Sunrise Destiny

by Mark Terence Chapman

  The scene cut to the Chief, with a holo pickup shoved under his nose. “We have the entire four-block area cordoned off. It’s just a matter of doing a door-to-door search. They won’t get far.”

  The rest of the news report was nothing more than a rehash of earlier coverage.

  I turned to Lola. “Sharinda Brown?”

  She winced and shrugged. “I prefer Lola.”

  “Okay by me.” I looked over at Karsh and his people, who were huddled together across the room, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “What’s the matter, Karsh?”

  [It is hot and dry today. We cannot be out of water for long. We must return to the sea soon.]

  “I understand. Should we leave now? You can fog people’s minds so they don’t see us, right?”

  Karsh projected an emphatic no. “There are too many possible witnesses, and our range is limited, more so from dehydration. Besides, it is much too hot for us to attempt to walk all the way back to the bay from here. We must wait until dark, when it will be cooler and fewer people will be about.”

  “That makes sense, but can you hold out that long without water?”

  [I do not know. However, we must wait. We cannot go now.]

  This was a disturbing development.

  “Lola, help me search this place. We need to find some water.”

  “Sure thing, baby.”

  I went left and she went right. I tried the kitchen sink, but it was dry. There was nothing in the cupboards but a mousetrap baited with a piece of desiccated cheese, a fistful of paper salt and pepper packets, and a few clear plastic mustard and ketchup packets from various fast-food restaurants. The mustard and ketchup had aged to the point where they were nearly identical shades of brown.

  I checked a couple of closets and one bedroom. Nothing.

  Lola returned to the living room after canvassing the bathroom and the other bedroom. She shook her head. “Nothing in the bathroom. Even the toilet tank is dry. This place must have been vacant for months. All I found was this.” She held up a half-liter plastic bottle of spring water. It was almost empty, but it did hold a few ounces. That was maybe enough for one small sip for each Azarti.

  “It’s something, anyway. Thanks.”

  I took the bottle over to Karsh. “It’s not much, but it might help you hold on a bit longer.”

  He gave me a mental nod. Up close, I noticed what I was unable to see from across the room: the Azarti’s skin, normally glistening, had taken on a waxy appearance. They were drying out.

  I wracked my brain for a solution. There had to be a way to get some water. I couldn’t exactly go to the corner market and buy a few jugs. Too many people were looking for Lola and me. Certainly, Karsh couldn’t go. He’d be hard-pressed to remain “invisible” surrounded by a city full of people. I was amazed that his people had made it as far as the jail without being seen. On the other hand, no one had been looking for them before, so bystanders might not have paid much attention anyway and it would have been easier for the Azarti to confuse the issue. Now, however, the public was alerted to the presence of a bunch of “kids in wetsuits” and would be more likely to remember seeing them.

  At the moment, I wasn’t worried about the cops finding us. I didn’t think they’d go to the trouble of searching a vacant apartment that hadn’t visibly been broken into. Nor was I worried about how to break the police cordon. I’d worry about that later. Right now, my only concern was finding water for Karsh and his people.

  After an hour, I was no closer to a solution. Then the problem got worse. I heard wheezing from several of the Azarti. If it wasn’t bad enough that the Azarti’s skin had continued to dry out to the point where it was gray and beginning to shrivel in places, now their threls were drying out. Much more and they’d no longer be able to extract oxygen from the air and the Azarti would suffocate.

  [Urine.] Karsh’s mental voice was weak.

  “I beg your pardon? I thought you said urine.”

  [I did. You must urinate on us. That will moisten our skin and deter the drying process.”

  Lola put her hand over her mouth. “Eww. That’s disgusting.”

  I agreed, and frankly I didn’t think I could whip it out in front of Allara, anyway. She was just a kid. Besides, the thought of pissing on my friends didn’t appeal to me.

  “Let’s-let’s save that as a last resort. I’ve got another idea. Lola, keep an eye on them. I’m going out.”

  “Sunrise, you can’t. The cops are all over the place.”

  “What choice do we have? If I don’t find a lot of water, and soon, they’ll die. They risked their lives to help us. I’ll be damned if I let any of them die as a result.”

  She nodded. “Go. Be careful and hurry back.” She glanced over at the huddled Azarti. “I don’t know how much longer they can hold out.”

  Except for Karsh’s suggestion, I hadn’t heard a peep out of any of them in the past twenty minutes. That worried me.

  I opened the door a crack and peered out. There was no one in the hallway so I slipped out and headed for the alley. I hoped there might be other partly full water bottles in the trash. Failing that, I might be able to slip into the back of a restaurant and steal something.

  I dove into the first dumpster and rooted around. The odor was overpowering, but I didn’t care. I found plenty of rotting food, but no bottles, cans, or jars. Apparently those people recycled religiously. I moved on to the next dumpster, with the same results. Then several smaller trash cans. A half-hour had elapsed and I’d come up with precisely nothing to show for my efforts.

  My friends were dying and I couldn’t do a thing for them but piss on them. I would gladly have beat my head against the wall if that would have caused water to ooze from the bricks. There had to be a solution.

  I started toward the restaurant I’d decided to rob. I had to hope no one was standing around inside. If I was seen, it would only take a minute or two for the nearby police to be summoned. Then it would all be over.

  I was ten steps from the back door when I spied something out of the corner of my eye. A green snake. No, not a snake. A garden hose! It was attached to a spigot on the wall. I realized the restaurant must use it to wash down the trash area periodically.

  I took a closer look. It was a twenty-five-foot hose. That was nowhere near long enough to reach across the alley, through the door, up a flight of stairs, across the hall and into the apartment. I needed a bucket or something to carry the water in.

  More searching. There were no cans, jars, bottles, or buckets to be found. I wanted to scream with frustration. What was I supposed to do, bring water upstairs one mouthful at a time? I could soak my clothes in water and bring it up that way, but it still would be too little and perhaps too late. No, I needed a way to get the water there faster and in larger amounts.

  If only the hose was longer. Then a thought occurred to me. If I couldn’t bring the mountain to Mohammed, maybe I could bring Mohammed to the mountain. I ran over to the apartment building and began pulling trash and debris from against the wall. There had to be—yes! A spigot on the wall. A quick twist proved that it was hooked up to a water supply.

  I ran back to the restaurant to get the hose. The damn connection was stuck or rusted. I twisted with all my strength, but the hose wouldn’t budge. Now I did grunt with frustration. Come on! I looked around for something—anything—heavy that I could use to pound the spigot. I had to get that hose loose.

  I spotted a shipping pallet and wrenched a board loose. It was heavy, but was it solid enough to do the job? I tried tapping the board against the connection. That didn’t help. I tried hitting it solidly. That didn’t work either. Eventually, I resorted to whaling away at it, first one side and then the other. I could only imagine what it sounded like on the other side of the wall.

  From inside, I heard a voice yell, “Tommy! Go outside and see what’s makin’ all that racket.”

  I had only a few seconds warning, so I ducked between the two dumpsters and held my
breath. My heart pulsed in my ears.

  After a few second, Tommy went back inside. “I don’t hear nuthin’, Uncle Tony.”

  I ran back to the spigot and gave it one more tremendous whack. I didn’t know how many more chances I’d get. Success! I’d managed to loosen the hose connection enough that I could unscrew it.

  “You don’t hear that racket? What, you deaf?”

  I heard the tread of a heavy man approaching from inside the restaurant. Again, I ducked around the far side of the dumpster.

  “It’s gotta be comin’ from out here.”

  Watching from between the wall and the back of the dumpster, I saw an apron and black pants. They stepped forward and I lost sight of him.

  “Hmm. Seems to of stopped.”

  A shoe scuff told me he’d turned the corner of the dumpster, heading my way. A few steps and he’d see me hiding between the two steel boxes.

  A screech from my right, followed by a thump as an empty trashcan tipped over, made me jump.

  “Ah, it’s just a coupla cats fighting. Stupid animals.”

  Uncle Tony turned around and re-entered the restaurant.

  I looked Heavenward and said a quick thanks. Not wanting to tempt fate, I left my hiding place, gathered the coil of hose in my arms and dashed back across the alley to the other spigot. I hooked the hose up as quickly as I could. Naturally, it refused to go on straight at first, but I kept at it until the threads aligned. It still wasn’t long enough to go up the stairs and into the apartment. Besides, having a hose snaking in through the front door of a supposedly vacant apartment might be just a tad suspicious.

  I had a better idea. I scooped up a few pebbles and stepped back into the alley. It took several tosses, but Lola finally heard the tapping, approached the window and looked down. I gestured for her to slide the window up.

  “Go to the bathroom and open the window!”

  She did as I asked.

  “Now catch this when I throw it.” I held up the hose. She nodded.

  It took four tries, with me having to coil the hose each time, but I finally got it high enough that Lola caught part of it. After that it was a simple task to pull the hose in and put the nozzle end in the tub. Now we had to hope Uncle Tony didn’t come back out into the alley and wonder why there was a hose running up the side of the building across the way. I turned on the water and went back upstairs.

  Karsh looked much worse than before. His skin was cracking and peeling. “Karsh?” No response. He seemed to be barely breathing. Damn. I should have peed on him when he asked me to. If he died because I spent so much time locating the hose….

  Lola and I carried him to the bathroom and placed him in the tub. There was only an inch of water in the bottom, so we used the hose to wet him down. I held my breath and hoped. After a few moments, his eyes opened.

  [Sunrise?]

  “I’m here, Karsh. We have some water for you. Just relax.”

  [Need saline. Fresh water…not sufficient.] He passed out again.

  His thoughts were erratic, but I understood. They needed salt water. It was hard enough coming up with fresh water. Where the hell was I going to get salt—?

  What an idiot. I raced back to the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers again. Where did I see—? There! I grabbed the salt and pepper packets and returned to the bathroom.

  “Here, Lola. We need to open these and dump them in the water. There isn’t enough here to really make salt water, and it’s certainly not seawater, but maybe it’ll be enough for now.”

  It occurred to me that I could piss in the tub to add salt, but once again I got squeamish at the idea.

  I tried to open only the salt packets, but they all looked similar and I was in a hurry. I hoped that getting some pepper in the water wouldn’t be a problem, but we couldn’t afford to go slowly.

  By the time we got all the salt packets open and stirred the water enough to dissolve it, there were three inches in the tub. We splashed as much as we could over Karsh, getting some on ourselves in the process.

  “Damn, Sunrise, you stink! Have you been playing with dead fish again?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, Lola. Remind me to take a bath later. Right now, keep him wet. I’ll go get another.”

  I took hope from the fact that Karsh’s skin looked darker and less chalky. Better yet, his threll looked almost back to normal.

  I returned a minute later with the Azarti who looked in the worst shape. I wasn’t sure who it was, but I “felt” like it was Lomash, one of the engineers.

  Karsh was awake again and seemed to be in better shape.

  [Quickly, help me out and put Lomash in the water. We must get the others into the water as soon as possible.]

  “Right. Lola, we’ll have to limit each one to only a minute or so until everyone gets a turn. We don’t want anyone dying first.”

  She nodded her agreement.

  There wasn’t enough hose to reach the living room, so I resorted to holding my thumb over the nozzle and spraying the Azarti from the doorway. I couldn’t get much water on them that way, but I hoped it would be enough to hold them until we could get them in the tub.

  After that, it was almost like an assembly line. Bring one Azarti from the living room to the bathroom, remove the previous Azarti from the tub and put him to one side, then place the next one in the tub. The bathroom was too small to hold everyone, so some had to be left in the short hall leading to the bathroom. We made a mess, sloshing water everywhere, but that worked out fine for us. Excess water on the floor kept the other Azarti moist until we could get them back into the tub.

  After each had been in the water two or three times, he or she recovered consciousness and was able to enter and exit unaided. The tub was nearly half full by this point, which helped as well.

  Finally, the immediate crisis was over and everyone was restored to health. The water wasn’t saline enough to maintain them long-term, but we didn’t expect to be here much longer anyway. It would be dark in a few hours and then we would leave.

  I tossed the hose out the window and watched it plop down in the alley behind the building. With any luck, Uncle Tony wouldn’t notice right away that his hose was missing and a “new” one had appeared behind the apartment across the way. We didn’t need anyone nosing around.

  * * * *

  We waited until full dark. It was tough, just sitting there in the apartment, wondering whether the police would bust down the door at any moment, but I forced myself to be patient.

  Finally, it was time to leave. I opened the door a crack and peeked out. The hallway was empty, so I led everyone to the stairs. I heard a sound and held up a hand to halt the others. Listening closely, I made out a woman’s voice coming from the ground floor.

  “I don’ know what goin’ on up there. La señora in 112, right below that apartment, is complainin’ that there’s agua—water—leaking through ceiling into her baño—bathroom. But no one renting apartment above and water been turned off for months. I check and there is water leaking. I thought maybe broken pipe, but then I hear about jail break today. I no about to check apartment by myself.”

  A man’s voice replied, “You did the right thing, Mrs. Hernandez. We’ll check it out. Where’d you say that apartment is?”

  “It right up dese stairs.”

  The voice was getting closer! I gestured to the others to follow me and we quickly made for the stairs at the other end of the hall. It was riskier to go out the front way, but we didn’t have a choice. We disappeared down one set of stairs as the voices rose up the other.

  I stopped short of the entrance. The patrol car was parked right out front and a small crowd had gathered to see what was going on. I knew we had at most seconds before the cops upstairs radioed in with suspicious activity on the second floor and the dragnet tightened around our position.

  “Now would be a great time to be invisible, Karsh. How about making the crowd think we’re two cops taking a suspect in for questioning? Can you do
that?”

  [I think so. The crowd is small, and I presume we will have to maintain the illusion for only a few seconds.]

  “Exactly.”

  [Very well. Let us go.]

  I pushed open the door and the eight of us filed out. “Watch out, everyone. Coming through.” I used my most officious cop voice. “Step back, please. Nothing to see. Clear the way.”

  We reached the car and I opened the back door. Karsh and his people piled in. Even as small as they were, only four could fit side-by-side on the seat. Allara stretched across the laps of the first four and the sixth lay on the floor between the front and back seats. Lola and I got in the front, separated by equipment between the seats.

  “All right, everyone, easy does it,” I muttered under my breath. “We don’t want to alarm the crowd, and we want to get as far as possible before the cops upstairs find their car missing.”

  Good thing the lazy cop left the key in the ignition. I waited until I was two blocks away before turning on the siren. Then I took off for the bay as fast as traffic would allow.

  It wasn’t long before the call came in about a stolen patrol car. I knew, due to the car’s GPS locator, that the precinct could track our movements and it would be only a minute or two before the cops closed on our position and cut us off.

  I stepped up the speed, driving down the wrong side of the street and detouring down alleys to avoid slow traffic, and otherwise taking risks that no sane person should take with a car. Twice I had to veer around dumpsters left jutting out into the middle of an alley. Once, I nearly killed us all when a cat dashed across the alley in front of us and I swerved to avoid it. I came within inches of sideswiping a truck parked behind a shoe store. That jumpstarted my heart. Still, I got us within a mile of the bay before I felt we were in danger of being cut off.

  I slammed on the brakes behind a bank building. “Everyone out. We have to hoof it from here. That way.” I pointed toward the bay. “We’re only eight blocks from the water. Let’s get a move on.”