The Thought of Rain

Chapter One: Dry

Dry

"I din' mean ta kill her, Suz, I swear it!" Suz's brother Joram lay on the ground writhing. The collar of his shirt was damp with sweat and coated in dust, yellowish earth.

"No one but you is sayin' ya did, so just stop sayin' it!" Suz scooted to the edge of the rock she sat upon, and shielded her eyes from the harsh sunlight. Her younger brother groaned in regret.

"Look, there ain't nothin' we can do about it now. Best thing for us to do is be gone from here," She looked around her slowly; the ground, as dusty as she'd always known it to be, would tell anyone with the skills to know exactly what had happened here. There were a few things she'd need to do before they could leave.

First there was the body. That would have to go.

"Think ya can walk yet, Jor?" Suz moved off the rock to crouch next to her little brother, who at the age of twenty-five, was only two years younger than her and taller than she ever hoped to be.

"I don' think so. Whatever she hit me with, it's done a number on my legs." Joram tried to pull his knees to his chest, but only managed to raise them a few inches from the sandy ground.

Suz sighed.

"Don' try an' move then. Stay here, I'll be right back." Crouched in an ancient dried river bed that hadn't carried water in over ten generations, they were about five miles from the nearest Formulation outpost. It was a good thing, too, or the commotion they caused would have brought an entire brigade to their location. That was the last thing they needed.

She peered over the lip of the riverbank, satisfied that she could not see anyone coming, or any activity in the direction of the outpost.

Scrambling back down the riverside, Suz appraised their situation. One body, very little food, no water. Only one small blade. Oh, and she couldn't possibly forget about those damn monkeys. She still couldn't believe it. Ahh! she thought frustratedly. They came out of no where! Bloody Mari and her BLOODY monkeys! Suz still wasn't sure exactly what happened.

" I think I'll be alright soon, Suz. Do ya gotta plan yet?" Joram looked hopeful. The emotion looked silly on his great, bearish face. His beard obscured the dimples Suz knew were there.

"Me? Why does it always hafta be me? You got us into this mess, why don' you try ta come up with a way outta this?" Suz placed her hands on her hips, half way back to where her brother llay prone. She paused next to one of the dead monkeys, its wings bent at an unnatural angle. She angrily kicked its small, frightening face. "Try ta put yer shockin' collar on me now, ya stupid creature!" The collar she referred to, a small black, shiny thing, scared the wits out of her. A few of them littered the ground around her, but most of them were on the monkeys themselves.

"Suz, it's not the monkey's fault, ya know that. Mari's neither." His face nearly dissolved into tears, "Suz, why'd I do it!?"

She turned her eyes away from her blubbering brother, not having any answers for him. Playing the events through in her head didn't help the situation either, but she did it anyway, for the hundredth time since it happened. Mari was on th' edge of the river, an' then all her monkeys came... Suz paused in her thoughts, recalling. An' then it wasn't Mari on the edge of the river anymore, and her monkeys tried ta collar me? She glanced at the flame-haired, dead woman. It's surely Mari now.

"You know as well as I do, that if they'd managed ta collar us, we'd not be havin' these problems now. We'd no' have anythin' now." She tried to lighten the situation, "Mayhaps we'd 'uv gotten a free lunch before they shot us."

Joram seemed to rally a small amount at the thought of Suz being shot, " I'd 'uv not let it go so far, Suz. I protected ya, didn' I? My best friend is dead now, because she tried ta harm ya. Isn't that enough fer now, Suz?"