DEATH COLONY: SURVIVORS
Chapter
1 > Chapter
2 > Chapter
3 > Chapter
4 > Chapter 5 > Chapter
6
The news hit them harder than Mashan
had thought, as Hal almost lost all use of his legs and Mia, utterly
speechless, collapsed to the floor, her face pale with shock. Hal
crouched and did not pull her to her feet, but remained there, his arm
around her as she wept into his shoulder.
At length, they rose, Mashan having
waited patiently for his ‘gift to the god’s’ as he’d called
them, to come around.
‘Why?’ was all Mia could manage.
‘God’s see demon kill Talnis
kin,’ said Mashan, once again pointing to the skies. ‘Demon bad,
bringers must be destroyed at dusk.’ He wasn’t telling them
anything he hadn’t already.
‘We already told you,’ fumed Hal,
‘that we’re innocent here. The “demon” is dead! It’s not
going anywhere even if you kill us! It can’t harm you people any
more!’ He gave up at that, having nothing else to say. Mashan
ushered several of his people forward.
‘We take them now to last meal, where
God’s will pity them until death.’ He said, in a strange tone that
was uncomforting to both Mia and Hal. ‘Your demon killed my kin, as
my Flock killed yours in return and vengeance. You lose kin in
death?’ he looked at Hal, Mia kept her eyes to the ground.
‘My friend.’ Said Hal. ‘His name
was Kyle. He did not harm to anyone, like us two.’ He quickly added.
‘Clearly, you yourself have done no
harm,’ said Mashan, and a spark of hope glimmered in the humans.
‘Yet God’s demand vengeance off all who are demon bringers.’ The
hope vanished. Mashan clapped his hands together.
Hal opened his mouth to speak, but
Mashan spoke before him.
’Take them now, and serve them good
food!’
*
The food was of little or no comfort to
Mia nor Hal, as they forced down what they could, trying to maintain
courtesy, despite the allegations towards them. As they were alone,
with only two guards stationed outside the hut they were placed in,
Hal and Mia had a chance to talk privately.
‘I knew that damn son-of-a-bitch
Mashan was playing around with us. He knew what he wanted to do.’
Mia gave no reply. Hal went on.
‘You know that should let you go,
this isn’t fair. You don’t deserve to die, you’ve done nothing
at all to them.’
Mia looked at Hal, frowned.
‘Me?’ said Mia. ‘What about you?
Just because you were a Sergeant on the Alpha Turret it doesn’t mean
that you were responsible for Captain what’s-his-face killing
Mashan’s people.’
It was Hal’s turned to remain silent,
though looking at him, Mia could tell there was something, somewhere
inside his head or his heart, that wasn’t revealing the full story.
He managed a smile and continued to eat the food.
‘You’re a bit of a mystery, you
know that, Sergeant Dexter?’ said Mia, slightly mocking Hal’s name
and rank.
‘Best way to be.’ Replied Hal.
‘Better a brick wall than a thin pane of glass. Still, I suppose
I’m just a thick pane of glass, aren’t I?’
Mia nodded. ‘In the way that I can
see right through your tough charade? Definitely.’ She said.
*
‘Guardsmen say you wished to speak
with me?’ Mashan asked as Hal stood in the doorway to the large
leaders’ hut, a guard either side of him. Hal nodded and stepped
inside.
‘I’ve come to talk to you about
Mia.’ Said Hal.
‘Your friend,’ nodded Mashan.
‘Were she my people she make good warrior. God’s say she
strong.’ Hal said nothing. These were a people that relied far
too much on God’s and not their own instinct, he thought.
‘Listen to me,’ said Hal, without
realisation, reverting back into his harsh tone he used on roughneck
grunts back on Earth. ‘Mia was a prisoner aboard the Alpha… aboard
the demon. She was treated as badly as your kin have been. She’s not
strong, in fact I’ll be damn surprised if she doesn’t crack up
before the end of the day.’ He paused for breath and then spoke
again, his tone softening, but his voice remaining raised.
‘If your God’s were to kill her,
they would be murdering an innocent. Please, do what you want with me
– I was an officer on that ship. But let her go, like I said she’s
innocent.’
Hal knew that he was being over
dramatic more than a little at the point, but the thought of having
Mia scarified to –quite possibly – artificial God’s with no
names, for no apparent reason to him or Mia, made him want to cry out
inside. He risked speaking further.
‘Imagine your son, Mashan, being
innocent and killed by someone unknown to him. This is the same
situation Mia is in.’
Mashan nodded, a blank look on his
face. A look that he had perfected so that no one knew what he was
really thinking. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Allow me a moment,
please return to your hut and wait there for me. I will come to you
shortly.’
Hal left the hut, hoping he hadn’t
just moved their sentence to immediate death.
*
Mia couldn’t get anything out of Hal
for the rest of the day when she asked about why he requested to see
Mashan, and was growing a little irate. To display this, she slapped
him harshly across the face.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Hal
yelled, immediately lowering his voice to almost a whisper. ‘I
already told you, I asked him for more food.’
‘We had plenty.’ Said Mia.
‘I wanted different food.’ Hal said
lamely, knowing that he had “liar” written all over him. He fell
into silence and said nothing until Mashan arrived with his two
guardsmen.
‘You please follow me.’ He said,
and led them away from the village.
*
At length, they came to a great cave
with a dim pool of shallow water, about knee-deep, in the centre. As
Mia looked around, she noted primal looking carvings on the walls with
paintings. The cave looked almost like a shrine. Then, again, the
Talnis tribesmen worshipped so many Gods, there must be plenty of
these around.
She soon found out it was where they
held ritualistic sacrifices.
‘Bring them forward.’
Mashan’s two guardsmen took the
humans by the arm and knelt Hal down infront of the pool. Mia, they
let go.
‘Huh?’ was all she could manage.
She looked at Hal, then Mashan for an answer. Hal looked away.
‘God’s choose you to live,’ said
Mashan. ‘You bring no harm here, though from this day, you will be
banished from village.’
Mia glared at Hal, though not angrily,
but with a look of guilt and sadness on her face. She crouched down to
Hal. ‘So this is why you went to see Mashan.’ She whispered. Hal
nodded.
‘You don’t deserve to die.’ He
said, that look of a secret returning to his face.
‘And you do?’ she said with a
half-laugh, half-cry.
Hal nodded and looked at her.
‘When the Alpha Turret crashed, I was
looking around the ship for possible survivors, but I couldn’t find
any, so I decided to check out the cell room.’ He sighed. ‘I found
Finch in there. He said he was gonna… do to you what he would have
in the galley, would I not have stopped him.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Mia, shuddering
at the memory. ‘Then what happened?’
‘I told him to leave you alone and go
look for some other survivors, but he wouldn’t. So I pulled rank and
gave him an order, but he wouldn’t take it and got out his knife.’
He paused. ‘So I hit him.’
‘He fell pretty hard, but I didn’t
stop there, I just kept on hitting him. He pulled out his radio and
started to call for backup, but I smashed it.’
Mia remembered the broken radio. She
nodded for him to continue.
‘He fought back pretty good, no
surprise considering the training we’re all given in boot camp, but
I grabbed his knife from him and…’ he trailed off, his voice
quivering. Mia stood shocked, but not upset.
‘It was you that slashed him?’ she
asked. Hal nodded.
‘I knew that I wanted to kill him.
Ever since I’ve known him, I’ve wanted to kill him, and I did.’
‘Finch was a bad man.’ She said,
her voice equally as broken. ‘He used to attack people and hurt them
all the time, you said so yourself! He deserved to die.’
‘No!’ shouted Hal. ‘He deserved a
Court Marshall, like every other soldier who defies his duties. He
didn’t deserve to be beaten to a bloody pulp and slaughtered, no
matter what. He was sick, he needed serious help.’
Hal began sobbing and Mia joined him.
As if understanding, the guards released Hal and the two embraced,
crying into each others arms. Hal pulled away and wiped away his
tears, nodding at Mashan.
‘I’m ready.’ He said.
Mia stood back, held still by a guard
incase she tried anything, and watched in morbid sadness as Mashan
uttered prayers to the God’s in languages she did not know, before
dipping Hal under the shallow pool of water. At first, Hal struggled,
the panic of suffocating and drowning washing over him, but Mashan
held tight, still uttering in strange tongues.
After a few minutes passed, Hal stopped
struggling.
When
he surfaced, he was dead.
