Scorched: The Last Nomads (The Burnt Earth Series Book 1)

by Melanie Karsak

  I stared across the community. There were five rusted vehicles on the grounds. One housed chickens. Another, the only one with its windows still intact, was being used as a greenhouse. From the third, I had already stripped the steering column, tires, and most of the engine parts. The fourth was rusted almost beyond recognition. Morty had built a roof over the fifth one, a van, and lived inside it. It didn’t even have an engine.

  Stuffing the map back into my bag, I headed toward the garage. It was almost dark, but I didn’t care. I slipped inside the building, eyeing the parts I had already gathered to build a vehicle based on a design created by da Vinci. I passed those by and went to the back of the room. Pulling away a heavy tarp, I stared at the two old diesel motorcycles sitting there. They were antiques, but given their age and the fact that they were both mechanical-injection diesels, they had survived the CME. I rolled each one to the center of the garage. I’d started this same project a hundred times before, always coming to the same conclusion. It didn’t matter whether or not I could fix one of the bikes; I didn’t have fuel to make it run. I pulled out a wrench and stared down at the machines.

  In the distance, I heard the first of the howls. The sharp wail in the distance reverberated across The Park. The yowl signaled the end of our day. Now, everyone would hide. It was night when the wailers ruled, and only fools roamed beyond the walls.

  I glanced out the dirty garage door windows. Across the community, everyone started putting their lights out. It grew silent inside the walls as people shuttered and locked their doors. Frowning, I knelt down and picked up a socket wrench. I started working on the green bike, which was in better condition and mostly rebuilt at this point.

  More yips and barks joined the chorus outside the walls of The Park. Strange hoots and gurgling bellows hung in the dense night air as the wailers woke and began hunting in the wasteland. Ignoring the sounds, I tried to focus on the noise of the socket turning rather than the wailing. But I failed miserably.

  What if Ash was out there with those things?

  What if she was running or hiding?

  My heart pounded in my chest.

  What if they had gotten her?

  I gripped the metal handle of the wrench hard and worked on the bolt that had rusted in place. Working by the light of moon alone, I cursed under my breath and tried not to think about the wailers, their howls, and the clatter of their teeth as they drew closer to the walls of The Park. I tried not to think about my sister who was out there somewhere among those things, who was in trouble, who needed me. I tried not to think about the fact that the elders would not let me go to Low Tide to look for her. I tried not to think about the fact that every goddamned machine in this place did not work and nothing ever would unless I fixed it myself.

  The top half of the rusty bolt snapped leaving the rest still lodged inside the pipe.

  “Dammit!” I yelled, throwing my wrench across the room.

  It smashed into the pipes and other equipment hanging on the wall, making a terrible clatter.

  Outside the walls of The Park, the wailers howled loudly.

  “I think you almost killed me,” a soft voice said from the door not far from where my wrench had punctured a hole in the drywall before clattering to the ground.

  I looked up to see Carrington, one of our governing elders, standing there.

  “You might have deserved it,” I said, immediately regretting my words. Carrington had been a close friend of my mother’s. And, in truth, she had watched out for Ash and me after my parents had died. “Sorry, I—”

  “It’s all right,” she said, bending to pick up the wrench. She crossed the room and handed it back to me. “Motorcycles?”

  “I need to find a way to get through Hell’s Passage…fast.”

  “You’ll be going nowhere fast without fuel.”

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead. She was right. But still. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

  “You must.”

  “No. I could go to Low Tide and look for her.”

  “And if something happens to you? If Ash returns and you are gone? I already let Ash leave against my better judgment. I can’t let you go too. She’ll come back.”

  “No,” I said then looked up at her. “Something is wrong.” Why couldn’t I get anyone to believe me?

  Carrington inhaled then exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry, Keyes. Even if… We don’t know where she is. We don’t even know what happened.”

  “And we won’t until someone goes to look. Ash aside, if we don’t get the supplies from Low Tide, we’ll all be dead in six months anyway. The water is already souring. You know it.”

  Carrington looked out the dusty window. The wailers’ barks had gotten louder. They’d drawn close to the walls. Like every night, they would sniff, and bark, and bang against the walls, almost like they were testing for weaknesses. They could smell us inside, and if they could come in, they would rip us all from limb from limb.

  “Go home,” Carrington said. “Get some rest. You are right about the supplies. Something will be done, but there are no easy solutions.”

  “But you’ll think about it?”

  “I already am,” she said then looked down at the bikes. “If only,” she said, waving toward them. “Your landsailers…did you bring them back?”

  I shook my head. “We left them there in case Ash and the others need them when they come back.”

  Carrington put her arm around me. “I love her too. I…I’m worried too,” she added, her voice cracking. “Now, go home and lock your door. Tomorrow, we will begin again.”

  With that, she left me.

  I stared down at the bikes. Would there be a way to convert the engines, use propane as fuel? We still had several propane tanks in the back. They hadn’t rusted yet. If only we had fuel. I stared out at the garage window. In front of the station sat two gas pumps. They were rusted and covered by red, thorny vines. Useless. I gazed back down at the bikes then sighed. What did it matter if the bike was almost in perfect working condition again? Without fuel, what was the point? I was better off working from the model da Vinci had drawn.

  Hoisting my bag onto my shoulder, I left the garage and headed home. I crossed the dark grounds back toward my house. I froze, my heart leaping into my throat when I heard a loud bang against the gate followed by a quick peppering of gunfire from the guard post by the gate. Someone shot a flare toward the area just outside. The flash of bright light evoked a series of yips and calls as the wailers retreated.

  I ran toward the watchtower. Tomas had already climbed down and was rushing over to the gate where Donovan was on guard. Enrique climbed down behind him.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Enrique turned and headed toward the gate.

  I quickened my step and followed along beside him.

  “One of them rushed the gate. Everything’s okay now. Donovan got it,” he said. “Get inside, Keyes. They’re restless tonight.”

  Rushed the gate? That was…odd. I was just a girl when one of the wailers had gotten in. I never saw it, but I remembered the terror I’d felt just knowing it was inside The Park’s walls. They had shot that creature too. I remembered my mother covering my ears to drown out the sound of the alarm and the gunfire.

  Frowning, I turned and headed back to my house. I locked the door, not even bothering to light the lantern. I flopped down on my cot and closed my eyes.

  Wherever Ash was, all I could do was pray she would survive the night.

  Chapter 3

  I woke with a jolt. I had been dreaming something terrible. The specifics of the dream faded, but I remembered the darkness, the taste of dust, and the wailers. I inhaled deeply. Sweat drenched my filthy shirt. With a sigh, I rose and pulled off the sweaty garment. I glanced out the window of my small home. People were milling around the community as if nothing was wrong. No one sensed the terrible urgency that tied my stomach into knots.

  Wetting the corner of a rag, I washed my face and
arms, pulled a clean white shirt off the shelf, and slipped it on. Ash had sewn and resewn the shirt a million times. Like everything else, it was still falling apart. I glanced down at my sister’s bed once more.

  To hell with this.

  Grabbing my pack, I headed out of my house and across the grounds to Park Building. As I made my way, however, I saw that the gate was open and a group was standing just outside.

  “Ash,” I whispered. My heart slamming hard in my chest, I raced to the gate. Why hadn’t they sounded the alert? Why hadn’t anyone come to tell me?

  I raced toward the group. Carrington, Ramsey, and Gutierrez were there with several of the other guards, including Enrique, who was kneeling down to look at something on the ground, while Raj was pointing toward the wall.

  “Ash? Ash?” I called, moving toward the small crowd.

  Carrington turned and looked back at me. She shook her head.

  I spotted Ronan’s wife, Samara, and went to stand beside her. “What is it? What’s happening?”

  “The wailer they shot. There,” she said, pointing toward Enrique. “The wailer tried to climb. Look,” she added, motioning to the scratch marks that marred the wall.

  They had rolled the massive metal gate back. Scratch marks, which nearly reached the razor wire, striped the wall. Long scratches streaked the gate.

  Carrington, Ramsey, and Gutierrez were talking in serious tones with several of the other community leaders, including Nat, who served as the community’s doctor. I sneaked around them and joined Enrique who looked up at me only briefly. They had covered the body of the wailer with a thin cloth. Reddish brown stains marred the fabric. I knelt down beside him on the sun-packed earth. The ground below my feet had dried like flakes of skin.

  “Ever see one?” Enrique asked.

  “Not up close.”

  Lifting his shotgun, he snagged the fabric covering the body with the barrel and lifted the material so I could have a look.

  In the small library in Park Building, I had discovered a small trove of journals about the wailers. When they’d first appeared, someone at The Park had studied them, taken notes, and considered their evolution. There were drawings, but those were nothing compared to the corpse before me.

  The creature lay slumped. It had been shot in the back. It had long, sinewy arms and legs and huge black eyes. Its skin was a shade of black so deep that it had blue and purple iridescence like the feathers of a raven. Thin strands of hair covered its head.

  “Burn it,” Ramsey commanded, turning his attention our way.

  “But, sir,” Nat protested. “At least allow me a day to do an autopsy. We know so little about them, and it’s been years since anyone has had a chance to look at one up close.”

  “And we have no idea what kind of diseases it may carry. I will not have it inside these walls. Burn in.”

  “Sir, please,” Nat tried again.

  Ramsey gave the man a sharp look then turned and walked away.

  Rising, I left the others and followed behind our community leader. Ramsey, a tall man in his early sixties, walked with a stride that bespoke his authority. His chin tilted out over his high collar. As I caught up to him, he gave me a passing glance.

  “No, Keyes. Don’t ask,” he said. “We are considering our options now. We’ll let you know what we decide.”

  “Then you are considering sending someone after them? If so, I want to—”

  “If we send a party out, if it is the right course, we will not risk letting you go. Now, no more. I already listened to your sister, and look where we are now.”

  Gritting my teeth, I let that go for now. Nat’s voice rose up behind me in defeated protest. I looked back to see he was talking to Carrington and Gutierrez who were no more willing than Ramsey to let Nat bring the wailer inside. “What about the wailer? Would you consider letting Nat examine it outside the gates? He’ll take precautions. If we had more information on them, maybe we could find a way to deter them, build some kind of device that keeps them away from the wall. I thought that if we illuminated the gate…” I was saying, already lost to my train of thought when Ramsey stopped.

  He looked at me, a partially frustrated and partially bemused expression on his face. “You take after your mother, always trying to riddle out problems. If you want to put your energy on something, then I do have an issue that would benefit from your creative mind. We need a solution for our water supply. There must be something we can do here, make here, to purify the water. We only have two tablets from Low Tide left. Not enough. Please go into the archives and research, draw a design, something…find me a solution. We need to find a way to live without the supplies from Low Tide. Your sister may return with the news that the outpost is gone. If that happens, we must find a way to survive.”

  I stared at him. It was the first time he’d ever asked me to do anything. Mostly I felt like the weird girl who was always coming up with inventions and ideas no one had any use for.

  “I… Of course,” I said. My quick elation and feeling like I had been flattered quickly faltered as I realized that while finding an alternative was a good idea, I was also being steered toward a task to keep me busy and out of the way.

  “Very good,” he said, and with a nod, he turned and headed back toward Park Building.

  I turned around to see Carrington headed my way. I knew she meant well. But at that moment, I was in no mood to hear reassurances. I turned right, walking away from her, following the wall to the watchtower at the southeast point of the community. Given it was daytime, no one manned the tower. I climbed up the ladder and into the booth. Pulling out my monocular, I scanned the horizon once more. Nothing. There was just nothing out there. I could see Hell’s Passage in the distance. The air was still and hot. The heat had begun to rise from the ground, causing a shifting mirage. Frowning, I looked away.

  I pulled my notepad out of my bag and sat jotting notes, just random ideas, about the condition of the community water. Well depth was an issue. And contaminants. And the fact that it was so damned dry that the earth itself was shriveling up. I tried to remember the last time it had rained. Maybe six months ago. More? The sun had decimated our atmosphere, fundamentally shifted conditions on our planet. The Earth and its inhabitants were slowly dying.

  Chapter 4

  I spent most of the day watching, waiting, and scratching ideas into my notebook.

  Ash never came back.

  There was no sign of anything alive on the horizon, not even a single bird in the sky.

  My sister was out there somewhere. I tried not to focus on it, to work on the task Ramsey had given me, but when a wash of dread swept over me, the anxiety so intense that I couldn’t take it anymore, I bundled up my things and crawled back out of the tower. The endless waiting wasn’t helping. I headed to Park Building.

  I entered the old administrative building. It was a little cooler inside, the brick structure holding some of the night air. Wooden benches sat in the old lobby that had a marble floor and a faded insignia on the wall, a remnant of the lost world. I made my way upstairs to the third floor of the building. The first and second floors were open to the community. There, the few children in our community took daily lessons—just as Ash and I had done when we were small. There were so few children now. When Ash and I were kids, at least thirty of us filled the tiny school room. Now there were only six or so kids under the age of ten. There were less of us now, but also fewer children were being born. It wasn’t clear if the low fertility was a byproduct of the solar sickness that lived inside all of us, worsening as the years went on, or simply due to malnutrition. But it was clear that our species was dying. The wailers, on the other hand, never seemed in short supply.

  When I reached the third floor, I opened the door slowly. At the end of the hall was the elder’s meeting room. With a soft click, I closed the door behind me then I paused to listen. I heard the elders talking, but their words were unclear. I could just make out Enrique’s voice.

&nbs
p; No use in listening to what I couldn’t understand.

  With a sigh, I headed to the small room that housed our library. It was stocked with a wide variety of reading materials that had come from nearby houses, the gift shop, the administrative offices, desks, and other magazine and pamphlets people had managed to save at the beginning or scavenge later. There had been a library downriver. In my grandparents’ time, someone had taken the initiative to retrieve the books, an act of heroism for which I was eternally grateful. Most of the books had come from there. I was about to enter when I noticed that the door to the clinic just across from the library was open a crack. I stuck my head inside. Nat was sitting at a table writing notes in a journal. A tall man about thirty years old, he was the most learned person in our community about medicines. It had been more than five generations since the sun had blighted the land. When The Park was first formed, Nat’s family—like mine—had been one of the first residents. His great-great-grandfather had been a doctor who had passed his knowledge down through his family line to Nat. In the early years, before the Earth had dried to a dust ball, The Park had still flourished. Now… I stared at Nat. He had no wife, no children. He would need to pass on his knowledge to someone else. Soon. But whom? I frowned when I thought about my peers. None of them seemed to have the aptitude or drive for much beyond the basics.

  “Nat?” I called, gently knocking on the door. He looked up at me.

  “Keyes,” he said with a soft smile. “Any news?”

  I shook my head then glanced at his papers.

  “Just trying to add to the other notes we have on the wailers. I heard what you said to Ramsey. Thank you for trying.”

  I cast a glance down the hallway toward the meeting room where the elders were talking. “Ramsey is old and stubborn. He doesn’t see the truth before him.”

  “The truth?”

  “That The Park is coming to an end unless we do something. Learning how to fend off the wailers would be one way to start. And we won’t find out how to do that unless we know more about them.”