How long before it reached here? Ten minutes? Five maybe. Then the water in the pool would be spoiled too. Unless. She looked at the land, the way the river split, half of it flowing down into the pool.
“We must dam the stream into the pool,” she called out.
She moved quickly without waiting for a response, heading back to where the water split in two. Most of the flow was coming toward her, down a shallow, six-foot-wide stream that was feeding the pool. She picked up one of the boulders that littered the broken ground and stumbled forward, the weight of the rock dragging her down. She reached the fork and the boulder splashed into the water, sinking almost without trace beneath the surface despite the shallowness of the stream. The water continued to flow around it unimpeded. She cast around for another rock and scrambled over to a large, brittle stone that fell apart as soon as she tried to pick it up. She grabbed the two largest chunks and hauled them back to the stream, dropping them next to the first one. Again they sank with barely a trace — and so did her spirits. She was already exhausted; she couldn’t possibly dam the stream on her own. It was hopeless.
A rock hit the surface in an explosion that covered Liv with water. She turned and saw Tariq behind her, brushing dust from his empty hands. He looked at her and smiled. “I’d get out of the way if I were you.”
She looked beyond him and saw something that made her laugh in pure shock. All eleven of the exiles were staggering toward her, each carrying a rock. She jumped away as the first plunged into the stream in a depth charge of water. Another joined it, then another. They were already piling up, a few rising above the surface and visibly slowing the flow. Liv dropped down into the water, scooping the red earth up from the riverbed and jamming it into the gaps between the rocks.
Tariq issued more orders in Arabic, and a curved wall began to form, extending across the stream that had run into the pool and diverting the flow to the other fork.
“Look,” the cry came from one of the workers. He was pointing upstream. Everyone’s eyes followed — everyone’s but Liv’s. She knew what they were looking at because she had already seen it — first on the stone and then in the hazy distance. The river was turning to blood.
“Quickly,” she called out, continuing to scoop mud into the wall of rocks. “We haven’t got much time.”
The sight of the river turning red electrified the weary group. Some rushed to collect more stones, others joined Liv in the water, frantically shoveling mud with their hands to seal the gaps.
Tariq dropped down and shoveled mud next to her, then a hiss like a huge snake drew all eyes up as the red wave closed in.
“Out of the river, everybody!” Liv shouted.
Those in the stream leaped out as if crocodiles had suddenly appeared in it. Some scrambled down the rapidly drying riverbed to help Liv and Tariq fill gaps in the dam wall, others stood back, awed by the sight of the swollen river arriving in a surge of red.
It hit the wall with a slap and slopped over the top of the dam. Liv and Tariq dropped back, digging a reservoir in the mud of the rapidly drying riverbed to catch the overspill. She looked up. Leaks had sprung out on the upper part where the mud had already been washed away. One more breach and the whole thing could collapse. Others sensed this too and everyone joined her in the mud, bolstering the wall with armfuls of silt and whatever rocks they could still find close by.
A stone tumbled down from the top of the dam and a cascade of red water followed it. Without stopping to think, Liv splashed through the water toward it, grabbing the stone and jamming it back in place. She held it there, feeling the sickening flow of red-tinted warm water over her hand as though it really was blood.
From her new position she could see over the top of the dam and beyond. The trickle that had been the second fork of the stream was now a solid red flow. But if the wall broke, all that water would quickly revert to its natural course and find its way down to the pool.
Liv leaned against the dam and braced it with her whole body, arms outstretched, willing it to hold. She could hear the slop of water on the other side of the wall, feel it running over her from the numerous gaps. She could almost sense the whole dam moving, feel the stones slipping out of place under the pressure of the raging river.
Then something shifted.
A stone she had tried to jam back in place moved forward, seating itself tighter into the wall, and the flow became a trickle around it. She looked over the top of the wall, her eyes wide. The water level had dropped. It was still dropping, leaving red tide marks along the lengths of the banks. The surge had ended.
They worked quickly and silently, all energy focused on filling any holes in the dam. But Liv never moved. She remained where she was, crucified on the wall and mired in red, her mind running through the symbols that had predicted all this and wondering what greater terrors might lie in the future, until Tariq laid his hand on her shoulder and told her, “It’s okay. The dam held. You can let go now.”
30
Shepherd opened his eyes to a world of silence.
For a few moments he had not the slightest idea where he was, or even who he was. He could see a floor strewn with debris and a wall that disappeared in a jagged line three feet up from the ground. Beyond it was a whiteness that hurt his eyes and a low gray cloud.
The cloud.
His mind hooked on to the word — and he remembered.
He felt the cold all around and sinking into him — but not from beneath. There was something warm underneath him.
He forced himself up, willing his disconnected arms to move and push him up from the floor so he could see what it was. He feared it might be blood, his blood, but it was just Franklin, unconscious and unresponsive. He felt cold, everything felt cold. He needed to get them both away from here and into the warmth.
He tried to stand but dizziness surged through him, driving him back down again. He focused on the chewed metal edge of what had once been the outer wall, trying to fix on something long enough to stop the world from spinning.
A face appeared above the wall, shouting something his ears could not hear. He tried to raise his hand and call the man over. He tried to push himself up so the man could see Franklin. But in the end these thoughts went no further than his brain and just the effort of thinking was enough to let the darkness back in. His eyes closed. The coldness pressed down. And the whistling whine in his damaged ears faded back to silence.
When Shepherd woke again it was with a gasp that hurt his throat.
He was lying on a bed in a white room, all wipe-clean linoleum and health awareness posters. One listed the symptoms of radiation sickness, another the toxic properties of various chemicals. He had been here before. The same posters had graced the walls in his research intern days when he had come to the sick bay to be treated for a mild helium burn.
Helium.
Burn.
The words pierced the bubble surrounding his brain and it popped in sudden and painful recollection.
“Franklin!” He sat up in bed and the room shifted as though it were floating.
White-coated figures surged through the door. They were all talking to him, at him, he could see their mouths moving but all he heard was a waa-waa sound, their voices muffled and indistinct as if his ears were waterlogged. He worked his jaw and they popped, his hearing returning as suddenly and painfully as his memory had.