His bad hip made him move unevenly, his right leg seeming about to crumple with each step. Remember.” He nodded emphatically and headed for the trucks. “Focus.” He forked his fingers and pointed straight at me. He returned to where I stood and held up his right hand, palm facing me, then tapped his forehead with his first two fingers. He took a step toward the small knot of trucks lined up on the western edge of camp. In the daylight, just about everything is brown, like us. Fires draw the ones that are hunting us, and fuel is too precious to waste. We don’t use fires or lanterns unless we have to. Enough moonlight peeked through the shrouded sky to show figures, but not faces. Nobody spoke, but there were plenty of quiet sounds: the pad of boots on dusty ground, the clink of metal against metal as tin pots, plates, and cups were rolled into packs, the whisper of tents collapsing. The nozzles and tanks of flamethrowers gleamed dully in the hands of the three sentries on the eastern fringe of camp. Everywhere I looked, men and women in identical gray-brown camouflage uniforms were taking down shelters, packing camp stoves and propane tanks, loading bundles onto the three remaining trucks. The hollow where we’d camped bustled with activity. “Ready? Let’s get moving.” He lifted the heavy canvas and ushered me into the night. His hands gripped my shoulders, guiding me to my feet. “Let’s hope we don’t find out.” He let the flap fall and approached me in the renewed dark. He half turned, moonlight carving his angular features from the night. “Skaldi?” I asked, fumbling with the laces. I could see my dad’s silhouette where he’d lifted the tent flap, letting in a pale slice of light. I swung my legs over the side of the cot and fished for my boots. There was no urgency in his voice, there never was, but I knew this was for real. I couldn’t make out his face, but I could hear his quiet breath. I opened my eyes to more darkness and my dad’s shadowy shape filling the tent. His hand on my shoulder, shaking me from sleep. Whatever is going on, Querry is at the center of it, for a secret in his past not only makes him a target of the Skaldi’s wrath, but the key to the colony’s future. The only person he can talk to is the beautiful Korah, but even with her, he can’t shake the feeling that something is desperately wrong. No one knows what the Skaldi are, or why they are here, just that they impersonate humans, taking their form before shedding the corpse like a skin.ĭesperate to prove himself after the accident that stole his memory, Querry is both protected and tormented by the colony’s authoritarian commander, his father.
And now the Skaldi have come to scavenge what is left of humanity. Otherwise he is dead weight to the other members of Survival Colony 9, one of the groups formed after a brutal war ravaged the earth. He can’t remember anything before the last six months. In a futuristic landscape ravaged by war, a colony’s hopes for survival hinge on one teenage boy in this fast-paced, action-packed story “filled with interesting plot twists, compelling characters, and gripping action” ( VOYA).
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