by R. A. Rock
Walking gingerly through the water that was pooling on the sand, we tried not to splash because the water on the ground was contaminated by the chemicals in the sand.
Everything was great.
Until it wasn’t.
We thought that soon the rain would end and we would be back to roasting in the desert sun.
But the rain didn’t stop.
And after a while, I wondered if it ever would.
River Rising
Chad
The rain kept falling and falling all through the afternoon. Eventually I figured out that it wasn’t going to stop. When I looked around at the others, it was apparent that everyone knew. Shiv’s expression was dour, as he realized that his powers were just as erratic and out of control as Yumi’s and mine were.
“What’s that?” Grace pointed at a stripe of dark blue still far away from us. She spoke loudly over the sound of the storm.
We all tried to see through the rain that was coming down in sheets, keeping us soaking wet and freezing and never, ever letting up in the slightest.
Nobody could tell what it was. But it was there in the direction that we wanted to go, so we kept heading towards it. We could now see the landmark that Gideon had told us about to the east, so we used that to keep ourselves heading south, since the sun was no longer an option to help us navigate the endlessly similar Wastelands.
As we approached, it became obvious that the blue stripe was a river stretching from the southwest to the northeast.
“A river?” Grace said. “In the desert?”
Shiv rolled his eyes. He was brilliant and he hated it when we didn’t figure shit out as fast as he did.
“That river isn’t usually here, Grace,” he said, in an irritated tone of voice, but I recognized that he was annoyed at himself for causing more problems when he was trying to help.
“Not usually here?” She looked mystified. “I’ve just been dehydrated and then drowned, Shiv. Throw me a bone. My brain’s not functioning.”
“The river bed would have still been here, but there wouldn’t have been any water in it.” He looked pissed but I knew it was all self-recrimination. “Until some idiot manifested the flood of the century.”
“Oh,” Grace said, getting it.
“Maybe there’s a modern day Noah sitting around with his ark?” Shiv pretended to look around. “Because otherwise, I have a feeling I have only changed our death from dehydration to drowning.”
“Wait, which one?” Yumi said, as we continued to move towards the river, which was now close enough that the sound of it was roaring in our ears.
“It has to be the Red River,” Shiv said. “There’s no other river that big on the prairies in southern Manitoba.”
“That’s the one that goes straight into Winnipeg,” Yumi said, but of course we all knew that, except Audrey.
The Red River and the Assiniboine River meet in Winnipeg at a point called the Forks. Every time the city had been rebuilt, they had always made sure to build a place for people to gather at the Forks. It had been a gathering place for thousands of years, since before the Europeans had even arrived on the North American continent way back when.
“So we can cross and follow it all the way into the city?”
“That’s right,” he said, nodding. “We have to cross or we won’t be on the right side of the city to get to the tech sector, where we’ll find what we need.”
And with those words, we arrived at the river. The water was rising as we watched. At the moment it was about halfway up the bank and flowing quickly. The rain continued to pour down and the combined noise of the water falling from the sky and the water rushing past made it difficult to hear myself think.
It was fast but not too fast yet. If we swam hard and went right away before it got any higher or faster, we could make it. And we had to cross it at this exact moment because who knew when Shiv’s manifested storm would ever end?
I caught Yumi’s resolve coming through the soul bond, though we all still held mental shields all the time to protect our minds in case her abilities went out of control again. Like me, she had realized that we had to cross… and quickly… if we were to make it to the other side without being swept away.
“Alright,” Grace said, wading into the current up to her knees. I shivered. The water must be freezing. “Let’s go. Give me that rope in your pack, Shiv.”
She held out her hand.
“I’ll tie it to that huge boulder on the other side so if it gets worse, we can still cross.”
“You’re not going without me, babe,” he said, handing me one end and moving into the water.
We watched as they crossed, half walking on the bottom, half swimming. The water was up to Grace’s chin when she was touching bottom. By the time they came out on the other side, they looked bedraggled and weary, but triumphant.
Grace and Shiv worked together and got the rope around the enormous rock. I pulled it taut.
“Okay, you’re next, Audrey,” I said, turning to her.
“You people are all fucking crazy if you think I’m going to cross that,” Audrey said, a scowl on her face as black as the storm clouds roiling above us. She gestured at the river. “I don’t even know how to swim.”
To Cross or Not to Cross
Yumi
I had no idea of the time but it must still be afternoon because it hadn’t got dark yet. The water rose swiftly as Audrey, Chad, and I stood on the wrong side of the river that was a byproduct of Shiv’s storm of the century, as he had called it.
“You can’t swim?” I said, shocked. I just assumed that everyone knew how to swim. “Since when?”
“When the hell would I have learned to swim? You saw my planet. And there’s no pools on the space stations. Plus, I was a little busy taking over the galaxy.”
“Shit,” Chad said. “I can take you across on my back.”
Audrey raised her thin eyebrows. A rivulet of water ran down her dainty nose and dripped off the end. She was constantly wiping at it.
“You want me to trust you to pull me across that water? I’m not interested in drowning, thank you.”
“Chad’s the strongest swimmer of all of us,” I told Audrey, aware that the water had come up another four inches as we argued. “You’ll be safe. I promise.”
“You promise? No way. I’ll take my chances on this side.”
“Audrey,” I said, in the most reasonable tone I could muster as I kept one eye on the rising river. “We’re not going to leave you here. You have to cross with us.”
“You know the time travel pod has to stay together and travel together. We have to stick together if we ever want to get home,” Chad said.
“No, I don’t know that. All I know is that you four have asked more of me than I can give. Over and over. And I’m getting tired of it. I want out. Maybe I’ll stay here with Gideon. He’s nice. And really great in bed.”
Chad groaned.
“I did not need to know that.”
“Look,” I said, my voice sounding a little more desperate than before. “We can’t leave you, Audrey, and we have to cross.”
“Now,” Chad said, his tone firm. I recognized it as his Captain voice. “The water is coming up and soon it won’t be safe, even with the rope.”
Was the rain coming down harder? I could hardly see Grace across the river. I was pretty sick of being wet by this time. And my patience was wearing thin.
“Don’t fucking make me knock you out, Audrey,” I growled, and by the look on her face she knew I wasn’t kidding.
Because I wasn’t.
This would be a lot easier if she were unconscious.
She took several steps backward.
“Don’t you dare, Tanaka,” she said and by the fear that I could see in her eyes, I knew we were never going to convince her. She was terrified and I knew that there was no talking sense into someone who’s that scared. You simply can’t reason with them.
You just have to hit them over t
he head.
“Don’t hit her, Yumi,” Chad said.
“Why not?” I said, pressing my lips together in frustration. “I know exactly where to hit. She would barely feel it.”
Audrey’s indignation grew as we discussed her as if she wasn’t even there. Then something changed in Chad’s face.
“It’s too late,” he said, his eyes bleak. “Look.”
I turned back to the river, which in the few moments I had been distracted by Audrey’s temper tantrum, had become more violent than I had ever seen a body of water. It was rushing past at a dizzying speed and sloshing up to the top of the bank.
My mind tried to calculate how much water that was and how much was flowing past at this moment but the sound of the water drowned all my thoughts and I stared — mesmerized.
“We can’t cross anymore,” I said breaking the spell. I turned on Audrey, furious. “You silly cow. You’ve ruined everything. We can’t cross. What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“Yumi,” Chad’s voice was a warning to get control of myself, I knew, but I didn’t want to.
“This is all your fault,” I said, pushing Audrey hard so that she sat down in a big puddle on the ground.
“You bitch,” she said, scrambling up and punching me with a hard right. My head snapped to the side and pain exploded in my jaw and cheekbone.
“Fuck,” I exclaimed, rubbing my face.
I moved forward to hit her back but at that moment, I heard Chad’s voice and the tone was strange enough to make me stop in my tracks. I swivelled my head to look at him.
“Yumi,” he said, in a slow even tone. “Turn around to face away from the river… very, very slowly.”
My heart was pounding in fear. I had never heard Chad speak this way, as if he was afraid for me. And considering I can take nearly anyone I meet, it made me nervous that he was worried I couldn’t handle the situation.
What the hell was behind me?
***
Chad
“Keep your eyes on him,” I said, feeling fear, not for the first time today. But this time it wasn’t for myself, it was for Yumi. And damn it, it wasn’t my job to worry about her anymore — but I did. “And then back up towards me. Slowly.”
The minute it took her to reach me seemed endless.
“Do you think we can take him together?” she whispered as she stepped back beside me, her wet elbow brushing mine.
“We could, but do you want to get that close to him?” I pointed out.
“No.”
That’s what I thought.
“Then we run as hard and as fast as we can. Audrey, you with us?” I said, never letting the creature in front of us out of my sight.
When there was no answer, I knew that when she saw this freak of nature, she had tried crossing using the rope rather than take her chances on this side. And after all the problems she had caused not wanting to cross, this pissed me off. Because now Yumi and I were the ones stuck with the consequences of her decision. As usual.
I turned my head just enough to see that she had made it to the other side and Shiv and Grace were reaching out to help her on to the shore. A second later, as they touched Audrey, they all disappeared.
What the hell? Had Grace teleported them all?
Why would she do that?
As soon as Shiv disappeared, the rain stopped too.
But there was no time to wonder about that now.
“Ready?” I said softly to Yumi. But the man-creature had had enough.
He roared in a way that was definitely not human.
“Go, go, go, run!” I yelled, pushing at Yumi and jumping into motion myself. Yumi fell almost immediately and I watched to make sure she got up before I kept running.
Soon she was beside me and we tore across the desert, sprinting for our lives. In my peripheral vision, I could see others like him swarming towards us.
They must have been attracted to the rain and then when they saw us, they assumed that we had were here to provide them with dinner.
The thought gave me a burst of speed and Yumi kept pace. We were leaving the crazy creatures behind us. But soon they were closing in from all sides.
How many of these people were there, I wondered, as they forced us to change course yet again. Until finally, there was nowhere else to go. They were all around us. Hundreds of them. With their hard pot bellies. Their open wounds. And their bizarre purple eyes with no whites.
“Red?” Yumi’s voice was tense and afraid. “What do we do now?”
We stood back to back and faced the creatures as they closed in on us.
I wracked my brain but I was out of ideas.
“Pray?” I said, with a shrug.
It couldn’t hurt.
Because there was no way out of this situation alive.
Divine intervention was our only hope at this point.
We needed a miracle.
And though I wasn’t a religious man, I would take any help I could get at this point.
Crazies
Yumi
Chad and I stood with our backs together in the middle of the fucking Wastelands surrounded by the crazy people with the purple eyes, beer bellies, and nasty looking sores all over them. The sun had come back out and was nearing the horizon, huge and red as if it had been stabbed, its crimson blood spilling over the prairie.
The warmth of Chad’s back comforted me, even in this moment of desperation. Or maybe especially right now.
Because we were probably going to die.
If these disgusting creatures didn’t kill us right now, then fighting them off and touching those sores would probably give us whatever they had and then we would die of that.
Or turn into one of them.
I shuddered at the thought.
Chad’s hand grabbed mine and I tried to think of a prayer that wasn’t insulting to whatever higher power existed.
What should I say?
I never cared about you before, but will you please save my life because I’m in a tight spot, now?
It didn’t seem right to pray only because I was in trouble. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work, was it? It felt like cheating somehow.
The crazies came closer, their faces hungry, their eyes so weird without whites. And those sores made me want to vomit. Somehow their bellies were disconcerting, as well, not jiggling at all the way I imagined a belly like that ought to move.
Then a voice rang out over the Wastelands.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…” Chad sang, his warm baritone a little rough from dehydration but sweet nonetheless. The melody spread out from where we stood and carried for some distance. I supposed this was Chad’s idea of praying. A song. It figured.
At the beautiful melody, the crazy people froze and appeared to be listening. They stopped moving closer and simply stood and focused on the sound.
Hm. Cool. Apparently music did sooth savage beasts.
He sang through the whole song twice, then changed to humming. Still they didn’t move, seeming mesmerized by Chad’s performance. That was great but it wasn’t going to save us.
Since this seemed like only a reprieve. Obviously Chad couldn’t keep singing for ever and then they would attack us and kill us. And since I was pretty sure that this time I was going to die for real, I wanted to have something off my chest.
“Chad,” I said, over his tuneful humming. “I…”
I paused, not sure I could do this. I had been holding on to the grudge for so long. Could I really let it go? But then I thought about the fact that I might die very soon. Did I really want to die without having made peace with Chad?
No. I needed to do this.
“Yeah?” he said, and I could feel hope coming through the soul bond as he continued to hum, keeping the monsters at bay.
“I forgive you for saving me and sacrificing her,” I blurted out. “I never should have blamed you for all of that in the first place.”
“Really?
” he said, his voice hoarse. “You mean it, Yumi?”
Then he began to hum again before the creatures could come out of their trance-like state.
“Yes,” I said, my own voice sure and steady. “I don’t want to die without forgiving you.”
“We’re not going to die,” he said, squeezing my hand. But it sounded as if even he didn’t believe himself.
Not this time.
The relief that flowed through the soul bond was so strong it made me giddy. And I was so glad I had finally said those words to him. Words I should have said a long time ago.
“I once was lost but now am found was blind but now I see…” he sang, running through the entire song again before he spoke.
“I forgive you for fusing all the bricks in my mind,” he said, then — his voice low. “I know you were just trying to save me the only way you could at the time.”
I wanted to cry as I picked up on the desolation he felt at the thought of not having his power anymore, though it really didn’t matter because we were going to die anyway.
I joined him in singing the hymn. I’m a decent singer, though my voice wasn’t as nice as Chad’s or Grace’s. Maybe if we sang, we would truly find some grace of our own. God knows I needed it — and Chad too.
It was strange and nerve-wracking having hundreds of crazy, sick people staring at us. Why didn’t they just attack us and get it over with? I couldn’t take the tension anymore.
Then we all heard it at the same time.
When the crazies heard it, they went… well, crazy. They stomped their feet and screamed. The pandemonium was deeply disturbing as they started to move away from us and the approaching sound.
The noise was something like a motor vehicle — that I had heard in the old movies — and gun shots.
The crazies drifted to one side and slowly moved away from where we stood. And that’s when several motorcycles pulled up in a cloud of dust that was reminiscent of one of the post apocalyptic stories from the 1980s that we had studied in our Ancient Movie class.