G. S. Prendergast - Cold Falling White

Also by G. S. Prendergast

Zero Repeat Forever

Authors Note

The sign language used in this book is fictional and not based on American Sign Language (ASL) or any other existing sign language. Any resemblances are purely coincidental. If you are interested in sign languages used by the deaf, you can find out more at www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/american-sign-language.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2019 by Gabrielle Prendergast

Jacket illustration copyright 2019 by Larry Rostant

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Prendergast, Gabrielle, author.

Title: Cold falling white / G.S. Prendergast.

Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster BFYR, [2019] | Summary: Months after the initial Nahx invasion, Xander and Raven find themselves on opposite sideswith Xander working with human insurgents and Raven awakening as an altered, upgraded human in the alien armybut both searching for answers, allies, and lost friends.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019013556 | ISBN 9781481481878 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781481481892 (eBook)

Subjects: | CYAC: SurvivalFiction. | Racially mixed peopleFiction. | Extraterrestrial beingsFiction. | Sexual orientationFiction. | LoveFiction. | Science fiction. | CanadaFiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.P916 Co 2019 | DDC [Fic]dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019013556

To all the strong girls: Audrey, Penelope, Monica, Kathy, Tess, Bronwen, and Lucy

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

MARY SHELLEY,FRANKENSTEIN

I ts cold.

And silent.

And dark.

I am as weightless as a thought, as a shadow underwater. The only thing that gives me substance is the sense of filling up with something. Something thick and powerful and inhuman, unearthly. I want to squirm away from it but there is nothing to squirm with. All I am is a selection of verbs: to fill, to grow, to change, to perfect. Its as though Im being rebuilt from scratch.

Days pass like this. Lifetimes. A lonely wisp of nothing floating in a sea of whats left of my mind searches for the word.

Obedience? Duty? Im being entwined in something, as though my nerves are unraveling and tangling into some idea of I cant see it. I cant hear it or smell it or taste it. Its nothing, a void, like the space left behind when something is lost. I can feel its emptiness, feel it trying to consume me, to ensnare me. But theres something else resisting it, something stubborn and intractable, something human.

Regret. And the idea that not every broken thing is unfixable.

In the darkness, I sense someone with me, and though this someone is no more substantial than I am, they feel heavy, like tears of grief or remorse. Tiny yet galactic.

Hello? Im not sure how I say it. I dont seem to have a mouth.

The answer comes back to me as an impression of force on matterthe particles of air vibrating from sound, the light flickering on Augusts hands moving as he signed.

Memory.

Oh August. Get me out of here. Im afraid. August?

I ts not until ten days after August left Ravens body in an abandoned hotel near Jasper that I feel her death, actually feel it, the way I felt Tuckers death and Lochies and Felixs and Mandys and the rest. Like boulders dropped on me from great heights that I have to carryfirst the pain of the impact, then the weight of them. Sometimes, plodding through the mountains, I look down at my feet and wonder why Im not sinking into the earth like an overloaded mule in a muddy paddock.

August turns back to me, his hand raised palm up, a sign Ive learned is a generic question.

Whats wrong?

Nothing, I lie. Ive been staring at my feet, trying to wriggle some feeling back into them.

Ive made a promise, to myself, to Raven and all the dead, and to Topher and everyone I left behind in the failing human sanctuary under the mountains. I just need to get out of the Nahx occupation zone, then I can lose my mind. Get word to the human authorities, tell them there are two hundred people starving, running out of fuel and resolve, two hundred people marked for death in a place where no humans are supposed to be breathing, as far as I can tell. Maybe no one will care. Whats another two hundred on top of millions? On top of Raven and Tucker, and Lochie, and Felix, Mandy, Sawyer

And my family. Mom. Dad and Nai Nai. Chloe. She was only thirteen.

Was. Is. Shed be fourteen now. Maybe Ill never know.

This is how I keep moving, by mentally scheduling a future freak-out, fighting not to tremble from cold, and following a seven-foot armored alien through a spring-soggy landscape that is utterly indifferent to the absence of my species. Geese fly north in neat Vs, squirrels scatter up gnarled tree trunks, big-horned sheep turn their ponderous heads to us as we pass. And the earth springs back to life, oblivious, even grateful to have this respite from human interference. The colors of spring keep me focused on my goalthe soft green of new pine needles, the silvery blue lichen on rocks, and dandelions, golden glowing dandelions everywhere.

August stops to pick them periodically, twisting their stems into his armor. I keep meaning to ask him about this but I probably wouldnt understand his answer. We dont have time to teach me his sign language.

Yes and no are obvious signs. And theres one he repeats daily.

Promise, he says, before turning away from me. I learned this word the day Raven died. August means he will fulfill his promise to get me out of the Nahx-occupied territory. He promised Raven, and to him that means everything. I dont know why. Whats one human boy out of millions?

A few minutes later he turns back again. Cold? Thats another obvious sign, as some of them are.

No. Can we just keep moving?

Im wearing the coat, gloves, and sidearm of a dead RCMP officer we found on the empty highway two days ago. The Mounties rifle is slung over Augusts back, along with a Nahx rifle he found discarded under a shrub.

Days and nights pass like this in silence, tramping through the mountains, picking up various treasures as we find them. I find a maple leaf scarf mashed in a puddle. August wrings it out and tucks it into his armor. An hour later when he gives it back to me, it is bone dry and toasty warm, as though it has just come out of the dryer. And we find food occasionally, in between days of living with my growling stomach. I now have pockets full of chocolate bars and nuts taken from a deserted gas station.