Sand Red

27

I fell back onto the sand.

Aida looked at me. 'What the hell? He's breathing, he's got a heartbeat.'

Yes, Aida, if I knew, I'd fix him wouldn't I? I didn't say this out loud. Syenin crept over. He ran his hands over Yul's mouth and wrists, confirming what we had discovered. He looked at Yul hard, running his hands absently over his breathing nostrils. He turned to me, looking troubled.

'He must have eaten something.'

'Eaten what?' I almost screamed. 'We ate the same meat!'

'I don't know,' Syenin said, looking at me quizzically. 'I'll have to think.'

He sat back. I really felt like screaming, now. What the hell was he going to think about while Yul lay there, perhaps dying?

I tried to stand. Aida quickly helped me up and I stood, waving a little unsteadily in the wind. The stars were coming out and my gunshot stung.

'The water?' Aida suggested. We had drunk the same water. Syenin made this observation and they fell silent again.

I turned, Aida helping me as I moved abruptly. 'Aida, the man, the one you knew, he stamped on Yul's foot.' The stamping had seemed an odd combat strategy to me, but I had passed it off as the man exploiting his size. 'Take out his boot,' I told Syenin. 'Maybe there was something on it.'

Syenin dutifully took out the boot. We huddled round it, straining our eyes to make out anything unusual in the darkness. 'Be careful,' I warned, as Aida turned it over. 'God knows how it happened, it could happen to any of us.'

The boot was of leather, tightened and bound by hair at the ankles, with thick soles a little larger than the boot, designed for walking in sand; telling me it came from somewhere the alien Redthorn had not yet invaded entirely. There were no visible studs, or devices of any kind, nothing that betrayed where a poison might be hidden, or how it was supposed to be delivered. I started to rethink my idea. The boot looked completely harmless.

'The other one,' Aida said and Syenin brought the other boot forward, holding it gingerly.

I caught it. A little glint in the tip revealed a sharp little iron needle. There was no reason for one but poison. I ignored Syenin's comment about the shame of tearing up a good boot. My mind was racing. Something had to be done.

'Who was he?' I directed my question at Aida.

'From Lebanon. I tracked him for weeks after Papa died. Trying to avenge him. But he was a darned good fighter and I had not yet been trained by the Dong, or I would have killed him then.' I briefly wished she had succeeded then, so Yul would not be in a possible coma right now. 'There was nowhere apparent he went,' Aida said, thinking. 'He seemed to just travel and kill and eat.'

'He wasn't a Forager, was he?' I asked, slightly alarmed. We had eaten him last morning.

'Not then,' she shook her head. 'He talked as normal as anyone and he had no trouble moving or peeing or anything. He seemed same as ever yesterday,'

Goddamnit. 'What're we going to do?'

'I know a poison like this, but I can't be sure about anything,' Syenin said.

I looked at him hungrily. 'What?'

'I really can't be sure. We had poisons at the camp I came from. The raiders,' he explained. 'Poisoned pins. Two of those were slow killers. 16680 and 72, uh, 024. 680 takes about twenty and a half hours to kick in,and 024 takes nineteen.' He looked at us. 'You see why I can't be sure.'

He had been asleep. We couldn't know when it kicked in.

Aida had grown pale. '72024 is always fatal. I don't think there's a cure.'