Sand Red

38

Five hours later, the sky was black and we were there.

'What is this?' I asked as I got off.

The place was empty. There were roads and buildings perfectly built and a massive wired fence around. It resembled an Old World settlement. The kind that children tell stories about.

'How come no one knows about this place?' I asked, reaching out to rattle the fence to see whether it held up.

'DON'T-'

All thoughts were immediately driven out of my brain by a white-hot bolt that hurtled up my arm. I jumped back. 'What was that!' I cried.

'Sorry!' Lars panted. 'I should have warned you.'

'But what was that?' My voice was shrill, and my reflexes thrown off by an invisible enemy.

'Electricity. The fence is electrified to keep people away.'

I rubbed my arm. 'Looks like it works.' The settlement was strangely empty. The streets lay empty, there was not one noise nor whistle of the wind.

'Where does the power supply come from?'

'Solar panels.'

Yul was easing Aida out of the car. 'You said there's medicine in there,' he said to Lars worriedly. 'She needs help.' Aida had still not woken.

Lars unlocked a gate I had previously not noticed.

'How'd you touch it!' I demanded.

Lars just shrugged.

'What is this place?' I asked him again as we made our way in onto a sand covered tar road.

'They made it after the astronauts left. They left us nothing at all, you know?' There was a trace of anger in his voice. He looked fumingly at me to see if I had understood. 'They took everything. Every resource. All the water they could carry. All the medicine, the chemicals, steel. And you know what they did with the rest?' he said, his voice rising. 'They destroyed it! So that we could not survive, so we died out, and no one could remember the atrocities the scientists carried out against us!

'Did you know they took a thousand stolen children with them?' he demanded. 'They forced people's children out of their homes! The rich could pay their way to Cerulone!' His face was reddening and spittle flew from his mouth. I privately thought the children were lucky to have been taken to Cerulone. Lars took deep breaths and the colour slowly faded from his face. 'It makes me so angry,' he breathed and I waited politely for him to recover. 'It makes me so angry.'

Yul was not so polite. He had managed to drag Aida to the small man-sized gate we had entered through and was now yelling for my help. I took the opportunity to rush back to him and we carried Aida between us and to Lars.

'I forgot to get the truck in,' Lars said. He ran to a larger gate and dragged it open before riding the truck inside and locking it again.

He led us down the road.

The place was totally deserted. The landscape was wide, and the buildings far apart. The structures were short and squat and very well maintained, with shining grey walls and well hinged and unrusted steel doors. Solar panels shone off every roof, dazzlingly bright and here and there were gigantic machines, made for oil drilling or borewells for groundwater. The massive fence enclosed the cement in a gigantic circle, tall, foreboding and quite threatening to one that has been shocked. The overall effect was very futuristic, which probably added to Lars' aggravation, because by his account, this place had been built over a century ago.

The road further inwards was less sandy in the shelter of the cement buildings and I gasped as we rounded a house and came upon the finest piece of architecture I had seen in my short and poverty-stricken life.

'What's that?'

It was built into a deep depression so its top barely came up to my knees- a large domed glassy structure, which on further inspection was covered in more brilliantly blue-green solar panels, stretching a kilometer across, easy.

Lars grinned for the first time. 'You'll see.'

It was maybe forty feet tall (it's hard to judge height from the top of a precipice), and the panels arranged in rows down its sides gave it the look of a melon.

He led us around the steep drop to a little sloping cemented road. My legs shook from the effort of the treck- I had wasted away for weeks- and I was panting heavily when we reached the bottom.

The entrance was majestic. A towering set of rounded iron doors around fifteen feet high, set against the structure, filled with what looked like numbers and Earth bless me, because I could understand nothing.

'What's on the doors?' I asked Lars.

He glanced at them. 'Cerulone's exact position and the mathematical proof for it.'

It dawned on me that this place was old. It had been built generations ago by men and women that hoped we could someday use it to save the remainder of humanity from a certain fate and Lars was just another of many that had fought and learned for the same goal.

'How many of you are there?'

'Thirteen,' he said grimly.

'Then why is it so empty?'

'Many of us were killed. So we decided spreading out would be a safer idea.'

Strange. You would have thought this place would be the safest in all of the New World.

The dome was black within and Lars quickly plunged into a passageway to our right and I peeled my eyes trying to see in the dark and quickly followed him lest I get lost in this strange and empty place.

The passage had many openings that we raced past, until without warning Lars ducked into a small white room, closed with no windows. I vaguely wondered how they ever got fresh air into the room.

'Fever medication,' Lars said to himself. Yul stood panting with Aida in his arms. He opened a cupboard above his head, plain white like everything else in the room and browsed the shelves full of tiny bottles. I went over to stand behind him and looked in wonder at all the strange clear bottles inside. They tinkled as he moved them and I wondered what they were made of.

'Paracetamol.' He shuffled around a drawer and brought out a long needle attached to yet another clear body. I watched, fascinated, as he sucked out the liquid from the glass and then picked up Aida's arm. Yul and I both reacted instantly. He pulled Aida back and I rammed Lars away.

'What do you think you're doing!' I yelled. The poisoning of Yul was fresh in my mind. Yul backed out of the doorway.

Lars put up his hands. 'It's an injection,' he said quickly. 'Delivers medicine inside you even if the person can't swallow.'

'I know what one is is, but what are you giving her?'

'It will bring her temperature down. After this I'll give her an antibiotic, which will kill the infection.'

I wasn't convinced, but Yul was. He thrust Aida out at Lars. 'Do it.'

'No!' I looked at Lars mistrustingly. He needed Aida's help and I didn't believe he would do anything to hurt her, but there are many ways of bringing someone to consciousness and with his outbreak in the car, I didn't trust his quietness anymore. 'You take it first.' I looked at him with hard eyes, fearing he would falter, or make an excuse.

But he just shrugged and pulled up his sleeve and gently poked the needle into a translucent blue vein.

'Okay,' I nodded, feeling foolish and relieved.'You can give it to her now.'

He gave Aida the rest of the injection, then took a dose of the antibiotic before giving the same to Aida.

'Sharing needles is dangerous,' he remarked. 'It's lucky I'm a universal donor.'

Yul's ears perked up, as always, at the word danger. 'She'll be alright?' he demanded.

'I have full faith she will.'