Sand Red

33

I awoke to screaming. I jumped up and my side burst in pain and I looked around wildly. We were stopped and it was the brightest hours of night, with the galaxy glowing with light enough to hurt my eyes.

Aida was wailing and thrashing, while Syenin fought viciously with knife in hand, trying to get to something in her hand. Yul was fighting back over Aida and her arm, her poor arm.

I scrambled out the door, nearly falling to my knees as red gathered at the corners of my vision.

'SYENIN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?'

He didn't even look at me. I tried frantically to slip my blade out of my ankle sheath only to find it was not there. Fear moved in my chest. I looked to see Yul didn't have a weapon either. He must have taken them while we slept. I ran around the car and tried to grab at Syenin's legs unsuccessfully. He turned and stabbed down at me with his knife and it was at that moment I understood the extent of his betrayal. Something glittered in Aida's hand. He wanted the device.

With a cry he stabbed straight down and Aida's voice exploded in a screech greater than any. She let go of the device. I leapt upon Syenin with the force of a tiger and we rolled on the ground, him trying to get away from me. To this day, I will never understand why he didn't simply use the blade in his hand to kill me. He grabbed at the earth behind my head and suddenly a dark shape was above me, and then it was slamming into me and I was in shock and pain and blood, and I was in so much pain I could hardly tell up from down and it was no wonder Syenin easily escaped my hold and I lay moaning on the thorn as his figure sped like lightning away. Yul was bellowing something behind me that I could not hear and I could vaguely remember the sounds of the strangest birds in the mountains that encompassed the Dong settlement, and then I was dead to the world.

I was awoken by Yul in the sand.

I blinked, the stars were burned in my eyes though there were no stars above me. Yul's big flat face came into view above me.

'What happened?' I asked him.

'Syenin betrayed us. Aida, she's hurt.'

I knew I couldn't sit up by myself. I lay there, staring up at the endless cracking sky.

'Don't just lie there!' he said desperately. 'Help her!'

'Can't get up.'

He pulled me up roughly. My ribs wailed in the warmth of the bandaging.

She was bad. Anyone could see that. She had been stabbed in the dreaded femur. It was a possibility that she would never walk again.

She was breathing hard, her eyes swivelled about in her head and sweat covered her skin.

'Get to camp,' I said. 'Drive. Why didn't you start before?'

'It's been an hour,' Yul said frantically. 'She screams every time I try to move her.'

I looked at him. He hadn't moved yet. 'Get her in the car!' I yelled at him.

He unfroze and moved crazily, grabbing her by the arms. 'We're going home, okay? Okay?' She didn't answer. He moved. She screamed like holy hell as her bleeding leg was dragged. It was dark, so I couldn't really be sure, but there wasn't a lot of blood, so it looked like it hadn't hit an artery.

I wrenched open the door. I was in awful, dreadful pain. Must have burst a stitch when fighting with Syenin.

I started the car quickly. Yul wasn't in any state of mind to drive. I couldn't turn around to check on them, thanks to my singing ribcage. 'In?' I yelled.

The car moved as Aida was loaded into it and I put my foot on the gas as soon as the door was shut. If we ran out of fuel before we were home, we would be dead meat. I knew it clearer than anything. I drove in the direction the car was facing, hoping Syenin had left it to correctly East, because the stars had disappeared and the sky was in its blackness before dawn.

Aida was still wailing from the back seat as the sky darkened further as dawn approached and I drove in fifth gear through the desert in total blackness for the hour before sunrise. The sky cracked in the East and dawn greeted the world with its massive, cold uncaring and my breathing loosened as I confirmed I was headed in the right direction. Syenin had betrayed us. The thought sat heavy in my mind and I could hardly concentrate on anything at all, least of all the way ahead of me. He had seemed like such a child. He was innocent, all he wanted was a chance at a better life. He had said he would come to camp with us. What would we do without the device? Goddamn him. Goddamn Syenin. There's enough ocean on the planet for us to share the glass and the terrariums and the food. Why did us people fight at all? Wouldn't we all be better off protecting each other and our limited resources? I didn't know. The pain in my side threatened to consume me and I did not know what I was thinking. Goddamn Syenin. I goddamn hated him.

Yul's sobs cleared their way though my foggy head. 'Is he alright?' I managed to ask.

'She's out! She won't say a word,' he nearly wailed and my head rang unpleasantly.

'She breathing?'

There was silence as he, presumably, checked. 'I think so,' he said uncertainly. He sounded like he was crying.

'Figure it out, then,' I said irritably. He was acting like a goddamn child and there was blood on my head and I couldn't handle his stupid screaming anymore. At least Aida had had a goddamn reason.

He said something that I couldn't hear and I ignored him. Aida was alright, and I didn't need to trouble my aching head over Yul's hysterics just now. I focussed on the glowing sand ahead of me and tried to keep my head from spinning. I was goddamn angry. Yul had always been selfish and childish and idiotic. But with everything the universe had thrown at us lately, he was starting to feel intolerable. Not a care in the world for anyone but his own goddamn self. I wished he would stop crying.

Aida didn't wake again and Yul grew more and more agitated until I finally had to stop the car and get out and check her breathing to allay his fears. Even I from the front and in my brand new mental state could hear her breathe catch from time to time as I mounted a particularly rough dune or maybe rock at speeds so high I flew up and back onto my seat in an epitome of pain each time. I marvelled at how far I had come as a person. I would never have guessed how far I could push myself before I broke. I was half mad from the pain in my head and my chest and the inside of my being. Every little noise magnified in the clanging vessels of my brain and I was somehow so extremely sleepy I could have fallen asleep right there in the driver's seat and yet somehow I was still hanging on to the wheel, teetering at the edge of consciousness and driving on and on and on.

The fuel tank had made no noise yet. A hope began to grow in me, a little one, that we would make it all the way home in the car.

But it was not to last and barely a minute after I thought this, the clang-clang-clang of the fuel warning rang out suddenly and continuously on and on as I attempted to drive through the noise. My head protested heavily as the sound rang through and through my head, making it difficult to concentrate, making it difficult to drive.

I drove on. Yul said something from the back that couldn't reach me though the haze of sound I was living through and I ignored him like before because of how stupid he was, but he was insistent and tapped my shoulder when I didn't answer him a second time.

'Kun...look.' I looked. 'It's a camp.'

I realized he wanted me to look in the distance and not at him. With an effort I turned myself back to the front.

And lo and behold. There was Syenin's camp.