“Search the bodies,” he said. “Take any weapons you find and all their personal effects. We’ll ransom them back to the families.”
The men broke into groups and fanned out downriver. Nasri turned his attention to me. “Into the carrier,” he ordered.
“Where are you taking me?”
“You may still be valuable. Do you have all your teeth?” He fingered my mouth. I winced and pulled away.
“The army knows we’re here.”
“In Minnesota?”
“We’re from Minnesota.”
Nasri smiled. His teeth were small and flat, worn down like a desert rat’s. “Not likely,” he said. “Now get into the truck.”
He shoved me roughly toward the hover-carrier. Another man grabbed my arm and yanked so hard that I practically fell into the back of the cargo hold. I stumbled, then regained my balance, but the man had already slammed the door shut behind me. I grabbed the handle. It would not open, and the glass was thick and obviously bulletproof. I pounded at it with my palms, but it barely made a sound. My nails hurt just trying to scratch it.
I turned, and my eyes adjusted to the dark. I picked out boxes, weapons, and electronic equipment lining the shelves in the narrow hold. Many things were still wrapped, untouched, as if they had been newly purchased. There seemed to be no order, just rows of expensive items—loot from PELA operations. On the far wall I noticed a small machine with the name Bluewater stamped on it, which I assumed was the owner or manufacturer of the machine.
Then I noticed something else as well—a body lying prone on the ground. A boy’s body. He was bloody and covered with mud. He didn’t move.
“Will!” I cried.
CHAPTER 10
>The hover-carriers glided silently over the ravaged land. Where rivers once flowed, there were now only huge gashes like scars on the earth. Lake beds had dried up, forming dust bowls that swirled with toxic chemicals and heavy metals. The ice and permafrost that covered the northern reaches had disappeared or been melted for water. The sea levels had risen, and salt water poisoned any underground aquifers that were not depleted from years of overuse. Rain fell, but in such torrents and violent storms that most of it washed into the ocean. The weather was unpredictable, and humans stole the clouds, sucking moisture from the sky and using it for their own purposes. Drought and death darkened the continents, and even the fittest could barely survive.
Nasri told me these things while my brother lay cradled in my lap. Will’s face was hot with fever and damp with perspiration, but at least he was alive. I brushed the hair from his eyes and kissed him lightly on the forehead. He stirred but did not speak. Nasri had given him some medicine, but it didn’t seem to be working. His leg was infected and raw, and it would take more than pills to cure it.
“We have to get him to a doctor,” I said.
“He’ll live,” said Nasri.
“You don’t know that.”
“I have seen men with legs seeping maggots survive in the desert. Their legs were simply amputated, and they moved on.”
“You can’t amputate his leg!”
Nasri shrugged. “We do what we have to. This is war.”
“We’re not fighting your war.”
“Of course you are. We’re all fighting the war.”
“What war are you fighting?” I demanded.
“We’re fighting on the side of the land.”
“The land? By blowing up dams and sabotaging water supplies? By killing anyone who crosses your path? You talk about saving the land, but you’re poisoning it.”
Nasri blinked rapidly. He looked like he wanted to hop again, but there was no room to hop in the small cargo hold.
“We’re poisoning the land to save it,” he spat. “When the great dams and reservoirs are destroyed, the water will return to the land, and people will remember its precious gift.”
“That’s crazy.”
Nasri raised his hand, and I flinched, but he merely scratched his stubbly head. “Look after your brother,” he said. Then he opened the hatch to the carrier’s main compartment and disappeared into the front of the truck.
I sat in the darkness and listened to Will breathe. I would not let him lose his leg. I would find him a doctor—a real doctor—who would give him proper medicine and stitch it up. And what of Kai? Was he already dead? The seriousness of our predicament was not lost on me. We were now in Canada, a country with which we were at war. We had no travel papers and were dependent on the kindness of environmental mercenaries—lowlife thugs who couldn’t be trusted. There was something suspicious about PELA’s avowed alliance with the Canadians—the very people who had dammed Earth’s water and melted the giant icebergs. I lay down next to Will, gripping his hand with my fingers. I could feel the pulse in his wrist, strong and steady. Will was a fighter. As long as his heart kept beating, he would not give up. I remembered how he pumped for both of us on the pedi-cycle, pushing past the point of exhaustion. It seemed like another lifetime ago. The dusty road where I had witnessed a boy spilling water from a cup was as far away as the girl I had once been—a girl who had never heard gunfire or seen a man swollen and dead.
I fell into a restless sleep. In my dreams, my parents and Will were gliding down a giant river on a floating device that looked like a pedicycle with its wheels turned sideways. I tried to warn them they were not safe. Water was leaking in through the wheels and swamping their seats. They were pedaling while slowly sinking. But they just waved happily back at me, oblivious to the danger. The river moved swiftly and silently, torrents of water rushing to the ocean. Dark and violent, it swirled around them like a gathering storm. I watched helplessly from the muddy shoreline as my family was swept away into the unforgiving sea.
I awoke to find Will still lying next to me. It took a moment to realize that he had one eye open and was staring at me, just as he used to do back home when we pulled our mattresses together in my room.
“Vera,” he whispered.
“Will!”
“Where are we?”
I explained we were in the back of a hover-carrier, traveling with PELA along the Canadian border.
“PELA?” he croaked.
“They blew up the dam,” I said. “It wiped out everything. Ulysses and the pirates are dead.”
Will shut his one open eye as if trying to block the loss, but when he opened both eyes, all he said was, “My leg hurts.” He reached down to pull up his trouser leg. His skin was red and raw, and blood and yellow fluid oozed down his calf. But a scab had begun to form around the edges, and purplish bruising mottled his shin.
“They gave you some medicine,” I said.
“Why would they do that?”
“They want to sell us.”
Healthy children of working age were needed at the drilling sites, Nasri had said. They were small enough to scramble down the narrow shafts but took in one-tenth the pay of adults. Plenty of orphans were apprenticed to the mines, their lives as miserable as the nineteenth-century urchins we’d learned about in school. As far as PELA was concerned, we were orphans they had found on the road.
“But we have parents!” protested Will.
“They don’t care. They just want money.”
“Maybe PELA kidnapped Kai.”
I had considered this. Several years ago three brothers were kidnapped from a Skate ’n’ Sand arena. They never returned, although rumors circulated that they were working for a drilling company on the Great Coast. This was why our father insisted that we shouldn’t talk to strangers and that we wi-text him when we were leaving school. But I didn’t think PELA had taken Kai. The environmentalists couldn’t have come into town without drawing notice, and it was too far south for them to venture anyway. PELA operated on the borders, near reservoirs and dams, where they could strike quickly then retreat.