The Dry Earth (Book 1): The Phone

by Orion, W. J.

  She wanted to leave for the city. She had an important job to do there, and wanted to do it while she knew the Baron’s patrols were out. Of course she was still healing, and still learning from her after-midnight conversations with Trey about the Monoliths, and fearful of not only the city but the journey overland to it. But still.

  As Owen took things out of her duffel bag and arranged them in no discernible way on the full sized bed Brent had given her, she found her mind wandering. How do I get to the city? On foot is easiest, and least likely to stand out, but in a caravan she’d be safer if attacked. Might stand out more, as there would be people in the caravan but… it might be worth it. A handful of people in the open didn’t stand much chance if a crab attacked them, but they might if a Monolith raiding party came.

  “Yaz?” Owen said at her side.

  “What?”

  “Where do you want me to put the cans of food? I asked you three times,” Owen said, “Why didn’t you answer me?”

  “I’m sorry. I was thinking and didn’t hear you.”

  “Oh. You think so loud you can’t hear people talking in the same room?” Owen looked perplexed.

  She snickered. “I guess so. I do most of my thinking when I’m alone, so I never knew how loud I thought. Could you hear me thinking just now? Did you see smoke coming out of my ear holes?”

  His eyelids disappeared with shock. “Smoke can come out of your ears?”

  “When all the machinery in muh brain starts churning,” she said then made a grinding noise with her mouth, “smoke billows out of my ears, oily and black and stains the ceiling until I do something stupid so I can stop thinking.” She leapt towards him as if to tickle him, and they laughed.

  “I was worried,” Owen said with a huff.

  “I worry when I think too,” Yaz said. “You can put the food in the middle drawer please. Thank you for asking.”

  Yasmine heard a strange noise outside through the cracked window. Daylight threatened through the drawn blind of the cracked glass and she dared not lift it. Full sunlight hitting in the room would make it hot fast. She went to the window and leaned over, putting her ear near the sill.

  Was it a hum? No, not quite. Nothing like crab technology. More of a grinding noise. An uneven, throaty, engine type of….

  “Get to your mother downstairs,” Yasmine barked to Owen.

  “Why?” Owen asked.

  “Because there are vehicles coming towards town.”

  Yasmine grabbed her halligan and the pistol she had no ammunition for and was out the apartment door in thirty seconds. She leapt down the stairs two at a time, her small feet skipping over the steps as if spring-loaded. She passed the door to the Murdough family’s apartment as Kim took Owen in, and the two women exchanged grim expressions.

  Yasmine blew through the blanket-door and hit the ground outside under the fabric-ceilinged sidewalks running. Ten strides in she heard a series of bells start to ring. The first came from the gate nearest the growing noise of the engine and each that followed spread across Shantytown. The bells triggered panic amongst the settlement’s citizens. Those sitting in the shade got to their feet and ran inside the closest building, yelling and hollering that the town was being attacked. No one joined her as she headed towards the gate.

  No one until she saw Brent running at a full sprint towards the gate just ahead of her. He exited the parking garage hefting a long rifle or shotgun in one hand while donning what looked like an old SWAT helmet with the other. Under his duster she saw he had a dark blue or black bulletproof vest on as well.

  She knew he’d been a cop, but to see him like this… he scared her. Nevertheless his presence emboldened her, and she ran faster to catch up. When she did, he looked over at her, shocked to see her.

  He didn’t say anything, not even about the pistol in her hand, but she knew he would later.

  Brent took the first of the steel steps heading up to the top of the guard tower at the gate. As they ascended, feet clanging on the diamond-patterned metal the sound of the engine grew both louder, and seemed to multiply.

  Yasmine dropped her halligan when she saw what lay just beyond the welded steel gate of Shantytown. The metal tool clanged off the steel floor loudly, startling her. Just in front of her on the platform stood the trader she met at the council meeting. The tall one with no eyes who came too close, and scared her off the stool.

  “Something wicked, this way… has come, yes?” the black goggle-wearing, weirdo Trader Joe said to her. He drew the slide back on his pistol, chambering a round, and returned his eyeless gaze to the convoy of armored cars that had come to Shantytown.

  “What’s the name of this rusty tin can you call home?” a bald mammoth bellowed from the hood of the bright red 4x4 truck at the head of the convoy. Black exhaust churned out of giant tailpipes beneath its rear bumper. He stood at least six feet tall, and was made of muscle, tattoos, and arrogance. On his sleeveless black leather vest (that he wore over a bulletproof vest) right above the breast was a patch of a giant #1. In his right hand he held some kind of military rifle that should’ve been held in two hands. Something with a chain of bullets hanging out the side of it. Hanging from his collar and shoulders was a tan cape that went to the middle of his calves. The bottom was torn and shredded.

  The thirty or so men and women in the convoy not in vehicles, or sitting in handmade turrets behind machineguns all wore some variant of the white #1. Some had it painted on their tanned foreheads, while others had it emblazoned across their backs, or chests like they played for a pre-war sports team.

  “This is Shantytown,” Brent called back to the pale giant with the shaved head. “We are prepared to defend our home if need be.”

  The giant laughed. “Well good! If you didn’t want to put the effort into defending it, then it wasn’t worth the gas to drive out here. Good for you. Who writes the checks here?”

  “Checks?” Yaz asked Trader Joe. “What’s a check?”

  Trader Joe stayed her curiosity with a wave from a gloved hand. He kept his gun low, and his eyes on the man shouting below.

  “We have rotating councils. There is no one voice,” Brent answered. “But you can talk to me while others listen. I’m Brent.”

  “Brent, huh?” the man said and cocked his head sideways. “That’s a good name. You strike me as a humble man who takes no crap from people, am I right on this? I’m usually right about these things.”

  “I’ve been summarized in such a way. What do you call yourselves?”

  Yaz’s blood cooled until she shivered. She knew. She already knew. She knew far too much.

  “Well, Mr. Summarized in Such a Way, Brent…” he turned and gestured towards the dozen trucks and cars string along behind him and the dozens of armed men and women surrounding them, “These are the Monoliths, and I am their Baron.” He turned back and grinned at the meager defenders of Shantytown. “And the Baron would like to come inside.”

  Yaz had never been more uncomfortable, not even when the black and red crab looked up at her in the bottom of the buried school.

  The glint the Baron had in his eye was all too similar to the bright light in that crab’s eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sometimes, You Like the Person You Think You Should Hate

  “What do we do?” Gordon (Yaz’s gate-guard nemesis) asked Brent. He held up his makeshift aluminum spear. “We can’t turn them away. They have machineguns!”

  Brent couldn’t stop staring at the huge man holding a machinegun, jumping off the hood of the red pickup. The shiny, polished, red pickup belching sooty exhaust into the air. When the Baron hit the remnants of the paved road that led to Shant he went to several other armed men and started chatting them up. The big man turned his back to the gate and the defenders of the settlement seemingly under siege.

  “He’s not worried about us at all, is he?” Yaz asked Brent. “I mean look at him. He isn’t paying any attention to us. His back is turned.”

  “N
o, he’s not worried, you’re right,” Brent said. “Because we’re all dead if we take a shot. Even if we kill him. The rest of his crew will ram the gate down, and shoot everyone that looks at them once they get inside. That or they’ll wait us out, and we’ll starve.”

  “So what do we do?” Yaz asked, echoing the frightened, spear-wielding Gordon.

  “Joe, any opinion you want to share?” Brent asked the masked, wrapped trader.

  “They’re here for something other than murder,” he replied. “If they wanted to raid Shantytown they wouldn’t be knocking at midday. They want something else.”

  “What could they want?” Yaz asked.

  “What everyone else wants. Trade, most likely. Water is the first request. Information is the second. There are possible, darker reasons, but I believe those would’ve been satisfied by a dawn raid.”

  “Open the gate,” Brent said.

  “You’re just going to let them in?” Yaz exclaimed in a hushed tone. “They’ll kill us.”

  “And maybe they won’t. I think Trader Joe is right. They came for something else. Something violence wouldn’t achieve as easily as talking would.”

  Does the Baron know I talk to Trey? Is he here for me? The weight of her mother’s phone in the cargo pocket of her pants began to drag her to the floor of the guard tower.

  The gate cracked with a metallic groan, then screeched open. Brent went down the steps to the ground with Yaz and Trader Joe on his heels. Gordon shuffled his plantar wart covered feet, and hoped for the best.

  At ground level Baron Monolith was a man of gargantuan stature. She could only compare him against the other men she knew. Brent stood tall; taller than most. Dr. Sonneborn and Trader Joe were taller than Brent, but they weren’t as thick as the big ex-cop and father of two boys. Not as thick.

  Baron Monolith (in his sleeveless leather vest, criss-crossed with chains of linked bullets, skin covered in all manner of tattoos) was taller than the doctor, and thicker than Brent. His hands looked big enough to pick Yaz up and hold her like she fit in a teacup.

  His red truck was bigger than he was.

  Only three of the convoy’s vehicles entered the gates. They came to a stop just inside the town, parked in a line far from homes and the parking garage market. The ten or so men of the Baron’s were inside Shantytown, but not far past the gate. They prowled around their shoddily-armored vehicles—metal welded on here and there, spikes protruding where people might approach—melee weapons and guns at the ready, darting eyes looking for an ambush. One of the vans had a peculiar wire cage welded onto it, surrounding the entire hull.

  The Baron stuck one of his bear paws out for Brent to shake when they approached. Brent took it, and the leader of the raiding party shook his hand with vigor.

  “That’s a good grip. Great grip. I like a man with a strong handshake. Not too strong though. Not too strong. You can show strength without being an obnoxious prick,” the Baron said.

  Brent nodded in agreement, but didn’t say anything.

  “Strong, silent type,” the Baron added with a sly, pearly smile. He looked over Brent’s shoulder at Trader Joe, then at Yasmine, who remained several paces pack. “You’re Joe, right?” Baron asked the weirdo with the now-hidden pistol.

  “Trader Joe, Baron,” he replied, and bowed slightly, flourishing his hand as if he were actually greeting royalty.

  “Yeah I thought so,” the Baron said with a wry smile. “You got quite the reputation in the city. You get things for people that need them gotten.”

  “I am diligent about my passions.”

  “And who’re you, little chipmunk?” the Baron asked Yaz.

  Her heart froze solid, and she couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even breathe. Brent moved to the side, putting his face between the Baron’s gaze and Yasmine.

  “She’s a kid, Mr. Monolith. Just another one of Shantytown’s residents, standing up when called upon,” Brent said with a stern voice.

  The Baron stepped more to the side so he could see Yasmine again. His gaze slid down her body to her toes, then back up to her face. He looked in her eyes for too long.

  Her skin crawled.

  “What’s in your hand, kid?” The Baron asked her and he already knew the answer. He aimed his gaze back down to her halligan tool.

  “It’s… it’s my halligan,” she said. Each word gave her a growing sense of courage. It’s just a man. He’s a scary man, but he’s just a man.

  “You know I used to be a firefighter before the crabs came?” The Baron asked her, his expression softening. “Station 12 on Oklahoma.” He revealed a tattoo on the inside of his left forearm. Sandwiched between icons of dead bands, or maybe sports teams, it looked like a medieval shield, and had the number 12 at its center.

  He laughed—a tiny, wistful sound coming from a large man—and walked around the side of his big red pickup, slinging his giant machine gun over his shoulder. He opened the driver’s side door and reached in. When he closed the door, he held his own halligan tool. His was dirty, worn, and the sharp ends looked like they’d been stained red.

  Blood?

  “See? This is my tool from then. I’ve been using it for almost 20 years now. This same one,” he looked at the tool like Brent looked at his sons. “Best thing I’ve ever used as a fireman, or… or after.” He looked up at Yasmine. “How’d you get yours?”

  “I picked it up out of a burnt-out fire truck a couple years ago. The tool was the only thing that survived. My dad was a fireman,” Yaz answered.

  The Baron’s eyes opened like he’d seen the sunrise for the first time. “Did he work for MFD?”

  “No. I’m not from around here. Small town. I mean, maybe. He died when I was very young.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Kevin.” Hot as the day was, she shivered. Saying his name to a stranger felt… wrong.

  “Ahh. Kevin huh? I see. I’m sorry. I had family in the force too. You’re safe here? Shantytown takes good care of you?” He seemed genuinely sorry for her loss, and invested in her safety. It was weird.

  “Yeah,” she answered, surprised a bit at his sudden interest in her well-being. “They’re good people.”

  “What’s your name, kid?” he asked her.

  “Yasmine. What does the big white number one mean on your jacket?”

  He looked at his patch. “Yasmine. That’s a good name. And this, it’s not a 1. It’s the white tower we live in. The Ivory Tower. The center of civilization and safety in the city. Heaven or Hell, depending on who you are. It’s the Monolith.” The Baron took his eyes off of her, and looked at Brent. He had a threat in his eyes. “You take good care of Yasmine?”

  “The best. I consider her my own daughter. I uh, I was MPD,” Brent said to the Baron. “Nice to see a MFD guy still out and around.”

  The Baron seemed relieved. “Okay. Yeah. Well, alright. MPD and MFD, back in the saddle again. It’s good. Yeah it’s real good,” he said. “I’m glad you’re taking proper care of Yasmine here. That makes me get all warm and fuzzy about this place, and you people.”

  “I’ll take warm and fuzzy,” Brent said.

  “Yeah, yeah, most would. Sadly, my reputation isn’t a warm and fuzzy one,” the Baron said. “Despite me being a big old teddy bear,” he said and flexed his enormous arms. “I think it’s on account of the machine guns.” He thumbed back at the armada of beaten trucks and the weapons mounted on them.

  “So at the risk of sounding impatient, what brings the infamous Baron Monolith to Shantytown?” Brent asked.

  “Infamy? Not…’ the famous?’ But, ‘the infamous?’ Man… It’s true. No one likes you when you’re a politician,” the Baron quipped.

  “Not many people out here like you,” Brent said. “At all. And I apologize if that stings, but it’s the word in the sands. You’re scary. People talk, right?”

  “That they do, despite my wanting them to shut up,” he said, eyeing Brent hard. “Look, I’ve made a lot of omelets since the
crabs came. And some people didn’t like seeing or hearing about those shells breaking, and a whole lot of people ate those omelets too, and stayed healthy, and happy. Can’t please ‘em all, Brent. Can’t be done.”

  “I understand. So… what brings you here?”

  The Baron eyed Brent, eyed Trader Joe, eyed the guards on the top of the guardhouse, and all the poorly armed citizens of Shantytown surrounding him. His gaze ended on Yasmine. His mouth split into a slow grin.

  “Food and water mostly. Following that, shelter and information.”

  Trader Joe turned his head towards Yasmine. It seemed to be as he’d said.

  “Well, our water trade is available to anyone with sufficient barter, but the laws of the sands are the same here as elsewhere. You leave as much as you take.”

  “Yeah we’ll piss in your holes. I get it.”

  “And as far as food goes, we have some spare we can offer, for fair trade,” Brent added. “Anything given away will cause starvation.”

  “Good, good. I like it. Going great so far. And yeah, we’ll trade. We’re not in the starving people business. We got plenty you want. We always got plenty everyone wants,” the Baron clapped his meaty hands together and rubbed them with restrained glee. “Shelter. At night we need a safe place to park our trucks while we patrol the region. An old house maybe we can set up a shop in, nothing fancy.”

  “Like a precinct?” Brent asked him.

  “I guess you could call it that. You’d be a pilot program. A way for the Monoliths to expand our realm of influence. Bring civility and safety to the wastes, one busted crab shell at a time.”

  “Baron,” Trader Joe started, “Are you insinuating that you’re out here hunting crabs?”

  “We take ‘em out when we can. It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it. Mostly, we scare the jerks who can’t behave into behaving, and if that fails, we put them to work back at the tower,” he answered.

  “Like… labor camp?” Brent clarified.

  “I hate killing people, Brent. Really, I do. I believe in rehabilitation. Sometimes, whether they want to be rehabilitated or not. There’s too few of us for murdering, righteous or not. Last resort, friend.” The giant shrugged. “We gotta preserve the gene pool.”