The Water Wars

by Cameron Stracher

  “But we didn’t do anything!” I protested.

  “It won’t look that way.”

  I was still gripping Kai’s medicine kit. Now I looked inside. Four neat, contoured insulin reservoirs were secured in an insulated pouch next to two boxes of blood-testing strips and a spare adapter for the injector pencil.

  “He left without his insulin,” I said.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He didn’t do it,” I said. “They took him.”

  “We don’t know that. He could have been running.”

  “You saw the bodyguard! Do you think he shot himself?”

  “Maybe he got shot protecting Kai and his father, and they got away.”

  “Then where’s the blood and the other bodies?”

  “Could be no one else was wounded.”

  But Will knew I was right. No matter how desperate Kai’s situation, he wouldn’t leave voluntarily without his insulin. It was a death sentence.

  “We have to help him, Will.”

  “We can’t go to the Guard, or the army. They’ll be looking for us.”

  “Then we have to go ourselves.”

  “Don’t be crazy. They’ll have guns, and we don’t even know who they are.”

  “If we stay here, the Guard will arrest us. You said so yourself.” My voice cracked; my throat was bone dry.

  “And what do we do if we find him? Shoot our way inside?”

  “If we have proof, the Guard will come. Especially if there’s money in it.”

  Will frowned. But he knew the Republic Guard would help a wealthy driller if we had a holo or even an audiogram—anything they could link to bank records.

  “We should tell Dad,” said Will. “Just in case.”

  I couldn’t believe Will was suggesting this. Our father would never let us leave. I told Will he was scared and making excuses. He said he was being rational and weighing the risks. The more we argued, the more forceful I became. For once I was the leader and Will the reluctant follower. He may have had logic, but I had passion and desire.

  “If we lose Kai, we lose the river,” I said. “We lose everything.”

  The lights had come on outside our building, and soon the grid would shut down. Will’s face was smeared with dust and grime from the ride, and I assumed I looked the same. My lips stung, and my hair felt matted with sweat and sand. But I felt exhilarated and prepared for anything. Will’s uneven grin told me he felt the same way.

  “We don’t know where to start,” he said.

  “Yes, we do.”

  I retrieved Kai’s father’s notebooks from my side basket. In them he had detailed the site of an old well that was about forty kilometers from Arch. I couldn’t understand all his notations, but it looked like he had found water there. If so, there were plenty of suspects who would kidnap him for the information.

  We cleaned up as best we could outside. Luckily our father was making dinner for our mother. He didn’t notice as we tiptoed past him to the bath. By the time he returned from the bedroom, I had set the table, and we were sitting in front of our plates looking as innocent as we could. I have no idea what we talked about. Every bump and sound made me jerk with worry that the RGs had arrived. We could only pray that it would take them some time to review the tapes and run a data scan, because it was too dark now to cycle on the roads. I don’t think I slept a wink, and I know Will didn’t, because I could hear him thrashing and pacing in his room.

  We left before dawn. We wrote a note explaining that we had gone to school early with a friend’s parent for water team. It was something our father could have checked, but he had plenty of other things to worry about. It was not the first time we had gone to school early, nor the first time someone had given us a ride.

  Our plan was to return before dark. We had goggles, masks, and sunshields. The wind could be fierce on the open road, and the shields would also protect against flying sand. Will brought some food, two liters of water in a saddlebag, and his old instant holo-camera. I brought my credit chip. I had saved my weekly allowance for most of the year, and although it was only fifty credits, that was enough to buy four meals and another liter of water and still leave something for an emergency. I also had Kai’s medicine kit with his insulin and injector.

  As Will calculated it, we could ride north on our pedicycles at about fifteen kilometers an hour. It should be no more than three hours to reach the well. If we were wrong, and Kai wasn’t there, we could return before our father knew we had gone. If there was any trouble, we had the camera and could send the holos by wireless. The RGs could come within an hour. At least that was the plan.

  But we made two mistakes. The first was that we assumed our pedicycles could withstand the grueling ride over forty-two kilometers of broken road. The cycles were meant for short trips—the market, school, a friend’s apartment complex. They were not meant for dirt and gravel roads that had not been repaired in years and were littered with old car parts, scrap metal, rubber, and glass. We made it about fourteen kilometers before I got my first flat. Will fixed the tire with the repair kit and some compressed air, but the second flat could not be repaired. The metal rim had separated from the tire, and no amount of pounding and banging would straighten it out. We had to abandon the cycle on the side of the road, and I climbed behind Will on his cycle.

  The extra weight, however, soon exhausted Will. He couldn’t pedal for both of us, and we stopped frequently so he could catch his breath. Then he got a flat too and ran out of compressed air while fixing it. Now his front tire was half-inflated, and that made pedaling even more difficult. I offered to trade places, but I didn’t have the strength to cycle more than a kilometer. It took us six hours instead of three to reach the site of the old well. Neither of us said anything about how long it would take to get back.

  Our second mistake was to think that there might be water at a place so desiccated and lost. The well had been drained years ago, and the coating of dust everywhere quickly told us there had been few visitors. Cracked and parched earth was all that remained where there had once been soft loamy soil. No water had flowed since at least the Great Panic, if not before.

  Kai was not here and probably never had been. Whatever the notations meant in his father’s notebook, the well wasn’t related to the kidnapping. Our lengthy trip had been foolish—and needlessly risky. As it was, darkness was coming, and we had no way to reach our father without a wireless signal. It was all my fault for suggesting we come here in the first place.

  “They must have taken him farther north,” said Will. His voice was barely a whisper.

  “Maybe. Wherever they went, they’ve got a twenty-hour head start.”

  “Don’t even think about it. We’ll never catch them. Not with the pedicycle.”

  “But Will!”

  He shook his head. “The only way to help them is to turn ourselves in to the Guard.”

  “They’ll lock us up.”

  “It’s our only chance.”

  Then my eye caught it: the faintest glimmer, a slight twinkle in the sun that I might not have seen if the light hadn’t caught it in just the right way.

  I picked up the syringe and showed it to Will.

  “He was here,” I said.

  “It’s just an old needle.”

  “No. It’s a backup for his injector. He told me. If his pencil runs out, he can always use a syringe and a bottle. He was here.”

  Will rolled the needle between thumb and forefinger like a valuable piece of silver. “There must be tracks,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, encouraging him.

  “But which way?”

  He walked backward slowly, his eyes fixed on the ground, scanning every inch of surface. I followed, trying to force my vision to see through the sand and dirt. If someone had been here, the wind would have covered the tracks quickly. And although the well looked untouched, half a day’s sandstorm would make anything look ancient.

  At first the growl in the distance
sounded like a storm. It came with very little warning. But as it got closer, the growl grew deeper, like a wild animal. Will straightened and tensed beside me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Trucks,” he said. “Lots of them.”

  “Could it be Kai?”

  Our view of the horizon was restricted, because the ground sloped away from where we stood. Several low-slung buildings also blocked our sight line. We could hear the trucks roaring, but we were otherwise blind. The sound morphed into different pitches—some high and whining, others low and rumbling: A convoy of vehicles heading for the front lines, or escaping with kidnap victims? Or maybe both…?

  Then the roar ceased. This was unusual, because the vehicles in a convoy would never shut off their engines—even I knew that. In an ambush they would not be able to flee immediately. This was someone who was not afraid of an ambush, for whom fuel mattered more than fleeing. Neither the army nor the Guard would ever take such a risk. Then Will spotted them.

  “Run! Vera, run!”

  A dozen or so men dressed in tattered black clothing, bearded and large, appeared over the horizon. They walked with guns extended, poised, and ready to shoot. If these were the men who had kidnapped Kai, we didn’t stand a chance.

  My legs felt bolted to the earth. I couldn’t move. Will grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the road. Behind us I could hear the men yelling and the machines restarting their engines.

  “Who are they?” I shouted as I stumbled to keep up with Will.

  “Water pirates!” His voice quavered.

  I nearly fell down. Water pirates were the worst kind of vigilantes. They traveled like nomads, stealing water wherever they could find it and selling it to the highest bidder. They owed allegiance to no government and killed all who crossed them.

  Will veered off the flattened sands onto rocky terrain, and I followed as fast as I could. We could hear the trucks roaring down upon us and something else in the sky. I looked up and saw a sight I’d seen only once before in my life: a helicopter. Two men with guns squatted in the open hatchway.

  “Stop running!” an amplified voice commanded.

  Will zigzagged, trying to scamper by the biggest rocks to slow the trucks. He kept one arm out for me, and I grabbed it, feeling the muscle in his forearm throbbing with the effort of the chase. We ran clumsily. I feared each step would be my last. I waited for the bullets to rip the air and wondered what it would feel like to be shot. Painful, like a vaccination, or quick and peaceful? Dust and dirt filled my vision, and it was hard to breathe. My lungs burned, and my feet ached from the rocks. But soon the road was a good half-kilometer behind us, and the sound of the trucks had faded. The helicopter, however, kept pace overhead.

  “Why are they chasing us?”

  “They don’t want anyone to know they were here,” said Will.

  Stealing water was a crime punishable by death. Even wildcatters, like Kai’s father, did their drilling with government licenses. Although the army rarely caught them, pirates were executed or sent to camps from which they never returned. Like other “undesirables,” they threatened the stability of a fragile republic. But this only made pirates more ruthless and determined never to be captured. They trusted no one and killed those who betrayed them. I ran harder.

  Then we heard the dogs.

  It was a sound I knew only from the wireless. Dogs were too expensive for most people to own. Unlike cats they drank plenty of water and could not hunt their own food. Left alone they were quickly killed by coyotes, one of the few other animals that survived in the wild. But they were still bred for certain purposes—including hunting runaways.

  “Will!”

  “I know! I heard them!” he said. “Hurry!”

  But the two of us were no match for men with dogs, to say nothing of a helicopter that kept a close watch from the sky. The barking got louder, and the blades of the copter beat the air around us. We ran, but the pirates ran faster. I stumbled, and an arm reached out to grab me. But it wasn’t Will’s arm. It was tattooed and covered with scars, twisted and gnarled—a pirate’s arm.

  CHAPTER 7

  They cuffed us, then threw us in the back of a truck. Will tried to protest, but one of the men raised a revolver and silenced him. We headed north.

  Through the slats in the side of the truck, I could see orange and violet bands of light as the sun crossed the afternoon sky. The truck banged roughly along the road, and the bands kept shifting and blinding me. I nudged Will, but he ignored me. He had been silent since the pirates forced us into the truck, and my efforts to get him to talk failed. He had a bruise on one arm where a pirate had grabbed him roughly, and every now and then, his hand went to the bruise, stroking it like a painful memory.

  Two men sat with us, their guns held tightly across their laps as if they thought one of us might make a run for it. But even if there were somewhere to run, leaping from the back of a speeding truck wasn’t the first thing on my mind. The guns were big, the men were even bigger, and the helicopter was still overhead. I could tell Will was thinking about running. I wanted to tell him we were approaching the northern boundary and the Republic of Minnesota.

  Minnesota had once been loosely bound to the lower republics, but it declared its secession after the Great Panic, and the army made no effort to stop it. Since then, it sold water to the other republics, but it stuck by its declaration and even sent troops to the border to prevent immigrants without proper documentation from sneaking through.

  I knew we were getting close because the truck slowed and the road got rougher. From the angle of the sun, I knew the direction we were going and how long we had been driving. It all added up to a border crossing into the powerful republic. There was no way a convoy of pirates could get across the border, however, and I wondered what the men had planned. Will sensed it too because after hours of silence, he sat up straight and cocked his head as if he were listening intently.

  “Minnesota,” I whispered to him.

  He nodded and turned to the pirates, speaking for the first time. “You’ll never get across.”

  The pirates seemed surprised to discover a real live boy in the back of the truck with them. One of them asked Will to repeat what he had said.

  “They’ll stop you at the border. You don’t have papers.”

  “Don’t you worry about the border,” said the pirate. “We’ll get through just fine.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “It’s not for you to be worrying.”

  “If they shoot us all, I’ll be worried.”

  I couldn’t believe Will was talking this way to a pirate. The pirate couldn’t either. “For a boy who’s a prisoner of pirates,” he said, “you’re pretty cheeky.”

  Will shrugged. “I’m just saying if we all get killed, what good is kidnapping us?”

  “If we’re all killed, what good is worrying about it?” The pirate snickered and slapped his companion on the back, and Will was quiet for a while.

  The truck continued to slow, and the men grew more alert. I couldn’t hear the helicopter anymore, and I guessed it had flown away so as not to get close to the border and risk being shot down. I didn’t think Minnesota had an air force, but it definitely had air defenses, and it wouldn’t let an unknown copter cross its skies. I heard the radio crackle in the front seat and some voices blurt forth in a different language. The driver responded, and there was some more crackling. The truck bumped loudly over a couple of barriers, and each time, we landed hard on our rumps. Finally it slowed and then came to a complete stop. All was silent.

  The radio burst forth again in that strange language. The driver answered, and another voice joined in as well. Then more silence.

  I strained to hear something, and I could just make out boots crunching against gravel outside. I pressed my face to the truck’s side, and I could hear the engine ticking as it cooled. More boots crunched, and a new voice called out. There was some muffled talking, and some more boots join
ed in. Then a hand grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me away from the side.

  “What’s so interesting?” asked the pirate who had spoken to Will. He was large, bearded, and bald, and his arms were covered with tattoos.

  I shrugged. My ears burned.

  “You’re wasting your time snooping,” said the pirate.

  “You’re going to buy your way across.” The idea came to me in a flash.

  “You’re a smart missy.”

  How else did pirates move about so freely? They couldn’t fight their way across, because they were outnumbered. Plus all those boots outside meant people talking about something important: money, water, or both.

  “But how do you know they won’t shoot you once you’re across?” I asked. “No, that would be stupid,” I said, answering my own question.

  The pirate nodded. “We wash their hands, and they wash ours.”

  “Is it illegal to steal water if they don’t arrest you?” I asked.

  “Not if you pay them enough.” The pirate smiled widely, big gaps where his teeth should be.

  Perhaps this was the way things worked in the shaker world. The rules only applied to people who couldn’t afford different rules. If you had money, you had choices—like pirates crossing the border freely, or Kai not attending school, or the WABs drinking clean water. If you didn’t, you had only chances.

  The talking stopped, and then the truck’s engine growled to life. The other vehicles joined in, and soon we were moving. I could hear the helicopter overhead again.

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “Only he knows for sure,” the pirate said.

  “He? Who?”

  But the pirate was silent, and from the glare Will gave me, I knew it was best not to keep asking questions.

  We drove for another hour until the sun had completely set. My bottom ached, and my neck was stiff and sore. Will had fallen asleep against my thigh. He awoke with a start when the truck honked loudly three times, followed by two short taps. After a moment an air horn responded with the same sequence. The truck lurched forward, and the sound against the tires was smoother and quieter. After a few minutes, the truck slowed, then stopped again.