"Beats me. Came down for my morning swim and found it like this. It's like the water just disappeared or something. Them fish is all half dried up, too. You know you got your shirt on backwards?"
Bending down, Cam picked up a tiny skipjack and felt its brittle, dry skin, saw its chalky, sunken eyes. Fish were supposed to be slimy, that much he knew. This was all wrong.
CHAPTER 7.
"Where are my keys?" Scott frantically raced through the kitchen. At the table, Cobalt was playing with his rubber baby spoon. Rebecca was fiddling with the faucets at the sink and was clearly not listening to him. "Beck, my keys? You see 'em?"
"What? Oh, um, Cobe has them. He was playing with them."
"I'm thinking he had an accomplice," he said as he lifted the keys from Cobalt's lap. The baby reached up for them so Scott gave them a quick jiggle before putting them in his pocket.
"I thought you were gonna fix this?" Rebecca kept turning the spigot, getting no response.
"I tried. I'm gonna have to call a plumber. Look I gotta run, the guys at the site just called and something is up. They're all freaking out."
"What's up is I can't take a shower and Cobe needs formula and we're out of bottled water."
"I fed him, he'll survive until you can get to the store. Think about what I said, about Cam, okay?" Scott grabbed a granola bar from the cupboard and ran out the front door.
Frustrated with the plumbing, Rebecca sat down at the table next to Cobalt. The baby was content to stare back at her, finding something of interest in her eyes. She stuck her tongue out at him and smiled when he giggled. For some reason his giggle became a cry, and then a wail. She wanted to bang her head against the wall.
"Shh. Come on, Cobe, just five minutes without crying. Please?" He's probably just thirsty, she thought, God knew she was and Scott hadn't even made any coffee this morning. Inside the fridge she took out the carton of orange juice, scowled when she found it empty. The milk was also empty, as was the pitcher of iced tea she'd made a couple days ago, nothing but dried tea stuck to the sides. "Jesus, Scott, you gonna drink everything?"
Then she saw the beers. Tentatively, she picked one off the shelf and held it up to the light coming through the kitchen window.
The bottle was sealed, but it was empty.
They were all empty.
"What the hell-"
Ding.
It was the front door. Through the window she saw Cam's clunker in the driveway. Scott had told her Cam was interviewing for a job this morning, something about manual labor for Joe Renton's Dad. Leave it to him to goof off and forget about the appointment. Jesus, he was such a fuck up!
Anger welled up in her and she forgot all about the empty beer bottle as she stormed to the door, Cobalt still crying at the table. She flung the door wide and laid into him. "Thought you were getting a job today? Or did you go surfing?"
"Can't." He stepped inside without her permission. "Something's wrong with the ocean."
"Nothing's wrong with the ocean. Sometimes it's just calm."
"It ain't the waves. The water's all screwy. It's...it's disappearing or something. Why are you drinking a beer this early in the morning?"
She looked at the bottle in her hand and considered what he was telling her about the water disappearing, then remembered he should be at work and not playing environmentalist at the beach. "I'm not drinking. Scott must have drunk it and put it back."
"He did that in the trailer too. He got something against throwing bottles away?"
"You didn't answer my question. I thought you had an interview today?"
"I did, I missed it. But-"
"I can't believe this! You know, Scott spent all night trying to convince me to give you a second shot. He said you were getting a good job with benefits. But instead you're at the beach. Fuck!" The bottle made a hollow thunk as it hit him square in the chest. It fell to the floor, bounced once, and rolled toward the couch. She immediately felt bad for losing control, but the whole cheating thing kept her from apologizing.
"Okay, that fucking hurt," he said rubbing his chest. "But I don't think you understand, there's all these cops and guys in special suits at the beach. I'm telling you, I think someone put chemicals in the water or something. What if it's terrorists?"
Hadn't Scott said something about the guys at the dig site freaking out about something? Cam was lazy and rarely made smart decisions but he wasn't one to give into paranoia. Could there really be something going on?
No, she decided, Scott would have told her if it was something serious. His scientist friends always knew what was going on, and if there was a terrorist plot afoot they certainly wouldn't have asked him to come to work. And somebody would have called by now, even if it was just her aunt in Ohio.
"It ain't terrorists, Cam. Only terrorist you're about to see is me if Cobe doesn't get some water for his bottle so I can stop him from screaming all day."
"He's still crying?"
"He needs formula. Do me a favor, since you're not at work..." She let the remark linger until he rolled his eyes. "Go to the store and buy some gallons of water."
"Now?"
"Yes, now. Your son needs his bottle. Go."
"All right. Stop yelling. All you do is yell."
"All you do is screw up, you should be used to it."
"I came to check on you, least you could do-"
"I'm not afraid of the ocean, Cam, I'm afraid that Cobe is hungry. Please go get some fucking water. And fix your clothes. You look like a fucking mental patient." She slammed the door on him, leaned against the hard wood until she heard his car engine start and the car pull down the driveway.
She fought back tears.
CHAPTER 8.
It didn't take a scientist to see something was wrong at the site. People were frantically running about like they were covered in fire ants, shouting orders to everyone and no one in particular. Jogging past the trailers to the water pump that rose from the dusty ground, Scott saw Professor Martin wave him over.
"Hey, Jack," Scott said, drawing up into the confusion. It still felt a little strange to call his old teacher by his first name, but they were colleagues now and it would be silly to call him Mr. Martin. "What's the matter?"
"Scott, c'mere and look at this. We're positive we located the aquifer, right?"
"Yeah. Pretty sure."
A lanky researcher in a White Stripes t-shirt ran up and blocked their path. "Excuse me, Professor Martin?"
"Yes, Shaun?" Jack looked at the empty bottle of water in the man's hand.
The man was Shaun Bonn, a graduate student who was new to the crew. Scott knew little about him, other than he was an intelligent, driven guy, and could recite the lyrics to any song ever recorded. "Professor, sorry to interrupt, but someone dumped all the water out of the bottles in the fridges. Could have been that guy that stayed here last night? It's gonna be hot today..."
Scott knew he was referring to Cam. Six in the morning was an unrealistic thing to ask a guy like Cam to honor. Better to get it out there than hide it. "That was my brother-in-law. I'll make him buy new-"
"No, that's okay," Jack said. "Thanks, Shaun. I'll deal with it in a moment." He motioned for Scott to follow him to the pump once again.
"Really," Scott said, "Cam shouldn't have done that. He's going through a hard time and-"
"I don't think Cam did anything, Scott. Something is going on with the water here. Look at this and tell me what you think."
They'd arrived at the pump head, a cylindrical device about the size of an oil drum, with a long tube that ran down into the ground some three hundred feet. Yesterday there had been a modicum of moisture in the collection bin; there was nothing today. It could be that there wasn't much to begin with, but Scott was pretty sure the aquifer was there. The basin used to be filled with water in the late 1800s, and the La Dorma River ran just two miles south of here toward the Pacific.
"I don't get it," he said. "Where's the water?"
Jack took off his baseball hat, stared at the sun and said, "That's what I want to know."
CHAPTER 9.
The supermarket was quiet this early on a Monday morning, nothing but a handful of the elderly comparing notes on soup can labels. The downside was that there was only one checkout register open, and if Cam got stuck behind any of these one-foot-in-the-gravers, he knew he'd be here all day while they counted out all their coupons. He didn't care much for the elderly, the way they smelled like onions and rubber sheets, and shrank to the size of hobbits. They were stranger than babies.
The juice aisle seemed to be of particular interest to three of the nearly-dead. They stood in a tight knot talking to one of the stock boys, who was replying to them the way Cam talked to Cobalt.
"Must be a bad shipment, ma'am," he was saying. "See? Just a bad shipment. I don't know what to tell you. It's all like this."
The juices and other drinks on the shelf were empty, Cam saw.
"But I'm thirsty," pleaded a little old lady of at least eighty.
Shit, Cam was thirsty too. He hadn't eaten breakfast, and aside from a burrito and a very syrupy coke from a taco stand last night, he hadn't put anything into his system in about ten hours.
It was a moot point to ask the stockboy what was going on with the water, but he did it anyway.
"Why is everything empty?"
"Why is the sky blue? Why do birds fly? Why do I hate this frigging job more and more everyday? Enquiring minds want to know." The stockboy, his smart-ass remark hanging heavy in the air, finally threw his hands up and told everyone to wait while he got the manager.
"This one has a little juice in it." One of the old men lifted up a bottle of apple juice that was three quarters of the way empty. Looking around the shelf, Cam could see a few bottles still had liquid in them, but not a lot.
When the manager arrived, he looked exasperated. "Hi, folks, I wish I could tell you what was going on here, but unless someone broke in last night and decided to play a prank I have no answers for you. I've been on the phone with my distro people all morning. Give me a few hours to straighten it out and get some shipments in. Maybe try back around four. Okay?"
"How does someone empty all the liquid and then seal up every bottle again? Cam asked.
"Like I said," the manager replied, "give me some time to figure it out. In the meantime, here are some coupons for cereals." The elderly patrons took the coupons, happy with their deal, and went to find the Mueslix.
As the stockboy and manager headed to the storeroom, Cam overheard one of them say the water was off in the whole building.
No water, he thought. Hazmat teams at the beach, empty beer, no juice.
Damn it, he was getting pretty thirsty. He grabbed a bottle of water that had about two cups left in it, paid full price for it, and left.
Before he drove back to see Becky, he stopped at a series of convenience stores. Everyone told the same story: someone had dumped out all the juice, water, soda, milk, and any other liquid in the store. The odds that some hoodlums were sneaking around town emptying every container in every store were beyond unbelievable. Not to mention that none of the stores had working plumbing. No way hoodlums could pull that off without someone noticing; they'd have to mess with the pipes under the streets.
He managed to find three more bottles that had some water left in them. Once he was in the car, he poured all the water into one jug. Some of it spilled down the side, but he was able to transfer the brunt of it without much loss. It wasn't much, but combined it was about a half a gallon. He set the bottle down and wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, noticing how they left streaks of water on the leather. Immediately, it began to recede. Not from the outside edges in, like a puddle of water should, but from everywhere at once. It was gone in seconds. Too fast, Cam thought. Sure, it was a hot day, but years of surfing told him water didn't dry that quickly. Playing with the thought, he remembered the water he'd spilled down the outside of the jug. He wanted to watch it evaporate again. But when he rubbed his hand against the jug's exterior, it was dry. Bone dry. He licked his finger and rubbed it on the dash board. The saliva streak disappeared quickly. "You've got to be kidding me."
He snatched the naked lady pen he kept in the visor, picked up the jug and drew a line across it, marking the water level.
When he pulled into the driveway at Becky's house five minutes later, the line sat about a quarter inch above the water. "What the fuck?"
It was disappearing.
Fuck knocking, he thought as he crashed through the front door calling for Becky. "Beck! Beck!"
"What? Jesus, don't yell, Cobe just stopped crying." She came out of the bathroom brushing her teeth. From the look of her rat-nest hair she hadn't taken a shower yet, and Cam had a sneaking suspicion why.
"You using water?" he asked her, already knowing the answer.
"No. Pipes are broken, remember?" She pointed to the gallon of water in his hand. "What the hell is that? You drank it already!"
"No I didn't. Remember when I said the ocean was all screwy. Well, watch this." He put the jug down on the table and grabbed a pen from the counter, marked off the water line again.
"Cam, I have shit I need to do. All I asked was that you get some water. A full bottle and you come back-"
She was going to drive him mad if she didn't just stop bitching for a second and listen to him. Okay, he'd cheated on her, he got it, but this was a little more serious than adultery in the 2000s. This was catastrophic, this was something out of the movies, this was nucking futs to the nth degree. Frustrated and past the point of concern, he grabbed her shoulders and forcibly brought her to the water. "Becky, you can hit me in a second for that move, but before you do...Watch. The. Fucking. Water. Please!"
That shut her up, but boy did she look pissed. No doubt she was going to take him up on his offer of pugilism, probably throw another beer bottle at him. Still, she bent over and looked at the water, eager to tell him he was an idiot.
"Keep watching," he said, "just wait."
Finally, the toothbrush fell from her mouth and landed on the floor, sending bits of toothpaste all over Cam's shorts. "How'd you do that?" she asked. "How'd you make the line move?"
"The line didn't move. The water is disappearing."
For the next couple minutes Becky was silent, perhaps trying to figure out if this was a trick. She looked at the faucet again, then at the fridge, and understanding sank in. "But how? How can it just go away?"
"No fucking clue," Cam responded. "But I know this much, seeing drunk people all the time, dehydrated and puking...you need water to live."
She quickly caught the meaning of his words, looked at him and whispered, "Oh, my God. Cobe."