The Dry Earth (Book 1): The Phone

by Orion, W. J.

  Like the ancient, great seer of the future Nostradamus, Knox spoke her prediction, and it came to be.

  A giant explosion of air shook the side of the van right near where the two women were. A moment after, a warbling, thick sound timed with a rhythmic shake took over the world inside the steaming vehicle . The van tilted to the driver’s side and Yasmine’s head hit the steel frame. She felt her forehead, but wasn’t bleeding.

  The gun.

  Squire Todd’s gun.

  “Keep going. Don’t stop,” Yasmine said to Knox. “Bernie, get right up to us,” she said into the walkie, and prayed he even had one to hear her. She dropped the walkie back into the cup holder as the van shook its way down the street and collected more bullets. Someone on the other end of the walkie said something, but she didn’t pay attention. It didn’t sound like Bernie.

  Yaz hit the back door’s latch and the door on the driver’s side swung open and nearly slammed shut on her fingers. Her hands felt over the other door—looking for the latch to open that—and she found it in the side of the door. That door swung open as well.

  Ten feet in front of her through a destroyed windshield she saw a narrow-eyed Bernie flooring his beaten, shot-up truck to put the hood just a foot from where she stood in the back door of the van. Wind whipped her hair in all directions as she waited for him to close the gap. An angry whizz and a snap pierced the hair behind her head, and she knew she almost caught a bullet.

  Bernie’s front wire bumper touched the back of the van, and Yasmine started to jump.

  She stopped. What would she grab onto? There would be nothing to hold onto if she cleared the bumper and the cage.

  At her feet inside the van sat her backpack, and all her tools. She snatched up the fireman’s tool, readied it in her hands above her shoulder, and went over the top of the roller coaster once more.

  Leaping through the air between two moving vehicles, soaring like a vulture over the desert, Yasmine felt weightless. Alive in a way she never had before. Just under the flashing euphoria of adrenaline she felt a shot of dread and guilt. What would her mother say, if she knew her daughter was doing this?

  Yasmine cleared the pickup’s Faraday cage and soared over the hood and towards the windshield faster than she expected. She’d hit the broken glass—break it more—and then fly over the top of the truck’s cab. Maybe she’d land in the back, and maybe she’d skip over the whole bed and slam onto the road, splitting her skull in five places.

  As she soared, she swung the sharp pick of the halligan tool towards the roof of the truck, just a foot from Bernie and his neck scar.

  The sharp steel spike pierced the metal like it was tissue paper, and the momentum of Yasmine’s body swung her around the tool like the arms on a maniac’s clock. Her hands held tighter than she’d thought possible, and yet still she almost flew away, off the truck and into the wires on the side of it or worse yet; into the ruined city streets below.

  She let go of the halligan when her hips crossed the back edge of the cab’s roof, and she fell hard onto a metal crate, then the bed of the body. Two feet from her head she saw a bullet-riddled Todd, bleeding out into the back of the pickup. She froze. She’d never seen a man bleeding to death before.

  Bullets smacked off the side of the truck inches from her body and she flung herself to the steel floor. There was no place to hide. Yaz knew she had one choice.

  To survive, she had to make them duck. Had to make them stop shooting.

  Yasmine reached up and gripped the steel mount of the gun. With one arm she pulled herself to her feet as the buildings whizzed by. More and more shooters stood up on the side of the rooftops—emboldened by their lack of defense—and rained down more violence on her. Some shot guns, others shot bows, threw rocks, or other debris.

  Yasmine’s hand found the grip of the machinegun, and her finger the trigger.

  A line of bullet holes appeared, walking their way up the bed of the truck, the side of it, then the street and one of the brick buildings. No longer flinching from the gun, she stepped behind it and leaned into it, aiming the chattering barrel at the tops of the rooftops. This went on for... less time than she’d think later, but too long to bear.

  She didn’t have the heart to see what she did, or even try to remember it. Best she forgot what she had to do in this moment.

  The gunfire disappeared along with the arrows and the rocks. She held the trigger down, spraying a lethal stream of bullets at the attackers until Knox made a turn away from the street of death. Once they disappeared behind a crumbling building with a bomb crater at its center, the gun stopped firing, and other than the roaring sound of the vehicle’s engines, and the faint FLUB FLUB FLUB of the flat tire on Knox’s van, the city went silent. They rolled forward in their hobbled convoy.

  “YEAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Bernie screamed through the broken glass at the back of the pickup. “Yasmine for the WIN! Check on Todd, see how bad he is.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t see.

  She’d killed.

  Yasmine sat down in the back of the truck, leaned her head against the vibrating steel, and let a little blackout give her a break from reality.

  Chapter Thirty

  Dirty Windows Only Show a Dirty World

  The lights were bright in Yasmine’s room. False, unlike the moon or the sun, the fluorescent bulbs found a way to scald the back of her eyes and make her head pound. She’d only been awake a few minutes in what had once been a small office, but already she wished she was still sleeping.

  She sat up on the creaky twin bed and looked around the small room. A nightstand, a dresser with an inert lamp atop it, and a small living room chair were all that was in it. She didn’t see a pee jug, which was bizarre.

  She stood and looked on the other side of the bed and saw her backpack, her halligan, and all her tools.

  Her hand went to her cargo pockets and she found the familiar rectangle of her mother’s phone. She pulled it out with eyes closed, and then looked at it for damages.

  The screen had a hairline crack across the center, but when she hit the power button, it came to life. Yaz could replace the screen. She had spares in her basement near Shant.

  The phone had a message from Trey, and she checked it.

  Did you get to the city yet? Are you safe?

  She sat the phone down on the clean sheets of the bed and tried to figure out an answer to give. She was in a clean room with plenty of juice—not flickering electricity, either—with clean, carpeted floors, and… air conditioning? She inhaled deep and felt the strangely cool air fill her lungs. Unless it was nighttime, and the windows were open, this building still had operational, luxurious air conditioning. She had to be in the city. She picked the phone up.

  Does the tower have air conditioning? I’m in an office in a room.

  She waited, but after staring at her mom’s phone long enough for the screen to go to sleep, Trey didn’t respond. She set the ringer to vibrate, and tucked it away in her pants pocket. As soon as she did, there was a gentle knock on the closed door. Whoever it was didn’t enter. They waited like she did.

  “Who’s there?” she asked the door after almost a minute.

  “The Baron,” they replied. It sounded like him.

  “Come in,” she said after her heart skipped a beat.

  The knob turned and the door opened inward. Its motion was smooth, unlike the doors in the houses with the busted frames, and crooked alignment she had to take shelter in now and then. The Baron, large and without his leather vest and weapons stepped into the doorway. He wore a faded blue t-shirt and shorts. In his hand he held a glass filled with clean water. He seemed… suburban, like a boring dad in a pharmaceutical advertisement in the back of Dr. Sonneborn’s magazines.

  “Hi,” Yasmine said.

  “Hi, kid,” he replied. His deep voice had somehow lightened, become friendlier. “I got some very animated stories told to me about you just a few hours ago.” He exten
ded the glass to her.

  “Yeah? People love talking crap about me behind my back,” Yasmine said, and took the glass. She immediately regretted her tone. She hid behind a sip of the fresh water.

  He cocked a corner of his lip up in a wry smile. “I feel that. They’re saying good things though, no crap. We should all be so lucky.”

  “I suppose. Am I in the tower?”

  “Sure are,” he said, beaming with pride. “You’re on the 17th floor. Just below the floors my knights live on.”

  “Is that, like, an honor?”

  “I mean, to many it would be. At least fifty people here are all trying to claw their way onto this floor and into this room. Probably not an honor to jaded, world-weary teenager like yourself. It’s a safe place. More security than on the lower floors. More amenities.”

  “Electricity and air conditioning, for example?”

  “Bingo. There’s also a rudimentary form of running water,” he added. “Flush toilets.”

  “No pee jug,” she said.

  “I hate those damned things. People say you get used to the smell, but I never have. Something about the smell of urine,” he said, and she genuinely believed his disdain.

  “Never bugged me.”

  “Well, you don’t remember a world with flushing toilets.”

  “I don’t. Probably better off that way. Can’t miss what I don’t remember having.”

  He looked at her. His eyes narrowed the tiniest bits and she felt the same examination she’d felt before—when they first met—but this time it didn’t feel like judgment. This time, he’d already made his decision about her, and was reveling in being right about it.

  “What?” she asked him.

  He shook his head and came-to like he’d been daydreaming. “Caught me staring, huh? You uh, you look like someone I used to know.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah, it is. I uh… look, you’re not under guard, or restricted in any way here. I want you to know that you’re a guest of ours, not a prisoner.”

  “I appreciate that. I hear you take a lot of prisoners.”

  “Only the worst get locked up. And speaking of up, up is bad. Down too far is bad also. I live at the top and the security gets tighter and less forgiving as you go. If you need to see me, flag down any of the guards. Especially the ones in the stairwells, or the elevator.”

  “You have a working elevator?” she asked him, excited to see the myth in action. “Where do you get your power?”

  “We do. All of our electricity is supplied by emergency diesel generators in the basement and solar panels on the side of the building. That elevator? Works like a charm. Runs from fifteen to thirty-three. That’s my floor.”

  33? Like Trey? Trey at 3:33?

  “If you descend, you’ll go to the market floors, the smiths, the toolmakers, the recycling plant, yada yada. You’ll also see a spot we call the tavern where we all get drunk, and where travelers passing through stay the night. That area is the Wild West. Below that is the garage where we store and work on our vehicles. Street level, outside our protection, is a warzone. Complete free for all between the survivors, and the occasional crab patrol. Our perimeter is good, but it’s always being tested by some douchenozzle.”

  “How many crabs do you see?” She thought of Trey again.

  “Damned few. We took a small patrol out a bit ago, and nothing since. Months before that we saw one roaming. Didn’t get him. The foxes don’t care about the henhouse anymore.”

  “There are still foxes out there. I saw a crab, killed it. Not even a month ago.”

  “I heard. Dropped a stairwell on it. Nice fu-“ he stopped himself, “frigging work.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Why do you believe me? Believe that I did it?”

  He put his hand back on the door knob and leaned. He debated what to say and shrugged. “I got no reason to doubt you, and two good reasons to believe you.”

  “Two good reasons? What are they?”

  “According to Bernie and Knox, you’re a superhero. You saved Todd’s life,” he said.

  “Todd lived?” she felt a buoyant wave of relief pick her soul up from the floor. She hadn’t even realized it was on the floor. “I swear he was dead. He was covered in blood.”

  “Yeah he got perforated like it was his fu-frigging job. But we got to your group in time with our QRF and saved him.”

  “QRF?”

  “Quick. Reaction. Force. We heard your 9-1-1 over the walkies and we came a-running. You saved him. I owe you.”

  “Anyone would’ve done the same.”

  “That’s something you are very wrong about. Most people—almost all people—duck and hide. They run from danger, not to it. You, kid, are a special delivery.”

  ‘Thank you,” Yasmine said, and felt her cheeks get hot.

  “Look, I’ll leave you be. You don’t need me looming over you like some creepy uncle at a picnic, asking how school is going. Do what you want, but don’t go too far down, or out of the tower without a monolith or two. I’ll see to it you have escorts for backup if that’s what you want.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Again, if you need me, just grab one of the guards.”

  “I will.”

  “One last thing,” the hulk added before leaving her, “Head to a window, and take a look. The view from up this high is… something to see.”

  The door shut, and she was left with her glass of clean, fresh water. She didn’t get to ask him what the other good reason to trust her was.

  After relaxing in the cool, quiet room for what felt like an entire afternoon Yasmine sat back up, checked for a message from Trey that might’ve slipped in, and when she found her mom’s phone without that message, she left the room.

  Beyond the door was a simple hallway running left to right. A few doors down to the left the hall terminated at another door with an old-fashioned dream catcher hanging off a nail at head height. To her right the hallway exited into an open space with a few couches, tables, and beyond that… dirty windows and blue sky. Far off she saw the horizon, but knew she floated high in the sky.

  Her legs went a bit to jelly, but a firm hand on the wall steadied her. She went towards the windows.

  The hallway was fine; it contained her. Kept the ocean of blue sky ahead at bay, but when the protective embrace of the narrow passage ended and she had to walk out into the open room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, she paused again, one hand clutching each corner of the wall.

  “Take my hand,” a voice beside her said.

  Yasmine turned and saw Bernie—the scarred weirdo—standing near her. Hunched a tiny bit with a fresh bandage covering his forehead he held out his hand for her. He smiled, hopeful. She gave him her hand.

  “When I was a little kid my parents brought me to Chicago,” he said as they walked at a gentle pace towards the dirty windows. “And we went to the observation level of the tallest building there. I remember thinking to myself why did we ever build anything so tall? Why would we risk it falling down?”

  “Because that’s what we do,” Yasmine said, breathing deep and staying focused on a table lamp with a fancy glass shade ahead. “We push the envelope. Test ourselves, and accept that failure is part of being successful.”

  “You’re gonna run this place in a couple years,” Bernie said with a chuckle. “The Baron’s gonna see to it.”

  “Let’s see if I can walk to the window first,” Yaz said back.

  They were there; the room was smaller than she’d first thought. She took her eyes off the lampshade and looked out at the ruins of the city spilling outward below.

  The world was… bigger than she could’ve imagined.

  It was also more destroyed than she could’ve understood.

  From far above she could see every broken wall, every smashed roof, every broken window and bombed out road. The shattered streetlights, the wrecked cars, trucks, and military vehicles, the black smears of explosions and the endless amou
nt of melted rubble from the crab’s plasma weapons.

  The city, the suburbs—as far as she could see until she couldn’t see anymore—was sand-covered, dry devastation.

  “Did the crabs do all of this?”

  “Most of it. We did some trying to make them leave. Hey, they won,” Bernie said and sighed. “Our enemy now is the world they left us with.”

  Yasmine felt a whole lot angry, a whole lot lost, and after Bernie walked away, a whole lot alone.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Tower

  Yasmine was startled awake by a humming sensation on her stomach.

  Is that mom’s phone? A text message?

  She didn’t remember putting the phone on her belly, but she felt its weight there. Yasmine grabbed her mom’s phone off the blanket atop her and unlocked it. He’d answered her earlier question.

  The tower has many floors with air conditioning.

  How high up are you?

  She smiled and wrote him back.

  Baron said 17th floor.

  Wow. He must like you.

  I’m getting that sense, yeah.

  Your journey to the city was safe?

  Not in the least, but I’m here and in one piece.

  I won’t ask. I’d like to sleep again.

  Soooo… now what?

  I don’t know. How much danger do you think you’re in?

  Hard to say. Less right now, I think. The Baron’s been busy the last couple days. Here, but busy.

  Do you think I have some time to get the lay of the land?

  I think so. Are you still thinking about helping me escape?

  I’m thinking about it.

  I’m also thinking about what it is you did to get him angry enough to lock you up, and throw away the key.

  It wasn’t what I did, it was who I did it with.

  You already know I was working with crabs.

  Crabs=criminal.

  I can’t blame him. I knew the world was ruined by them, but the view from up here is…

  Well. I never used to be angry at them. Now I am.

  They took our water, our world, and most of our happiness.