Dustborn Read online

  A loud scream rang through the air, so long and so agonizing that it stirred her into a step.

  Panic is the easiest road to death.

  “They’ll die, if they keep this up!” she insisted, taking another step for the door.

  “And we’ll join them, if we go out there!” Kai grabbed her arm.

  Looking out through the doorway, Neena noticed a colonist’s broken skull in the alley, staring at her with eyeless sockets. A particularly loud wail spurred her into action.

  This time she couldn’t restrain herself.

  Fighting her good sense, Neena broke from Kai’s grasp and slipped out of the doorway.

  Chapter 13: Raj

  Raj looked around at Samel, Adriana, and the others who sat in circles, nervously watching the cave’s entrance.

  The absence of seventy-five colonists had put a dark atmosphere in the room, filling the people in the Right Cave with an unease that had surely spread to the Left and Center caves, where some of the volunteers also lived. Every so often, a group took up by the mouth of the cave, looking out over the colony, biting their fingers or shifting uncomfortably. No one spoke openly of the monster in front of the children, but it was on the tips of their tongues, and behind their glassy stares.

  Raj noticed the mothers keeping their children closer, as if the monster might float up from the sand and snatch them from the caves. They matched their children’s steps. They watched the front of the cave, the rear, and all the places between. Even if Raj wanted to slip away and search for the object, he couldn’t.

  Samel hung closer to Raj than ever. The atmosphere of the cave had crawled under his skin, too.

  Raj couldn’t deny that he was worried about Neena, too.

  He was angry, but worried.

  Making his plan to dig out the gleaming object was easy, when he was staring at Adriana’s eyes and had no concerns about his sister, out in the open and exposed to the Abomination. Now, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  He’d table his plan for later.

  Finishing a conversation with Adriana, Raj asked her to watch Samel while he excused himself. All eyes watched him walk across the room. A group of three mothers hung near the cave, close to where he had stood turning rocks in his hands. They spoke in nervous whispers, pointing to the colony, while others watched their children. Raj’s pulse quickened as he joined them. Staring out over the cliff, he searched the remains of the distant hovels. A few specks moved in and out of the houses below, but he was too far away to identify anyone.

  A few volunteer guards strode past the cave’s entrance.

  Getting one’s attention, he asked, “Have you seen anything?”

  “No. And you should stay back,” the man warned, as Raj leaned his head a little too far out into the open.

  Raj looked right, catching a momentary glimpse of Darius and the others, who stood a few hundred feet past the Left Cave, on a precipice from where the volunteers had marched, holding their horns. If not for his talk with Neena, Raj would’ve been with them. He felt another sting of frustration.

  “Do you see anything?” asked a woman standing next to him.

  “No,” Raj answered. “It’s too hard to notice anything from up here.”

  The worried woman shook her head. “It makes me nervous.”

  Raj nodded, clenching his hands and unclenching them, wishing he were on the ground, or keeping watch from a better position than the sheltered mouth of a cave.

  A rumble interrupted his thoughts.

  Screams echoed from the distant ground below.

  The guards on the ledge yelled to one another, looking from the ground to the cave. To Raj and the women, one of them said, “Make sure everyone stays inside!”

  The guards took off down the ledge, heading in the direction of Darius. Inside the cave, women grabbed their children, or yelled for them to get near. Others burst into tears. Raj took two more steps outside the cave, noticing a stream of people far below, running in one direction. His heart hammered as he thought of Neena, down in the colony and in danger.

  Forget her warnings and her rules.

  Without second-guessing what he was doing, Raj turned to look back into the cave, found Samel and Adriana, and yelled, “I’ll be back!”

  And then he was out of the cave and sprinting after the guards. His breath heaved as he ran along the fifteen-foot-wide the ledge, sticking close to the rock wall on the innermost side of it, avoiding craggy, protruding rocks. None of the running men ahead of him looked back or stopped him. Something more pressing than a disobedient boy held their attention.

  Raj wove along the ledge, eventually passing the Center Cave. He didn’t stop to engage the slew of women gathered at the entrances, nor did he stop at the Left Cave.

  After a while of running, he was on the precipice where Darius and his onlookers clustered together. Raj weaved among the frightened people, bumping shoulders with several, before finally joining Darius.

  “Darius!” he cried over the uproar.

  Darius’s face was alarmed and filled with fright. “Raj! You shouldn’t be here!”

  Looking out over the cliffs and to the ground below, Raj saw people pouring up the main path.

  “What’s going on?” Raj asked frantically.

  The look in Darius’s eyes gave him a sharp stab of fear. “I don’t know!”

  Chapter 14: Neena

  Neena and Kai hurried over the ground, weaving around scattered clothing and banged-up kitchenware. Looking across the alley, Neena saw the three other colonists who had accompanied them, holed up in another hovel, staring out the doorway, clinging to one another.

  “Stay there!” she hissed to them.

  They listened, but others did not.

  Pandemonium had taken over the main path.

  Men and women spilled out from some smaller alleys, or out of the hovels they searched. Kai and Neena raised their hands to stop the panicked people from running, but no one heeded them. Instinct was overcoming sense.

  People barreled up the main path, intent on getting away from the threat and back to the cliffs. They tripped over one another, looked over their shoulders, or cried out their friends’ names.

  To Neena and Kai, one of the young Watchers cried, “It’s coming!”

  He jabbed a finger in the direction of the noise, before hurrying away from the bedlam. A flock of people followed his lead, carrying spears and half-full bags. One man dropped a sack of goods, abandoning it. Another tripped on a piece of rock, fumbling, before finding his balance.

  All at once, the rumbling stopped.

  Silence fell over Red Rock’s ruins.

  Neena and Kai paused, waiting for another scream, or the sight of the monster, leaping from the ground and toward them. The fleeing people waited a few hundred feet up the path, startled by the sudden lack of noise. Neena and Kai looked down a tattered pathway toward the commotion, certain that the beast was in the midpoint of its attack, or that it was doing something that they couldn’t see or hear.

  Nothing.

  Down the pathway from where the noise emanated, a few doors of the intact hovels opened, and pale, terror-stricken faces peered out. Neena looked at Kai. She looked at the ground. Before she could ask a question, a man raced toward them from the end of the alley, breaking the silence. Neena held up her hands to tell him to stop shouting, until she heard his words.

  “A building collapsed on top of some of our men while they were scavenging!” he screamed. “We need help!”

  The man gestured frantically, before heading in the opposite direction. Neena and Kai rushed after him. Some of the people in the houses came after, their faces white and nervous, moving in a tight formation, holding their spears.

  Near the end of the pathway, dust floated in the air, form
ing a dirty cloud over a newly ruined, larger hovel. It looked as if some enormous, omnipotent being had squashed two sides of the house inward with gigantic hands. The sides were gone; all that was left was an enormous pile of rubble in the lot’s middle. An agonized scream echoed from somewhere under the mess. Bryan and a half-dozen Watchers frantically dug through the piles of sand and mud brick.

  Pointing to where the others dug, the man said, “Louie and Gary are underneath! They were caught inside when it fell!”

  Without hesitation, Neena, Kai, and some others helped Bryan and his men, pulling aside the rubble and searching for the trapped colonists.

  Neena pulled aside brick after brick, casting them behind her. Sweat drenched her clothes. Her hands stung. Each piece of the wreckage seemed heavier than the last. After working for a while, they found the first man. His arm was bent at an ugly angle; debris and dust covered his face. He screamed in pain as they carried him out from beneath a pile of bricks and brushed him off.

  “It’s okay, Louie! We’re going to take care of you!” someone promised, helping him away from the wreckage.

  Neena, Kai, and the others kept digging, focusing on another area that Bryan pointed out. They flung mud bricks aside with growing nervousness. Neena knew how quickly a person could suffocate. She knew how easy they could die from crushed lungs, or fatal, internal injuries.

  They had almost dug to the ground when one of the men cried out, “I see a hand!”

  They refocused their efforts in a new spot.

  Neena threw bricks aside, scraping her hands on their jagged corners. Her sides cramped from stooping and lifting.

  And then they revealed something.

  Gasps and exclamations came from The Watchers as they exposed a lifeless, crushed body. After more digging and brushing off, they uncovered the crushed man, lifted him out, and carried him to flat ground. A piece of stone jutted out from the center of the man’s belly, staining his torso red. His mouth hung agape. Leaning down, Bryan and a few others checked for breath. They checked for the beat of his heart. They dabbed at his wound, cleaning off the blood, even though the man wasn’t moving or responding.

  After a long while of frantically trying to revive him, a morbid hush fell over the onlookers.

  One by one, The Watchers looked over at Bryan, shock on their faces.

  “He’s dead,” Bryan said finally, standing, dusting off the debris from his clothes. He stared around at the others. The people wrung their hands, looking from the body, to Neena, to Kai.

  An absent look overcame Bryan’s face. His eyes roamed from the body to the man with the broken arm, who gritted his teeth to contain his pain, before unleashing a wail.

  Bryan’s faraway expression transformed to grief. He turned back to the dead man.

  “Gary was my best friend,” he said, tears pooling around his disheveled face. “We took our oath together.” He shook his head, as if he might somehow erase the tragedy.

  “I’m sorry,” Neena said, reaching out for him. The other volunteers and Watchers shook their heads, mumbling their condolences.

  Bryan’s eyes went to the ground.

  “I wish we could’ve reached him sooner,” Kai said.

  Hearing Kai’s words, a new emotion took over Bryan’s face. Slowly, that emotion bubbled stronger. Returning in Neena and Kai’s direction, he curled and uncurled his hands, jabbing an accusatory finger at them. “This is your fault.”

  He looked from one to the other, his anger mounting.

  “Bryan,” one of his friends said, trying to grab him.

  Bryan shook his friend off. “Get off me,” he barked.

  Getting close enough that Neena saw the flare of his nostrils and the spittle on his lips, Bryan said, “Gary wouldn’t have been down here, if not for you. You are responsible…for all of this.” He motioned around to the ruined hovels, the destroyed colony. “The deaths of our families, our friends. You brought the monster here. You brought death upon our people!”

  Slowly, Bryan’s anger spread to a few other men, who nodded as they looked from their dead comrade to the man with the broken arm, who could no longer contain his agony, and openly wailed.

  Kai opened and closed his mouth, but said nothing. Bryan’s eyes roamed to the markings on Kai’s head, and back to his face. Fury flickered in his eyes.

  “Stay the hell away from us!” he said, looking between Kai and Neena. “Both of you!”

  Without another word, Bryan turned his back on them, returning to Gary’s dead body, while the others helped the broken-armed man to the cliffs.

  Chapter 15: Darius

  Darius stared down the winding path at the marching, incoming people.

  “I see Neena!” Raj cried.

  Darius followed his finger to where Neena trudged exhaustedly. Kai trailed behind her. The rest of the volunteers marched after, leaning on their spears, sweating, rounding the last corner before the precipice. Bags hung like second bodies from their backs, weighing them down, but somehow, they found the strength to ascend the remaining steps.

  Darius swallowed as the first people reached the precipice.

  No one had missed the commotion around the collapsed hovel. Some had even seen the structure fall, though it had taken a while to figure out what was happening. After lots of arguments and confusion, Darius had finally convinced everyone to stay put at the top of the cliffs.

  Now he couldn’t hold them back.

  People hurried forward, searching for their relatives among the first to arrive. A few skirted around Neena, finding their loved ones and holding them close. The marchers unslung their full bags, looking as if they’d been through a weeklong hunt, rather than a day’s trip.

  “Neena!” Raj said, greeting his sister with relief. “You’re okay!”

  Neena nodded grimly, but she didn’t answer. Even Kai stayed silent. They found Darius and formed a row in front of the incoming people, at the head of the precipice, turning to watch the others arrive.

  “What happened?” Raj asked Neena.

  A long moan from the back of the line cut off Neena’s response. All eyes roamed to the back of the group, where The Watchers helped a wounded man up the path, wearing a makeshift sling. Darius’s heart sank as he saw the lifeless body coming afterward, a body they’d all witnessed carried from the bottom of the cliffs. The man’s mouth was twisted in an unmistakable grimace of death. Blood drenched his shirt and pants. Bryan carried the man’s legs, while another Watcher held his arms. They held him with somber expressions. Recognizing him, a woman near Darius wailed and ran for him.

  “Gary!”

  Bryan’s face was solemn as the woman raced over, and he and the other Watcher set the dead man down. The woman buried her face in her dead husband’s chest, sobbing uncontrollably. A healer rushed over, verifying that the man was deceased before offering his sympathies.

  “What happened?” Darius asked Neena.

  “We tried saving him,” Neena said, her face downcast. “He was already dead.”

  They watched helplessly as the woman mourned over her husband, and Bryan spoke softly to her. A cluster of Watchers gathered around the body, holding a quiet vigil, while the rest of the crowd looked on helplessly.

  A few looked guiltily at the bags in their hands.

  Those supplies had cost a man’s life.

  After a long while of silence, The Watchers resumed their trek, heading in a line toward Darius, Kai, Neena, Raj, and the rest of the waiting onlookers on the precipice. The injured man came first, accompanied by a Watcher and the healer. Behind them, Bryan and another man picked up the deceased man again, bringing him toward the crowd. The grieving widow smudged away her tears.

  Darius, Neena, Kai, and Raj parted. Confusion washed over Darius as The Watchers glared at him. Bryan’s face was th
e angriest.

  “Bryan—” Darius started.

  “Get out of my way,” Bryan said, making it clear that he would push past him, if he needed.

  “My husband,” the widow said in disbelief, staring at Darius with absent eyes. “He’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Darius.

  Speaking only to the widow, and not Darius, Bryan said, “Don’t worry, Sherry, we’ll find a place inside to bury him.”

  Without another word, Bryan and his Watchers stormed by Darius, Kai, and Neena, heading toward the Left Cave.

  Chapter 16: Neena

  “They haven’t come out all evening,” Neena said worriedly, looking at her dried meat without eating it.

  Darius looked toward the entrance of the Right Cave, chewing his dinner. Every so often, one of the colonists walked over to the entrance, peering outside. No one had seen any signs of Bryan or his men since their return from the colony. Even The Watchers stationed in front of the entrance had taken a hiatus.

  “We’ll need to post our own guards soon, if The Watchers don’t return,” warned Darius. “Someone needs to look out for animals.”

  Neena glanced around at the people in her cave. After passing out the rations they’d collected in the colony, the colonists had fallen into a strange gloom. Even those who hadn’t been on the precipice had heard the news. They chatted, or played with their children, but most wore a mask of uncertainty, or grief. She spotted a few of the colonists who had gone on the expedition, explaining what had happened in more detail to the others.

  Neena stared out the doorway, watching the amber light of the setting sun splash through the threshold. She couldn’t erase the memory of the blood-spattered, dead man from her mind, and of course, she’d never forget Bryan’s harsh words.

  His thoughts echoed hers, when she lay in her bedroll in the cave, considering the lives lost on that day with the Abomination. A small, whispering voice in her head told her that she’d never outlive this new guilt, just as she hadn’t outlived her old, perceived failings.