“No games,” I insist, struggling to hold onto my composure. I won’t be the victim they want me to be. “I can help you. Just tell me if there’s a dried up spring around here.”
“Weell, there used to be a pool in the next chamber, seepage from above, you know, in the ancient days. It is nothing now, of course…dry, dry.”
“Show me.”
For a long moment he’s silent, rubbing his jaw. “I have seen strange things,” he says finally. “I have seen people who glow in the dark. I have seen babies born with fins and flippers in a place that has no water. Perhaps you speak the truth.”
He motions to a tall, thin boy with hard eyes. “Thad, untie her.”
The boy inches forward to cut the ropes at my feet. A dark sore covers his cheek, but it’s the blatant hunger in his eyes that has me turning my head away. I stretch my legs slowly, wincing with pain as the blood returns to my extremities. Slowly, I stand, pressing my bound hands against the rock wall for support. I feel lightheaded, and it’s a moment before I can walk.
My captor leads the way past the small fire. The others step back to let me pass. At the back of the cavern there’s a small opening in the wall, near the ground.
“That is it,” he says. “In there. You can tell if you poke your head in a bit.”
I lie down on my belly and poke my head through the hole. Sure enough, there’s what looks like an old pool basin, surrounded by crumbling stalagmites. The back wall actually looks like a waterfall that has been turned to stone. From one end to the other, the depression looks to be about sixty feet long and maybe four feet deep, bigger than anything I’ve tried to fill.
Here, for a moment, out of sight of their prying eyes I let myself feel fully the dark sweat of fear. Exhaling softly, I bring my fingers to the lip of the basin and wish for water. Behind me, I can hear the others whispering.
The man nudges my leg. “What are you doing in there? Do not be playing games.”
“No games. Just hold on,” I mutter.
In a minute, I see what I’m waiting for, a small dark stain starting to grow against the ground and I am exhilarated. It hits me that this may be the first time I have truly taken delight in my ability.
I slither out backwards and motion for the man to take my place. He gestures to the boy, Thad, to keep an eye on me. I feel safer with the wall at my back and face him and the room, all of us watching each other warily. Even though I’m relieved that J.D. escaped capture, a part of me wishes he were here by my side.
In a minute the man slides out and stands, raking his hands through thinning hair. He casts a look at me, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “This is a good thing you can do.”
Thad drops down and pokes his head into the opening to see for himself. When he stands, his eyes look uncertain, but his voice is hard. “Now we eat her.”
“No,” says my captor shortly, but his eyes on me are thoughtful. “Now we trade her. Tomorrow. We will do it tomorrow.”
I’m stunned. “What? But I thought….”
“That I would let you go?” he answers. “No. You have saved your life. My family will not eat you. But we will get value in exchange for you—food and medicine. These things we need very much. Now, we eat.”
My hands are kept tied, but my feet are allowed to stay unbound. With all eyes on me, I can’t make a move without it being registered. I sit against the cave wall and the smallest of them brings over a small bowl. Small boys should be round and chubby, but this child has protruding ribs and thin matchstick legs that barely support him.
“Food. Food,” he whispers, reaching into the bowl and holding out a dead beetle and what looks like a piece of root. “Eat. Mmm, good. No pasty sides.”
Baffled, I look at one of the girls.
“No pesticides,” she translates.
“How does he know?”
She shrugs one thin shoulder. “Maybe he doesn’t.”
I take the bug and crunch down hungrily. The child smiles with approval. He puts the bowl down where I can reach it with my bound hands. Then, he does something unexpected. He leans over and kisses me gently on the forehead. I’m startled. Have I ever been kissed? I have no memory of it. Nevertheless, I feel a surge of tenderness. I smile at him and he smiles back.
“You smell good,” he says. Then he reaches his hand into the waistband of his pants and pulls out a photo. My mother’s picture. He places the photo in my lap and goes back to the fire. The others watch closely, but no one interferes.
My wrists are still tied, but I pick up the photo and look at it before putting it awkwardly in my shirt pocket. It was the one thing in my backpack that served no functional purpose, but it was also the one thing I’d be most sad to lose.
Stomach growling, I eat. There are only a few beetles in the bowl. Hardly enough to take the edge off my hunger. I am made aware of how thin is the thread that keeps this small family group alive. After I’ve eaten, I’m brought a bowl of water from the pool I’ve made. The others wait for me to drink, then seeing it’s safe, drink themselves.
Once everyone’s done eating, I’m ignored. The others take turns peeking at the newly-formed pool of water, then they huddle together talking, about my fate perhaps; about the things they will receive in exchange for me. Will they trade me to the man with the mustache? Or are there people in this wilderness who have things of value to offer for a girl who can make water?
Speaking of making water. “Excuse me,” I interrupt.
“What do you want?” the man asks.
“I have to, ah, you know.” I can’t believe I’m blushing “I have to pee.”
I can see his wheels turning. Evidently, he comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t need to recycle my urine since he now has an adequate supply of water in the cave. He points at the oldest boy. “Thad, take her outside.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“And Belinda, you go, too,” he adds, addressing the oldest girl. Perhaps she is to keep the closest eye on me as I go about nature’s business. How am I going to get away from both of them?
“Sheesh.”
My little friend hops up. “Me, too,” he says brightly.
Thad grabs a club leaning against the wall and motions to the others to join him. It is a ragtag group that escorts me out of the cave.
The little boy slips his frail hand into my bound hand. I close my fingers awkwardly around his. There’s something about this child. He’s too trusting. How will he fare in this world?
“He’s coming,” he whispers to me, his face angled up to mine.
I glance at the others, but the two of them are deep in conversation. Thad catches my eyes on him and leers, swinging his weapon threateningly. Quickly, I turn to look at the girl. She’s paused, her eyes scanning the landscape.
“Who’s coming?” I whisper back. “J.D.? My friend?”
He nods sagely.
“How do you know?”
“Smell it. Smell him.”
“Ah.” I gaze at him in wonder. I take a good sniff myself, but smell nothing but the flat, metallic taste of the air. “What’s your name?”
“Me? Joey.”
“My name is Kira, Joey. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Kira,” he says. He catches my eye. “I’ll remember.”
I’m led to a patch of scrub barely thick enough to shield me from the waist down. Thad gives me a shove. “Go here.”
I edge behind the small covering, trying to be discreet. I sneak a peek at my surroundings as best I can, but see no sign of J.D. Shoot. Where is he? I can’t see him, I certainly can’t smell him, but I find myself believing the boy, Joey. J.D. is out here somewhere. He hasn’t left me behind. With my wrists bound, I’d never be able to get away from my guards on my own.
Suddenly, I hear a whirring sound. My head jerks around in time to see a large rock whiz past me and strike Thad in the back of the head. He groans and claps his hands to his skull. I take advantage of the sudden distraction to dart out of the scrub a
nd dash across the hard ground in the opposite direction, ignoring the shouts behind me. I hear more stones hurling past me. Great day in the morning, does J.D. have an entire arsenal at his disposal?
“Bye, Kira!” calls little Joey, breathlessly, behind me. “Bye, bye!”
“Bye, Joey,” I call back. I can hear his brother and sister swearing behind me, fumbling to get out of the way of the sudden onslaught, followed by the occasional gasp when a rock finds its mark.
Quickly, I’m swallowed up by the darkness, and I slow my steps, becoming hesitant.
“J.D., where are you?”
“Here.”
He jumps down from a boulder, the cheeky grin on his face barely discernible by starlight. A slingshot hangs loosely from one hand. With the other, he pulls a stone from his pocket and places it in the sling. “Should I keep going?”
I press my bound hands against his arm. “I don’t want you to hit the little boy.”
“Nah. Mostly I’ve been aiming at the ugly brute with the bat.”
“How can you even see them from here?”
He clambers back up the boulder and searches the darkness. “They’re running back the way you came.”
“Good. Let’s go quickly before they get the others. I want to get away from here.”
He jumps back down, his eyes searching my face. “Are you okay?”
I laugh weakly. “I’m fine. They’ve got my backpack, though. The GPS, my bedroll, all the food and sunscreen….”
“Forget it.”
I glance around, my eyes hunting for something that looks familiar. Was the path we were on earlier over to my left? “I don’t know where we are.”
“I know. Follow me.”
J.D. cuts the ropes binding my hands and we set off at a brisk trot. Soon he has us back on course, heading north. Once we’ve covered a little distance and confirmed that we’re not being followed, I’m overcome with nausea and stop to throw up my guts, the thin remains of my bug dinner. With shaky breath, I quickly relate what happened between the ambush and J.D.’s rescue. I don’t tell him how scared I was. When I finish recounting my tale, he reaches over and gives my hair a tug. I feel better.
Every moment from then on becomes one of wary watchfulness. Every minute. Every hour. I feel it deep in my bones now, the danger; the following. Is it the man from the Biosphere? Hungry bandits who want to exploit my ability to insure their own survival? Or is it my imagination? I don’t say a word to J.D. Maybe he knows. Maybe he feels it too.
“Thank you,” I say to him finally.
He looks at me, baffled. “For what?”
“For rescuing me. For not just leaving me, you know, back there.”
“What? And let them make stew out of you? They have no idea how lucky they are. I’m sure you would have given them terrible indigestion. Hmm…” he says slowly. “On second thought, maybe I should have left you there.”
“Since when do you have a sense of humor?” I throw a punch at his shoulder and he dodges it, muffling a snort of laughter.
We travel at night and sleep during the day, taking turns sharing the one bedroll while the other finds a sheltered place to stand guard. When I do sleep, it’s fitful. My exhausted body falls heavily into slumber even though I dread the moment when my subconscious takes over my mind. Day after day, I sink into ethereal, bone white dreams that leave me cold and shaking, even when it’s a hundred degrees outside. Why this anxiety? I still feel followed, watched. Maybe the bandits were a warning that my time is running out.
Early one evening, J.D. and I stumble across a small air system, the wind kicking up dancing dirt devils. Thin flumes twist and turn in the air and we shield our eyes as we cross through, coughing from the dust, yet captivated by the atmospheric show before us.
We’re approaching the Dead Lakes Region now and we tramp through dry washes that have not run with water in years—only the faded memory of water remains. I am becoming more adept at recognizing the places that have known water. There’s something in the pitch of the land, in the striations of color and flow across the bedrock. I try to grasp the realization that I’ve almost reached my goal. It’s no longer some distant, uncertain thing. It’s near and immediate.
Before our stopover at Bio-4, I’d been making water with impunity, filling small ponds and roadside ditches, calling forth liquid from some primeval tear in the universe. Not anymore. J.D. has convinced me that every filled well and water puddle is like an arrow pointing directly at us, making our path transparent to anyone in pursuit. I don’t know if he’s right or not. But I feel the following.
Our supplies are low so we’re on a ration system, swallowing our measly portion of water every day. In addition, J.D. and I recycle our urine, recapturing the vitamins and minerals we can’t afford to let spill on the ground. The trick is to drink immediately while it’s still sterile, before there’s any contamination. It’s warm and salty and, as much as I detest the taste, it’s never enough. I go to bed thirsty. I wake up thirsty. Always thirsty, dry skin clings to my bones like thin parchment.
How can someone capable of calling forth water be so completely dry?
We’re here. Slag. Tall buildings rise before us in the distance, looking like the interconnected skeleton of something that was once alive. It’s strange looking, eerie, but there’s a sense of familiarity, too. It feels like a place I once knew—a shadowy landscape in my memory—or maybe not my memory, maybe my mother’s, passed to me in some intangible way. Or it could just be the faint recollection of a photo I saw once in a school lesson. J.D. pauses beside me, taking in the scene. It’s desolate. Nothing moves.
“Do you want to go now,” he asks, “or wait?”
“Do you have the masks?”
He nods.
“We might as well go on,” I decide.
Among the supplies J.D. acquired for us at Bio-4 are two respirators. He hands me one now, and I fit it carefully over my face before we approach the city. I don’t know how much protection these things provide, but if they keep out even a portion of the invisible toxins in the air, they’ve served a purpose. It’s awkward breathing through the mask. I fight a feeling of claustrophobia, an urge to gasp in a huge lungful of air, and instead make myself breathe normally.
We cross a bridge that’s concrete and beautifully carved and arched across what was once a wide riverbed. The bed is dry, just the outline remains, but I can imagine the way it once looked, when people crossed the bridge every day and enjoyed a view of the water.
We walk down quiet streets, past bombed skyscrapers and apartment buildings with windows blasted out. The street is littered with broken glass and debris and we have to constantly pause and check before we place our feet down in front of us. There’s a wind here, too, a lonely, desolate movement of air whistling between the buildings.
A teacher once told me that the Devastation was a complete breakdown of civilization, pitting every kind of individual against his or her opposite. Believers against unbelievers. The “haves” versus the “have-nots”. Intellectuals against laborers. Even men and women took arms against each other at one point in the fray. It was that idea of “other” that created constantly shifting loyalties among groups and unleashed every kind of weapon in the world.
But long before simmering tensions had erupted, the places where J.D. and I had trod had been a heartland: the breadbasket of the world, ripe with wheat and corn and grassy meadows. That period of history was now the stuff of legends—a time of self-absorption, intolerance and greed. But there are consequences. If history teaches us nothing else, it teaches us that. There are always consequences.
We follow the shape of the riverbed and when it curves around to the west, we curve with it, then stop in our tracks at the sight before us. We’re standing on Lake Shore Drive and stretching as far as the eye can see is a huge—that’s not the word for it, gargantuan—dry basin. There’s a gradual depression across the road, where the shell of a once-thriving marina still stands. Just past
the marina, the scene changes. The land drops steeply into a dark abyss stretching far to the north.
The moon is setting, and I slip off my mask to take a quick breath. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I catch the faintest trace of airborne chemical underpinning the smell of hot sand. Chlorine. It’s present in the air, the soil; easily converting to dioxins and taking up insidious abode in human tissue.
I look past the city perimeter to surrounding foothills, bare and alien. An alkali dust storm is gathering above the old lakebed. There’ll be heavy particulates in the air tomorrow. We need to find a safe place indoors.
Drawn by the surreal scene before me, I turn my eyes back to the lake. I find it odd that it’s still referred to as ‘the lake,’ identified by its absent properties. This territory has gone from city to sagebrush and the people have all dispersed. It is not a healthy place.
Following my lead, J.D. pulls off his own mask then nudges me. “Are you going to make water, now?”
“I guess.”
“Maybe it would clean the air too. Get rid of some of the dust stirring.”
“Yeah.”
I don’t move. I stand staring at the basin that once was the hub of a lake system supplying twenty percent of the world’s fresh surface water. It’s astonishing to see it, to finally be here.
Since the Lakes Region was a closed system, the pollutants that reached the water remained indefinitely. PCBs and DDT, metals like chlordane, mirex, toxaphene—once they hit the water, they had nowhere else to go. But at least, there was water. It was toxic, sure, but it could have been cleaned. Then in the wake of the Devastation and escalating environmental crisis, the resulting lack of cloud cover exposed everything and everybody to increased radiation, higher temperatures and dehydration. And then there was a small tectonic shift in the south, not much, but just enough to alter the planet’s axis and accelerate global climate change.
Dry Souls Page 7