The Sun burned my back as I crouched. An engine throbbed in the distance. I turned the blade over in my palm, and pushed my hair out of my eyes. Sweat gathered at my brow as it drew closer. It was a large vehicle by the weight of the noise, which only added to my mounting anxiety. The sound turned up the street and heartbeats later, I launched myself, flinging the blade out before a rear tyre. The wheel turned as though in slow motion and the blade embedded itself satisfyingly in the rubber. The others fell upon the car with shouts and cheers, surrounding it around and above. I sprinted to the door from which the twins were dragging the driver and climbed in. The levers groaned as I pushed into gear.
I stamped down on the accelerator. 'MOVING!' I yelled.
The wheels began to heave forward and there were cries as people struggled for handholds. I turned the corner snail slow and we ground forward to camp. Around the old government building, it came into view. A close mess of Old World ruin with the New World built shed standing tall, presiding over the poor rubble beneath it.
My passengers began to jump off with hoots and hollers as I rumbled on toward the shed. A little like being atop a train as it goes into a tunnel. Charlotte dragged the great steel doors open and I cautiously rolled inside. Jordan, greeted me as I climbed out. His hair was mud brown, greying at the temples, his skin rich olive.
'Is the load heavy?' He spoke with the Spanish lilt to his words.
I grinned. 'Very, Sir.' Barely anyone makes it to gray hair in this world, and it's polite to address them respectfully, though I called him by name when we were by ourselves.
He strode up to the back and flung the cloth aside.
'I hope it's water,' I said.
Jordan nodded satisfactorily. 'Oil. Lots of it. Well done.' Jordan was forever obsessed with profits.
I scratched my beard. 'We're low on water.'
'We can trade for water.' He turned to me with a smile. 'Glad to see everyone back safe.'
I straightened, recognizing dismissal. 'Aye. Till tomorrow, Sir.'
'Till tomorrow.'
I walked past him into the raging red Sun. There is a precious little water left on Earth. The Sun is in its Red Giant phase, you see and its growth has consumed Mercury already. In two billion years Earth too will go. But life on the planet will have ended far before that for lack of water. The evaporation rate rose because of the heat. It was so high now, we were losing water to space.
Shrugging off the youngsters' questions, I moved towards the kitchen. Charlotte handed out the rations in the front.
'Any water?'
She gave me a withering look. She hated being asked for favours, but I really was thirsty. 'In the back.'
'The keys?'
She indicated they were under the oil vat.
'Thanks.'
She didn't answer.
The water safe was in shadows. A dirt-caked tank as tall as my waist stood in the centre of the safe upon the floor. I dipped the beaker into it and lifted the silvery coolness to my mouth. A movement stopped me. Beyond the tank, hidden in the shadows was a shape. I took a slow step back. The shape shuffled to its side and into the light. I froze. The crazed look in her eyes was unmistakable. A Forager! How on Earth had she gotten into the safe? I bent a little, inch by inch, readying myself to draw my weapon from my ankle sheath. She stepped forward and into the light, tilting her head inquiringly. I dropped down in a flash and in an instant the weapon was in my hand. She screeched as she recognized the glint of the blade and dropped, hissing, into a mirror of my pose. I raced towards her, knife outstretched. She cried in terror as the blade caught the light, scrabbling into the wall for an escape. I stabbed her chest the next instant and her cry was cut short as it punctured her lung. She collapsed onto the floor, writhing in pain. I knelt over her, panting and her eyes met mine. They held a terrible awareness and I looked away, leaving my contaminated knife. My feet took me back to the tank and I lifted the beaker from the floor, refilled it and drank, glad of the distraction. The door flew open behind me and I whirled around, still rushing with adrenaline.
Charlotte hurried in, her brows knit together. Niger and Enya milled behind her. 'What happened? We heard screams. What's-' She caught sight of the body.
'Forager.'
She strode to it. 'But the door was secure!'
'She got in, Charlotte,' I said wearily. I replaced the beaker and moved out of the room and among the children. They parted to let me pass.
The K1 Georgia virus, named for its origin in the Republic of Georgia, targets the nervous system. It robs you of excretory control, speech, motor control, vision and eventually stops digestion. But that's not how you die. The virus stops involuntary breathing so you're constantly distracted and can't sleep or you'll die. From there it's just a race to what kills you first. Lots of Foragers die simply of forgetting to breathe. It's transmitted by touch and highly contagious. There is no cure. Foragers are thrown out of communities since there's no use wasting resources on a certain death. So they steal.
Dusk was cutting across the sky and activity in the camp was scant. The dust and rubble of the Old World ruins stood illuminated by the sunset, the large grey building of the shed stood locked and Madan stood alert at the doors. Most of the campers sat around the fire, laughing and joking over the evening ration. There were nineteen of us in total, four children and fifteen grown-ups. We lived in the uncertainty of the New World, wandering the desert in search of food and water, scraping together enough to survive.
'Good catch today.' Raul was saying.
I sat down heavily- a bit too close to the fire- and singed my trousers.
I yelped in pain and jumped to my feet, beating at the burn at my knee.
'Ah, are you alright?' one of the twins called gaily.
'I'll live,' I muttered without humor. A good pair of trousers damaged. I sat back down next to the twins, a safe distance from the fire this time. One of them handed me a rough stone bowl of stew- Od or Yul, in the firelight I could not be sure which. They were Mongolian, only first generation displaced owing to Mongolia being so close to here in the Arctic Circle. As the Sun grew, the lands spanning out from the Equator had become increasingly arid, until temperatures forced life forms poleward. Soon, we will have nowhere left to run to.
I had known the twins almost as long as I could remember, from when they first joined the camp. They had been orphans, half starved, wild and hadn't spoken a word of Russian, the Meadow Mari dialect, or my native Chinese. I had been fascinated with them as a child because of their identical appearances: they had the same pinched eyes as me, but wider set and on rounder faces, both wonderfully, perfectly, alike. As children, we quickly made friends over our similar eyes. They were my best friends. I couldn't imagine life without them.
Yul had a small silver scar on his left eyebrow, nearly unnoticeable. That's how I would tell him apart when we were younger. But now, I could tell them apart by their manner. Yul was fond of mischief. He was the braver of the two, never shying away from risk or a challenge. Od was less courageous. He would often refuse expeditions he thought were too risky, and fought tooth and nail to force Yul out of them too.
I pulled my boots off with some effort, wiggling my toes in the refreshing coolness of the sand. Sand, of course, cools very quick. Though it was nowhere near starlight yet, it was losing heat fast.
'Why the long face?' Yul asked. His face was pink from waiting for the car in the Sun and his rough black hair stuck up at odd angles because he refused to comb it saying it was too short.
'Forager in the water safe. Lost a good knife,' I said despondently. 'Can't even drink in peace inside a water safe.'
Od settled down beside his brother. 'Ah it'll be okay. We won't be here forever.' Though they were probably only a few years older, Od had always been good at the playing role of big brother, to both me and Yul. After my mother's death, the two of them had practically raised me, though I swear Yul is far more childish than I am.
'Just got to wait for the next ship to Cerulone,' Yul said in mock seriousness. Cerulone was the closest Life planet. The astronauts had left for it a hundred and thirty years ago, leaving the rest of us here to die. There was no way for anyone on Earth to get there, the astronauts had made sure of that. They didn't want K1 Georgia following them to Cerulone.
I gave a short laugh. 'Not unless it gets nearer. You've got watch duty, haven't you?' I asked. I didn't feel much like conversing tonight.
'Aye, first watch,' Yul said.
'I'll keep it for you.'
'Thanks. Don't get killed.' He clapped me on the back. 'I'm sleeping.'
'Goodnight,' I said dully.