Dry Souls

by Denise Getson

“Oh.” I stare at him with wide eyes, and he stares back, looking as surprised as I feel.

  He gives me an awkward grin and fakes a soft jab to my good shoulder. Too tired, too sore and definitely too hungry to muster a response, I lean my head back on the ground and close my eyes.

  Over the next few days, J.D. rarely leaves my side except to hunt for food. After I’ve rested, I locate a small depression in the ground nearby that’s ideal for a pool of water, and we’re both able to hydrate ourselves. Gradually, I gather my strength. By the end of the week, I can assist with small tasks. J.D. finds tumbleweeds, which we chop into a salad, along with bristle grass and ants or locusts. I’m even able to collect enough dry grass seeds to grind into a gray mush that’s tasteless, but filling.

  Now, with a fresh energy I haven’t felt in days, I want to test myself. The sun’s not fully up yet. It’s light enough to explore, but not so hot that the exertion will sap my strength.

  “J.D., there’s a patch of roots a bit south of here. I’m going to head down and dig up a few before it gets too hot.”

  “Don’t overdo it. If they’re rooted too deeply, come get me, and I’ll help you.”

  It’s the kind of statement that used to irritate me, the implication that I couldn’t do it on my own. Now, I appreciate the offer of assistance.

  “Will do.”

  It feels good to stretch my legs. And the patch of roots turns out to be even better than I’d hoped. I’ve got several tasty specimens removed from the ground when a noise reaches my ear that halts my hand in mid-air. Barely breathing, I strain my ears, wanting to be certain. I’m not wrong. There are voices coming up the mountain.

  Quietly, I pocket my trowel, grab the roots and head back to camp. As I approach, J.D. looks like he’s going to speak. I hold my finger to my lips and tiptoe closer. “Two voices,” I whisper. “Heading this way.”

  Without a word, he begins packing up our stuff. I assist, stuffing the roots and trowel into my bag. We quickly tie up our bedrolls, scuff the ground a bit and head for higher ground. The pool still has water in it, but we grab tumbleweeds and camouflage it as best we can.

  From a higher vantage point, we crawl out onto a flat ledge and peer between the rocks.

  J.D. leans close. “Could you hear what they were saying?”

  “Not really,” I whisper. “But there was something...”

  “Territory?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t get the impression they were a search party, more like they were travelers.”

  Suddenly, a sound reaches our ears. J.D. listens intently. With a small gesture, he inches us back to ensure we’re hidden. For a minute, we lay there listening quietly, barely breathing, as the voices come closer. I only hear two speakers. Could there be more?

  A micro-expression crosses J.D.’s face then he lifts his head and peers through the rocks. “No way,” he whispers.

  “What?”

  I’m stunned to see him stand and gaze down the mountain. The voices have stopped. He lifts one arm in a wave. With his other, he reaches down and helps me to my feet. Before me is a welcome sight beyond my happiest dreams.

  Clambering over rocks below us are two figures, male and female. Immediately, I recognize Tuck and Tamara. I grab hold of J.D.’s hand. “Where’s Shay?”

  Carefully, we climb down from our perch and approach the couple waiting for us. They are dusty, thinner and older than when I saw them last in Bio-4. Do we look like that to them? Like parched ghosts?

  When Tamara’s eyes meet mine, they are dry, but filled with a grief so vast I know without words Shay is gone. I’ve never been a hugger. Then again, I haven’t exactly had people in my life I wanted close. At this moment, the only right thing in the world is to reach out to my friend and hold on, oblivious to the quiet words Tuck and J.D. are exchanging nearby. For endless minutes, she and I clutch tightly, communicating the only way we know how the pain of existence and the comfort of human connection.

  Wordlessly, I turn and begin leading the group to our sheltered spot. J.D. pulls the tumbleweeds from the pool so Tuck and Tamara can drink and refresh themselves. I remember the roots in my pack and take them out now, quickly shaving them into thin, edible strips for us to eat.

  Soon, the four of us are pressed together into the shadow of the rock, shielded from the rising sun. No one speaks right away and the unasked questions are like invisible stones hanging in the air between us. We all know they’re there, but we’re afraid to offer one, afraid of the hard answers that will be offered in return. Tamara finally offers hers without our asking.

  “They used Shay to try and get information from me. They were convinced I knew some clue that would reveal where you’d gone.”

  “And you couldn’t give them anything.”

  “No.”

  My heart is breaking. I would have turned myself over to the Territory for Shay. And I know Tamara would have done anything in her power to prevent that sweet, innocent child from suffering.

  She takes my hand. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “It’s their fault,” she says, “the ones who hurt her.” The steel in her voice and in her eyes is something new. It makes me sadder than I have ever been in my life.

  J.D. breaks the silence. “Tamara, tell us what happened after we left.”

  “These men took me and Shay to a room and asked questions. About Kira mostly. But you, too,” she says, glancing at J.D. “I’m afraid I didn’t have many answers for them. So they played a tone,” she says softly. “It was in a range I couldn’t hear. But Shay could. She screamed.” Tamara stops, takes a shuddering breath.

  “You don’t have to do this now,” I begin.

  “No. I want to.” A tiny muscle flexes in her jaw. “Fairly quickly, they realized I really didn’t know where you’d gone, and they released us. At first, everything seemed fine. Shay was scared, of course, and she wouldn’t let go of me. Otherwise, she seemed unharmed. But the next day, she toppled over for no reason. I thought it was fatigue from her ordeal. But the loss of balance didn’t go away. It got worse. She couldn’t sit upright or pull herself up. She’d tip sideways and then be flat on her back, her eyes wide with astonishment, you know how she was.”

  She blinks quickly, and I don’t say a word. I did know. Shay was perfect and completely benevolent. And she’d been too young to understand she lived in a world that wasn’t.

  Tamara clears her throat. “Anyway, it got so I couldn’t take my eyes off her for a second. Tuck found a papoose for me to use, and I started carrying her around in it everywhere we went. She hated it, of course. Then one morning, she didn’t wake up. She’d been next to me the entire night, wrapped in the papoose and cradled in the crook of my arm. She just slipped away, and I never felt it.” She shook her head, eyes glazed with pain. “How is that possible? How is it possible that the best piece of myself could be let go, and I didn’t even feel it?”

  Her voice is bereft, and I wrap my arms around her. She trembles. It seems as if she is crying, but there are no tears. She is too dry inside.

  “I found Tam a coupla days later with Shay.” Tuck’s eyes move from Tamara, to me, to J.D. “The papoose was still strapped to her body, you see, with Shay inside.”

  “I was lost,” Tamara whispers, eyes squeezed shut.

  “I had my contacts ’round Bio-4 keepin’ their ears to the ground for news about what the Territory was up to, you know, to see if I’d learn where the two a you had gone. One day, I get a tip. All the suits have vanished—just like that—headed for Slag and some hush-hush operation. So I got with my boys and pulled together supplies, figurin’ I’d head up myself to check it out. After all, I’d been in Bio-4 awhile, and it was time for a change.”

  “By yourself?” I ask, forgetting for a moment that I’d left the Garner Home alone—and known much less than Tuck did about how to survive.

  “You just have to know where things are, Kira, like underground outposts along the w
ay with hidden stockpiles for travelers. I’ve traveled most of my life, so I know the network. Only, this time I weren’t doin’ it alone. Tamara refused to stay in Bio-4.”

  She shrugs. “What was the point?”

  “I’m sure ya can imagine our surprise when we reached Slag,” he says, eyes on mine.

  “We saw the lake,” Tamara whispers. “Did you do that?”

  Tuck whistles. “Man, when we reached the beach, it was outta control. Rovers dartin’ in and out with giant machines, and Territory officials marchin’ around with dopey looks on their faces.”

  “I swam,” says Tamara.

  I’m startled. “You what?”

  “I’ve always wanted to swim. I sank in over my head and felt cool liquid sliding along every surface of my body. It was wonderful.”

  “Tamara, that was dangerous.” I say the words automatically, but a part of me is jealous that she got to go into the water, and I didn’t. “Those men, they were going to do something to the lake. Make it toxic.”

  “We knew there was somethin’ going on, that’s for sure,” Tuck adds. “At first, we couldn’t figure it out. And we weren’t the only ones drawn to the water. Even in a wasteland, word has a way of traveling. Folks would come out of their dark places at night and sneak down to the water’s edge to drink and bathe. It was, well, it was somethin’ to see.”

  J.D.’s been quiet all this time and I turn to him now. “I’m afraid, J.D. I’m afraid something terrible will happen to those people. They’re so thirsty, so desperate. And they won’t expect it. They won’t see it coming.”

  Tuck and Tamara exchange a cryptic glance.

  “They didn’t see it coming, Kira,” she says softly.

  I’m unable to tear my gaze away from the face of my friend. How many times during my escape from Bio-4 and the long trek from Slag did I wish I could see Tamara again? And here she is. My wish has been granted. But I realize now my wish was selfish. Whenever I pictured Tamara, I imagined her and Shay laughing together on their small patch of space in Bio-4 or selling jewelry in the marketplace or snuggled together gazing through the bio-dome at the round moon. Now, Tamara is here. But Shay is not. And my friend has been transformed. Her eyes are sunken, her cheeks hollowed by hunger and sadness. But her voice is still clear when she speaks, her questions shaking me from my reverie.

  “How do you do it, Kira? How do you make the water?”

  “I honestly don’t know. The first time was completely accidental. I’ve never figured out how or why. I stopped trying to make sense of it. Thinking about it just makes my head hurt.”

  “You’ve got to do more. You can’t stop now. You’ve got to help us live. All of us. Help us grow things on our own, without the Territory telling us how many drops of water we can consume in a day or how many beans we can have on our plate.”

  “I want that, too, Tamara. You can’t know how much. But every time I make water, it’s like a giant flag waving, saying ‘here I am, come and get me.’ And they want to control me, control what I can do. Since J.D. and I left Slag, I haven’t had an opportunity to make enough water that wouldn’t evaporate within a few day’s time. You’ve seen what it’s like out there.”

  I figure the shock of seeing Tamara and Tuck is starting to wear off because my thoughts are finally starting to organize themselves. I turn to Tuck with a question that’s been struggling for formation since I first saw them on the mountain.

  “How did you find us?”

  Tuck looks at J.D., and he chuckles. Even Tamara smiles.

  I look from one to the other. “What? What don’t I know?”

  It’s Tuck who answers. “I’m gettin’ to that. So first, we’re at the lake, see, and we start noticin’ these tactical teams leaving the city. Clearly, there’s some kinda search underway. But what’s it all about, right? One night, I’m making introductions to folks who’ve come to the lake, and I hook up with a man who says to me he’d been hired at this place in town, cooking for Territory staff and a couple of captives, a boy and girl. But the buildin’ had collapsed, and these kids had gotten away, and his boss wanted ’em back very badly.”

  “Thorne.” I can’t hide my disgust.

  “So he survived,” says J.D.

  “Later that night, Tam and I were hidin’ under a pier and we see patrols fannin’ out around the lake, chasin’ lurkers and broadcasting that their oh-so-sophisticated machinery had detected deadly toxins in the lake. They said there’d been some kind of underground rupture that had pushed all this bad water to the surface of the earth, and it could generate somethin’ highly contagious, like a plague. They said the Territory was takin’ steps to protect everybody. For their own safety and the safety of others, people were being forced to evacuate the area.

  “Clearly somethin’ sneaky was going on, so we hunkered down to see what would happen next.”

  I can tell that whatever it is Tuck’s about to say, it’s going to be bad. “Electric fences?”

  He shakes his head. “Buried mines.”

  I knew Thorne was evil, but still…the news is staggering. Tamara squeezes my hand. “I’m sorry, Kira. But Tuck is right. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself. They were burying landmines along the shoreline. All it would take is a couple of people getting blown up as they try to approach the water.”

  J.D. finishes her thought. “And the Territory gets to keep the water for themselves.”

  “I’m afraid so. Occasionally, people will still try, of course, thinking they’ve figured out a way to do it and not get caught. But most people will accept their rations meekly and just leave it alone.”

  I drop my head into my hands, certain that whatever naked expression shows on my face right now must be ugly and hateful. I want to do violence. I want to hurt Thorne. There is no reasoning in the world to justify his actions. That water should be saving lives. Lots of lives, not just the ones Thorne deems worthy.

  Softly, Tuck resumes his story. “Some of us didn’t believe the water was toxic, see, because we’d been drinkin it. We’d even been in it. But once we realized they was blockin’ access, a bunch of us began fillin’ as many containers as we could find for storing underground: tubs and tanks and barrels and bottles and small, clay jugs. For several nights, we did little else but pipe water outta that lake. But between the mines and the sentries, it kept gettin’ harder and harder to find a safe place to draw the water. And soon enough, people started gettin’ blown up. And pieces of them were left behind on the beaches as a warning to others.”

  I stare at Tuck unable to fathom such an abomination.

  “We could tell time was running out, so Tam and I, we boogied out of there. My first goal was just to head in a direction not overrun with search parties. It didn’t occur to me ’til later that I was followin’ in your footsteps.”

  “You saw one of my marks?” says J.D.

  Tuck nods.

  I glance from one to the other. “What are you talking about? What mark? Why don’t I know about a mark?”

  “It’s something Tuck and I used to do back in Gamma. There was a group of us actually.”

  “We called ourselves The Lost Boys.”

  J.D. looks at me. “Each of us had a small stamp we carried. We’d use it to mark a good hiding place or to secretly indicate that a valuable cache was nearby. We’d place the mark somewhere that wasn’t obvious, but not completely hidden either, beneath a metal strut or inside the corner of a concrete block, for example.”

  “And you were doing this the whole time we were walking?”

  “I didn’t start doing it right away. It was actually several days after we’d left Slag that I started leaving the mark behind. It’s an old habit. I’m not even sure why I picked it up again. Maybe I wanted to mark our way back, in case we ever decided to return.”

  “What if Thorne’s men found your mark?”

  “It wouldn’t mean anything to them. There’s nothing about it that would tie the mark to me or that w
ould have meaning for anyone unless you were someone who I’d traveled with in the past and you knew me, specifically.”

  Tuck nods. “There are actually lots of marks out there you know. I come across them now and again. But once I recognized yours, I started looking for your mark along the way. Often, that was our cue to stop and rest for the day.” He scratches his nose and blinks at us. His eyes contain a grin for the strange circumstances in which we find ourselves. “Sometimes I couldn’t find it, and I’d backtrack and try a new direction. Reconnoiter. Dodge the occasional search party, of course.”

  “It’s pretty rugged terrain.” J.D. replies.

  “I don’t know how you survived,” I add. “We nearly didn’t.”

  “Actually, sometimes you helped us.” he says.

  He chuckles at the baffled expression on my face.

  “By now, I was startin’ to figure out a few things, Kira. Like that you had a habit of makin’ small pools of water and coverin’ ’em up. They were well hidden, by the way. I’m sure we missed a lot of them. Or they were dried and gone by the time we passed by. We’d go days without finding one of them—maybe just a patch a damp ground, and we’d suck on the mud for the moisture that was there—but every now and then, I’d shove aside a piece of rusted metal siding, and there’d be the remains of a little trough of water like a gift.”

  “I was trying to be so careful,” I tell him, frowning. “I wouldn’t even make water unless I absolutely had to in order to survive. Do you think any of the searchers found my water?”

  “I think you’d a known it by now if they had. Keep in mind that we’d already figured out we were on your trail because of J.D.’s mark. Unless the search parties had someone with them who’d really traveled, who’d been out in the wasteland for months or years on their own building trust with other travelers and learning to see things in a certain way, I’m not sure they would a seen what I did. Sometimes I’d look at an area and just know that something had been moved recently without even understanding why I was so sure of it. Things have a way of breaking apart or fallin down, and sometimes a piece of debris just didn’t seem to fit.”