The Dry Earth (Book 1): The Phone

by Orion, W. J.

  Thank you.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Motivational Speeches Are Hard

  Despite Caleb wanting—advocating, arguing for it, in fact—to test the strength of Trey’s container, Yasmine carried him down as they descended on rubble and rope to the obliterated penthouse level. When she hit the ground her uncle stood in the center of where the fancy dining table had been, on an exposed, warped girder. She could smell the soles of his boots sizzling from the heat still in the beam.

  “No Mike?”

  “Naw. I don’t know if he got to the other stairs in time. I hope so,” her uncle said.

  “You guys were close?”

  “As close as I was to your dad. God, I hope he made it. Let’s try those stairs over by the elevator, and if that fails, we’ll descend using the elevator shaft,” the big man said.

  “No. First let’s look for your halligan.”

  “I’ll get another downstairs.”

  “If you say so,” she said. “Can we get mine on the way down?”

  “If the 17th floor is still there.”

  She swallowed that bitter pill, and looked at the hundreds of little beings in the tank that made up Trey. They swam idly, fearless in her arms. Somehow…

  She thought that was cool.

  The stairs were damaged but intact enough for them to get down to the 17th floor. The inter-species trio didn’t see another soul until they hit the landing of Yasmine’s floor. Her uncle stepped through the door first, and the same guard that she’d talked to earlier stood there, pistol in one hand, walkie in the other as it squawked in a dozen voices. The guard saw the Baron and the relief was evident. His expression changed to a mixture of disgust and confusion when he saw Trey under Yasmine’s arm. To be fair; she was carrying a container of glowing squid.

  “What happened up there?” the guard asked. “We thought you and Mikey were killed.”

  “Gimme that,” Caleb said, and reached for the walkie. The guard gave it to him without hesitation. Caleb hit the alert noise button on it to silence all communication. Once he was sure everyone was listening, he spoke into the device. “This is the Baron. I am not dead, though I’m sure many of you wish I were. We were just attacked by a crab vessel. I suspect they were trying to destroy the Monoliths. Look around you; you can see they have not.”

  “There are a few things you need to know; First, I’ve discovered that there might be good guy crabs, as well as bad guy crabs. Second, I have a good guy crab in my… control, and third, we are going after that sumbeetch who just blew up home sweet home. Fourth… that ship is headed to Shant, and if you can hear this, and you’re part of the QRF, we got some rescuing to do. If anyone has seen Mikey, tell him to meet me in the garage.” He tossed the walkie back to the guard. “We’re grabbing her stuff, and heading down to the garage if anyone asks for me.”

  “Yessir. Hey, is that the crab? I… thought they’d be bigger. And actually a crab.”

  “Yeah turns out the crabs are actually calamari in fish tanks inside crab shaped cars,” he said.

  “The world works in mysterious ways,” the guard said.

  “Amen. Get your stuff. We gotta move if we’re going to save the people in your town,” Caleb said.

  “Hold him,” Yasmine said, and handed Trey to her uncle. “And be nice. Maybe talk to him for a bit. Show him your soft side.”

  “I bet he’d like that,” Caleb said.

  Inside his fish tank, Trey spelled another short word.

  SIGH

  “Oh get off your high horse. Or whatever it is you ride on your planet covered in our stolen water,” she heard him say as she jogged away to her room.

  The elevators were jacked; the cables destroyed by the blast that eradicated the upper floors of the tower. This meant Caleb, Trey and Yasmine took the stairs down the remaining 16 floors to the lobby. When they hit the main floor, her legs were jelly and Trey’s container jammed in her backpack weighed a thousand pounds.

  “You gonna be okay?” Caleb asked her as they strode through the chaos of the lobby market.

  “Just—gotta—catchmybreath,” she said.

  “Cardio, kid. Rule #1.”

  When he walked into a space with people… they called out to him. The people of the tower. His charges. As he walked by they bellowed out his name and begged for his help. They wanted safety, protection, and the security that he and his loyal Monoliths offered them. All he did was give them a raised hand to calm their fears, and a confident smile.

  We got this, the smile said. No big deal.

  She’d seen that smile before. Yasmine loved that smile. It reminded her of when things were tough during her childhood. Her mother had smiled like that. She had pictures of that smile on her mom’s phone. If she had any doubt about him being family… that expression squashed it.

  Her legs felt a little better.

  As they marched past the frightened populace of the tower, one by one the Monoliths joined them in stride. First one, then five, then ten, and by the time they reached the already crowded parking garage, there were a hundred well-armed men and women ready to go.

  The Baron’s red pickup truck awaited him, its smooth skin polished and ready, perfect as the day it rolled off the assembly line, before the war. Standing in front of the grille was Mikey.

  “Mikey!” her uncle called out as he bolted forward to hug his friend. They embraced tight, then pulled apart. “What happened to your arm? And your clothes are all torched.”

  “A crab spaceship blew up your place? You remember that?” Mikey asked with a grin.

  “Ummm… Can’t say I recall that. Clean yourself up. You look unprofessional,” Caleb said to his friend. They shared a laugh and a smile Yasmine knew was familiar, and they moved on. Work had to be done.

  Her uncle pulled the driver’s side door open and yanked out a halligan. He spun the weight in his hands as deftly as a ballerina would spin a baton, and he smiled.

  This was a different smile. He climbed up on the rail that ran the length of the truck, then up on the high bed. He beckoned for her to join him up at his side, and she did.

  “Everyone, please say hi to the Baroness,” he said, pointing to Yasmine. “Or maybe she wants to be a kick-ass Duchess. Whatever she wants. Yasmine here is my long-lost niece, and what she says goes. If anyone gives her grief, she’ll knock your goddamn block off, and when she’s done with you, I won’t need to put a hurting on ya. Everyone say hi.”

  The crowd paused in something between confusion and awe, then applauded. For whatever reason… they loved that the Baron’s royal line had grown.

  She blushed, then waved at the gathered mass of people.

  “Yasmine… tell the Monoliths what’s going on, and do it loud.”

  She licked her lips in nervousness, and didn’t stay private. She shrugged her backpack off her shoulders, and removed Trey’s tank from the bag. In both hands, she lifted it above her head for them to see.

  “Everyone, this is Trey. He’s an alien. He’s a crab, and he’s my friend. He’s helped friends of mine too,” she said. Inside his case Trey spelled out a message for the gathered army.

  HI

  “There is a demented, evil crab that tried to blow up the top of the building, and is now heading towards Shant to destroy it. He’s trying to kill me because I killed him once before. I mean, I didn’t actually kill him, but I dropped some stairs on him, and killed some of him, and now he’s pissed and wants revenge.”

  The crowd remained silent, and judging by the faces they were making, were becoming more confused than when she started.

  “If we don’t head to Shant, and fight that crab and maybe a few more, they’ll kill everyone there, and then maybe come here to kill us too. A lot of people are going to die. It’s going to be terrible.”

  “May I?” her uncle asked her in a whisper. “Some advice?”

  “Sure,” she whispered back as the crowd became unsettled.

  “Lead with motivational, not infor
mational. We can explain everything to them later, right?” Caleb said to her. “And avoid words like terrible, and die. Not exciting.”

  “Yeah,” she whispered. She sat Trey down on the roof of the pickup’s cab, and thought about Squire Todd. She hoped he was doing okay. She raised her voice, and tried again.

  “The crabs came when I was a baby. I was three. They killed my father, stole my lakes and my oceans, and tried to take my happiness and safety. I don’t remember a world where I could play in the grass,” she slowed down, feeling emotions flood in. She gathered herself. “I am SO. SICK of being afraid of the sky. I am SO. SICK of fearing them. I am SO. SICK of… hoping that someone else will make the world a better place. I am tired of being alone.”

  They weren’t confused anymore. Each of her powerful sentences brought them up from their static emotional state. Now they were rabid, angry, motivated, and ready to wreak havoc on anything she and her uncle pointed them at.

  Yasmine felt… justified. Powerful. Unified.

  “Friends, come with me to Shant, and help me save innocent souls, and maybe, just maybe we’ll all stop feeling so sick.”

  The Monoliths roared, and jumped into action.

  She looked at her uncle—The Baron—and saw the pride he had for her.

  She remembered that expression too.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The Crab Master Key

  The sun headed towards the horizon over and away from Brent’s shoulder as he and his eldest boy walked back towards their home in Shant. It had been a good day.

  “Trade for anything good today?” Liam asked Brent.

  “No, not really. Quiet in the market all day. Trader Joe is coming back later tonight from a run south of Shant and hopefully he’ll have something for me tomorrow. I asked him to look for wood screws and nails. We’re almost out and Andy can’t keep up with demand.”

  “He always gets cool stuff,” Liam said, and kicked a rock into a ditch.

  “He does,” Brent agreed.

  “Yasmine does too. She always gets cool things. Things the other scavengers don’t think people want.”

  “She’s very good at that. She listens, and cares about people.”

  “When is she coming back?”

  “I don’t know,” Brent said, his voice trailing off as he heard a strange sound rolling in the distance. In the next few seconds he identified it as some form of machine’s noise. The mechanical hum grew louder, and echoed off the few brick buildings of Shant’s downtown. “Oh shit,” he muttered. He knew that sound.

  “Dad, don’t swear. You know Mom hates it.”

  He knelt and embraced his son’s narrow shoulders. “Get to the apartment right now. Tell your mom a crab ship is headed this way,” he instructed, scanning the blue sky to the east for the source of the threatening sound. “Get to the shelter. Lock everything down. Holler as you go.”

  Brent saw the fear come over his son, then watched it diminish. The father stood and watched his son sprint towards their home and knew Liam would get the job done. He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered as loud as he could.

  “Crabs! Ship headed this way! Shut it down! Shut it down! Get to the shelter!”

  The few people in his immediate vicinity froze and looked at him with odd expressions of confusion, or disbelief. He hollered the same message again, and pointed a finger into the sky where the thrumming grew closer, and louder. A tiny pip of dark color against the blue sky moved closer, and grew bigger.

  Like ants under a moved rock, they scattered.

  Brent sprinted to the gate tower nearest to him, dodging people heading in every direction but his as he went. These were veterans of the apocalypse; they ran as calm as could be expected, and didn’t bowl others over. The people of Shant had a plan to survive. They followed it. Brent worried about the visitors. They would need to be led to safety.

  “Can you see it?” Brent hollered up to Gordon, who was covering his second straight shift on the tower after his overnight.

  Gordon lowered the binoculars with the one busted lens and looked at Brent as the man sprinted up the metal stairs to the top level of the tower.

  “Yeah,” Gordon said. “Small ship. Not a big troop transport like the one that landed last year.” He handed the binoculars to Brent.

  Through the magnification and despite the one cracked lens, Brent could see the alien craft approach. It flew low, and slow on a trajectory that would cross right over or near Shant. Behind the tapered nose of the sleek vessel Brent could see the blossom of engine-tentacles so typical of the crab ships. Why they flew in space-squids he didn’t know, but the bizarre visage of the craft served to intimidate the human populace below.

  “What should we do?” Gordon asked.

  “Well sound the frigging alarm for starters,” Brent said and pointed at the 1950s era hand cranked air raid siren mounted on one of the beams holding the roof up. “Then we go to ground as fast as we can. Play dead and hope they pass over us, like always.”

  “What if they come here anyway?”

  “We’ll fight as best we can, or run as best we can, but it won’t be good. We’ve got nothing left in the tank powerful enough to down that ship or kill any of the crabs inside it. Right now we pray they pass us over, like they always have.”

  “Yasmine was telling the truth, wasn’t she?” Gordon asked him. “The crabs really were near here and she did kill one.”

  Without answering him Brent turned, grabbed the handle of the crank and spun it.

  The air shrieked with its noise, hurting both of the men’s ears. If they could’ve heard them, the sound of bells ringing spread throughout Shantytown.

  At least it drowned out the sound of the approaching vessel.

  Brent sprinted away from the base of the tower towards the basement he knew his wife and two sons would be hiding in. The air raid siren’s terrible shriek was dying off, its message delivered to all, possible even the deaf. Brent knew Gordon was descending down the gate house a few seconds behind; he too needed to get to shelter. If the crabs didn’t see anyone to shoot, they might not shoot.

  Brent sprinted down the main thoroughfare towards the downtown area and its ceiling of fabric, and noticed the sound of his crunching footsteps in the gravel and sand. His footsteps alone. He skidded to a stop on the sidewalk near the corner of a house and looked back to find the young man who’d taken the extra shift on the gate. Brent saw him going back up the stairs to the top.

  “Gordon,” Brent hollered. “Get out of there!”

  “I forgot my spear!”

  “Dude, get-“

  The gate, the gate tower, five feet of wall and Gordon disappeared in a terrifying blast. Brent was thrown away and onto his back as the concussive force tossed concrete, steel and wood through the air like a tornado. Brent’s ears erupted in agony from the explosion as the back of his head smacked off the broken concrete of the sidewalk.

  Debris rained down, and before it all came down to crush him, he rolled over and scampered towards the corner of the building he was closest to. Brick—rocks, heavy things—hit his legs, bruising and battering him as he crawled against the corner wall and covered his head.

  When the ruined defenses of Shant finished their descent from the sky, the world above grew dark. Brent fused his eyes shut and played dead as the hairs on his entire body stood up, brought to their end by the flickering, growling thrum of the alien craft hovering overhead. He heard something mechanical open and heard whirring noises that caused him to shake with fear.

  Please don’t land. Please don’t land. Please, please, please.

  The thrum of power grew, and Brent felt it fade as the ship slid away through the air just above. He held his breath for a few seconds more, then rolled over to steal a glance at where it was heading.

  The tentacled craft glided through the air until it reached a gentle hilltop perhaps a mile away. Whatever crab helmed it steered the tendrils that powered its locomotion until they were point
ed downward, and like a feather falling from the sky, the menacing ship landed.

  “They’re coming. Oh lord they’re coming,” Brent muttered, and got to his feet as fast as possible.

  He didn’t have time to mourn Gordon’s death.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  De Oppresso Liber

  Yasmine wished for the terror of the five mile an hour drive into the city with Knox, Bernie, and Squire Todd. Her first car ride seemed like an eternity ago, and the speed with which they’d gone had been reckless enough for a lifetime for her. She’d felt certain Knox was at least fifty percent crazy-woman for that excess of risk.

  She was now certain Knox was a calm, smart, reserved driver.

  Before they left the subterranean parking garage below the Tower, her uncle had turned to her in the front seat of his impeccably red pickup truck and uttered two sentences with an angry grin.

  “I’m gonna drive this thing like I stole it. Technically I did.”

  She didn’t know what it meant then, but she did now.

  With both hands gripping the big steering wheel of the truck and one giant foot on the gas pedal Caleb brought the fat diesel motor to limits she was sure would cause it to explode. Seatbelt buckled, one hand on the handle just above the door and the other on her halligan, she dared a peek out of the corner of her eye, over Trey’s container on the seat between them at the speedometer.

  Fifty. He was driving fifty miles an hour through the wastes with a set jaw, and eyes that dared the world to attack his convoy.

  They’d only just gotten up to speed when they saw the crab vessel fire the same weapon that eviscerated the upper floors of the Tower. From a distance the buildup of power at the front of the levitating ship seemed ineffectual, like a blue candlelight growing slowly brighter in the distance. But then that candlelight erupted, and a lance of brilliant energy struck down at the surface. She had to close her eyes from the intensity. When she opened them, she saw a fountain of rubble, smoke and fire shooting up a hundred feet into the air. Yasmine knew someone had either died, or was about to.