Sand Red

24

We started at dusk. The way was rough from the half buried rubble of the Old World settlement. More than once, my feet slipped on the rock and it was difficult for Yul and Aida to drag me forward. I could walk a little now and my pain was constant and unceasing. The dressing on my wound had been changed, the dried blood ripping off excruciatingly and only to bring forth a fresh welling of blood that promised the next changing, too, would not be easy. The injury had dried well and it had closed to some extent, so stitching would not be needed. I was thankful for this at least, because my first gunshot was etched in my mind, for it had needed the horror of stitching. My ankle tingled in remembered pain.

As we dragged forward, I thought of fish. The ocean had fish in it. The ocean was water. The people of Kuwait had purified ocean water for drinking in the Old World and they continued to do so today. Kuwait had been the richest people on the planet a hundred years back. But its population was now extinct owing to the heat. And water may have been plentiful, but food was scarce. The coastline was relatively heavily populated in this day and age, full of dying water drinkers and grubby children fighting over fish and coconut. Homes were built from rubble and scores of people survived on the partial purification of seawater and paddy, coconut and fish. Tropical sea life thrived. Fish were plentiful enough, and water, but fruit was hard to come by and life on the coast was dangerous. I had lived on the coast in the early days of the shifting camp, during a summer when water was extremely scarce. We had moved away in three months, when six of our number were killed for their rations as they slept in the sand.

I still remembered the bulbous taste of fish and the massive nets the people threw out to sea to catch them and the boats of Old World plastic fishermen risked their lives in. It was there I had learned to swim. The sea was the coldest, wettest thing I had ever experienced and my mother had been the happiest woman in the world, because she had grown up on the Chinese coast and the sea reminded her of home.

I shook my thoughts off. I didn't think of my mother. It only brought tears. All the same, I craved a raw fish.

It seemed like the Sun was absent twice as long that night. I needed one shoulder to help me along on my injured side and when Yul switched with Syenin for the third time, I felt a little sad. Yul and I had known each other almost our whole lives. It seemed we were drifting apart now and there was nothing I could do about it.

When it was day and my arm was numb from being on someone else's shoulder, we finally decided to stop. Aida had calculated the distance and direction to the Red settlement, but it was impossible to be accurate and she was a little tense. I didn't mind. I didn't care about getting to the Reds.

'Would help if we had Od's crutches, huh?' Yul said as we sat down.

'Aye,' I breathed and my ribs stung. I had not thought of that. But I wouldn't have been able to use crutches anyway. They relied on core muscles. I didn't trouble Yul with this remark, though, because it wasn't likely we'd finda pair of crutches anyway. You realize how much nonsense we speak when every word you utter hurts. 'I'm sleeping,' I announced, hoping one of them would help dig me a sand hole. None moved. I looked up at the brightening sky. Another day, another few thousand life forms aggressively finding sustenance.

'Oh, you need help getting down, don't you?' Syenin asked.

'And a sand hole,' I said in a low voice. He set to digging with powerful strokes. In the dawn light I noticed the sinewy muscles in his large dark hands.

'What work did you do?' I asked him, looking up at his face.

'Military,' he said, having dug a large enough patch clear of thorn. 'I came from the local raider band.' He looked up at me with laughing in his eyes. I recalled how the soldier had talked about their families. It had never occured to me that raiders and meat killers, too, were a people. I realized this was exactly what our camp was. 'Your parents?'

'Killed. So I left.'

I would never understand how he had spoken of it so easily.

'There,' he said, his hand on my shoulders, gently laying me down. He grinned. 'Glad you took me along?'

I smiled at his absolute enthusiasm. 'Aye.'

The evening Sun burned my eyes as I lay with my face Westward. I groaned, turning and immediately earned an arm full of thorn. 'Ow!' In my pain, I jerked my body back and received a mind boggling round of pain from my ribs. I released my breath in a whoosh and Yul sat up beside me immediately.

'What happened?'

'Nothing, nothing.'

He stretched. 'Want your ration now? I want mine.'

'Aye.'

He stood up and nudged Syenin with his foot. 'Wake up. We've got to eat. Aida!' He pushed her over.

He came back to me and helped me sit up.

When we had eaten well because the meat would soon go bad, we started onward. The Sun had all but sunk down, blood red, below the horizon and I could barely see my own feet in the dense darkness. I waited for the stars to come out. Somehow, the sight of them quieted my pain. Syenin stumbled as his foot caught in a rock and a sharp pain flared in my side as I half collapsed. He caught me in time and after straightening, we walked on. Progress was slow owing to me being unable to move quickly, but it was enough. Aida reckoned we'd reach the Reds in less than a week.

The darkness grew as the Sun sank further and slowly, one by one, the galaxy came into view. It had been said that in the days of the Old World, one could scarcely see the Orion due to the amount of light that glowed up to the heavens with electricity. What amazed me was that it was called light pollution. Pollution! To think of that. Electricity would do us a world of good now, but the solar panels had long been destroyed over the wars for the power resources and it would be several million years until coal and crude oil existed again. What a pity that I would die without seeing a lightbulb like my mother once had. Or maybe I would. Who knew, when things moved so fast?

'Let me switch over with you,' Aida said to Syenin, who was lagging behind and shining with sweat now.

We stopped as they changed and my wound pulsed as I lifted my arm onto Aida's shoulders. I cursed myself for being so stupid as to get shot again. Most people would never see a gun in their lives and here I was, shot a third time, wasting water on bandaging and evaporation and only hoping I would not expire of infection. Such a pitiable existence. I wished, not for the first time, that I had been born in the Old World. In a place of light pollution and schooling and cities and the same bed every night. Then again, if the Hindus' theory of reincarnation was right, I had already lived the life I craved.

'Od must be going crazy right now,' Yul said without preamble.

'Maybe you shouldn't have come, then,' I retorted. My constant pain and Yul's coldness towards me had made me irritable right back towards him. We wouldn't be going back to the Reds if it hadn't been for him. Why couldn't he have just stayed with Od?

Aida breathed deeply as she slogged on. She was surprisingly strong. Syenin had not lasted half as long as she had been walking with my weight.

'What are the Reds?' Syenin asked.

'A settlement. They've got farms.'

'Terrum farms? He asked interestedly.

'Terrarium,' I corrected him. 'No, they haven't got terrariums.'

He thought this over. 'Well, then how do they farm?'

'Under the open sky.'

'Water?'

'They have borewells.'

'Wow,' he said.

I grinned at him. 'Yes, wow.'