Red Storm
Vol. 1, No. 1
“To Everything There is a Season”
By Jason Thibeault
Published by Dime Novel Publishing at Smashwords.com
© 2010. Dime Novel Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
978-1-935893-18-9
Smashwords.com Edition
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.
-- Ecclesiastes
“To Everything There is a Season”
Mikael leaned on his pick as he looked toward the mountains, the wind whipping through his legs, scouring down the cliff walls and into the Havaghesh Valley—nothing more than a hole in the Earth. He squinted into the distance, blocking out the bleak landscape, trying to focus on the wind, to find traces of the dust. But he only saw bits of dirt, dregs from the digging as picks slammed into the ground, drew back up, slammed into the ground again and again.
His world was a wasteland, the byproduct of an unhappy God and an overachieving humanity. No one could remember another time but stories spoke of it, when the Earth was rich and vibrant, when God smiled upon mankind and food and water were plentiful.
Mikael strained, looking through the glass of his visor at the ridge of the valley, searching for signs of the dust. Because even though he couldn’t see it, something made him unsure, because he thought he heard, or felt, that familiar rumble that started in the fathomless blue sky and rolled through the valley floor, jumbling small bits of ore and rock, shaking every part of his body until it made his teeth ache. Boom after boom after boom until the storm rolled over the lip of the valley, the red dust pouring into it like molten lava into a cauldron. He clenched his jaw, trying to relax the muscles and looked up toward the sun, dull through glass that had been treated by the scientists to protect his eyes, automatically dimming in response until it was almost black. The sun, no friend to Mikael or any Farmer, hung just above the tallest peak, Havaghesh, the peak that gave the valley its name.
It was a valley ringed by tall, sheer mountains as if some great hand had reached down and gouged a hole in the Earth, leaving long trenches running the length of the floor where the fingers had dug in.
The Farmers stood out against the harshness of the land; their black rubber suits, covering every inch of skin on their body, insulating them against the coldness of the air and the searing touch of the sun. It was a contradiction that seemed to exemplify their lives—even though the sun shone harshly down upon them, capable of inflicting terrible burns on uncovered skin, the air within the valley itself was deathly cold, only the rubber suits of the Farmers insulating themselves from its biting anger while the air above the valley, wavering over seemingly infinite sand was hot enough to evaporate water even before it dropped to the ground.
From the lip of the valley they might have seemed like ants in a desolate land, fruitlessly searching for one last grain of food or water. But down in the trenches, their picks a flurry of activity hammering against the hard, unforgiving ground, they worked tirelessly, sweat and waste reclaimed in special pockets for sanitization, storage, or trade later.
No, he thought, definitely not time yet. Why am I so anxious then?
He knew that part of that anxiety was over the stranger. Fallel. Arriving the day before last, just before nightfall with his sled in tow—a rubber tarp stretched tightly over a hoard of supplies—he had presented himself to Mikael with the formality and decorum of a Farmer greeting: clasping the emblem on his own shoulder and then Mikael’s; offering the choicest pick from his sled.
But, even before Fallel performed these normal rituals, the actions that helped define him as a Farmer rather than a Towner, Mikael had known that he wasn’t from the Valleys of Orotho. As the Siam of his Farmer tribe, Mikael had broached the rim of Havaghesh a number of times to bring ore to Orotho. It was their relationship—the Farmers provided the ore that Orotho needed to power its town while Orotho provided them picks, new rubber for their suits, glass for their visors, food, and, of course, water.
And so Mikael knew that Havaghesh was just one of a number of valleys that existed within the shadow of Orotho and traded with the Towners. He’d met a few of the other Siams as well, trading with them from time to time, sometimes ore, sometimes water, sometimes stories; sometimes more.
He remembered the first time he’d climbed the ridge of the valley, sled in tow, with his own father and been almost overwhelmed by the site of the vast wasteland stretching farther than the eye could see.
The Khali, his father had called it. And if you looked hard enough you cold see the shadow impressions of other valleys like their own dotting the horizon.
Being young and perhaps more hopeful than a Farmer should be, Mikael had expected to see something else, something that told him the Universe wasn’t as harsh and unforgiving as it was within the valleys.
It had been a harsh lesson.
So like all Farmers, Mikael had cast aside hope, replacing it with acceptance. The Farmer way of life, the Zavesh, told them to accept things for what they were and how they came.
So what bothers me so much about Fallel, he wondered.
Perhaps it had been Fallel’s suit, apparently new, unmarred by days in the dirt fields mining ore with a pick, which gave him away. Or perhaps it was just a gut instinct that Mikael had; an internal alarm that went off that Fallel wasn’t from a Farmer tribe he’d met before. Maybe it was just the way that Fallel had pronounced the word Siam that set him apart from the Farmers Mikael had met that mined ore for Orotho—his sing-song voice, stressing the first part of the word rather than the last, rising and dipping in a melodious canter both hypnotizing and frightening.
That’s what it is, Mikael thought.
He couldn’t remember a time, or a story, when someone had talked about a new tribe.
Yet there Fallel had been just a few days ago, standing before him.
Standing there from somewhere else.
Of course, the prospect of trading with different Farmers promised the invigorating infusion of new blood and Mikael could appreciate that. He had two daughters of his own, Rand and Sheika, and he wanted to give them more of a life than trading them to another of the Orotho Valley Farmer tribes. They had been trading too often amongst themselves—a daughter here, a son there, water and ore in return—and he knew that it was weakening all of the tribes.
Looking back on that memory of a few days ago, Mikael still reprimanded himself.
He hadn’t hidden his surprise well.
He’d broken the Zavesh and wondered, perhaps even hoped again when he should have just taken Fallel for what he was—a Farmer looking to trade.
But he couldn’t help it, no mater how disciplined his Farmer sensibilities. With little more in life than trying to eek out a living from the rock, fighting the elements that at every step threatened to kill them, Farmers were reserved by nature, so much so that even words themselves were precious, as if the breath to speak them was worth more than anything idle chit-chat could offer.
It was their Zavesh. The code of being a Farmer.
But what Fallel represented was enough to crack even the steely resolve of a model Farmer like Mikael.
It was change.
Because when tribes began to travel between towns—covering vast, scorching expanses of Khali —some great part of the Universe was moving, churning the gears that powered the cosmos. When tribes brought stories with them as alien as themselves—intrusions of a world other than their own—change was imminent; change on a scale of the Reckoning.
Like all Farmers, Mikael knew of the Reckoning. It was a story that was passed down from generation to generation, his own father telling it plenty of times at gatherings until they could all recite it word-for-word.
The day when the sky fell, when the Earth opened up, when God cast them out, and an angry Universe unleashed its fury to set things right.
For the Farmer, it was called Hezba.
It was a single world to encompass everything about life—God, the Universe, Nature.
And on the day of the Reckoning, Hezba struck back at mankind for centuries of wickedness against Life itself.
Perhaps that’s what had struck Mikael the most—the sheer prospect of the journey in light of what lay above their valley. No one knew how many years it had been since the Reckoning, but the land was still scared from it, still a barren wasteland with the hate and anger of Hezba etched across it.
The Khali was unforgiving, a seemingly infinite stretch of sand in all directions with nowhere to hide from Hezba. If that wasn’t enough, the searing heat of the air itself allowed only short jaunts, mostly from the valley to the town. Any attempt to traverse the land too far outside the valleys meant certain death. And that was an unspeakable violation of the Farmer’s Zavesh—to die away from the tribe and deprive them the ability to trade the body to Orotho for more water.
No one, not even Mikael or the other Siams, knew why Orotho wanted their dead. But it had been happening for longer than anyone could remember or any story told. And so trading the dead to the Towners had become part of the Zavesh. A bit of flesh for a bag of water.
But Fallel was an emissary from such a tribe. Someone who had clearly made the journey from somewhere else.
Someone who had defied the anger of Hezba.
Someone who promised new blood and new chances.
At the same time it frightened and surprised Mikael, it also made him comfortable. Hot from the exertion of half-a-day’s labor, his suit insulating him against the icy winds with the work of his own body, he had stared at Fallel, his mind formulating a plan that he couldn’t articulate, couldn’t even believe was entering his consciousness, worming its way up from the darkest part of his mind.
A union, he had thought, remembering just last week his realization that Orotho’s scientists were coming more often to count, to tabulate. Mikael could still see the satisfaction on their faces as they left, quick to get out of the valley before even the remotest possibility of a storm.
Happy with one less Farmer, Mikael wondered.
His Farmer Zavesh kept him from inquiring why they wanted less Farmers; just as it kept all Farmers from inquiring what Orotho did with the bodies they brought to the Factory—why the scientists traded for them, traded so much water for a shell, when they traded so much less for the ore and waste by-products.
Practicality far outweighed the mystery, though, and the Farmers gladly accepted what was given them.
But seeing those scientists walk away each time, their rubber suits new and awkward, made him think of the storms themselves, how the Zavesh said the storms came from careless Farmers piercing the valley floor too deep, from shifts in the ground itself. But outside of tradition, of the stories, there was no consensus among the tribes. They were too far apart to keep such a network of information.
No, for all intents and purposes, Farmers existed in their own little worlds.
Fallel pierced theirs like a messiah.
Fallel had tried to allay Mikael’s suspicions and anxieties on that day of potential by offering to share the tent with the Siam and his two daughters. To share his warmth with Mikael and his own. It had helped and, again, Mikael was struck by how much Fallel was a Farmer.
But just as quickly as he had arrived, Fallel disappeared into the trenches, walking slowly towards the camp where he vanished between the folds of Mikael’s personal tent.
Mikael absentmindedly returned to farming, his mind a whir of possibilities that existed just on the fringes of tradition—things he could consider because they weren’t there; things that could be added, could become tradition; while the others worked steadily, seemingly unaware or uncaring, but actually just showing their Farmer rearing: life explains itself; curiosity is just a waste of energy.
But that wasn’t what made Mikael anxious now. It was the fact that Fallel hadn’t surfaced from the tent for Storytime. They had all waited for him to enter the group tent at Storytime, Mikael in the Siam’s place, surrounded by the fire pits and the tribe, the rest eager but showing nothing other than disciplined patience.
Except Fallel hadn’t come.
The shadows had grown, creeping over the flues in the group tent roof, dragging with them the thick darkness and the blazing stars. And they had waited.
Although no one had said anything, all were concerned. Not necessarily for the broken decorum, but for Fallel’s health. They wondered if he lie there in Mikael’s tent, dead from the heat, or, forbid, the dust.
Without an uttered word, they all came to the conclusion that they should just let him rest, that perhaps the walk, from where ever he was to their valley had taken more of a toll than he’d let on. Mikael reminded them that he was from outside Orotho’s domain. From who knew where.
But that was a day ago. He hadn’t come out last night for Storytime either. Only during the day, to stand at the tent flaps and watch Mikael’s tribe dig. Everyone could see that he was weakened, holding onto the rubber doorway as if he might pull himself into the valley sun; as if it was going to take all his strength to keep on living a Farmer’s life.
Mikael looked toward the tent where he knew Fallel lay on the rubber floor, unmoving, his breathing probably just as shallow and raspy as it had been last night when he, Rand, and Sheika had pressed their bodies against him as all Farmer’s did to conserve heat. But it had been difficult to get to sleep as each breath Fallel drew drove into the silence of the tent like a pick into the hard ground.
Uncertain how long he was supposed to let it go on, when it would be appropriate to either send Fallel on his way or make him earn his stay, he turned back to his work, looking plaintively at the small ore pile before he splintered the ground with his pick.
He hadn’t said anything more about the load he carried or what he wished to trade and they tolerated it because that was the Zavesh—to accept things as they came, to not question.
But it was a tolerance heavy with caution because that was the Zavesh too.
Mikael pushed the desire to know out of his mind.
The answer will come when it comes, he thought. No sooner, no later.
He struck into the dirt again.
If anyone had seen Mikael, standing in the blazing mid-day sun, his shadow draped across the uneven rise that divided one trench from another, they would have been surprised by his size. Even slightly hunched, as every Farmer eventually became from years wielding the pick, he was taller than anyone else in the tribe. Some said it was because he was descended from the Originals, the Giants, because, as far as anyone could remember, his entire family had been tall, like the people before the Reckoning—before Hezba had sent the universe crashing down on all of them.
So it was said.
No one remembered, or knew, or had anything written down and whatever the tribe whispered about Mikael, they did so because of what he had told then, the stories that his father passed down to him as they huddled around the fires after a long day in the fields.
Through the digging, Mikael watched his daughters, just a dozen feet in front of him in the same trench.
Rand was helping Sheika with the delicate nature of the dig. As the elder, it was her responsibility. But Mikael could feel himself tense as Rand stopped, standing in frustration as Sheika smacked a piece of ore—obliterating it.
That’s what made it delicate. A Farmer had to be careful with the pick, as Orotho didn’t accept bags of ore dust. They wanted whole chunks. The Farmers didn’t know why and they didn’t ask, so part of Zavesh became an understanding of how to be careful when digging, how to coax the ore from the dirt.
But for the past year, Rand had become difficult. She balked at Mikael’s requests, vocalized her feelings about Storytime; daydreamed about Orotho, about a town she’d yet to see. The tribe appeared not to notice and Mikael secretly appreciated this Farmerness.
But it couldn’t go unnoticed—and without consequence—for much longer.
If Rand were to be the next Siam, she’d have to accept her place, accept the Zavesh she scorned in her eyes. Accept being what she was—a Farmer.
Staring at his daughters, Rand returning to Sheika’s aid and relieving Mikael a little of his anxiety, he felt almost charmed that he led his tribe, that everyone addressed him as Siam.
Our Elder Farmer Mikael, they said.
It meant that he could keep his children in the tribe rather than trading them to another for other children. He knew that it wasn’t right, that no one should have to give away their offspring, but he also knew that it was their Zavesh. He remembered once asking his father, the Siam before him, when his best friend Volsklov had been traded for two smaller girls; he’d told him that it’s what had always been done. Even in the time of Giants. It’s what kept the Farmers strong.
But keeping his children wasn’t his only privilege and he knew that he could abuse his position—take more water than he should, more food, do less work.
Only he didn’t. He put the tribe above himself on every occasion except where it concerned Rand and Sheika.
He continued to dig, cracking earth, pulling ore out.
With the tube already in his mouth, protruding just enough from the thin, sturdy rubber cover over his teeth to bite down on like all Farmers, Mikael didn’t have to open his mask to get water. Gently sucking, he squeezed the half-filled bag attached to his waist and felt the small bit of water rush into his mouth. Just enough to satisfy his thirst and to keep everything moist, to keep his teeth as healthy as possible; so that when he died and his tribe took his body to Orotho for trade, a higher price was paid.
He remembered when he was little how they just used to untie the pouches and pour the water into their mouths.
How much water did each person waste? He thought. Either from the precious drops that fell to the arid ground, or from sheer evaporation—their most precious resource frittered away. And worse than that, they’d unclasped their masks for a moment, loosening the metal hitches which held the heavy rubber over their nose and mouth and the glass shield, sewn into the mask, over their eyes; exposed their lips and noses to the cold.
Even now, there were a couple of older Farmers in the tribe, barely hanging on, who didn’t have a lower lip, or a nose, because they’d lived all their lives unclasping their masks, the wicked cold eating away at their flesh.
Perhaps that was his greatest gift, the fact that he worried about water so much. For it had been the first thing that he had done after his father’s body had been taken to Orotho for trade, the day that Mikael had become Siam—to develop the intra-suit pumping system.
Mikael couldn’t remember how long he’d toiled on it at night, after Storytime, but eventually he’d perfected the design, using bits of scrap rubber from suit patches to construct the water pouch and the tube, separating it from the system that reclaimed sweat and other waste. It was a thin rubber tube that ran on the outside of the Farmer’s suit, snaking it’s way from the rubber pouch to where the water was stored on the hip to the hood where it entered at the side of the neck, fused with the rubber of the outside shell, then around the near cheek and into the mouth. Even in the first days that it was used, a few Farmers, including Mikael, having their suits modified as test subjects, the water savings were immense.
Soon his idea had spread to all the tribes and Mikael’s name became revered, became whispered over fireside talks, side-by-side with discussions about the disappearances of the tribes, about declining Farmers, about the Reckoning. He was granting them all a little longer with their people, a little more life.
Perhaps, the other leaders wondered, Mikael is the one to lead us all.
Maybe he had become a little bit taller with each telling.
But the rumors hadn’t changed Mikael, because, if anything, he chose not to hear them. It was the one power that everyone had in a world where information was spread by the mouth—choosing not to listen.
He watched Rand for a moment, as she helped Sheika with her pouch, his littlest one uncertain how to be most efficient; most careful. If you squeezed too much and sucked too hard, you could force all the water from your pouch into your mouth, making you gag, wasting your day’s rations. It was a skill that took time to acquire. But the children seemed more apt than those who had been accustomed to the old way, changed only a few years ago. Rand had been there when the change was made, had just begun to work in the ore trenches. Sheika had still been under the rubber, unable to even walk.
They had both come from one of the other tribes as Mikael had yet to have any children of his own.
As Mikael lifted his pick over his shoulder and drove it into the hard, unyielding dirt, Rand threw her own pick down as Sheika struck another piece of ore.
His body tensed as he fought from going over to them. If his plan was to ever reach fruition, he must give Rand the opportunity to become a Siam. He couldn’t keep rushing to her aid.
Still, he was hyper-aware of the other Farmers and found himself trying anything to see if they were looking without making it too obvious.
And each time that he returned to watching his daughters between his own digging, he could see that they were saying something, arguing, hissing underneath their masks as the sudden gusts of wind whipped away their words.
Suddenly Rand grabbed her pick and headed off for another end of the plot. Sheika stood there in disbelief as Rand dug into the ground by herself leaving Sheika alone.
Mikael’s stomach twisted with anxiety.
Rand, he thought, get back to Sheika, she’s your charge. What will everyone else think of you?
But, no matter how much his worry about the present situation created images of the tribe throwing her out, he had little to worry about because pouches and water, plucking ore from the crumble of dirt, the slowly setting sun and the imminence of the storm—that’s what his tribe, all tribes thought about; not about Mikael, or Rand and Sheika’s deteriorating relationship. Instead, they focused upon the ground, upon the valley they’d been assigned to by Orotho.
Perhaps to anyone who wasn’t accustomed to it, who’d never been blinded by the swirling dirt or seen such uniformity of terrain where North, South, East, and West were all the same—a nothingness, a plain of dried, cracked dirt that stretched to the mountains, the steep grade of the valley sides, and ended—it might have seemed hopeless, that no matter what, no one could survive out here. That’s what set the tents off so much, though, set up in a circle, the smaller family dwellings ringed around the central communal tent, anchored into the hard ground with eight hand-length steel stakes.
Those tents seemed to defy all the odds.
And despite their flimsy appearance, the tents held steadfast in the wind, belying the impression of a tentative hold on their staked positions. The walls of each tent, five layers—rubber, thin metal, rubber, thin metal, rubber—were impervious to the elements, definitely able to withstand as hard a wind as anyone could remember.
But, even if a stake did come loose or a tent flap broke its seal, the tents were never farther away from the farming area than a 300-count sprint of the slowest person. For Mikael’s tribe that was Sheika, the youngest Farmer. So when they had finished mining that plot in that trench, they would move the tents a little, like some slow migration and someone would count to 300, just to make sure that Sheika could make it.
For Mikael and his people, for all the Farmers, the tents were their only salvation in the valleys where the wind could get so strong that it could pick a person up and pitch them from trench to trench.
Their only salvation against the dust.
None of the Farmers new where the dust came from or what it was. They just knew that it was different that the dirt that kicked up from picks striking the ground. It was somehow finer, softer, could penetrate even the tiniest breach in a suit.
It was red.
It was poison.
Once or twice in the history of a tribe, someone had been unable to get back to the tents when the call went out:
Storm! Storm! Storm!
There was no rescue, no going back. In the Farmer’s Zavesh, survival of the tribe was more important than the survival of a single member so it didn’t make sense to go back and try to rescue someone. They were left where they fell, sprawled between the trenches where they had tripped, foot stuck in a pick hole, ankle twisted.
Dead to the tribe.
The rest of the tribe would be huddled within the community tent, sealed behind the layers of rubber and metal, sealed within an enclosure that was checked every night and every morning for breaches, sealed against any possible dust, while the one that had fallen was left outside to deal with whatever Hezba had in store for them.
No running, no hiding, no trying to get to a tent.
No chance of infecting the rest of the tribe because the dust was poisonous as well. And if it managed to get inside a suit, like it always managed to, death came painfully, slowly, inevitably. For those that managed to survive, the winds following the storm picking their suits clean of the red dust, perhaps a few grains in the corner of the mask or within the cracks of their fingered gloves, they were ostracized from the rest in a tent far off. Despite the Farmer sensibilities and practicalities, they weren’t barbarians. But they didn’t show any undue mercy either. The infected was simply left to die, as humanely as possible. No extra water. No food. Just them and the Hezba. Their tent was recycled at Orotho for new rubber, a new tent constructed.
Life continued on.
Zavesh.
Hezba—a word without meaning, a word that symbolized a universe of change and evolution, of happenings and chance, of luck and the randomness of a chaotic world. A word where everything was equal in importance, in being able to affect the universe and the great gears of the cosmos.
Of course, there was hope, but it was only enough to push them on through another day. Their minds swam with survival, with reaction and precaution, preparation but never prediction. And at the back of everyone’s mind, a prickly paranoia about the possibility of a tiny hole, or a gradual rip, any break in the suit that could provide access to either cold or sun, there was no time for romance, or daydreaming, or love; or Rand and Sheika’s relationship. There was only time for farming, for standing in the trenches that ran from one side of the valley to the other—the place where the tips of those giant fingers gouged the hard soil—and begging the ground for one more chunk of ore; for running to the tents when the storm call went out.
Neither was there any time to question the workings of life—things were just done; things just happened; that was Hezba and the Farmer’s Zavesh was the code, the behavior, which allowed them to deal with it.
In fact, neither Mikael nor any other Siam knew what the Towns used the ore for. They only knew that each time they entered the boundaries of a governing town like Orotho, they needed to seek an allocation assignment, a place where they could farm. Only one tribe was permitted to farm a valley at one time. Mikael’s tribe had farmed under the shadow of Orotho for longer than Mikael could remember, perhaps even longer than his father had been Siam. It was unthinkable for a tribe to intrude upon each other’s allocation, other than to trade, but it did happen and it was usually settled between tribes—some price paid in flesh and water; the loss of a son or daughter without getting anything in return.
Even if there wasn’t some grand reason, every Farmer knew that they traded the ore for rubber, food, metal and supplies, but, most importantly for water, the one thing that kept them alive when the towns didn’t want them. Not that they wanted the towns either. The entire history of any Farmer tribe was in the valleys, etched on the worn, metal handles of the picks, spoken at Storytime. Where would that go if they moved into the towns? Sure, life was better there, under the protection of the roofs, from sun up to sun down, free from worry about the storm and the dust. But, and Mikael looked to Havaghesh, it was almost like the towners were caged, prevented from roaming the land because they’d lost the instincts that let the Farmers range freely outside.
Getting back to his work, Havaghesh burned into his mind, Mikael remembered the story of how his tribe had come to Orotho for their assignment; how they’d scaled up the cliff wall of Lokonza, the valley his tribe had farmed before Havaghesh, their tents and their gear wrapped in tight bundles, the tents rolled around the metal rods which supported the insides, and made the terrible trek to the next valley, eventually huddling at the edge until it was clear that no other tribe had claim on the land and then lowering gear and people to the valley floor by a series of long rubber straps. The story told how his tribe moved faster as the dawning sun broke the ridge because they needed to get to the floor and set up camp. Their paranoia about the storm, about the dust, pushed them to their limits.
That was the worst part of the paranoia: wondering when the storm would come, when the winds would blow but instead of dirt, it would bring the thin, hazy redness that swept over the valley ridges, covered the ground in a morbid tint; the poison.
The dust.
The story of migration told how the Ortho scientists came out to Lokonza with orders for a relocation, showing the Siam at the time the valley, the safest passage up and down—the trade route to the town—pointed out Havaghesh and told the Siam that the storm wouldn’t come until the sun touched the peak; but they couldn’t tell him when. So their tribe, so many years ago, had scrambled down the mountainside, parents helping children, moving as fast as they could along the steep grade, their rubber covered feet responsible for feeling the way down.
Mikael remembered all the times that he and his father had made that same trek up and down the cliff walls of Havaghesh, scaling the treacherous rocks, the cart full of ore waiting at the bottom, hooked to the straps of the pulley system by rubber harnesses, to be pulled up after they reached the top. Up and down, to Orotho and then back home with a few freshly filled bags of water and other things.
He wondered how many times he and Rand would do the same? It was almost time that she made her first trip—perhaps after a few more days had passed, giving the tribe more time to bulk up the ore haul. Because even one more bag of water would save them from having to make the trip again too soon; especially when it seemed that the ore was harder and harder to come by; especially when it meant traversing the Khali.
Mikael looked up at Rand and was partly glad that she seemed content for the moment working on her own plot. Her mood was so tentative lately and anything that placated her temper was welcomed. He wondered if a trip to Orotho wouldn’t return her sensibilities.
The world that Mikael knew, that he thought of even as he slammed his pick into the dirt, brought it up to his shoulder, threw it behind him, his hands sliding from top to bottom and then brought it over his head—all in one motion—was one of trade. Everything, from birth to death, could be bargained for.
So why not his daughter’s emotions? Her loyalty? Her perception of life?
He stopped farming again, the wind whipping at his suit, trying to budge the rubber that was buckled and tied, taut and molded to the skin beneath. Something didn’t seem right today. The rest of the tribe was working steadily, scattered amongst the trench, each of them assigned a square plot that, when all farmed, would meet together. Was it the yield? Was he worried because the past few months in the new valley had provided them with very little? No, he knew it wasn’t about his worry for water. Not this time. It was the weight of the air, as if it was pressing down on him, pushing him towards the hole he was digging.
He straightened his back, stretching, trying to get a sense of what was bothering him.
Looking towards the camp, he thought about Fallel again and that made everything even more uncertain. He knew he shouldn’t feel that way, that although Fallel was breaking the Zavesh, Hezba was Hezba. Everything happened the way it happened—regardless of how he felt about it. Still, a stranger from afar, a sled full of goods? It was as if Fallel’s silence left him without an identity; and that compromised everything.
Mulling on that, thinking that Fallel was like a void in their camp, a rip in the fabric of their reality, he thought it strange how he couldn’t hear anything, how, in the past few moments, the wind had picked up so much that he no longer heard the bite of the pick, the grunts and breathing; as if the wind was stealing all the sound, creating a hole for something to fill, something…
And suddenly, he knew what was bothering him. Even as he looked to the rim of the valley, to the sun that was still well above Havaghesh Mountain, he felt the rumble, heard the first boom, saw the pile of ore begin to fall apart, to jump with the anxiety of the ground.
It was early.
“Storm!” he yelled. Again, again. Unbuckling his whole mask, uncaring, unfeeling towards his own well being. Again, again, until every pick lay on the ground and every tribe member was running to the camp—over the hill and into a trench, over the hill and into the trench.
Why now, he wanted to know, why is it early?
And as he ushered Rand over the hill, picking up Sheika who kept sliding down as she tried to scramble over, he questioned his own decision not to move the camp yesterday, to wait until they’d moved to another trench.
The rumbling was louder now, almost deafening as he yelled at his daughter to run faster.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Crack.
And a rushing sound Mikael knew even without looking back although he did, feeling almost compelled to—a thin veil of redness tumbling over the trenches, closing, like some predator upon his helpless people as they just began to reach the safety of the camp.
Not just a storm.
The dust.
The poison.
So unlike the storms that the stories spoke about, that he told his tribe happened about before the reckoning—great gray and black clouds rolling over mountaintops, laden with water and the promise of life. No, the storm that pursued his tribe was the merciless trudge of poisonous dust. And in that moment, when he stood on the threshold of being hypnotized by the swirl of endless red and white shades he asked that question, the one he was never supposed to ask: why does life happen the way it happens?
Why the storm now?
If it hadn’t been for Sheika’s scream as he stumbled, letting her slip from his grasp around her waist, tumbling down the slope and into the trench towards the tents, he might never have looked away. His father had warned him just as he’d warned everyone else not to look at the storm. There was something hypnotic about the dust, about how it swirled and shook and rolled and rumbled; something so ominous and awesome that stories were told of people who’d turned back to look at it simply taking off their masks and giving up all hope of escaping.
He picked himself up and rushed down the slope, shoving Rand ahead of him as he lifted Sheika up again and carried her over the hill.
Everyone was inside but his daughters and himself, and he knew that if they didn’t get over the next couple of trenches and inside the main enclosure in a 20-count they’d lock him out. Siam or not, they couldn’t jeopardize the contamination of everything for just three people. They’d find another leader. And he’d expect them to.
It was more for his daughters’ sake than his own that he pushed Rand, that he pushed himself even though his lungs burned and his mouth was as dry as the dust rolled toward them. They needed to get inside. He told himself that it wasn’t love, but necessity. Rand was their next leader—the first woman who would lead any tribe. Perhaps in the realization that they weren’t going to make it, his true motivation became clear—some master plan that everyone has for life, or is part of, but refuses to acknowledge until faced with some fateful end.
Was that his, to create the most fundamental change to tribe life ever? Was it arrogant, was it selfish? Or was it just easier to dwell on that, than the possibility that what drove him was love?
Did he really think he could accept dying?
Perhaps if he had the energy he would have thrown Sheika and Rand to the camp, or turned around and fought the very dust that was so close to touching his legs as he topped the last hill. The worst part was that he’d seen people die from the red dust. In fact, of all the people he’d seen taken to the Factory, of all that he’d taken himself, only one hadn’t died from the red poison.
It was a slow and painful death. Everyone eventually got the disease, when they could no longer control the coughing, when the dust began to ring their mouths and noses, clogging every passage of air into the body. But with the protection of the rubber suits, improved generation upon generation, people didn’t die until much later when a seam broke or when a tear so insignificant let in just a tiny bit of the red poison. If he were to die out there now, he’d become a story, a tragedy whispered from tribe to tribe.
But part of him didn’t care. Because, and he was slowly beginning to become settled with it, he did have a master plan, a far reaching one that was so close to fruition. And if it came between a choice of his plan or his life, he’d gladly have given up the later.
As the dust imminently closed in, the only sound in his ears was the howl of its approach, the shrill whine of the wind challenging him to run harder, faster, for the-sake-of-his-daugthers-he-was-too-young-to-die-with-too-many-unfinished-ideas; to pick up speed.
Alfrez was at the door, his raspy voice pulling Mikael, fueling him with a final burst of tribe loyalty, to just make it within arms reach, that he’d do the rest.
In one final motion, realizing that without the help of his tribe, without his tribe, the plan, his very identity, was meaningless. With everything he had left, he grabbed Rand, who had fallen a few steps behind, and lunged at the door, throwing Sheika into Alfrez, stepping in himself after Alfrez had stepped away.
Even before he had crossed the threshold, he knew that he didn’t have a good enough grip on Rand’s hand. Because as he stopped inside, turning around to see Alfrez shutting the flaps, the heavy metal latch falling into place and the seal, a thick rubber role attached to the ceiling, unrolled in one fell swoop, he caught one final glimpse of his daughter, his master plan, laying in the dirt, doing what she had always been taught to do if she fell before a storm—wrap herself tightly into a small ball; provide no opportunities for the dust to penetrate.
But he also knew that it didn’t matter. It would find its way into her. It always did.
Tucking the emotions away, giving his tribe nothing else to talk about other than the loss of a valuable worker, he turned towards the central fire pit, Sheika in tow, her small hand cupped inside his own, her head careened back towards the door as if Rand might walk in at any moment.
In the next issue of Red Storm
Despite her best efforts, Rand couldn’t stay where she was. She grabbed her knees with her hands as hard as she could, tucked her chin against her chest and pushed against the ground, digging her heels in, trying to press herself into the hard, unforgiving dirt. But the wind simply pushed her, like a discarded piece of metal, across the plain and into a trench where she was slammed against the far hill. Pain and all, she remained in her tuck, knowing that somewhere behind her the clan was safe in the communal tent; and that alone gave her a sense of comfort.
They had all made it.
The wind howled around her. She could feel the dust pressing upon her and wondered how long it would be before she would be taken to the Factory.
Had anyone ever survived the storm outside? She wondered.
But more so, she wondered if they had if they were be discarded by the clan, left to the shadows of the tent, left to just count the time? She knew that those who got the disease were forced to eventually wear the mask inside, a smaller version which covered just the nose and mouth and tied around the back of the head.
Is that what they did? She thought. Silently counting their remaining days behind the mask?
She wondered if they jealously compared themselves to the others who danced after Storytime with an indignant air of normality.
About Red Storm
Red Storm is a serialized dystopian science-fiction story published by Dime Novel Publishing. Each volume of Red Storm is comprised of 23 issues (30-50 pages per issue) published bi-weekly for $.99 per issue (the first issue of each series is free). You can access additional issues of Red Storm and other Dime Novel Publishing series, from www.dimenovelpublishing.com.
About the Author
Jason Thibeault has been an aspiring/failed/re-born writer for over twenty years. He finished his first novel If This is Adventure...I Don't Need It when he was sixteen (thankfully unpublished). He wrote his second novel, Ordinary Magic (a magical realism novel set in Haiti), while in the Campus Wide Honors Program at the University of California, Irvine. Focusing on creative writing, he spent a lot of his time working with the faculty of the Graduate Writing program as well as at numerous writing conferences including Squaw Valley. He also helped edit, publish, and develop the UCI Journal of Fiction, Faultline.
After getting his undergraduate degree, Jason spent time abroad, working for HarperCollins London and trying, unsuccessfully, to publish numerous short stories and Ordinary Magic. Upon his return, he finished his formal writing education at California State University, Northridge and wrote his third novel, a hard sci-fi dystopian titled Red Dust Storm. He also founded the Phoenix Writing Project, a literary journal and local reading series featuring CSUN, local community, and celebrity writers. Jason has also taught numerous creative writing classes at various colleges and universities.
Taking a decade off from serious writing, Jason finally returned to fiction in 2007 focusing on young-adult. Paying attention to what his children were reading (from Harry Potter to Cirque du Freak to Percy Jackson) Jason began to understand that his imagination and writing style were ultimately suited to young adults and pre-teens. With less concern for the details of adult-oriented novel (and far more suspension of disbelief), Jason found quickly that he could generate young-adult fiction at a frighteningly fast pace.
Jason is currently the author of all of DimeNovel Publishing's current series (Barty the Kid, Jake: Vampire Hunter, Conjunction, Red Storm, BoxWorks Toys) and the creator of many of Dime Novel Publishing’s upcoming storylines. He lives in Chandler, AZ with his wife, four kids, and dog.