The Last Rain

“I can't remember the last time it rained. Was I thirteen? Fifteen? It was a long time ago anyway. No one knows exactly when it was because it just kind of happened. We were in a bad drought when some people realised it hadn't actually rained in years. Most of those people are probably dead now, so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.”

The traveller stared through dusty goggles at the words on the dried up scrap of parchment. It was everything she had hoped to find on her journey, and had only stumbled on it by accident. Shee had walked all day, nearing exhaustion herself, when she decided to take a rest and dribble a few drops of precious water into her mouth. She lowered the heavy tank of water from her back, resting it on the yellow dirt against a rock. She opened the tank and pulled out a cloth, wringing out most of the water before tilting her head back and squeezing the last few drops from the cloth. When she righted herself she saw it in the dirt, a square edge of some obviously manufactured item. It stood out against the terrain sculpted smooth by decades of natural processes. She peered closer and found it to be a leather-bound notebook, as dry and desiccated as the surrounding environment. It was mostly buried in the dust, with just the corner poking out. Careful not to break it, the traveller used a brush to sweep away most of the dirt, freeing the time capsule from its dusty prison. She decided to camp for the night and read the volume in the hopes it would tell the story she was sent for.

Much later, after she had set up her camp and removed her protective outerwear, the traveller lay in her tent and carefully thumbed through the pages. The opening paragraph was grim enough, but she found herself almost crying as she continued through the words.

“It became apparent when small towns with comparatively little water reservoirs were begging for shipments of water from the larger centres. Everyone had of course already run out of water in their tanks, but this was nothing new. We had seen droughts before. But this wasn't any ordinary drought. Gradually, more and more towns joined the list, bigger towns with flowing rivers that simply dried up. Eventually it stopped raining on the coast, even in the north, where annual cyclones normally ensured a supply of water for the dry season.”

“The cities initially sent out great trucks filled with water to supply the smaller country towns, and they filled the highways with their gleaming round trailers. Eventually it became apparent that the cities too would dry up, and the trucks sat abandoned and empty on the highway. The country people moved to the city and entire towns died, towns that were once proud, with murals dedicated to country life and its associated hardships. Those towns simply ceased to exist.”

“Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, they had too much rain. Their towns disappeared too, as a result of being swept away. Massive floods persisted and the people prayed for the rain to stop just as we had prayed that it would return. It was as though all the moisture from the southern hemisphere was being sucked away and dumped in the north. I don't know what ended up happening there as we lost contact long ago/”

“The price of water of course skyrocketed, and the poor were the first to feel the pain. An industry sprang up around contraptions used to extract water from everything, the air, the ground, even meat. Mostly they were snake oil salesmen, and the buyers paid dearly for any scrap of hope they could find. Most perished. People even started using the contraptions to get water from human remains, and society became a dangerous place. Desperate people were stealing and murdering, anything to get even a measly amount of water. The worst days were when you had to butcher your own deceased loved one, just to extract enough water to live another day.”

“Eventually even the rich were not immune, and there was simply no water of any kind for anyone, and they began to perish too. Some good that money did them, what is a measly few months when we all die the same in the end anyway?”

“They had a name for us, those who were young enough to remember the better times but also have our lives so greatly affected by the hard times. They called us the Children of Disaster. Some said that we would bounce back better, like those who had previously escaped poverty, famine or war. Those people created a better life for their children, and society prospered. But this feels different. My wife remains barren, both unwilling and terrified to fall pregnant; needing to support another person is simply too much when you struggle to support yourself. Perhaps she couldn't even if she wanted to. The baby would likely die, either from thirst or by some horrific fate at the hands of kidnappers. Babies are their favourite.”

The traveller stopped reading at this point, set the volume down and peeked out of the tent. It was still light out, and a faint breeze picked clouds of dust into mini tornadoes that wheeled off over the horizon. She felt at her neck for the only personal possession she travelled with. It was a heart shaped locket, and the writer's heartbreaking story made her feel keenly the distance between himself and her own wife. However, she also felt glad, as she realised that with this discovery, this was the furthest point she would be away from her. She had found what she was sent for and every step from this place would be a step closer to family, to safety, to water. The rains had returned to the coast enough to support a small gaggle of survivors. Perhaps the writer was right, humanity can bounce back stronger, but only if they remembered the lessons of the past.

The traveller returned to the tent with a renewed sense of purpose. She had to return with this book, she had to persist, survive and deliver the evidence that she had been sent to find. She grasped the locket again and sat down to finish reading the writer's account.

“Inevitably humanity became a primal collection of individuals fighting for survival. You had to be vigilant at every step, because you didn't know who was lying in wait to drain you of every last drop you had. We continued on for a while, clinging to any and every scrap of hope we could find, and trusting no one. Storm clouds gathered on the horizon regularly, but without fail they revealed themselves to be nothing more than clouds of dust kicked up by the winds. Still, every time they gathered we allowed ourselves a flicker of hope that they may contain water.”

“It may seem easy to think that the easiest option would be to end it all ourselves, save us from being consistently devastated. Many people did choose that option, and the roads were littered for a time with their bodies. But eventually they too became a potential source of water and suddenly there were no bodies anywhere. Even in death we had no desire to resign to that fate, so we continued on. Eventually I continued on alone.”

“I know I can't continue forever, and with every step I feel like my days are numbered. I am growing weaker every day, and though I had for a while subsisted on water gathered from the evaporation of plants overnight, those plants are dying and even that water source is increasingly unfruitful. The fact remains that there is no one place in the entire country that has water, and I have travelled the majority of it. We squandered water when we had it and by the time we realised, it was far too late.”

“As I think on it now, I am certain that I was fifteen when it last rained. I was working a terrible job in some fast food chain, I don't even remember the name, and it doesn't matter. We had been in drought for years, but there were still odd showers that greened the grass and extended the dams supply for a few more weeks. I heard a metallic splat sound, and I grinned because for a moment it seemed so foreign. I quickly realised it was a raindrop falling onto my car. I had no idea it was the beginning of the last rainfall. It's weird the things you remember. As I look out of my tent now I can see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon. Probably dust, but I need to keep holding onto that hope.”

The traveller closed the notebook with tears in her eyes. She briefly thumbed through the remaining pages but they were all empty. She wondered at the fate of the writer, and held a small hope that the storm clouds truly did contain rain. She pulled a plastic sleeve from her pack and sealed the book within it, replacing it securely in the bag. She peeked out of the tent, eyes squinting against the dust. The sun was beginning to set, and it was time for her to sleep. Tomorrow she would set off on the journey home. She closed the tent, zipping it securely against the environment as the storm clouds gathered in the distance.