Cameron Stracher - The Water Wars

“It started with the water,” said our father. “But now it’s about so many different things.”

Will squinted, his left eye nearly closed, the green in his iris like a sliver of emerald. I knew he was thinking about the war, and the army, and what awaited him next year. I was too. Everyone spent a year in the military, then five years afterward on active reserve. We had to protect Illinowa—guard the earth and sky. But the Rails seemed a long way from Basin, and I wondered who was really protecting whom.

A klaxon rang outside signaling the last hour before the grid shut down. I could hear the car outside waiting, the low humming of its motor like the grid itself. Kai regarded our father coolly. He suddenly didn’t look anything like a boy. His face was planed by shadows, and his fine hair hung over his eyes. “The government is keeping secrets from you,” he said.

“What kind of secrets?” our father asked.

“The kind they don’t want you to know.”

“Well, then, it’s probably better we don’t.”

Our father’s smile was a tight line, but Kai didn’t smile at all. “The river is the beginning,” he said. “If they can’t control it, we can start again.”

A new beginning, I thought. Without hunger, thirst, or war. A river could be like a time machine: Step into the same place and it was already changed. But I wondered if there could ever be enough water to start again.

Kai watched me from across the table, his eyes lidded low, pupils barely visible. His skin glowed, and his lips gleamed moistly. When he spoke, his voice was soft and low. “Someday,” he said softly to me, “I’ll take you there.”

After that Will and I became obsessed with Kai’s river. But no matter how many times we asked, cajoled, or flattered him, Kai wouldn’t say anything else. His father had sworn him to silence, and as much as he wanted to impress us, he feared his father more.

But that didn’t stop us from trying.

One morning when Kai met us at the bus stop, Will said, “Kai, let’s go to the river today!”

Kai said, “You can’t just pick up and walk there.”

So we knew it was beyond the boundaries of Arch.

Another day I said, “I wish we could take a boat down that river.”

And Kai said, “It’s not a river for boating.”

So we knew the river would be shallow and fast.

In this way we learned things without Kai even knowing. We learned, for example, that the river traversed the border with the Republic of Minnesota—territory thick with pirates. We learned that men had tried to find the river for years but had given up, because they thought it was a myth. We learned that water from the river began in secret places where no man could reach, in high mountain crags and deep valleys protected by violent winds.

But we could not convince Kai to tell us the location.

A month passed. Our mother got no better. Our father seemed more tired and haggard than before. The days got shorter but no cooler. Merchants draped yellow, gold, and red banners across their windows to remind us of autumn, but they couldn’t disguise the monochromatic sameness of the earth and sky. The wind blew harder, and no dry shower could remove the grit permanently embedded beneath our nails and stuck in our skin itself.

Each morning I saw Kai at the bus stop when I went to school, and he was waiting there when Will and I returned. He seemed bored and restless but refused to go to school, because he didn’t have to. “They don’t teach you anything there,” he said. “Nothing worth knowing.”

I disagreed. I had learned a lot in school—about butterflies and sand worms; about drainage and absorption; about how water is made of gases that float in the air.

“If you don’t go to school, they’ll send you straight to the army,” I said.

“Will’s going to the army,” Kai countered.

At least Will’s service was only for twelve months. The kids who dropped out of school ended up in the army for years—or worse. Without a job on the outside, or a sponsor, they had nothing to leave for and few reasons for the army to release them.

“Anyway, I have a job. I work for my father,” Kai reminded me.

It had been two months since I met him, and I still hadn’t seen Kai do any work for his father. But he insisted he was there when his father needed him, and I didn’t know enough about the drilling business to recognize if that was just an excuse.

We were walking in the direction of my building, the only ones on the road for miles. In the distance we could see the collapsed facade of a shopping mall: gaping bricks and metal rebar. There weren’t enough people to keep buying things, and most businesses had been shuttered or moved back to the central core. Scavengers had picked over the most valuable materials, and the rest of the building was slowly falling into a heap. That was what it looked like all across Arch—and across the entire republic, as far as I could tell. People gathered in close proximity to one another, and anything unprotected was left to criminals and the elements.

Everything fell apart. That was the only constant.

In nine months I would lose my brother to the army. I couldn’t bear thinking about what would happen once he left home. He promised he would be fine, but I knew boys left all the time and were scarred forever. If anything happened to Will, I didn’t know if I could go on.

And what of Kai?

When I thought of him, I felt a sudden flush creep up my neck. I cast a sidelong glance at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t look anything like the dark and muscular heroes in the romance screens I sometimes read. Besides, I was too young for a boyfriend—that’s what my parents had said—even though plenty of girls my age were pairing up. There was one boy last year who had followed me around, but he was creepy and left me alone when Will threatened to beat him up. With Kai, however, I grew more flustered as we walked farther and didn’t hear when he asked if he could come over.

“If you’d like,” I said after he repeated his question. “My father should be home,” I added, in case he got the wrong idea.

We entered the grounds of our complex, passing the empty guard station and the useless and crumbling concrete barriers. Long ago these buildings had been built for retirees who needed security and extra care. But these days few people lived long enough to retire, and there was no money for their care anyway. The guards disappeared first, followed by the upkeep and maintenance. Now we patched our own walls and prayed that the electric wiring would not fail.

Kai climbed the steps ahead of me, his calves outlined against the thin fabric of his trousers. He rang the buzzer, and my father welcomed us. He offered us a snack of crackers and soy cheese, which Kai was happy to accept. We ate in the living room and played board games. The wi-screen glowed softly in the background, playing its constant stream of news, entertainment, and information. We ignored it. It was too early for homework, and I never had much anyway. Will returned, and the three of us swapped stories while Will tried to extract more information about the river.

Soon this became our regular schedule. Our father would leave the door unlocked with a plate of cheese and crackers at the table. Most of the time he would greet us in the kitchen, but sometimes he would let us be. Kai and I grew comfortable with his absence, and I almost forgot the tension of having a boy in my home without a chaperone. At the end of every day, when the black limousine arrived outside our building, Kai seemed reluctant to leave. More than once our father took pity and invited him to dinner. Then we would prolong our game-playing or storytelling until it was finally time for me to do my homework. When Kai was long gone, I’d take a dry shower, set out my clothes for the morning, and read from my mother’s collection of Great Books of the Twentieth Century : a ten-volume set with torn paper pages, cracked bindings, and scribbled pen markings—the only bound paper volume in our home.