Chapter Text
Above them the windmill turned and turned, pumping water with a steady, creaking sound, powered by the constant flow of wind.
A rough, child's sketch in the fine powdery dirt, the bore hole, the depth marked out, the running of the pipes. Diameter, depth, drill. The wind shifted and the sketch blurred but it was still legible enough to go by.
“Depth of the well?”
“100 meters, Poppa.”
“What's the ratio?”
“1:1 direct drive.”
“How about the rpm?”
“50 to 60!”
“And how do we count that?”
“By sitting still and counting my heartbeat against the mark on the blade and a fixed point.”
“Good work, Ace. Nice job.” And he smiled as his father's hand tousled his sandy hair. The man took off his round black helmet and set it on his son's head. “Someday soon, you'll be an Engineer just like the rest of the family. Doing good for the world.”
Ace laughed as the helmet came down over his head, smelling of machine oil and sweat. The edge dipped over his eyes and the deep shadow of the helmet blocked out the bright sun of the waste.
“Poppa! Ace! Mum says she's done with the new borehole and wants you to have a look. She thinks the water's going sour.”
“Right, there you go. Off with you. Tell your mother I'll be by shortly.”
Ace clambered around the old wreck, catching sunning lizards with a slipknot of string tied to an old car antenna. He let them go after inspecting them, after looking at their ticks and parasites and the jagged scars where their tails had grown back. Once he caught a two-headed one, and though he wanted to keep it in a jar and feed it insects, he realized he couldn't separate it from its family so he let it go.
Through the cracked and spidery glass he could see inside; it was dusty and dry, full of the slow decay of fabric and plastic and metal. He crawled up onto the roof and laid back on the rusted heap, tipping his cap over his face. The warmth of the metal against his back, the heat of the sun...
Suddenly a strong pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him off the wreck and instinctively, he rolled, curling up, but instead of falling to the ground, arms held him tight, giving him a squeeze.
“Ha, got you, Ace.”
“Frances!” He squirmed, twisting in her grip.
She kissed his forehead, and he made a face. “No fair!”
“You're right, it's not fair.” She set him down. She was over ten years older than him and tall, her tanned arms muscled tightly, and when she bent down to meet his eyes, he stole her cap off her head. Her short brown hair was jagged and damp from sweat. “Wanna fight about it? Show me what you've learned.”
Ace glanced around; there were a few bricks behind her, in a tumbled heap.
“I'll get you!” He grabbed her around the waist and pushed, and she tripped over the bricks, falling onto her backside with a musical jingle of her tool belts.
“Ow!” But Frances was laughing, pulling him into her arms and kissing his cheeks. “I deserved that. Gotta watch your back and your feet, always.” She winked at him and he scrambled back onto his feet and helped her up.
“Time to get back to work, Ace. Poppa says the tank's leaking, so I'm going to go put on a new weld. We gotta pump and store as much as we can before we go.”
“Okay.”
“You wanna come watch?”
“Yeah!”
*****
Ace could always remember the day they left; it was seared into his memory. Above, the clouds had hung heavy, gray, with an ominous oppression.
They were going to a better place, a green place they had heard of, far away. Traders that passed through their settlement had spread the word; they had seen it, high above the waste, inaccessible. But his family was an Engineer family, and there were many other skilled Engineer families in the settlement and they knew they could manage it. They had pooled their young people and picked scouts that were gone for weeks. The scouts had returned with good news: the place was real and habitable; the scouts had climbed up to the high valley; there was no path, just fields of boulders and steep cliffs. The way was difficult, but that was good for the community; it meant that they'd be safe from harm. The valley was habitable and the water good.
“If it's green, it means water and plenty of it.” Poppa patted his breast pocket where he kept his drawings in an oilskin pouch. “Your mother and I designed the preliminary sketches for a water system based on the scouts' drawings and measurements. We'll build it when we get there.”
“When we get there.”
They packed up everything they could, all the tools and books and plans, and carefully secured them onto the rig. The windmills were dismantled and packed as well, stacked in big piles of long aluminum, coded and numbered. Furniture they could always build from scrap, but it was sad leaving the great beautiful table of smooth carved wood that his parents did their work on. It was a survivor from the old days.
“Never mind that, we can draw anywhere where there's a flat surface,” Mum had said. “Leave it be; it's been in this house since Before. It would be a terrible waste if it fell off the truck and broke. It's held out here for so long that we better let someone else enjoy it.”
So on the morning they left, they got into the rig, piled high with their life and their livelihood. Flanked by their fellow cars, it took several minutes of waiting before it felt like they were really going, leaving their old life behind.
The last thing Ace saw from the back window as they were leaving was the rusted out hulk of the old car, wind swirling around its empty axles.
Ace had a little music box that had been passed down through his father's family for generations, time out of mind. When he turned the handle, it played a song.
Sometimes when the convoy stopped to cool and water the engines and make repairs, he would sit in the shade of the rig and play its tune, humming along. What the song was called, no one knew, but it was sweet, with a pleasing melody.
“Hey, what's that?” Ace looked up to see a young man. Maybe almost as big as Frances. Someone from a neighboring settlement that had joined their convoy, a youth Ace didn't recognize as one of their neighbors.
“It's a music box,” Ace replied politely. “The mechanism works by simple forward rotation--”
The youth snatched it from his hand before he could continue.
“Hey, that's mine!” Immediately, Ace was up on his feet, his heart pounding, but the youth was taller and bigger, and he held Ace's music box out of reach.
“Only if you can get it. Otherwise it's mine now.”
Ace looked around quickly, but there was nothing obvious he could use in this fight.
“Only if I can get it?” Frances loomed over the interloper, and plucked the music box from his hand. “Is being bigger and stronger the only way to be right?” She shoved the boy against the truck, pale eyes fierce, her hand knotted in the front of his shirt. “Is that why you're picking on him?”
“Nuh-nuh--”
“Get out of here before I give you a thrashing,” Frances snarled and letting go, the youth stumbled away in fear. He shouted something as he ran; Ace had no idea what it meant, but it sounded rude.
“You okay, Ace?” Frances handed him back the music box and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Yeah, I'm fine.” Tears prickled in his eyes, and he scrubbed at his face with the back of his hands.
“It's okay. Out here, everyone turns into a beast,” she said. “It's the emptiness. It makes people crazy. Makes folks hungry and thirsty for stuff they can't even eat, like cars and people and guzzoline.”
“Really?”
“Really.” And she mimed a roar at him to make him laugh. “Gonna eat you right up!”
Ace put his arms around her as she helped him back up into the rig, lifting him bodily.
It was a long and dangerous run. Twice they were attacked by road warriors, and many of their neighbors had been killed defending the convoy. Curious, Ace wanted to see them bury the bodies, but his sister kept him in the rig. From a distance, he could see the ceremony; they were sprinkling handfuls of white clay over each body before consigning them to a common dusty grave.
“Don't look.” Frances drew him away from the window and drew him close, her arm warm around his shoulder, and thoughtfully, she kissed the top of his head. “You'll see enough death one day. We all do.”
One moon-bright night, his mother came back, bruised and bleeding; she had been driving escort when bandits and road warriors came out of the waste to attack the convoy. Now that there were less people, everyone who could took a turn at escorting the convoy.
Ace pretended he was asleep under the blanket, eavesdropping as his father wiped the blood off her face.
“Don't worry. It's not my blood. I gave back as good as they gave us. Better, really.”
“It's too dangerous, love. Maybe we shouldn't have left. I'm worried for Frances and Alex.”
“I am too. But you know we can't go back. We stayed too long as it is; all our supplies are low. And now that so many have died, we can't let their sacrifice mean nothing. They died protecting us. They died so we could have a better chance. We're all in now.”
“You're right, love, you're right.”
When the storm began swirling its sandy tendrils around the convoy, everyone stopped and people got out, quickly tying ropes and chains from vehicle to vehicle, so that no one would lose their way down the line. Goggled and masked, men and women scrambled from rig to rig, making quick repairs, making sure everyone was together.
“Where are Mum and Poppa?” Ace looked out the window of the rig, trying to make them out in the mirrors.
“Fixing the tank. It's leaking again.” Frances had tears in her blue-gray eyes, and Ace put his arm around her shoulder.
“It's not your fault. It's an old tank that's always leaked.”
“I could have welded it better. I know I could have done better.”
“Poppa says welds can't hold forever. Sometimes things are just broken and can't be fixed.”
Frances wiped at her eyes and he hugged her tight, feeling her tears damp against his forehead.
A little while later, daylight turned suddenly to night, and an even stronger wind struck the rig. Frances swallowed and they both stared in fear at a trickle of sand that was coming in through a cracked window.
“Do you think they're okay?”
“'Course they're fine. They'll be back any minute.” She ran her thumb between the teeth of the curved-jaw pliers in her tool belt, the metal edges digging into the calloused pad of her thumb
“I'm scared.”
“It's okay to be scared sometimes.” Frances tucked the blanket around his shoulders. “I've been scared before, plenty of times.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Like when the men came with the guns and started shooting. A couple nights ago.”
“What're you supposed to do when you're scared? I'm scared all the time now. I wish we were home.”
“I don't know, Alex. But wishing doesn't solve anything, and being scared...” She shrugged. “It's a natural thing, I suppose. Sometimes I think the best thing is to try to not be scared. Put up a brave face until you feel like you're not scared anymore.”
“Even if you're scared?”
“Even if you're scared.” She looked out the window at the storm. “Alex, I think it's important to keep going, to keep trying. Even if you screw up. Especially if everyone's counting on you.”
She sat back and fidgeted for a while, before squaring her shoulders, nodding to herself. Frances leaned down to kiss his cheek.
“Stay here and get some sleep. I'm going to go down to check the tank. Whatever you do, don't leave the rig until the storm stops. Don't open the door or the windows. Promise?” She offered him her hand, and he clasped it, feeling her strength, her warmth.
“Okay. I promise.” Ace laid down, stretched out on the back seat of the rig. He was exhausted from the fear, from the nervous tension in his body. Soon they would be back, and they'd dig out, riding to Walhalla. He closed his eyes.
The storm lasted three days.
Ace was one of the first ones out when the storm ended. The sky was brilliantly blue, with a cold, icy clarity that he would always remember. There was an intense silence in the waste, a calm that seemed almost unnatural. Heaps of sand had drifted around the rig; it was buried so deeply that he had to shove hard with his feet to get the door open.
He slid down the dune that had piled up around the rig and began looking for Frances, for his mother and father.
“Frances? Mum! Poppa!”
Soon a chorus of other children joined him, thin, shrill voices in the waste calling out for those who could no longer hear them.
He found Frances buried to her chest in sand. She looked like she had fallen asleep with her goggles on, but despite the mask of cloth around her face, her mouth and her nose were plugged up with sand. She was propped up just behind the tanker, and her tough hand had sealed the leak so that the water was safe. She had died protecting them. If they had lost the water they would have all died.
He found his parents a few meters away, half-buried in sand, facing west. The line they were hanging onto had broken free in the storm, and they went the wrong way before trying to shelter together. Their mouths and noses too were clotted with sand, despite cloths they had wound around their faces. His father's black helmet lay cupped between them, filled with sand. The sand got into everything.
He didn't know what to do. He knew he should probably be crying but there was only a deep, intense emptiness inside of him, a stillness as profound as the stillness of the waste. The best he could do was put an empty bucket under the leak to catch the precious water, and drag Frances' dead weight down beside the rig, the heaviest weight he had ever tried to carry. He sat in the cold shade of the rig with her, stroking his fingers through her soft sandy hair.
*****
He woke in the crook of her cold arm. She was stiff and white, and he knew he had to bury her, bury them. Dig a deep hole. Sprinkle them with white clay.
A strong hand gave him a shake, and he flinched away, but the tall man knelt down so that their eyes met. He had a thick head of curling brown hair, a wild shock shot through with streaks of gold and knotted in an almost comical topknot. Golden stubble crusted his broad jaw.
“You're an Engineer's kid, aren't you?”
“Yeah.”
“What's your name, son?”
“Alex, but everyone calls me Ace.”
“All right, Ace. I need you to start digging out your rig. We can't do anything about the dead. They can't help us now and we can't help them. We can't stay here like this. Out here, we're buzzard bait. Can you drive?” The way he said it sounded like the man had said it many times already. It was beginning to sound more like a set piece than words of comfort.
“Of course.”
“Then you have the honor of driving the family car. Danny's already patched the leak. I'm Joe. We're gonna get to Walhalla, no matter what. All right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And...” The man looked down at Frances' body, and he shook his head just a little. “I hate to tell you to do this, Ace, but you're gonna have to strip the bodies for anything useful. Like the tools.” He pointed to Frances' treasured tool belts. “We'll need everything we can to survive and rebuild. All right, get to work. We're going to try to get back on the road before noon.”
“Yeah.” Numbly, Ace found a shovel and started digging.
He saved his family for last. Sore and shaking with fatigue, he somehow managed to drag Frances closer to his parents. His father's black helmet was gone; so were his shiny brown shoes and his coat, but Ace felt into his father's shirt pocket and found the design drawings in their oilskin pouch. He put them away carefully, reverently.
“I'm sorry, Frances.” Working carefully, he unfastened her tool belts and tugged them out from under her. Everything was there, all her carefully collected tools, from years of gifting and trading. Some she had even made herself, to fit her hand. He slung them over his shoulders; the belts were too big for him to wear around his waist and even draped over his shoulders, they weighed him down.
He slipped off her dark welding goggles and put them around his own neck. Her eyes were closed as if she were merely asleep.
Kneeling at her side, he kissed her cheek one last time. And he kissed his mother and father's hands before setting their cold, lifeless wrists over each other. Their hands had been balled up protectively into fists; there was no way he could unbend those stiff fingers so they could hold each other into eternity.
He couldn't bury them. He didn't have the strength.
Ace didn't have to go far to find the white clay; there were many pockets of it, all over the waste. Briefly shrugging off the belts, he took off his red flannel shirt and using it as a bag, piled it up with the soft, crumbly white clay that he dug out with his bare hands. He took big handfuls of the dry clay and sprinkled it over the bodies. The wind caught the white powder and it flew over the sand in a brittle white scatter.
He pressed his whitened hands to his face, tears streaming down his cheeks. The white powder congealed on the skin of his face, mixing with his tears and he couldn't help but smear it when he wiped at his eyes, at his running nose.
He stood for a long moment, trying to think of what he would say to them if they were still here, if they could still hear, choking on his sobs until shivering, he pulled his white-stained shirt back up over his bare skin.
He hugged himself. Out here it was just him, alone, and the vast expanse of the waste, the bruised mountains looming like black clouds in the distance, the orange-red glow of the dirt and the golden sand that smothered everything.
White, everything was white. He closed his eyes against the awful blue of the sky that he no longer wanted to see.