In Expectation of Hope

How many times had she dug this hole? And how many more until she found something viable?

She wondered how much longer she had to search before Magna would accept her telling that it was no use to look any longer.

Katish dropped the water pail at her feet. The pail—made from the scraps of old homes and the solid metal strips of broken down cars and lawn mower blades—hit the ground with a miniature explosion. A plume of acid dust exploded in the air as its weight crushed down on the rain starved earth.

It was a rash action. Her lungs screamed and eyes teared as the acid-sand seared into her flesh. Katish coughed and rubbed the tears out of her eyes with the back of her dirty hand. She could not afford to go blind today. Not before she found it. Or died looking for it.

If she came back empty handed, Magna would send her right back out again and then she would surely die.

Katish set the blade of her trowel to the scorched earth, shoulders bearing the brunt of the naked sun. Once upon a time, people had loved that glowing orange orb in the sky. Loved to soak up its rays on leisure days. But not now. Not after the last shred of the atmospheric shell had burned up during the End.

As she picked through the solid earth, Katish considered the End. She allowed herself to wonder if it had all gone according to plan, although of course it hadn’t.

Decades ago, in the midst of a global financial disaster, American financiers and businessmen--the top 1% of the 1%--decided to take fortune into their own hands. They had determined that the only and best way left to make a profit was to foster dependency. To be the sole proprietors in their respective fields. No oil in the Middle east or Russia meant consumers would have to turn to Seattle and Texas’s multibranched oil monopoly VN Energy. No metal from Canada—they would go to NYS Installers.

A cabal of 10 of the world’s richest men in oil, steel, energy, finance and politics gathered 5 of the world’s best ill-intentioned scientists and built a bomb. One intended be set in strategic locations and knock out the competition in select countries.

What it really did was kill everything around it, including its creators, hiding out thousands of miles away in Chicago, Illinois.

If it had stopped there, that would have been bad enough. But the cowards who built the bomb wanted to ensure there would be no reprisals, at least not during their lifetimes.

So they created a secondary measure. The finished project had all the characteristics of an atomic bomb with a secondary blast of SARS that seeped deep into the earth. The resulting acid rain, saturated with biological terror, killed billions in that first year alone, and many more were rendered sterile from drinking the water.

Those fortunate enough to have a family raised children already sick, poisoned by their mothers’ blood and most of them never made it to adulthood. Forty was old, in this new world.

Clink, clink, clink….the trowel skid off the hard dry sand. Sweat pooled around her collar bone and gushed down her arms. It was dangerous to lose so much, to be out in the sun this long. Already, Katish could feel the radiation sizzling against her skin.

Clean water was rare and almost impossible to find, except in the deserts like this, beneath the hulking mass of some large mountain or rock formation. There was no way she would find what she needed here.

There was no water here, just as there was no future for them back at camp. Magna should have never sent her out here. It was a waste of what very little life she probably had left.

Katish’s shoulders burned, her eyes still stung from the acid dust—would she really go blind? The hole was four feet deep—and still the earth was dry as bone.

She had to scout another place. She would check back on her return to see if it was still dry.

She clutched the fiery heart-shaped locket in her free hand and stumbled closer to the rock face. There had to be something somewhere. Her thumb rubbed against the locket’s smooth, bulbous surface, praying for hope.

She could have gone to the lake and collected the water there. After several decades, the pond that formed of melted Artic ice was only half as polluted as the others.

Not today.

Her thoughts turned to the two new women who had stumbled their way into camp last month. They were both in their last weeks of pregnancy, both having lost their families to the elements or to rival survivalists—wild people who roamed the earth scavenging for anything they could use to survive on.

Katish did not hold out any hope for the woman who came from the East. That had been the epicenter of the blast. It was a miracle she’d been able to conceive at all, but she would likely not survive the birth. Her face bore the tell-tale scars of acid rain, her hair had been almost gone when she was taken in—now it was, and fully so.

The woman from the Low Country was not free herself of scarring or trace signs of radiation poisoning. But she was big boned and muscular. Her child would be the first they’d had in six years.

Fresh water could be the difference between life and death for mother and child. Magna told Katish she had to find it. She would have gone herself had the poison in the air not rendered her incapable of walking long distances. She spent the entirety of her days in a chair, teaching survival skills to the people who were silly enough to listen, and encouraging the others to hold out hope for better days.

What was the point? They would never survive to see those days, as Katish had told her once before. She remembered the heartbreak in the old woman’s eyes at her little emotional act of rebellion.

Magna had taken off the heart shaped necklace and given it to her. It was a gift, she said, from someone who she’d once thought hated her. A peace offering from someone who was never really her enemy. And--according to Magna--it was a sign that anything can happen, as long as a person is alive.

“You have to hold on to hope, Katish.”

Katish dropped to her knees beside the rock face. To hope for water out here was too much. She knew as well as anyone except Magna that there wasn’t any. She wanted this over with. She wanted to go home.

She dug so fast--too fast. Perhaps the number of attempts, and not the time spent with them, would help convince the old woman of that.

Her sweaty palms slipped and spliced open over the blade of the trowel. She hissed, and gripped the handle tightly, interlocking the fingers of both hands above the hilt. She dug, and dug, and dug and dug like a mad woman.

The tiny, burning heart singed her flesh. Today, more than any other day, she wanted to take it off and be rid of it. She had scars from the acid rain it caught, burns from the acrid sun that turned it into a burning ember. She sighed, hid it under her shirt and grit her teeth against the searing pain.

Something was different about the dirt here. Katish reached in deep with the trowel, withdrawing more sand…and deep black earth.

Yes! Her heart leapt, Katish worked with renewed vigor, the muscles in her arms ached like they would tear free of the bone at any moment. She forced herself to keep going, going, going, until the first glitter of water bubbled up through the earth. She sat back and sighed, dragging the leaden pail closer to the hole and took a red leather strip and some wire from it.

“Cheers, Magna. Perhaps you’re really not crazy after all.”

She pushed herself to her feet, found a stick and pounded it into the earth near the new well. They could make it bigger later. Right now all she was worried about was getting the water pail filled and marking the spot where she’d filled it.

“Kat!” A high pitched, muffled voice touched her ears. Katish jumped and looked around. Was she going delirious? Her eyes scoured the red landscape; there was nothing there.

She crouched down to take a sip of the fresh water filling the hole.

“Kat!” The voice was closer now. And now when she looked up, Katish could see the tiny form of Ash Higgins, running towards her. The little redhead stumbled to a stop, gasping for air in front of Katish.

“You found it!” she exclaimed, staring at the water with wide eyes.

“Why are you here?” Katish demanded, winding a strip of fabric around her bloodied hand.

“You need to come back. I brought another one, just in case.

“The babies are here—”

“Both of them?”

“Yes.” Ash was smiling so big Katish thought her face might split.

“What of the mothers?”

“They need water. But they’ve survived. You have to see the child though.”

Try as she might, she could not get Ash to tell her anything more about the newborn. Katish stumbled back to camp with her, her nerves tight and temples pounding.

Ash walked quickly. She led Katish through the line of flimsy tents to the immigrant space. There, laying amongst shards of old sweaters and torn coverings, lay the woman Katish had given up for dead.

She was alive and speaking with Magna, who held a tightly wound bundle in her arms. At the sound of Katish and Ash’s approach, they quieted and looked towards them in greeting.

There was something in Magna’s eyes that Katish rarely saw. Something complacent, almost smug. As Ash spoon fed the new mother clean water, Magna held out her arms to Katish, offering her the tiny bundle they held.

Katish’s breath caught. She didn’t believe it.

The child was perfect. Her fat, glowing face free of scars or signs of illness. Her little hands were crunched into tight fists in front of her. At Katish’s touch, the little human started to wail, and her cries were as forceful and as loud as anything she had ever heard.

She glanced up to meet Magna’s stare. The old woman pointed to her chest, where the locket hid and mouthed the word: "Hope." She smiled, and it reminded her of Ash's smile at the well.

Katish’s eyes burned again, but not from the sand. Gingerly, cooing to calm the wailing child, she removed the necklace and wound it gently around the child’s wrist.

In the future, this child would need a reminder, just as she had. But just now this little being held all the hope Katish never knew she needed.