The Dry Earth (Book 1): The Phone

by Orion, W. J.

  Her face went flush. “I’m sorry. I saw the eggs and got excited.”

  He grinned again. “I know. I’m still thrilled about these,” he said, lifting his hand so the white eggs sat in the palm. His dark brown eyes gleamed with the light of success. “And to answer your question, I traded him six .303 Enfield rounds.”

  “Say what?”

  “It’s a rare caliber for an old gun. Pretty powerful. I’d had those bullets for… Hell, 10 years. Found ‘em in the glove box of a broke down car in a ditch on the interstate. I’m glad they traded at all, but to get this… that’s nice.”

  “Congrats,” she said. The story of the bullets somehow made the thrill of the trade fade away. Now she had the awkward stickiness of standing in front of someone with nothing to say.

  “So. My wife sent Liam over here a few minutes ago. I got the message you ran into a crab out there,” he said, thumbing at the wall of the parking garage and the wilds beyond. “Pulling our leg, or did it really happen?”

  Despite every urge to the contrary, she told him the story. Starting when she set out from her basement shelter outside of Shant and ending when she and Gordon were yelling at each other in the cold of the desert night. The entire time Brent listened he looked at her. Gauging her in ways that made her skin squirm. She never felt threatened, or doubted; she felt assessed, evaluated, and even… found worthy.

  “And yeah, that’s it,” she finished.

  “Impressive. I’m glad you didn’t try to beat the thing to death. Even with your halligan you woulda been hard up trying to crack one of their shells. And man, Yaz… good thing you didn’t do that. When they die, they don’t go quietly.”

  “They blow up, right? I’ve never seen one die, but you know, I hear things.”

  “You hear a lot for someone who doesn’t live around people,” Brent teased.

  “I’m a good listener,” Yaz quipped.

  “That you are. And no, they don’t blow up. They’ve got some kind of internal safety when their armor is cracked enough or the creature inside is killed. Some kind of acid that fills them up and melts everything. We don’t even know what the crabs look like inside their armor.”

  “What about shrimps? Could they be a different species? The shrimp armor is like, the size of a dog and crabs are like… big bear sized. They don’t even look the same on the outside,” Yaz posed.

  “I wish I could tell you. You know I can tell you that you did the right thing running. I don’t know many people who’ve survived a toe to toe with a crab, and you’re the first I’ve heard of to do it mano a mano.”

  “One on one?”

  “Yeah,” Brent answered. He sat down on a metal stool and rested the half dozen eggs on the cleanest rag he could find. “We’ll have to call a town meeting. Tell everyone what you saw. They might want you to tell the story again.”

  “Uh-uh. I told it to you, you can tell it to them. I don’t… I don’t talk in front of people. It’s hard enough for me to come to the market to see you or trade,” Yaz said, admitting her fear to the big man. For whatever reason, it helped.

  “Okay, okay now. I won’t let them make you talk.”

  “They can’t make me talk,” she said, defiant. “No one can make me do anything.”

  “Unless you owe them a debt,” Brent said. “Then you’ll do whatever they ask to make it square.”

  She looked at her feet. “Um, speaking of which… I owe you for some bread and some water, and the use of a bed, and-“

  “You mean my family’s hospitality?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said, ashamed.

  “Well,” he said, and looked over at the eggs he’s just gotten. “I tell you what. Let me keep a couple of the books you got at that school, and then tonight you come over and share these eggs with my family, and we’ll call it all even.”

  “I can get a far better trade for those books,” she pleaded with him, but his expression told her he was cutting her a deal and she should shut up about it. “Fine, but you need to answer me a question.”

  “I got answers. All day I got answers.”

  “Why does everyone want me to stay around? Dr. Sonneborn wants me to do paperwork for him, and you want me to have dinner with your family. Why won’t people just leave me alone? Let me pick in peace and come and go as I please?” She picked up some random item out of a plastic bin and fiddled with it. That was better than eye contact.

  “Yaz… Shantytown loves you. You bring us things we need, and you trade fairly. You give kids toys. You leave more than you take every time, and when we see you, and see the look in your eyes, we can tell you crave connection. Human connection. More than a transaction here in the market.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You calling me a liar?”

  “No.”

  “Shantytown likes you, Yaz. And while we’re waiting for you to accept us as your own, we’re gonna try to get you to stay as long as you’re willing to suffer us,” Brent said with a smile.

  “Yeah, well, it sucks.”

  “Oh come on. You’re tougher than that. Little conversation won’t kill you. You tell the doctor you’ll do his faxing and filing?”

  “There are no more fax machines, Brent.”

  “You really need to work on your sense of humor, Yaz. It’s in there. I can smell it.”

  “You can’t smell someone’s-“

  “Ahh. Ahh. Gonna stop you right there.”

  She stared at her feet again, but couldn’t stop from laughing.

  “Go tell the doctor you’ll do his work. The slow pace will do your back good. Head to our place when you’re done, and you know you’re welcome to stay the night if you need shelter. On the house.”

  “Thank you. I’ll repay you somehow.”

  “I said on the house, Yaz. That means for free.”

  “I know. It’s just… My mom had this saying about old habits, right?”

  “She tell you they die hard?”

  “Yeah, she sure did.”

  “Your mom was a smart woman, and she raised a competent, compassionate, powerful woman to boot. Now go. I’ll see you a little after sunset.”

  Chapter Eight

  Whispers in the Dark

  Yaz enjoyed her egg. Well, the portions of egg that she got.

  As the sunset filled the dust-infected sky with swaths of reds and oranges, Kim cooked the eggs in a cast iron pan over the small fire on the balcony of their apartment. She made them in a variety of styles so the family could see the incredible versatility of the food. One was scrambled, one was fried hard, one was cooked ‘sunny side up’ and when everyone had their taste of those, she cooked the rest to order.

  Yaz’s favorite was ‘sunny side up.’ The yolk’s liquid texture felt like free water, and free water felt like a giant victory in life. She also enjoyed watching the two boys eat and joke. Just like their parents, Owen and Liam had terrific senses of humor and watching the four of them gave her a huge sense of accomplishment. She’d braved the social torture chamber and emerged unscathed. Actually, she emerged a little fulfilled. She even managed to leave her mom’s phone in the pocket of her pants the whole time. That had to be some kind of record for her.

  Of course when the food was gone, and it was time for Brent and Kim to read books to Owen and Liam before bed, she bolted. Dr. Sonneborn had a spare room at the clinic for her, and the idea of listening to them while they read felt far too intimate for her to bear. Not to mention she had an agenda of her own to keep.

  She said thank you, dodged a few hugs and slipped out into the hallway, then down the stairs. Yaz exited the brown stone building’s blanket-door and inhaled the cold air of the night. The moon was half full and as soon as she exited the covered alleys and streets of the brick buildings she could see well. No one stirred, and she had the entire town to herself. She caught movement in the top of the guard tower in the distance out of the corner of her eye and huffed.

  “Screw you, Gordon.”

 
A happy Dr. Sonneborn let her in after she knocked, and led her to the emptied office that he’d turned into a patient recovery room. A small twin bed sat in the right corner and opposite that was a reasonably comfortable looking chair with worn upholstery. It looked like a cat had gotten to it, back when cats were kept as pets. Now they were mostly feral, and stalked settlements at night for the tiny rodents that somehow survived the crabs taking the water of the world.

  “There’s a low supply of power in here,” he explained to her, pointing at a hole in the wall at foot level that had an extension cord poking out. “If you need any juice for the gadgets you have, go ahead and plug in, but don’t expect much.”

  “Thank you.”

  “When you wake up, I’ll show you what I need done, and then we’ll have breakfast. Won’t be much, but it usually isn’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sleep well, and don’t forget to change your dressing,” the doctor said then ducked to exit the room before she could complain about him telling her what to do. The heavy wooden door closed with a click.

  Yaz dropped her gear and locked the door. She fished out the cable and plug for her mom’s phone from the bag and plugged it in to the cord poking through the wall. After stretching, yawning, kicking off her shoes and flopping on top of the clean bed and its clean linen, her mom’s phone came out.

  She turned the screen on and felt a hug wrap around her from her childhood. Seeing the background wallpaper image of her joyous mother and father holding her as an infant made the world’s problems disappear. She often wondered who the lucky person was who took that picture. The person who got to see them alive like that.

  The locked door and clean bed helped with that, too. It didn’t stop her back from hurting though.

  She sat her mom’s phone down with a sigh and got to the edge of the bed. Yaz took out the supplies the doctor gave her and stripped her top off. She unwrapped the bandage from her torso and almost cried out as the dried blood fastened to her shirt from her lower back pulled a scab free. She felt fresh blood trickle down her behind and she stood so it didn’t get on the bed. White sheets, and all.

  Several minutes later she had the blood cleaned up, honey applied to the area of the wound and a fresh bandage wrapped back around her. She returned to her spot on her back in the bed, though this time she did so without flopping.

  Her mother’s phone distracted her. She plugged in the ear buds and played some relaxing blues music as she popped open the gallery of old pictures she loved so.

  One by one she thumbed through them, loving the expression in her mother’s eyes, and on her father’s face through the haze of the scratched phone glass. She saw them happy. She saw herself happy, and that made her happy. As she flipped further and further along to the pictures of when the crabs came, she saw the happiness fade from their faces. She watched hardship scar them. She watched the sand and sun darken their flesh and their eyes until the only pictures she saw were of the withered husks of who they once were.

  Then she stopped seeing her father in the pictures, and after spending dinner with Kim, and Brent, and their kids, she couldn’t handle those thoughts or memories. They overwhelmed. Crushed. What once had been a respite from the harsh, arid wastes of her day to day reality had become an arduous test and she was in no mood to be tested.

  Yasmine rested the phone beside her pillow and closed her eyes, letting the music wash away her dark thoughts. On impulse she changed the music choice to the hard, fast beat of the electronic music her mother had enjoyed. The same songs Yaz knew her mother had traveled the world to dance for, and the same music that played at the concert when her parents met. She sat the phone back down and rested her eyes. So long as she clung to that story her mother told her, she would be okay.

  Fatigue soon replaced sorrow, and the dreams let themselves in for her.

  In the void of the windowless room, a loud noise woke Yasmine from a deep, restful sleep. She sat up, her body warm; almost sweaty. She itched.

  “Hello?” she asked in the direction of the door, thinking the doctor had knocked and woken her. She waited, but there was no second knock.

  She tugged at the thin plastic cord connected to her ear buds and the sound of silence rushed into Yaz’s exposed ear canal. She heard her breathing, her heartbeat, and the sound of a rodent or insect eating away at a wall.

  Her eyes noticed a miniscule change of light beside her.

  Yaz looked over and saw her mom’s phone sitting an inch away from her pillow, just a hand’s width from her planted elbow on the bed. At the top of the phone near the camera eyelet she saw a tiny red light flash. The memory of the crimson-eyed crab at the bottom of the stairwell flashed out of the dark and she shivered. She wasn’t hot anymore.

  “What the heck?” she sat up with a grunt of discomfort and let her legs hang off the side of the bed. She picked the phone up and turned the screen on. Something was different about the way the screen looked. There was a new icon that looked like a thought bubble from an old comic book from her pile at her home at the top, and a little red circle with the number 1 at the center on the corner of the messaging icon near the bottom.

  Her mother’s phone had just received a text.

  Thirteen years after the end of civilization, her mother’s phone had just gotten a message.

  Thirteen years after an alien invasion that brought on a drought that killed off most of the world, her mother’s phone had gotten a message.

  Thirteen years after the power went out, the ocean dried up, the wars raged, and just a few years after the death of her mom… the phone had been contacted by someone somewhere else.

  She dropped the phone to the bed and scooted away to the foot. Yaz decided the device was haunted. A ghost from beyond had pierced through to tell her about her impending doom. She was sure of it. Maybe it was the ghost of the dead crab returned to take the most important thing she had away from her.

  “Okay. Not good. Not good at all. What’s going on?” she asked the empty room. The phone’s screen gave off enough light for her to see, and she snatched up the halligan tool from where it leaned and held it to her chest. The cold metal felt strong. Unyielding. Brave.

  She sat like that until the phone’s screen went to sleep. Somehow, that made it worse. She reached over and turned the screen back on, then pulled her hand away. The balloon, and the little red one were still there, calling out their lure to draw her in.

  The cold metal in her hands grew warm, and her skin clammy. She sat the tool down and fanned her hands until they were dry.

  “Who? Who sent it? Who has a phone that can connect with mine? Do they know where I am? Are they coming for me? Is it the crabs? Is it bandits?”

  She thought again of the red-eyed, scarred monstrosity she’d killed in the buried high school and a shiver coursed through her body. It was dead; she’d dropped three stories of concrete and steel staircase on it. She didn’t have to worry about that thing coming back for her.

  Yet she worried.

  She licked her lips (a bad habit her mother had trained her out of when she was about ten) and took a deep breath. She watched as her mom’s phone screen dimmed, then went black.

  She couldn’t wait any longer. All her answers (if they were to be had at all) were in that little chat bubble, underneath that little red one.

  She picked up the phone and turned the screen on.

  Chapter Nine

  Add New Contact

  Her finger hovered over the messaging app, refusing to touch the square that would reveal the answers she sought. Her nose wrinkled, and her pulse pounded but her finger wouldn’t move. In fact, it backed away from the scary icon on the screen of her mom’s phone.

  She halted the retreat of her disobedient digit.

  “No,” she resolved. “Others get scared and turn around. I never turn around. This is no different.” Yaz forced the pad of her index finger to the scratched surface of her mother’s phone. The device responded.

 
A bold, unread message hovered at the top of the inbox. It came from the number 333-333-3333.

  “That’s a lot of the number 3,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Suppose we see what they said.”

  She opened the message.

  Hello?

  Somehow, the simple message melted her fears away.

  “That’s it? Just ‘hello’ and no good information? No selfie? Come on, stranger. Tell me something about you.”

  She tapped on the reply field and the keyboard popped up at the bottom of the screen. For the first time ever, she typed in a reply, sent it, and waited for the person with all the threes to respond.

  Hello.

  Seconds ticked by that felt longer than the hours she spent digging holes in the sandy wastes that led to treasure troves. The ten seconds that passed exhausted her patience and when the phone pinged a second incoming message, her frayed nerves made her hands jolt, and she dropped her mom’s phone on the bed. She picked it up.

  Thank you for answering. I was worried you would ignore my message.

  Ignore your message? How would that be humanly possible? Do you know how long it’s been since this phone rang? I have so many questions.

  Yeah, I bet. May I ask with whom I’m speaking?

  She grinned. She was having a text conversation. A real, honest-to-God text message conversation, Unthinkable. Amazing. Her mom would be so happy. She got back to it without wasting another second.

  They call me Yaz.

  Yaz? Is that short for something? Yastrzemski, like the old baseball player?

  No, LOL. My dad would like you for that guess. He liked the Red Sox. Yaz is short for Yasmine.

  That’s a very pretty name, Yaz.

  What’s your name?

  I don’t like my real name. I’m fond of my nickname though. Trey.

  Are you a boy or a girl?

  I’m a boy.

  How old are you?

  How old are you?

  I’m 16.

  There was a pause of almost a minute before Trey replied, and Yaz felt the void of his presence in the pit of her belly like a growing knot.