For the hundredth time since he’d awoken, Cody swore at the dead tablet in his hands. The thing might as well have been a slab of stone. He checked the cord running between it and the small, solar-powered charging bank he’d been using for weeks to keep it running.


    The cord was fine. Just as fine as the last time he’d checked. The connections were free of grit and dust; they didn’t wobble. He knew that the cord wasn’t really the problem but couldn’t help hoping against hope that he might discover some flaw there that he’d missed. He refused to let himself admit that the tablet itself might be broken.


    “It’s probably the screen,” A small voice piped up behind him. He jumped at the sound and whirled to find Anji had crept up behind him. The girl was slight for her age and not entirely over her initial fear of him, but she was also curious as a cat.


    Cody’s frown deepened. “It can’t be the screen.” His voice made it clear he didn’t so much believe that as want to will it into truth.


    “Well… It looks broken.” Anji shrugged. She didn’t know much about technology, having been raised in a place far enough north so as to be almost detached from the civilized world. Her dad had, when she was very young, still had a cache of electronics and tech devices that he’d brought north with him, but they’d for the most part been defunct beyond repair by the time she was barely learning to read.


    They had stopped to shelter from the midday heat in a dilapidated old shack that Robert told them appeared to have been once used as a fire outpost. There was, luckily, still a relatively intact smaller cement building behind it that offered decent shade.


    Atlas and Robert were standing behind the building, shading their eyes against the glare of the sun. There was a broken off fire hydrant standing beside them, and they had been initially hopeful that there might be some still functioning water source nearby. An old pipe, an aquifer. Something. No such luck, though.


    Atlas sighed and let the hand shading her brow fall. Sweat that had beaded where her hand met her forehead was immediately wicked away by the dry air. She surveyed the land that spread out before them.


    Aside from the shade, the lookout station also offered an excellent vantage point. It was posted on a hill that swept up from the road and then dropped off beyond the station in a sudden series of small craggy hills. Grey-brown underbrush, bleached and worn tree trunks, and pale dirt stretched out as far as they could see in every direction.


    “Why the hell did they need a fire lookout here? There’s nothing here to burn.” Robert’s mouth quirked into a grimace. His eyes looked pained. “This would have been all trees and farm fields, Attie. Back then, the green stretched all the way west to the timber line in the mountains.” He pointed towards the sun, towards the west. “The desert would have ended two hundred miles to the south.”


    Atlas couldn’t see anything too far off through the dusty air, but she knew based on what he had told her that there was a mountain range that way. A big one. The highway they were following was supposed to lead directly to those mountains, eventually. And to the city at their base.


    “I don’t see any water,” Atlas said simply. She turned away from the sweeping vista. Robert nodded, swallowing. His eyes were tight with worry.


    “We need to get closer to the mountains. There’s bound to be some up there. Once we’ve taken care of that we’ll be in a better position to decide what to do about the… About what Cody told us.”


    “So we’ll keep heading west, then.” Atlas glanced once more at the view. It felt suddenly as if the desolate landscape loomed over them. Something massive and insurmountable. She wondered again why they had left their home for this stinking, seemingly endless wasteland. And again thought bitterly that the fate they would have met in the north may have been preferable to this.


    A wheezing cough behind them signaled Cody’s arrival on the cement deck behind them. Atlas scowled at him. “It helps if you cover your damn face,” she muttered. He looked abashed and pulled a handkerchief up over his nose and mouth.


    “I think,” he said, words muffled slightly by the cloth. “That’s a lake bed.” He pointed northwest, towards a slightly paler patch of land that began just where the dusty air ate up the visibility. Robert and Atlas both squinted towards where he was pointing.


    “What makes you so sure?” Robert asked.


    “Those rocks don’t look like they got there naturally, and they seem to be bordering something. My best guess is it was a lake at some point. Maybe a reservoir.”


    Atlas swore she could feel her mouth dry up at the word. God, she was thirsty. “What rocks?” She asked, licking her lips.


    “The-” He lifted his hand to point again, confusion wrinkling his brow, then seemed to realize something. “Ah,” he said, bringing his pointing hand to his face instead. “I have lenses,” he tapped a finger to below his right eye. “I can see farther with them.”


    “Lenses?” Atlas asked. She glanced sideways at Robert and saw that he didn’t look confused at all.


    “Artificial lenses,” Robert said, as if that explained everything. Atlas frowned. “So,” he turned his attention fully on Cody now. “You see a lake?”


    “A lake bed.”


    “Artificial lenses?!” Atlas asked, gesturing in confusion at her uncle.


    The men ignored her for the moment, looking intently at each other. “I just see rocks. It looks like a lake bed to me. Something big and man made and not a field or a town.”


    “It would mean leaving the road,” Robert murmured. He gazed thoughtfully out towards where Cody had pointed.


    Cody nodded. “But it also might mean water.”


    Atlas threw her hands up in frustration and went back inside to check on Anji, muttering under her breath. Aana was just waking up from a nap and had started making a pot of tea. She smiled as Atlas stepped inside. Anji was leaning against a wall, carefully stacking rocks in a precarious-looking tower.


    “Bored, are we?” Atlas asked.


    Anji scowled. “Dad said I’m not allowed to go out until the sun starts to set. So, this is what I’ve been reduced to.” She pointedly poked at a rock towards the bottom of the tower and sent them all crashing down. One skittered across the floor and into the tea kettle with a ringing thud.


    “What’s an artificial lens, Aana?” Atlas picked up the stone that had bounced off the kettle and chucked it back towards where her cousin was already starting on another rock tower.


    “Huh?” The old woman asked. “Oh, the eye implants?” She looked distant, like she was lost in her own thoughts. “People… They… There are implants that go beyond cosmetic. They started as replacements for glasses, contact lenses…” She trailed off, smiling as she saw the clear confusion on her granddaughter’s face. Anji, too, had perked up and turned to hear. “I sometimes forget how much you don’t know.”


    “I know what glasses and contacts are, Aana,” Atlas corrected. “My dad wore glasses. But Cody said he has artificial lenses, not contacts.” Aana just continued to smile knowingly.


    “Yes… Well... In the South, once gene editing had become widely available, it was somewhat of a mark of poverty to have less than perfect vision. Wearing glasses was a sign that your parents either weren’t able to afford to or chose not to ‘fix’ those perceived problems before birth.


    Those kids grew up… They of course didn’t want to be hindered by whatever judgements people might make. Someone made artificial lenses that instead of just leveling the playing field, took it further and gave advantage over even the people who had all the genetic advantages. Nobody could look down on anyone who had sight beyond the limit of even perfect human vision.


    Of course, people being people, soon it became a trend. It spread to other alterations. Perfect outsides and insides had already been achieved so why not improve upon perfection?” Aana dropped a wink at Anji, who had abandoned her rocks completely in order to eavesdrop. “Kind of like superpowers.”


    “So Cody is a superhero!” Anji exclaimed. Atlas chuckled.


    “He just has good vision, Anj. Doesn’t make him superman.”


    “Actually, my hearing and sense of smell is great, too,” Cody said from the doorway. “Not so much on the super strength or laser vision, though.” He was grinning at Anji, who snorted a laugh.


    Robert stepped up beside him, looking grim. The mood in the room immediately shifted.


    “Son?” Aana asked cautiously.


    “Someone’s coming,” he said. “A group.”


    Cody’s smile slid off his face and everyone turned to look at Aana. She wiped her hands on her lap and stood up. “Hide Anji,” she said. Robert scooped his daughter up like she was still a toddler, and for once she didn’t protest.


    They disappeared together back out the door, and Atlas felt adrenaline pouring into her system in a dizzying wave. “Well, super-vision, can you go take a look?” She shoved Cody in the back, harder than she’d intended, and followed him out onto the deck. They stuck close to the pitted cement walls of the building, trying to avoid being seen.


    The deck wrapped around the back half before giving way to sand and stone. The shade disappeared as they came to the front, the side that faced the road. Atlas squinted as her eyes adjusted but Cody didn’t seem to be affected by the light change at all.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    The dust cloud was all he could see at first. It drifted up from the road in a wide plume, billowing around the first of three vehicles that sped towards them. Cody could only make out the first car really, the other two were swallowed almost entirely in dust. They were coming fast, though.


    “Three cars,” he said to Atlas. “Maybe they’ll just pass on by?” The look she gave him in response was withering. He doubted it, too. Theirs was the only relatively intact building they had spotted in days, and out here every scrap of useable shade was worth its volume in water.


    Fear writhing in her belly, Atlas gave Cody’s shirt a tug. “Come on, let’s get back inside.”


    Robert was just coming around to meet them, his face red and damp with sweat. He pulled his own makeshift mask up so that only his eyes, dark with fear, were visible. He ushered them all into the back corner of the little building, tucking their scant belongings behind them and dropping to a crouch to peer out of the glassless window.


    The sound of tires approaching on the uneven pavement was the only herald of their arrival. These cars’ engines weren’t the noisy, fuel-burning type like Cody’s bike had been. They were deathly silent. Electric, and well-maintained by the sound of it. Cars of the wealthy.


    Atlas stayed in the corner, heart galloping wildly in her chest, trying not to notice that Aana had once again palmed her old scraping knife. Her small fingers looked deceptively frail against the antler handle.


    “Music,” Cody whispered at her side. Atlas stared at him.


    “What?” She hissed back. He had enough time to repeat the word in a louder voice and she enough time to pin him with a glare before she heard it herself: A snatch of music, drifting in through the empty window over the hissing of tires. It grew louder, loud enough for her to catch a thrumming backbeat and the words for you before it faded out again just as quickly.


    Cody raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the window. “Music,” he repeated again. Robert’s shoulders visibly relaxed.


    “They didn’t even slow down,” he said. His voice was shaky with relief.


    “Hm.” Aana grunted, turning her knife over and slipping it back into her bag. “Well. That’s twice we’ve gotten extremely lucky. Let’s not push it. I think we’d better head out.”


    “What’s that you said about leaving the road?” Atlas asked her uncle, smiling wryly.


    “Yeah, suddenly doesn’t sound so bad,” he agreed, standing up. “I’m going to go get Anji.”


    When he returned with her she was clutching her backpack and her eyes were red and swollen with tears. Cody offered to take her bag and then pulled a face at her as she handed it over, earning a flash of shy smile from the girl. Atlas watched the exchange, prickly with unease.


    Cody had taken to Anji with a speed that would have been, under any other circumstance, endearing. He had an easy way with her that spoke of experience with children. It was an ease that didn’t come naturally to Atlas, and she thought part of her distrust of him might be due to envy.


    “Siblings,” Aana whispered, tapping her on the shoulder. “I bet he has younger siblings.”


    That her grandmother had also noted and wasn’t worried about Cody and Anji’s natural rapport provided Atlas some comfort. She took a deep breath, willing herself to let go of some of the tension in her body. “Yeah… Siblings.”


    Cody grinned, turning to them. “Spot on, actually. I’ve got a kid brother.”


    Atlas scowled again, disliking that he seemed able to hear everything as well as see it. Aana laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. “Let’s go, granddaughter.”


    They all shuffled out of the cement building in a row, with Atlas at point. Aana stayed close behind her, then Robert, with Cody walking backwards and saying things to Anji that elicited peals of laughter.


    It took them until sunset to reach the rocks, and about half that time to realize it was actually the remains of an old dam. The eroded pile that was all that remained of the rock wall stretched out in both directions along it, lining a smaller abandoned road to the right and curving around to the left in a series of jagged inlets.


    There was the usual ghosts of long forgotten infrastructure alongside that road; various poles and scrap bits of metal and wiring. At the intersection of byroad and main road, a shred of rubber that may once have belonged to a tire leaned precariously out over a crevasse where earthquake or time had cracked deep into the blacktop.


    About halfway down that smaller road a small steel bridge, rusted out almost entirely, led out to a stilted tower. At one point there would have been water that necessitated those stilts, but now it just looked odd. It seemed the slightest gust of wind might blow the whole thing over.


    They all gazed somberly out over the lakebed when they got to the point where the rocks began sloping down to the bottom of the lakebed. It was empty, though there were some muddy patches where scant greenery grew. It looked jarring against the dusty landscape, a slash of green amid the monochromatic browns and grays. But, that there were plants at all suggested some kind of water down there.


    Robert heaved a sigh, pulling his mask down briefly to wipe a hand over his sunburned face. “Might as well go check it out, I suppose.” He started picking his way down the rocks, kicking up dust with each footfall. Wordlessly, the others followed.


    It wasn’t steep, thankfully, and the rocks were so packed with dust and grit and hardened clay between them that footing wasn’t too precarious, either. Occasionally a loose rock would go skittering down after an ill-placed footfall, but it wasn’t often.


    The stones eventually gave way to a layer of silt and clay, and then steel-reinforced concrete near where the ground began to level back out. Anji and Atlas were both wheezing audibly by the time the downward scramble finally ended. Anji crouched down to catch her breath, going to remove her mask but stopping at a glare from her father.


    They passed around the two remaining water bladders, every one of them fighting the almost primal urge to suck down every last drop. Their sips were careful, measured. Just enough to wet chapped lips and dampen dry tongues. Enough to barely sate the ache of thirst that was snaking down each throat.


    “So,” Cody said conversationally as they passed the water around one last time. He leaned back, propped up on one lanky arm, looking somehow comfortable on the rocky ground. “Do you all trust me enough now to tell me where you’re headed?”


    His companions all looked at each other. Unspoken words passed between Atlas and Aana and then the older woman nodded solemnly. It wasn’t that they trusted him, per se, Atlas knew. It was just that if they were all being perfectly honest they really had no reason to keep anything from him. At this point, if he meant harm, he’d have been well done with it.


    “We,” Atlas began, heaving a long sigh. “We are headed South… We got removed from our home. They told us we could find Sanctuary in the South if the world outside our colony wasn’t…” She hesitated, searching for the correct word. “Hospitable.”


    Cody frowned. “And where’s home?”


    “Hudson,” Aana answered. Her gaze locked on Cody with such intensity that his blue eyes widened slightly. “Far North. Even the bay colonies were farther South than we ever traveled. The military came from there and pushed us out. Requisitioning the land for carbon capture plants, they said.”


    “Hudson,” Cody repeated. He looked North as if he could see all the way to their home. “Carbon capture…”


    “Hudson,” Aana agreed. “Though Canada didn’t claim jurisdiction when push came to shove, did they?” It was not really a question. She finally took her eyes from Cody’s face, turning them skyward.


    “They came with tanks,” Atlas continued. She said it matter-of-factly. “They offered us the chance to go South to a sanctuary city, or to stay and go into their camps. We were turned out with three other families and made it as far as the bay colonies. But…” She trailed off, her face darkening with the memory. “They were alrighty in resource wars. We weren’t exactly welcome.”


    “They killed everyone,” Anji said simply. “They killed my mom. Attie’s dad. My brother. All of our cousins. Our three last dogs.” Her voice cracked on the last word. Atlas automatically started stroking Anji’s dark hair in a practiced soothing motion.


    “So, we continued South. They gave us coordinates to the Sanctuary city, and we’ve been traveling ever since. Once we get there we will… Try to rebuild our life.” Atlas attempted a weak imitation of Aana’s stoic strength but her voice quavered. She didn’t like thinking about the future. Hope was dangerous.


    Cody looked at her. “Shit,” he swore, dragging his legs up to hug his knees. “I know it doesn’t quite cover it but, I’m so sorry.” There was sincere, heartfelt sympathy in his features.


    Atlas just shrugged. “It’s alright,” she said. “Or at least it will be. One step at a time. First we really need to find some more water.”


    Aana nodded, standing with a stretch. She dug some protein bars out of one of their four bags and handed them out to everyone. “Eat,” she commanded. “I’m going to see if those plants mean water.” She nodded towards the shock of green in the middle of the lake bed.


    Cody almost protested. It didn’t feel right to him to have the oldest amongst them do the most physical work, but when he surveyed their little ragtag party he swallowed the words. Aana was clearly struggling less than the rest of them. He himself was trembling and weak from hunger, and Robert’s sunburn had only gotten worse over the course of the afternoon.


    “And what’s your story?” Atlas demanded after Aana walked off into the gathering gloom. She took a bite of her bar and raised her eyebrows expectantly.


    Cody grinned. His entire countenance shifted in a moment, adopting a swagger that belied his gaunt face. A dimple appeared in his right cheek. “I’m just trying to find my brother,” he said.


    “Oh yeah?” Atlas wasn’t convinced. “And what’s with the tablet?”


    The confidence in his eyes flickered. “It’s my only way to reach him,” he said quietly. This, at least, sounded like the god’s honest truth.


    “Not running from anything?” Atlas took another bite. “Or anyone?”


    She was shrewd. Cody committed the fact to memory and rolled his shoulders. “I’m looking for sanctuary just like you are. For myself and for my brother.” He started in on his own bar.


    He ate slowly, watching Aana’s retreating silhouette as true darkness began to fall. Beside him, Robert took out a tube of some kind of ointment and smeared it all over his burned skin before settling down to eat. His bites were reluctant enough that Cody wondered distantly if the man was feeling well.


    Anji, after scarfing her bar down in what seemed like one gulp, curled up against Atlas’s chest and stared up at the starless sky. It was darker out here than in the city, but the dust scrim blocked everything out entirely.


    They sat through dusk in amicable silence, exhausted from the day’s travel. The sun pulled the temperature down with it, and even the stinging dust that the wind kicked up didn’t take away from the relief of the cooling air. One by one they pulled their masks up against the swirling dust as the breeze became a steady, gritty wind.


    Aana’s footsteps signaled her return about ten minutes later. The deepening darkness hid her features from them as she approached, but she was shaking her head. “No luck,” she said. “There is some water there, under the mud, but the algae would likely kill us if we dug any out. We-” Sh was cut off by a sudden deafening crack, and she collapsed in a heap with the word still on her lips.


    There was a moment of protracted silence where everyone seemed frozen in place. Before Atlas could even begin to register what had happened, there was another sharp crack and then a whining buzz near her left ear. Behind her, dust exploded upwards as if someone had thrown a rock.


    Once, twice more came the sound. Then the whirring noise, and another soft pop of dust shooting up from the ground. Tension and confusion had them all frozen in place. By the fourth crack, reality snapped back to normal speed, and Atlas realized with dawning horror what the noise was.


    They were being shot at.


    She opened her mouth to scream but Cody clamped a hand over her mouth and shoved her hard to the ground. At her side Anji shrieked as Robert threw himself over her, both of them tumbling to the ground in yet another cloud of dust.


    Two more shots echoed across the lakebed in rapid succession. Something stung her shoulder. Then her leg. Whoever was shooting at them continued to miss. But just barely.


    She writhed under Cody’s arms, trying desperately to buck him off. What was this? Had he tricked them? Led them into a trap?


    “Be quiet,” Cody hissed almost inaudibly into her ear. His eyes were wide with panic. In the diminishing light she could see, despite hardly knowing the man, that his fear was genuine.


    The next time the sound came, he flinched and loosened the hand that was clamped against Atlas’s mouth. She took the opportunity to whip her head around to look for Aana again.


    In the last scrap of daylight, she met her grandmother’s eyes across the few yards of dusty ground that separated them. Aana’s familiar dark eyes were open, and staring. Staring, but not seeing.


    Ignoring Cody’s warning, Atlas began to scream.