NaNoWriMo

This is where to come for the latest rambling sequences from my Nanowrimo (or should that be NaNoWriLess) novel, called “Darklings” This page may also contain rants about my inability to write when tired or stressed, and fantastical notions posted when I have been sleep/caffeine/chocolate deprived. You have been warned. The picture below should give an accurate reading of my current wordcount as uploaded on the nanowrimo website.

(edit 2008 – it was putting up this years widget, so the above is proof that I did my 50k (plus an extra 2k+ for luck, but who’s counting?) I was most chuffed!)

Here’s the story so far (complete with typos and name-confusions):

Chapter one

The valley floor was hard, crusty and lightly rain specked. For now, at least the weather was on her side. She could have done with a touch more rain to keep the dust down as she scuttled across the wide expanse towards the tall fence enclosing the wind farm. She was too exposed already. An eyeball check of the valley hadn’t shown up any patrols, but that didn’t mean they weren’t lurking out there ready to swoop. She was surprised to find herself alone out there, conditions being what they were, seemed like the perfect time to be making a juice run. Others should have been availing of the opportunity too. Maybe she’d lucked out and missed out on a sweep and all the other power rats had been rounded up, leaving her free to hook a line at her leisure. Or maybe there was a welcoming party of the bad kind inside the fence. Or maybe everyone was just too busy enjoying the nice weather to think about stealing power today. Or how about maybe she should just focus on that darn fence and how the hell she was planning on getting through it and worry about the other crap if and when she had to. It didn’t appear to have been breached recently, no obvious areas of weakness visible from where she was now. And it was damn high. At least 20 feet with some not very neighbourly razor wire running along the top. She sighed. Friendly types the EPOW! Corporation. Real Christian.

There were no signs warning of patrols or guard dogs, they didn’t need any. Each upright along the entire length of the fence was topped with a crucifix. EPOW! was a Christian company. They wouldn’t kill you, or cut your hands off for trespassing or stealing from them, which was good to know if you were a juice rat, but they would prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law which meant being swabbed and tagged just for starters, and there was no way she was going to let that happen to her. Right now, outside the fence, that was moot. Getting through or over the fence was the pressing issue, and moreso now that it had started to rain. It wasn’t too heavy yet, but the heavy blades inside the farm cutting through it were making a faint plaintive sound as the wind started to whip up. If it got much heavier she wouldn’t be able to work on the fence properly. She didn’t like the feel of wet metal against her climbing gloves, it made her teeth hurt.

She pulled her cutters from her belt and stood back to assess the fence again. Her grandfather had told her that power used to be so plentiful that farms, companies and cities used to have fences that were electrified, yet here she was in front of one owned by a power company, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t waste their precious juice on keeping people away from the local motherlode of it. Wouldn’t make sense in the cost benefit analysis, and EPOW! was no different from any other company in that respect. God still came after the bottom line. Not that they’d ever admit it, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to force them to either. People needed what they created from the wind, and some like her needed it so badly they’d steal it if they could. She needed to stop thinking about what used to be called “the politics” of her situation, and work on getting herself out of it. She flexed the cutters in her wrist and walked over to one of the high fence supports, examining the base of it, and the strength of the wire where it was attached. There had been some serious storms of late, and she was hoping that the wire had somehow loosened itself from the uprights during one of them. No such luck, the bolts were still sitting firmly atop the wire, their saucer shaped nuts keeping the wire tight and protected. Another sigh. All very well of the others to send her out on an errand, but this was starting to look like an impossible task.

She shook out the bunched muscles of her shoulders, well aware that the more time she wasted thinking and assessing, the more likely it was that someone would see her. Johnny had talked to her about something called exponentials once, when he was teaching her about power, and force, and risk. Her risk here was “increasing exponentially”, and she didn’t like it.

She tried flicking the wire beside the uprightbut it didn’t respond. Not even the vaguest hum. She was tempted to wonder about how they managed that, keeping it so tight, seemed to go against all the laws of science and sense, but shook her head to clear it of all procrastinatory notions. She turned and looked across the barren land behind her, clear. No dust clouds to warn her of approaching vehicles, and everything inside the fence was quiet too. Eeerily so. Maybe they were all at worship, or bible study or whatever those freaks did when they all went into a room together to “Praise Him”. If they were, she had limited time before the patrols were back out, all hyped up on God (and the corporate platinum) and looked to hook themselves some rats to prove their fealty. Time to move.

She hunkered down at the base of the fence and moved away from the upright, shuffling along twenty yards into the expanse of fence. She hooked the cutters around a low link and wished she had a God to pray to, some luck in the bank that would see her through this. She bore down on the cutter handles, grunting from the effort, but the wire wouldn’t snap. Time was, wire would melt away like butter from the blades in her hand, but not anymore. She resisted the temptation to stand up and kick the fence. If it was this hard to start with, it was only going to get worse, and she’d need all of her energy to cut a hole big enough to squirm through. No use wasting it on temper.

She adjusted her position and flexed both her hands, before cupping her left hand again under the cutter handles, and bearing down on it from above with her right hand, and all her upper body weight behind it. No “ping”, the wire held firm.

She removed the cutters and examined the site of her efforts. The metal had a small indentation in it and no scratch marks around it, so the cutter blades hadn’t slipped. That meant they were still sharp, but something was very wrong.

They all knew that this was a new fence, but even new chain-link should have easily given way under the combination of her sharp blades and that amount of pressure.

What if it wasn’t just a “new fence”? What if it was made out of a “new metal”? Some super-resilient alloy cooked up in one of the eastern metal labs. Those guys were always tweaking alloys, it was only a matter of time before they came up with something that would be of genuine use to the ones who footed their vast research bills – given that they were probably operating in constant fear of their livelihoods. She couldn’t blame them for making life harder for people like her, not when they relied on EPOW! and companies like them to keep their jobs.

Again she sighed and stretched out her fingers. No point in cooking up worst-case scenarios. Damn thing was just a wire fence, and thin wire at that, less than two millimetres in diameter. No matter what the alloy, she should be able to cut through it. Should. Unless there was something wrong with her cutters. She gripped them in her right hand, squeezing the handles so she could examine the blades. She hadn’t thought to check them earlier since Jas had sharpened them before she came out on her run, and they had been safely wrapped through her climb here. The freshly-honed edges gleamed but a couple of years of regular sharpenings had taken their toll. Keeping them wrapped in c-oil cloth kept them safe from rust, but nothing could mitigate the effect of the whetstone. The blades were becoming feeble, and she wondered just how many runs they had left in them before they retired themselves from active duty. Or were put out of action by a tougher than usual wire, or a user who hadn’t mastered the proper grip yet, and caused them to seize up, or slip, nicking the already perilously thin blades.

She knelt forward, then slumped onto her heels and wondered just how urgent this particular juice run was. Urgent enough to risk their primary access tool, with no adequate replacement in sight? She needed time to weigh the situation up. Trouble was that time is an even more precious and rare commodity than the juice she was so desperate to obtain.

* * * * * * * * * * *

While the lone juice rat sat, lost in thought, at the base of the fence, tossing her cutters from hand to hand as she tried to figure out what to do next, a dust cloud rose up on the distant edge of the valley floor behind her. It was created by a squad of v-oil quad bikes, six of them, travelling in a perfect triangular formation towards the EPOW! facility. Each bike had a driver, a pillion passenger and a ragged pennant hanging from its handlebars. The pennants had all originally been white, but time, various incidents, and the weather had conspired together to turn then an almost uniform rusty-beige colour. The crest, which had once been a lovely vibrant red was now a dirty deep brown, while the large “R” beneath it had faded from solid black to broken grey. That “R” stood for Rapture, and if the juice rat could have seen the convoy’s approach it would have scared her more than anything she could imagine lurking behind the EPOW! fencing.

Each pillion rider had a crossbow strapped to their back, and quivers of sharp flint-tipped arrows were mounted on wither side of the bike’s frame. The drivers were armed too, with swords mounted behind the handle-bars. It wouldn’t take a genius to see that these guys meant business. And not in a good way. That was mostly down to the bikes though, since these were the cleanest-cut quad-bikers on the face of the earth. Their clothes were well-mended and surprisingly clean, and they were clean-shaven to a one, with slightly longer than army-regulation cropped hair. Their leader rode in the middle of the third row, flanked by his compadres, any of whom would have happily died to protect him. He drove the bike with a confidence bordering on arrogance, in perfect synchronicity with his fellows, as sure in his steering as he was in everything else. That was how he had become a leader, and that was why his band of outlaws were the most feared group on the western seaboard. Outlaw zealotry was the most frightening kind, since zealotry was generally encouraged, especially in cities. Where faith is mandatory, the rabid/blind kind generally gets you promoted. But these guys were far beyond that, and even if they hadn’t been, Joel was sure to have found himself leading some group that he could talk into believing the same way he did. There were enough (truth be told, too many) of his kind about. What most of them lacked was the charisma that Joel had, and boy did he have it. Aside from the 11 other riders on this mission, there were hundreds of other Rapture members worldwide, and several chapters within an easy bike ride from his base. Joel liked to rotate his membership between chapters, to keep his boys on their toes, and this was a canny decision since it meant each convoy was filled out by 11 soldiers who were all desperate to impress their leader. Impressing Joel was a tough task, and since he didn’t (obviously) play favourites, his troops all followed every gesture, every facial tic, and most importantly each mission with an intense concentration and diligence that was rarely seen among outlanders. He had them in the palm of his hand, his own personal army. But Joel being Joel, he didn’t see it as “his” army, he saw it as the army of the chosen and the righteous. Several platoons worth of individual right hands of God that would, working in concert with the God they worshipped, rectify this massive wrong and finally bring about the end-times, and hence the Rapture. Joel dreamed of being the last man on earth, he and his troops having wiped out everyone else, and him standing alone after the last of his men has been killed (no mass suicide for these boys, that being a crime against God). If he succeeded he might even be spared death, like Enoch, and ascend directly to Heaven, his life’s work in service of God completed to his Creator’s satisfaction. It never occurred to Joel that such thoughts were prideful, and that God might take this pride into account on the day of his reckoning, and not only the pride but the murders too.

It never occurred to Joel that he could be acting in any way that was wrong. He was a true believer. No living in a sissy city with cheap power downloads for him. He couldn’t handle the concept of having to live among people of other faiths, of perhaps being ranked below someone with a different Primary Deity, or a different Faith System to him. If he couldn’t live like that, then that meant it must be wrong, against God’s law, and therefore anathema. Just being alive felt like anathema to Joel. All of humanity should have been wiped out because of the event, and it was interference from unbelievers that meant there had been millions of survivors. This interference needed some balancing out, as far as he was concerned, and he was just the man to lean on the scales of the world to force a balance. Not having thought things through Joel had entirely missed the ironic point that he was born before the event, and had his parents been as staunch in their beliefs as him they would have killed him then. Joel didn’t do irony. That was made abundantly clear the day he killed his parents, breaking several commandments with two huge swings of his sword in order to help God out.

Today’s mission was part of Joel’s grand plan. Once the plan had come to him (he told his followers it had come in a vision, but in reality it was the result of many days spent pacing, and many hours spent staring into the embers of campfires) he couldn’t wait to put it into action. Even though Joel didn’t think things through, the numbers were getting to him. He didn’t have enough followers, and there weren’t enough groups like the Rapture around for the numbers of survivors to be whittled down to just him in the space of his lifetime. He was well aware that the task God had set him was truly vast in scale, and had worn his brain out trying to think of ways to even the odds. It was thinking about the power downloads while sat on a freezing cold mountainside that did it for him. Where would the cities be without power, he had mused. How many would be hardy enough to survive without it, as he and his men did (Joel thought that continued use of electricity went against God’s wishes, and he tolerated the quad-bikes as work tools only)? With that question in mind, Joel came up with his plan to deprive the cities of their precious, life-saving electricity. He and his boys were on their way to hobble an important power station by bringing the Rapture upon its employees. Joel couldn’t wait to get started, his blood was boiling with righteous fury.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Less than five clicks away, the juice rat was still trying to come to a decision about whether to continue her efforts to breach the fence, or to give it up and go back to the camp and ask for advice from the others. She knew that if she did manage to hook a line at the cost of the wire-cutters it would prove to be far too costly a hook-in. That the others would not be happy was the least of her worries, since none of them would survive very long, angry or not, without the tools in her hand, as they needed them to gain access to the hot juice-spots. Without them they would have to dig in the desert for weeks to run a splice – and that was simply too dangerous. Power now but never again, versus no power now but a plan for the future? She had been raised to plan for the future, and had thus reasoned her options down to a single non-choice. She stood up, brushing dust from her knees, and carefully re-wrapped the cutters in the c-oil cloth from her backpack, and nestled them into a padded pocket compartment where they would be safe from any knocks she might be subjected to on the long climb home. She did some quick warm-up exercises, checked her climbing belt, turned to make her way across the valley floor to the cliffs, and saw the rapidly approaching convoy. Panic froze her brain.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The lead mission-rider raised his arm to signal there were souls visible up ahead. His pillion passenger, and the pair on the bike behind them ducked with almost fluid motion to allow the signal to filter back to Joel. After 5 seconds, the rider in front raised a single finger and circled his hand to indicate that the soul-bearing individual was outside the perimeter fence. Joel revved his bike in three short bursts to indicate the signal had been received and understood.

A person who was outside the fence meant a juice rat or some other stray that he could dispatch to the next world with impunity. Not exactly godly work, since the vast majority of those souls would not be heaven-bound. Still, this one would count towards the final tally. Joel’s fingers gripped the handlebars tighter, his instinctive reaction to the tingling of his fingers. They always tingled when he was ready to partake in the holy joy of dispatching an unbeliever. This lost soul was a bonus addition to their planned tally, and would serve to heighten his boys’ excitement. An unexpected treat.

Chapter two.

Amitosh sat at the cave entrance, watching the clouds. His normally unlined brow was creased in concentration. Inside, Jas noticed the change in his expression, and walked out to join him in his contemplation of the weather. The rain had stopped and all was still, so she was puzzled as to why Amitosh was peering at the clouds so intently. When he noticed her watching him, he stood up and pointed at the horizon, a worried look on his face. Not for the first time Jas wished she could speak Hindi. She raised her eyebrows at him and prepared herself for an extended game of charades. Amitosh made a rapidly speeding circle in the air with his left hand, and with his right hand, palm upturned, rippled his fingers. His face was grim.
Jas didn’t have to guess what he was predicting. She dropped to her belly and shimmied to the cliff edge, scanning the cliff face below her, and then the valley floor. No sign of Aube. Damn. And what was that kicking up all that dust out near EPOW! ? Please don’t let it be a patrol. Let the girl get back safely, hooked-in or not. Their current hook-in was safe from discovery until the next inspection in a couple of days. This was just a back-up line. She hoped that Aube knew as much, but knew from experience that rats weren’t always given all the information they needed. She may have been told she was on an urgent run, when it was nothing of the sort. Their current leader believed all of the rats should be given the exact same speech about urgency, and working for the collective, in order to be sure they didn’t “avoid taking low-level risks to secure the objective”. She could hear his voice in her head and cursed him. Aube hadn’t been around for a few days, so she hadn’t heard anyone else get the pre-run pep-talk, and the General refused to treat her any differently than the others. This in spite of the fact that she had been away working on a far more complex task than any juice run, and had come through for them all, as usual. She cursed herself for not letting the girl know that this run was not life-or-death, despite whatever guff the General had spun at her. She anxiously looked along the cliff face, hoping to see a head bobbing out from one of the outcroppings below. But there was none. She tried to figure out how long Aube had been gone, how far into the hook-in she was, and therefore where she was. She truly hoped she was somewhere she could take shelter from what was coming. Amitosh prodded her in the backside with his foot. She turned round to see him hopping agitatedly and pointing skyward. She nodded impatiently at him, then made a scurrying sign with the hand that wasn’t gripping the cliff edge and pointed down into the valley. The boy let out a low whistle and shook his head sadly at her. Again, Jas didn’t need any further elaboration.
She stood up, kicked some rubble over the cliff-edge in temper, and strode into the cave. Her entrance drew several looks from the others. She stood, blocking the light, arms akimbo, and calmly announced “Black wind coming.”
There were several gasps and a few people immediately leaped up to secure the cave entrance but she waved them back angrily, “Loose rat.”
There was a sudden hush, as each person looked around them to see which one it was. There were a few groans as Aube’s absence became evident, then a babble of worried whispers. They were quieted by a deep baritone that resounded through the cave: “How soon?” it asked. Jas looked over her shoulder for Amitosh, and beckoned him inside. She gestured with her arms, stretching them out and bringing them close together again, then making an open-palmed shrug. He shook his head at her. She made a face, of all the times for him to play dumber than dumb. She extended her arm to start again, but he grabbed her wrist shaking his head again. He waggled her arm, shaking his head vigorously. He lifted her arm up and took her hand, manipulating it so her thumb and forefinger were 2 centimetres apart and nodding at her. He then pulled her around so she was facing towards the General, and pushed the hand defiantly in his direction, mimicking the measurement on his own free hand and waving it aggressively towards him.
“Message understood” resonated back to them from the rear of the cave. Jas and Amitosh stood waiting for further instructions, but were met with silence. A few heads turned towards the back of the cave, each one thinking the same thing. What if it was them out there?
The silence hung for a long minute, and was broken by some lickspittle suggesting “Pass warning and lockdown.”
And the General spoke again, “Agreed.” Adding unnecessarily in case anyone had missed the point “That will be all.”
Jas squinted into the darkness of the cave, her face betraying her thoughts. The man was not just callous, he was dangerously stupid too. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t solicited rescue ideas, even if he were not to implement any of them, the mere fact of asking would let everyone know they mattered. If he was so completely unconcerned with Aube’s fate, what did that mean for the rest of them?
Bottom line where the General was concerned seemed to be that everyone was expendable. That just didn’t sit right. Not with Jas, not with Amitosh, and not with several of the others gathered on the ground floor of the cave. From the rear of the cave came a stern-sounding handclap; “Now people. Time’s a wasting!”
He may consider them all expendable, but they were still expected to jump when he told them to.
Jas shot a furtive look at Amitosh, he winked at her and she smiled at him. Then both of them went their seperate ways to play their assigned parts in locking down the cave complex, or in Amitosh’s case spreading the warning about the imminent storm. Or at least, to anyone watching that was all they were doing, but Jas was also trying to get a search and rescue party together. For most of the cave’s inhabitants there was simply no question of anyone ever being left to fend for themselves in a dust storm, and if it were possible that would go double for someone like Aube.
Elias was the first to approach Jas, He simply rolled his eyes towards the back of the cave and winked at her as Amitosh had. She smiled at him too, and tilted her head towards the ceiling. He gave her a discreet thumbs-up and made straight for the ladder to the upper levels of the cave complex, charged with looking for help among those who eschewed the General’s company along with the sychophancy of the lower levels. Jas grinned to herself as she worked, and wondered just how long the General could retain control over his so-called “troops” when he had just sleep-walked himself into such a bad and unpopular judgment-call. She was truly tired of his ass-backward decision-making, and from the number of people winking at her as she went about her business, she wasn’t alone in that.
Wouldn’t make breaking one of his orders any easier though. For everyone who sent a wink-signal her way, there were 5 others who clung to the General’s words like they were gospel. And this was supposed to be a collective of individual thinkers. When had it gotten so screwed up? She walked over to a roll of worn plastic sheeting, and was tempted to kick it out of sheer frustration. Instead she grabbed the end of it and dragged it towards the cave mouth so that one of the “troops” could cut it to size and another could nail it around the wooden frame attached to the cave mouth, and thereby keep the storm out. Or hopefully keep the storm out. It didn’t always work that way.
Her job done she stole a furtive glance around the room, and seeing that the coast was clear (the General and his cronies being temporarily distracted by a group of winkers who seemed to have forgotten storm lock-down protocol, and were seeking clarification on a number of pointless issues), made her way up the ladder after Elias. She found him in a back room on the upper level, sitting in the middle of a small group. He was talking animatedly with Aimée and Sean while beside him Amitosh was frantically drawing on the dirt floor. Jas went over and studied the squiggles on the floor. She tapped Amitosh on the shoulder and raised her eyebrows at him when he looked up at her. He pointed to Elias, pointed at his drawing, and shrugged. She looked down at the pattern in the dust again, squinting and tilting her head to see if she could make any sense out of Elias’ plan, but it looked desperately random to her. Too random. It looked like he wanted the five of them to fan out around the EPOW! facility in the hope that one of them would happen across Aube and then bring her back. Too many risk factors there, too much reliance on luck in her estimation. She turned to Elias and asked “So, if someone finds her, how do they let the other know it’s safe to come back?”
He looked vacantly at her, “Flare?” She shook her head impatiently, “No way we’re getting at them now. We’re in lock-down. And besides, we don’t have time to get there and back before the storm hits.”
Elias shot a quizzical look at Amitosh who mimed a slow hand-clap in his direction. His face fell, “Oh. Well…”, he looked to Jas, “What would you suggest, then?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know, but if we’re going out there we better come up with a plan that could work. And we best do it fast, because like the man said, time is a wasting.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

Down in the valley the wind was picking up. The blades of the wind-turbines started to squeal as damp sand blew across them. The change in tone snapped Aube out of her panic. She looked up and saw dark clouds dashing across the sky. Storm. That might take care of the Rapture-riders, but where could she go to take shelter? There were buildings aplenty inside the fence, but the fence was still there, and still impenetrable. She looked back over her shoulder to see if the bikers had noticed the weather, but they didn’t seem to have. They were still headed straight towards her, and seemed to be coming faster, if anything. She looked back at the fence, and scanned the surrounding valley. She needed somewhere to hide, and she needed somewhere close. No obvious hiding place leapt out at her. Things weren’t looking good.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Less than a kilometer behind her Joel gave the “fan-out” signal to his boys, four rapid revs from him and they broke formation, fanning out gracefully and giving him his first sight of the treat up ahead. Small, looked to be female. He adjusted the focus on his goggles, trying to sharpen his view. Yes, definitely a woman. He scoped out her gear and pegged her instantly as a juice rat. The backpack was a giveaway. No gatherer would risk being within a five click radius of a major facility, the risk of being intercepted by a patrol was too great. No, she could only be a rat, which meant she would put up a fight. He smiled, she was truly going to be a fun appetiser. He zoomed out on his goggles, and realised suddenly that something was wrong. She wasn’t tackling the fence, wasn’t headed back to wherever she has come from. She was just standing there, looking out across the valley. He scanned the area around her but she looked to be unaccompanied. She could be a look-out, he thought. There could be more of them. That thought lit up his face in a ghoulish grin. His day was getting better and better.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The whine from the wind-turbines was getting higher and more plaintive by the second, and around her Aube could see the sand stirring up into clouds. She dropped to her knees and shucked off her back-pack, ripping it open and fumbling around inside. This close to the valley floor the sand was already flying into her face, her eyes watered as she tried to find her storm-pack by touch. Working on instinct, she tried to ignore the constant stinging as grit was hurled at her in increasingly powerful blasts. Her ears began to hurt, and her cheeks were wet with tears streaming from her eyes as they tried to clean themselves out, only to be assailed again seconds later. Her fingers brushed off a familiar-feeling container and she pulled it out in haste, spilling the other contents of her back-pack out onto the ground where a layer of dust wasted no time in covering them. She opened the wooden box and pulled out a balaclava and a long scarf. She pulled the balaclava on over her sand-covered head, and wrapped the scarf tightly around her mouth and neck. As she did so, a pair of goggles fell out from among its folds. She quickly rubbed some of the sandy salt water out of her eyes and pulled them on, tightening the rubber strap as much as she could. They started to fog up immediately, and she threw her things back into her backpack as quickly as her decreasing vision allowed. The wind was getting stronger and stronger, the squealing from the blades was becoming intolerable and her exposed skin was starting to burn and bleed from the constant abrasion. She dusted off her backpack pointlessly and pulled it back across her shoulders, wincing in pain as the straps rubbed against her chafed skin. Her mind was racing, trying to remember what Johnny had taught her about black blizzards. She knew what they were, and what caused them, but she couldn’t dredge up any tips on how to stay alive if you were caught in one with no hope of shelter. Maybe that was because there weren’t any. She had come across enough sand-ravaged bodies in her time to know that lots of people never made it through the storms, shelter or no shelter.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Joel had finally noticed that all was not right with the world around him. He had been so focused on his chance to use his sword of righteous vengeance that he hadn’t noticed the wind picking up. It’s a hard thing to spot when you’re constantly surrounded by whipping wind by virtue of riding a quad. The juice rat’s increasingly bizarre behaviour had prompted him to take a wider view of the valley, and he could now see what he hadn’t before. He and his boys were riding straight into a dust storm. None of them had thought to point anything so obvious to their leader, and they were all, even now, following his plan to the letter. No deviation even for the weather. He couldn’t help but admire their intensity but wondered for the first time in his life if he hadn’t been a bit heavy on the indoctrination when it came to following orders. It was clear to him now that if he hadn’t noticed the storm his men would have driven straight into the very heart of it. He would need to have a serious talk with them about the dangers of blind obedience when risk factors other than the armaments of the enemy were at play. This storm, to his way of thinking, was a sign from the Almighty that the time was not right for an attack on EPOW!. It necessitated a rethink. He stood up on the footrest of his bike and waved his fist in the air, backwards and forwards, issuing the order to stand down. One by one the bikes around him responded, closing into a circle around him before braking in unison. He dismounted and the boys followed suit. Once the bikes stopped moving, the force of the storm became apparent. Joel briefly wished they wore helmets, as the normally arid desert floor swirled up in billions of molecules of damp grit and attacked his face and neck. He looked across the length of the valley, and realised the storm was in fact coming from behind them, and since they hadn’t been able to outrun it even while in full attack mode, their options were limited. Too limited. He tried to work the situation over in his mind, but couldn’t come up with a scenario that would allow all of them plus the bikes to escape intact. Maybe that was another message from Above. Perhaps it was offensive to God to attack a Christian company? Or at least to do so at this relatively early stage in the campaign. Joel was confused, not a state he found himself in very often. He liked God to deliver His messages to him with crystal clarity, and this message was as garbled as the storm it encoded itself in. He simply did not know what to tell the boys to do. There never was a worse time for a crisis in confidence, when the wind was growing stronger and the sand rising higher with every minute he procrastinated. He looked around at his assembled soldiers, frantically trying to come up with a contingency plan, while keeping a poker-face. He had been so sure that he was doing the right thing, and that God would protect him, that he hadn’t ever stopped to think about what they should do if things went wrong. So now he was faced with two lessons at once. He had failed a test from God, and he needed to plan things better. Oddly bolstered by the fact that there were lessons, and that he had noticed them, he was struck by sudden inspiration. He smiled at his men beatifically and started barking out orders.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Aube started back eastward across the valley towards the cliffs. She cast an eye back towards the bikers, but could no longer see them as the dust storm increased in intensity. All around her was a moving wall of sand. It was hard to breathe as the stuff was becoming lodged in her scarf and making every breath difficult. Hard enough to breathe through layers of wool and cloth without adding a sand coating to the mix. He goggles kept misting up and her shoulders were on fire. Visibility was terrible, she had to trust that she was headed in the right direction, and tilted her body forward, hoping the wind would help propel her towards where she needed to go. That would have worked were it not for the fact that the wind seemed to be coming from all directions at once, and the whipping wall of sand made each step agony. Dogged as she was, she knew that she was fighting a losing battle. She sank down to her knees and removed her backpack, panting at the pain it caused. She lay down on the valley floor, pulled the backpack into position over her face and waited for it all to stop.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Back at the cave-complex Aube’s friends were trying to tackle the first part of their rescue plan, which involved escaping their camp under lock-down. This was proving harder than anticipated since the lock-downs were running more efficiently now that everyone there had been through so many. The General may not have cared about anyone being outside during a blizzard, but he cared very much for making sure those inside stayed safe. That meant that each point of exit was securely sealed by plastic sheeting nailed around wooden frame supports. Getting out meant getting through one of these, and somehow securely sealing it again once they were outside. Aimee and Sean had already checked for an unsealed exit, but even the small trapdoors on the uppermost levels were all sealed tight, with plastics teams standing around them ready to repair any breaches. They returned to Jas, Amitosh and Elias with crestfallen faces that wordlessly told them getting out was not likely. Elias started pacing around the small room, his shoulders hunched to keep his head from scraping the wooden ceiling. Amitosh made various exasperated gestures, and pulled Jas with him to one of the vent-shafts where they could see, even now, sand swirling about through the scarred once-clear plastic sheeting. The storm was coming closer. Jas groaned. If Aube was near EPOW! when it hit there was now no way for them to get to her without effectively committing suicide. She loved the kid, but she also loved the others, and liked being alive. It was just possible that the General was smarter than she gave him credit for in ruling out any attempt at rescue. She pulled Amitosh to her and hugged him roughly, resisting the urge to ruffle his hair. He returned the embrace and took her hand, leading her back to the others, his small face betraying how deeply all of this was affecting him. Jas looked at the three hopeful faces before her, and shook her head sadly. There was nothing that could be said. Aimée dropped her head, not wanting the others to see her cry, and the two men scuffed their feet awkwardly on the floor. Jas and Amitosh joined them on the battered couch,and the five of them huddled together in silent misery.

Chapter three

“Turn on the heat scanner, let’s see if we can’t find some live bodies out here.”
“Roger that. Range?”
“As far out as she’ll go. This place looked pretty dead before the wind kicked off, but it’s best to be sure.”
“KK. What’s our heading again?”
“Don’t you ever frickin listen? There’s a compass built in to the scanner. It would help if you actually looked at the damn screen.”
“Sorry boss.”
“I ain’t your boss nitwit. Just do what I tell you for now, ok?”
“KK, sorry Cam.”
The driver of the AATV looked over at her passenger who was now studiously peering at the screen built into his side of the dash and decided then and there to alter her hiring procedures. She couldn’t just hire anybody who showed up anymore. She needed folk with brains enough to play their part and this genius for one hadn’t the brains he was born with. Probably had them scared out of him over the course of a decade spent trying to get by on his own. When would she learn to stop adopting every stray that showed up at her camp? She shook her head and concentrated on her steering, looking down at her sonar screen to check for obstacles ahead. The screen was a bizzare pattern of what her grandpa had called “snow” when he was trying to pick up a signal on their old TV, before TV ended. It took a fine eye to see beyond the snow caused by the whirling sand to any big objects that might be in their path. She had reduced the sensitivity of the sonar twice already in an attempt to filter out the snow, but this storm was a doozy and there was no way to tune out the massive amounts of sand and grit being hurled in sheets through the air outside. Good thing she had plenty of experience reading through snow, though this was a particularly heavy storm, and she hoped her reactions would be quick enough if she misread the staticky screen.
“Heatsig up ahead Cam. Looks to be a big one.”
“A big what? Heatsig or a big live thing?”
“Heatsig. Looks to be a group. People and machines.”
“Shit, what’s our position?”
Brian looked up from the screen, “Why?”
“Where the fuck are we?”
He consulted the screen again, trying to pick out the location marker from all the read-outs on it, “Erm, I’m not sure.”
“Aw man, hit the button closest to me.”
Brian complied and watched as a large yellow X appeared near the top of the screen. As he watched it, a skull appeared over the X. He had never seen that before. “What’s the skull for?”
She cursed under her breath “Danger. It’s a power facility. Where is it on the screen?”
“Up near the top. We’re not going there, are we?” He suddenly looked like the small, scared boy he had been when the world fell apart around all of their ears.
“Hell no, we ain’t going there. But that skull means that your big heatsig is probably a perimeter patrol that got stuck out here, so we ain’t going anywhere near it either.”
“Oh.” He fell silent for a moment, thinking. Lacking anything constructive to say he settled for his default response, “KK.”
She sneaked a glance at him, he was still peering at the screen, not reacting at all to the fact that she’d altered their course. Why she had been expecting an acknowledgment she did not know. Time was she had co-pilots who knew what was expected of them. This bunch all had to be baby-stepped through everything. And it wasn’t like they were generations apart. She knew for a fact that Brian was only six years younger than her. But at times like this she felt that at 35 she was getting to be too old for these runs. She hadn’t the patience to hold their hands and pat their heads every step of the way. Plus, the fact that they never showed any initiative at all irritated her beyond belief. How would they all survive if she wasn’t there to take charge of the salvage runs? She couldn’t risk finding out. One fouled up run and they’d lose their vehicle and that would be that.
Brian was currently examining a small green blip to the east of the big skull-topped X. “Erm, Cam? Looks like there’s someone outside the power plant?”
“Outside? How far outside?”
He squinted at the screen, “About half a mile.”
“Mile? When were you born again? Give me the distance in clicks please.”
Looking suitably chastened he examined the screen again, “Um, A click and a bit.”
So, measure conversions weren’t his strong point either. She wondered what was, or if he even had one.
Exasperation got the better of her, “Sit back a minute,” she snapped at him.
Brian flew back in his seat, shocked into unquestioning obedience by the snarl in her voice. She hadn’t time to deal with his bruised feelings now, and so keeping the handlebars steady, she lunged to the right and checked out the scanner display for herself. Sure enough, there was a blip on the screen to the east of the facility. A tiny greenish one. By her reckoning it was neither half a mile nor a click and a bit from the perimeter fence of the facility, which showed as a bluish web on the screen. Nickel alumite coated wire no doubt. Stayed nice and cool regardless of the heat around it. Nobody going to breach that fence with a portable welding torch. The corporate guys were finally getting a clue. No, the blip on the screen was more like two and a half clicks from the blue fence with the glowing red turbines behind it. Any idiot with high school math would know that that worked out at round about the one and a half mile mark. But this guy had probably never seen the inside of a school. Before sitting upright again she manipulated the scanner controls to auto-map the distance between them and the blip. 4500 metres. She sat up again and consulted the sonar to her left. The screen was unreadable, layer of static upon static, the storm had ramped itself up another notch while she was turned away. As if to prove the point, the AATV was suddenly hit by a gust that buffeted the vehicle and made her grit her teeth in order to regain control of it, given that the gust has caused it to lurch wildly. This storm was not playing by the rules. Her windshield was covered by who knew how many layers of damp, cloying, shifting sand, her sonar was by now a blur of static that made little or no sense, and to top it all her specially-modded AATV was bucking on its ballasted axes. The ballast was supposed to increase stability in windy conditions, but it wasn’t working that way in this wind, and all of the added weight had seriously limited the Shockey’s speed capabilities. She tried to picture the valley in her mind, and wondered if there was an expanse of water that they could drive into and wait the storm out. It was moving faster than they were, faster than she’d ever seen, and she hoped that meant it might be over quicker too. Pretty naive hope, but worth hanging her hat on. Yeah, and maybe that blip up ahead was an animal and not a person, and in a few short hours she and Brian would be having an impromptu lake-side barbecue to celebrate still being alive. If there was a lake, which she didn’t remember the valley having before, and she doubted one would have provided itself for the express purpose of sheltering scavengers in specially built but woefully inadequate vehicles. That would take a miracle, and Cam was who she was and did what she did because she knew there was no such thing. All she knew right now was that they would be very lucky to get out of this storm alive and with a still-functioning vehicle. Another strong gust knocked them off course, and the vehicle shuddered in protest as she wrestled with the handlebars, Brian grabbed onto his handrail and looked nervously at the canvas and plastic fixtures that were keeping the elements out. She followed his eyes and saw that the canvas was rippling in an ominously strained fashion. Another worry. Would the lid stay on when the true force of the storm caught up to them? She hunched her shoulders over the handlebars and tried again to make sense of her sonar screen, but a mass of nearly solid white pixels glared back at her. The display was so bright it hurt her eyes to look at it. She was driving blind now, reliant on the IR scanner and Brian’s interpretation of it to avoid collisions. Not a happy thought. Every time the vehicle hit a bump the wind caught the undercarriage and lifted the wheels higher than was safe for them to go. Brian was looking seasick, and she was feeling a mite queasy herself. The wind seemed to be coming from all directions at once, and the canvas lid was starting to make a noise she mentally identified as slapping which rose ablove the constant thrum of sand blasting against it. Wouldn’t be long now before the slapping sound gave way to a ripping sound, and then all bets would be off.
“Brian? How’s the green blip looking?”
“Erm, it’s got yellow and red in it now, and it’s bigger. Seems to be lying very still.”
“Human or animal? And how far ahead?”
“Human, I think. Distance is reading at zero point nine seven clicks.”
“That close? Give me a heads-up at zero point five, ok?”
“KK” He seemed pleased at having a task to distract himself with.
She listened to the sand thrumming and scraping, and the canvas rippling and snapping until he piped up again; “Here.”
She slowed the vehicle down, “Shout again at zero point zero two zero.” Twenty metres should give her sufficient braking speed. Since she had slowed down the chassis was rocking less. She took that as a good sign.
“Here” She stood on the brake and the engine obediently choked and died.
“That’s taking ’stop’ a mite too far she muttered, patting the dashboard. She turned around in her seat and rummaged in the salvage compartment behind her for her storm gear. Brian was still staring at the scanner.
“Blip is now a blue, green, yellow and red blob.”
“Thanks for the update. Still look like a person?” Her hand brushed off the kit and she pulled it over the back of the seat.
“Erm, yes. A female person.”
She looked across at him and noticed he was blushing. A shy boy, really. She wondered how he would react to her changing into her kit in front of him. Best not to think about it really. She kicked off her boots and wriggled out of her jeans, pulling the jumpsuit on feet first, wriggling around on the seat so she could pull it up over her knickers. Brian was now crimson, and looking at his feet. She rolled her eyes, shrugged out of her shirt and pushed her arms into the sleeves. The boy was mortified being in the presence of a woman who was partially clad. What did he do when naked ones were around?
She rolled her balaclave over the top of her head, pulled it down and fumbled with her goggles before pulling them on too. Next she rolled the legs of her jumpsuit tight to her calves and pulled her boots on over them. She took a blanket from the kit and knotted the bottom edges of it together, then grabbed a second one and a small O₂ canister which she rolled up in the blankets. She tapped Brian on the shoulder, handed him a spare blanket and said “Wrap up in this. I’m not sure the lid is going to hold. He nodded at her dumbly and took the proffered blanket, folding it into a neat rectangle and leaving it in his lap. She glared at him, “You might want to wrap up now. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m fixing to go out there.” He nodded and shook the blanket out, sat off the seat, positioned it carefully beneath him and sat back down again. She turned away in frustration as he began, slowly and methodically, to wrap it around himself. One hand on the heavy-duty zipper that served as the drivers-side lid door, she asked “Ready?”
He replied with a weak “KK”. No ‘Good luck’ no ‘Be safe.’. Typical. He was worried about his own ass when she was the one who was about to risk hers. She gripped the zipper and yanked it upward, losing her grip immediately as the wind caught the corner of canvas and whipped it away from her. Sand poured in through the gap, and the AATV started rocking again as the wind got into it and tried to find a way through. Brian sank down in his seat, white-knuckled hands poking from under the blanket and clinging for dear life to the handrail. Screw him. She wormed her way out through the opening and dropped to the ground outside, the blanket roll pressed to her chest. She could see a vague dark outline a couple of meters away, but as she was having trouble getting to her feet in this crazy debris-filled wind, getting to the prone woman would not be easy. She dropped onto her knees, then forwards onto her belly, and wriggled and pulled herself along the valley floor. Her balaclava quickly became clogged with sand, and she pulled herself along, spitting it out pointlessly, and griping to herself about the sting of the whirling sand. The storm was so strong now that the sand battered her through her clothes, it was like being assaulted by some very powerful toddlers, or being pelted with microscopic ball bearings, no, scratch that, shards of glass. Finally she reached forward and touched the woman with her gloves. There was no response but she felt warm. Warm and sticky. She dragged herself forward another half-meter and positioned herself at the womans head. She paused to take a laboured breath, pulling yet more sand into her mouth and nose as she did, and pulled herself to her knees, only to be almost knocked flat again seconds later by a rogue gust. Cursing, she extracted the O₂ canister from the blankets and held it between her thighs. Then she placed the rolled blankets gently under the woman’s head, brushing off sand as she did so. The woman was wearing a balaclava too, and goggles that still had a faint mist inside them. That was a good sign, given that her own were misting up with every breath she took. She fumbled with the oxygen, almost losing the canister from her hand as she tried to detach the mask and unwind the tubing. She gently lifted the woman’s head again and slid the mask over it, scraped sand away from her mouth and started the air-flow from the canister. Still no response. She would have to worry about that later. She removed the blankets from under the woman’s head and unrolled one partway, tucking it under the woman’s body as she did. The sticky stuff that she had felt was blood. The ground around them was dusted with it. Looked like she’d rolled across it a few times. Cam shook her head, the woman had been out here a long time. She could be wasting oxygen on a corpse. Again, she decided to worry about that later. She leaned forward to tuck the blanket in at the woman’s waist, then moved around to cover her feet. She unrolled the second, knotted blanket and kept it from blowing away with the weight of her own body. She lay on her side and wrapped her arms around the woman, then rolled over, bringing them both further in to the knotted blanket. The loose blanket started flapping immediately, so she tucked it in again, and crawled off the blankets. She grabbed the unknotted end of the bottom blanket at the woman’s feet and pulled it along with her in a backwards knee shuffle towards the AATV. Movement was increasingly hard, and her nostrils were getting clogged up with sand, but breathing through her mouth meant eating the stuff, so she tried to ration her breaths. Not an easy thing to do when lugging a body through a storm. When they reached the AATV she was so exhausted and sore that she didn’t bother to check on the lid, or Brian. She slumped up against the front tire and tried to compose her thoughts. She needed to get the body in the rear compartment, get back to the cab, and wait the storm out there. She just couldn’t seem to find the energy to do it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a small blur through the sand. She turned her head to look more closely and saw what looked to be a disembodied arm waving at her. Brian. She raised her right arm and delivered two sound thumps to the AATV casing. The arm retracted and a head poked out at her. She was amazed, the boy had more spunk than she’d given him credit for. Brian wriggled out of the cab pulling his blanket after him, and dropped to the ground, then got to his knees, turned straight back around and sealed up the cab. He patted her on the shoulder and gestured at the zipper-door. She shook her head at him and pointed to the body in front of her. He nodded, and pointed back at the cab again. She shrugged. He started gesticulating wildly at her, the blanket flapping around him like a comic-book superhero’s cape. She shook her head, uncomprehending. He gave up on the useless attempt at sign language, grabbed the blanket the body was lying on and pulled it towards the rear compartment. She suddenly understood what he was driving at. Rather than taking his suggestion to get back in the cab, she shuffled forward onto her knees, lifted the head of the woman in front of her and shimmied under the shoulders of the body, nestling the head in her lap and shuffling forward askwardly, helping to bear the weight. When they got to the rear compartment, she moved the woman gently off her lap and pulled herself up to work the zipper. Brian pulled the woman to him, and dragged both of them up into a standing position against the back of the AATV. Cam worked the zipper and tried to keep the canvas flap from tearing as she opened it to where Brian stood, the body held tight to his chest like a favourite rag doll. He leaned forward and she tucked the canvas flap behind his head, he leaned back again and tilted his head to the ground. She grabbed the woman’s feet and together, aided by wind that blew the right way for once, they lifted the body up and over the lip of the access door. The canvas lid was now bucking furiously in the wind, so they unceremoniously dropped the body inside and worked together to seal it up again. Cam smiled at Brian and gave him a thumbs-up signal. He managed a small smile, his teeth coated with grit and sand and pointed back to the passenger door. She nodded and made her way up the driver’s side, opening the zipper-door gently and working in through as small an opening as possible, then quickly zipping it up behind her. Brian arrived at the other door moments later, and she pulled him in by his sand-scraped and dusty arm. He shook himself off, and sealed up his door. They looked at one another for a moment, then Cam bit off her gloves, pulled off her goggles and balaclava, and hoisted herself over the seat divider and into the rear compartment, taking care not to land on the body which was splayed across the narrow floor. She removed the oxygen mask, and cleared more sand away from the woman’s mouth, then she gently peeled off the balaclava and gingerly checked the neck for a pulse, convinced now that both of them had just risked their lives to save a corpse. Somehow Brian having come through made it all the harder. This woman was probably dead long before they got to her. Unbelievably she thought she could feel a faint pulse. She reached behind her, hoping that Beth’s compact was where she usually kept it, hidden down the back of the passenger seat where she thought Cam would never find it. They had been out on a salvage run together just the day before, and by Cam’s reckoning Beth hadn’t had a chance to remove it since. She slid her hand up and down the passenger seat, feeling for the tell-tale slit in the upholstery, then dug around in it with her fingers. Brian turned around, and looked quizzically at the seat, as though it had suddenly started moving of its own volition. She stifled a laugh, he still wasn’t the brightest bead in the box, but he had guts and heart so she shouldn’t laugh at his lack of smarts. Her fingers closed on the compact, and she pulled it out, then flicked it open, holding the rusty mirror over the woman’s mouth. A fine mist appeared. So this wasn’t yet a corpse, and their efforts had not been completely in vain. She closed the mirror and grabbed a canteen of water and a rag, damped the rag and set to cleaning up the woman’s face. May as well see what she looked like, since she was no longer a piece of road-kill.

Chapter four.

Four clicks behind the AATV with its human salvage, Joel and his boys were meeting the dark heart of the storm. They had pulled the Quads into a tight circle and pulled some of them up onto their sides to create a makeshift shelter, behind the defences of which they lay huddled, faces to the floor. Joel had removed the oxygen canister from the first-aid kit on each bike, and the drivers and passengers lay side by side, passing the air between them. Joel was awe-struck by the wrath of the storm, he had never been caught in one before and its power both fascinated and terrified him. He knew they would have a few moments reprieve when the eye of the storm passed overhead, and reasoned that if they could survive to that point they could also make it through what came after. He knew that their chances were low, but his faith was strong. His lips constantly moved as he muttered prayers to God, begging for forgiveness for having misinterpreted His wishes, praying for strength for himself and his men, and praying that He would spare them dying in any way that didn’t involve a glorious battle. He didn’t want to die out here, among people who looked to him to lead them, battling against something as intanglible as the elements. He firmly believed that God had brought this storm to teach him a lesson, and that if he could only parse the lesson correctly, and apologise for his failings in the right way, the storm would stop. And so he prayed. On and on he prayed, with fierce concentration, ignoring the fact that the quads around them were being lashed so strongly by the determined multi-directional wind, that each of his boys was clinging to a hand-rail, desperately trying to add themselves as ballast in order to save their shelter, and their way home. Despite their efforts, the bikes were occasionally lifted off the ground by the increasingly hostile winds.
Then the boys attached to the bikes would use all of their body weight to pull it back to earth again. They were beginning to tire and there was no sign of a lull or a calm to give them a much needed break. Their grunts of effort as they pulled against the elements largely drowned out the prayers of their leader. They had attempted to secure their arrow-filled quivers below the quads, but with the biked constant shuddering, shaking and lifting off, arrows were falling out onto the ground, where they were whisked up by the wind, adding themselves to the grit, and clumps of debris as projectiles to be hurled further down the path of the storm. They didn’t have time to bemoan the loss of part of their arsenal, or the hours of flint-knapping that had gone in to making those arrowheads, since staying safe and alive for the moment was a higher priority. very centimeter of their exposed skin was abraded, and they were bruised and battered from yanking the bikes down on top of themselves. They each were suffering more pain now than they ever had in battle. Regardless of their level of faith in God and in their leader, each of them was fast becoming very scared indeed. after all, they were only boys, averaging 15 years of age. Their puny little early adolescent bodies were not inured to this kind of rough weather. They weren’t inured to much of anything besides fighting and following Joel’s orders. They were young, yes, and full of energy and blind faith, but both were things that rapidly waned in the face of a storm of such majesty venting its ire on them. They thought, to a one that God should have been protecting them from this. They didn’t share Joel’s (limited) ability for deductive reasoning that had led him to believe his actions had brought all of this upon them. Rather, they felt betrayed. They had each risked their lives to do battle for the glory of God, and this was their reward? To be trapped out in the worst storm they had ever seen, their skin practically flayed off them by the sand-laden wind, and clinging for dear life to hunks of metal and reinforced plastic that had never been designed with a wind-breaking function in mind? It just wasn’t fair. Some of the boys were already at the point of exhaustion, with only the rapidly dwindling adrenaline from their frustration helping to keep their hold on the quad handrails.

Joel could sense the tiredness of his boys, the effort-laden grunts had been replaced by tired groans as time wore on, but rather than use his own weight and strength to help them he increased the urgency of his prayers. God would help them. He would. He had to, because there was no other way he and his boys could last much longer.

* * * * * * * * * * *

In the back of the AATV, Cam’s canteen was running low. She had used almost all of her water trying to clean the wounds of the woman she had rescued from the storm. It hadn’t been easy, but she was almost done and still the woman had shown no sign of life beyond a faint rise and fall of her chest. Cam had been hoping for some movement, or a word – even a moan of pain, especially since the kid was so cut up, the cleaning up exercise must have hurt like hell. No such luck, the woman lay they stoically refusing to acknowledge the fact that she was still alive. Maybe she was in shock? Cam flicked some of the remaining water over the prone form in frustration. Still no reaction. Not a lot of point in pulling a live one out of a shitstorm if they hadn’t the good grace to revive themselves and show a proper amount of gratefulness. Cam was old-fashioned that way. She didn’t risk her life for someone if she wasn’t at least going to have their undying gratitude in return. Call it a character flaw, this need to be appreciated, but it had served her right for many a year now. It was also part of how she assessed people, by the level and quality of their thanks. She had a bad gut-feeling for those arrogant and insincere types who said thank you only when prompted, and then didn’t sound wholly sincere. She equally instinctively avoided those who over-thanked her. Her gut had it down to a science, and it was the only character assessment tool she employed. This one on the truck floor was irritating her by being too injured to proffer thanks. She knew it was a ridiculous way to think, but she’d slowly started to realise, as the storm raged around outside and the AATV shuddered (making her spill the water and ticking her off even more), how much both she and Brian had risked to get the girl on board. Least she could do was show some sign that she’d actually get through this, that all their efforts hadn’t been wasted, and that she acknowledged and appreciated what they’d done for her. One thing she herself appreciated was that the whole thing had given her an opportunity to see another side of Brian, who even now was busily patching a tear in the canvas above his head with an inner tube repair kit. Gone was the cowering boy she had left behind when she had set out into the storm. He had been replaced by Mr. Ready-for-anything. She couldn’t think what had snapped him out of his terror, but she was glad something had. It was good to know that his strong point was stepping up to the plate in a crisis, good to know that he did have one. And a mighty useful one at that. She could tolerate all his foibles and failings now she knew she could count on him when it really, truly mattered.

Brian poked his head over the back of the seats “That should hold awhile.”

“Do we have much glue left in the gun?”

He waggled it at her, “Yup. Quite a few spare patches too.” He patted the seats affectionately. “This old bird should hold up just fine.”

She raised her eyebrows, grateful he couldn’t see her in the gloom. Old bird? The truck wasn’t that old. In fact it was her pride and joy. She’d won it arm-wrestling some idiot who had a whole fleet of the things he didn’t use because he was ’saving them up’. For what, she had wondered acidly at the time, a rainy day? Another apocalypse? Good thing she had beaten him too, seeing as how she’d staked her twin sister as her side of the bet. It wasn’t like there had been much risk involved, the guy was old, and small, and gone to flab. He sister hadn’t seen it that way though, and to this day the sight of the AATV would send her into a temper fit that could be best escaped by turning the damn thing around and driving as quickly as possible in the opposite direction. Or so Cam figured, since she knew had over-qualified her initial apology, rendering all subsequent ones useless. So she didn’t apologise for it anymore, and that just made her sister all the madder. Best to turn tail and run when a family member won’t be reasonable. Those are battles you can never win.

“Cam, how’s the patient doing?” Whoops, Brian had noticed her zoning out.

“She ain’t moving. Ain’t speaking neither.” She prodded the recumbent woman with her finger, still no response.

“She gonna be okay?” He looked deflated. Last thing she needed now was for him to lose all his gung-ho adrenals or epinephrals or endorphins or whatever they were, so she lied.

“Sure, Brian. I guess she just needs to get her breath back.”

“Erm, how come she’s not wrapped in the thermoblanket?”

The thermoblanket. She’d forgotten about it. “Because I forgot about it. Where in the sam hill do we keep the thing anyhow?”

“Erm, it’s folded up and strapped to the floor. Near your foot. I guess you would forget about it, seeing as you never had to use it before.”

“Yeah, guess we’ve all bin lucky. Fine time to forget about it though.” She scrabbled around the floor of the salvage compartment until her hand met a rough leather strap. She wrenched it open, pulling at the covering beneath it. The thermoblanket had been a lucky find on one of her first salvage runs in the Shockey. It was made out of the same stuff that her grandfather had used to treat his arthritis, aqueous sodium acetate solution dotted with activator strips and stitched into a fabric covering. He grandfather had had a small stash of little dressings that he used to use when the pain got on top of him. This one was on a much grander scale. She’d come across it on a salvage raid in a lab, and thought it might come in handy sometime. Looked like she had finally found the right time. She unfolded the blanket and then twisted it along its length as though she were wringing it out. She heard the tell-tale cracking noise that meant the thin, notched steel strips inside had started reacting with the sodium acetate. The blanket would start to heat up now. She shook it out and laid it over the ‘patient’, tucking it in under her feet, waist and neck. This would give her a fighting chance. Wasn’t much else she and Brian could do now but watch and wait, and hope they all managed to weather the storm.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Debris of ever-increasing weight was now whirling around in the storm. Joel’s boys were increasingly distracted from keeping the quads on the ground by the bizarre things that flew past their eye-lines. Because of all the swirling sand it was sometimes hard to tell if they were really seeing what they thought they were seeing. Several times now one of them had turned to another, jaw agape, as a newspaper, a piece from a china tea-set (a cup to be precise) and other such things that should not be around in the desert sailed over their heads. Other debris spoke of casualties; a lone boot swirling around like a propellor, pieces of clothing (thankfully with no-one inside them) and strips of bandages (or shredded sheeting, it was hard to tell) fluttered by. One of the boys, who up until then had been sheltering Joel while ensuring that one of the rear-most bikes didn’t topple onto its wheels, was transfixed by these nature-transported objects, and started to rise to his feet just as a large pumpkin loomed in the distance. A pumpkin? He had never seen one of those and wanted to get a good look at it as it whizzed by. There was an abrupt change in the wind direction causing the to pumpkin dip and veer straight towards him. Anyone else would have reacted, but this poor boy thought that thinking about the pumpkin had attracted it to him, and he could do nothing but gawp at it as it loomed ever bigger, ever closer and finally impacted on the bike at his chest. The pumpkin had been bruised, battered and throughly exfoliated by the sandy wind, and so it burst immediately on impact with a resounding and satisfyingly wet-sounding “thwap!”.

The unfortunate, and slightly stunned boy found himself covered in stringy pumpkin goo, to which a blast of sand happily and rapidly affixed itself. He quickly ducked back down into his previous position, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground at his feet and refusing to look up again, in case any other objects became magnetically drawn to his thoughts. The other boys sniggered amongst themselves at the mess he was in, glad to be distracted from the greater peril of the storm by a moment of unexpected amusement. Oblivious, Joel prayed on.