarm. It was one of you, wasn’t it?” Carrie asked, her voice no longer friendly.

  No one spoke.

  “There was a grease fire. Someone could have been hurt… or worse,” Carrie said.

  “Enough. I don’t know what you think…” Andrew was cut off as Carrie stepped in front of Val and Tony.

  “Which one of you did it?” she asked curtly.

  “We didn’t…” Valeria started, but Carrie shook her head, stopping her.

  “You would both understand that a fire on the stove could be extinguished, but would also trigger an alarm. Why are you constantly messing with things and sticking your heads where they don’t belong?” Carrie was shouting now, drawing attention of the other colonists.

  Kendra was about to tell her to relax when her older sister switched her focus to her. “And you… running into camp smelling like rotten meat. Where the hell have you been, and I don’t want to hear another lie from you. Do you think Mom and Dad would appreciate you sneaking around deceiving your sister?”

  Kendra had heard enough. She grabbed her sister by the collar and pulled her close. “Listen closely. Don’t you mention my parents again like that. I was the one who stayed. When you chose this over us, I was there to pick up the pieces. Say whatever you want about me, but I don’t want to hear you ever pretend to understand their wishes.” Her heart raced as she quietly explained this to Carrie.

  Her sister’s eyes went wide, and instead of fighting back, she surprised Kendra and nodded. “I understand.”

  Kendra released her. “Can you let us be? We didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  Carrie averted her gaze, and Kendra suddenly felt sorry for the woman. She was obviously following Hound’s objectives, and the man remained missing. She was doing her best, with Keller strutting around like he was the king and the reverend gathering a congregation of cultists.

  “You could have been killed. There are predators out there, you know,” Carrie told her.

  “There are predators inside camp, too,” Andrew said, and Kendra shot him a glare to keep his mouth shut.

  They had a plan, and Kendra didn’t want to agitate her sister more. “If the fire is taken care of, can we call it a night? Everyone has work detail in the morning,” she said, and Carrie nodded solemnly.

  The other
s began to disperse, and soon it was only Carrie and Kendra. “I’m sorry about the outburst, Ken. You know that. This is all…”

  “It’s tough on everyone, Carrie. If you need to pass any of your burdens on, I’ll be a shoulder for you, as long as it’s my left one. The right is still healing,” she said with a smile.

  Carrie’s eyes welled up with tears. “Please stay safe. Follow the rules. If you’re going to be leading our colony enforcement team, you have to be on my side.”

  Kendra said she would, mentally crossing her fingers. There were too many things that didn’t add up, and she felt the noose tightening around their necks. Carrie left her alone outside the mess hall, and Kendra stared up at nothing, telling herself the lies would end soon. When they saw what was beyond the mountain ranges, she would stop letting herself get tangled up in Roland’s conspiracies and Andrew’s anger at authority.

  * * *

  Two days had passed since they’d left the unnamed woman’s bloated corpse for the animals to feed on, and Kendra was feeling optimistic. Roland had returned to the scene the next day with Tony, and they’d only found minimal evidence the woman had ever been there.

  That was one way to dispose of a body. Feed it to the wolves.

  “The doctor will see you now,” the nurse said, pointing to the hallway. They were inside Eden Five, where Doctor Thomas Hartford’s medical bay was situated. This was Kendra’s third visit with him, and if all went well, he was going to give her a clean bill of health. She wasn’t wearing the sling any longer, and already that was an improvement.

  The metal door slid open, the lights inside the room bright. The Eden stations each had solar panels powering them, and after sleeping in tents and eating outside, the luxury of plumbing and lighting wasn’t lost on Kendra.

  “If it isn’t my favorite patient,” Thomas said as she entered. His smile appeared genuine, and his kind eyes bored into her, putting her at ease. She was here to distract him, but it didn’t hurt that he was handsome, and always seemed interested in what she had to say.