"Water! Water!" they all screamed. It might as well have been "Kill them! Kill them!" as far as Cam was concerned.
He grabbed his mini crowbar and raised it above his head, his stomach erupting in a ball of tightness, ready to strike Dick down. Ready to kill? He hoped not. But something instinctual rose up inside him and he knew that if it came down to himself or these bastards, it was going to be himself. They sure as hell didn't look like they wanted to talk.
"Cam!" Scott yelled as the door flung wide.
Like a single creature with multiple arms, legs, and heads, the crowd rushed in and threw Scott to the floor, everyone swinging their tools and sticks at him. They smothered him like a giant blanket, began pounding him with anything hard. Somewhere under the pile, Scott grunted and reeled in pain as each blow hit home.
Cam was on them in a heartbeat, swinging his crowbar at the blonde woman who sat on top of the pile. Her head split wide and she toppled to the floor. No time to think about what he was doing, though. He aimed for a large man in a Padres shirt next, but was slammed sideways as Dick's fist, like a battering ram, connected with the side of his head.
The jug fell from his arms and slid under the nearby desk.
"Get the water!" Dick yelled.
The crowd must have thought Scott still had it, because none of them rushed to the desk; they kept wailing on their prey.
"Cam!" came Scott's muffled cry. His arm found its way out from under the pile of people. It was drenched in blood, the fingers purple from being stepped on. His next scream was cut short with a gurgle.
Wooziness passed like a wave through Cam as he tried to right himself. A fog overtook him and he slumped to the ground again. Concussion, he thought. Not good. They'd kill him if he didn't get up.
Dick was clawing under the desk for the water, like a rat tearing into a trash bag. No, thought Cam, that water was for Cobe and Becky, not these murderers. His baby was going to die without it.
Dick had the water jug now and was yanking the top off of it. Cam wanted to rush the man, to swing that crowbar into his eyes, but his head hurt too much to fight. Where was the crowbar anyway? It had flown from his hands when Dick punched him. He found it in the hands of a crazed man sitting on top of Scott. "Give us the water, you prick," the man said, and brought the crowbar down on Scott's face, which was briefly exposed under the pile of people. Something cracked, and blood shot from the bridge of Scott's nose before he disappeared under the pile again.
Got to save him, thought Cam, got to hurry. They're killing him, just like Jack. Even thinking hurt his head. Dick must have been holding something when he hit him. Something hard, because he definitely had a concussion.
Near the desk, Dick was pouring the water into his mouth, gulping it down so fast he was practically choking on it. The pile of punching arms and kicking legs was oblivious to it, and within seconds Dick had finished the whole jug by himself, spilling some of it onto his clothes.
Wasting it.
Cam felt his fists ball up, felt rage run down his spine. He wanted Dick dead. The man had already killed Jack, and now he was sealing Cobe's fate as well. But Scott was still under the pile and he had to save him, so Dick would have to wait. He tried to stand up again, and this time fought his way through the wooziness. First thing he did was kick out at the pile of people beating on Scott. The blow was weak, but his foot hit one man in the jaw and the man yelped and rolled off.
"Scott?" he yelled. "Get off him, you fuckers!" His brother-in-law was completely buried under the pile, just bits and pieces of him sticking out. One man swung a pipe, another swung a piece of metal that looked like it was torn off the trailer's side. All of them brought their weapons down on Scott.
"Scott?" No answer.
His head pounding and his vision blurry, Cam leapt on the pile and tried to pull the people off. He hooked his arms into the fray and yanked people back, put one man in a headlock before punching the man in the mouth. Every move hurt his head as if he was taking blows himself. Maybe he was; he was in so much pain it was hard to tell. One thing he did know: the pile was too strong to fight by himself. He was crying now, yelling for them to let Scott up, pleading for the life of his brother-in-law, telling them Scott didn't have any water. The people were desperate, thirsty, panicked. They kept swinging their weapons.
Someone grabbed Cam and locked him in a half nelson, immobilizing him, forcing him to watch as they beat Scott to death.
"Cam," came Scott's voice, feeble and distant. "Cam."
"Scott! Stopping hitting him, you fucks! Dick has the water! Dick has it!"
Nobody seemed to hear. For some reason they had singled Scott out as the man with the water, and they were still looking for it.
Scott's hand fell outward from under the pile again. In his palm lay the car keys, and Cam knew what it meant. He wouldn't let that happen. He couldn't. He threw his head back and slammed it into the nose of the man holding him. A flash of white erupted behind his own eyes, but the move freed him. The man fell away, but got right back up with a busted nose and went for Cam again. Cam leapt away, caught a glimpse of Scott's face under the pile-eyes swollen shut, nose broken, teeth missing.
Mr. Half-Nelson suddenly put a hand to his face and fell down.
Delayed reaction.
Dick was licking the inside of the jug, sitting under the table like a child who'd just stolen a cookie.
"Cam...go...water...go," whispered Scott, right before a steel-toed boot caught him in the temple and burst his eyeball from the socket. Blood spread out beneath the heaving pile of pounding fists and feet. Scott's other eye rolled back in his head.
There was a scream that filled the trailer now; the scream of someone who'd just lost a friend and family member.
Nobody paid it much mind.
Mouth wide in anguish, Cam looked up at the lone jar of water on the shelves, the one Scott had left out of mercy, turned back and saw Dick looking at it as well. Shit, he'd drawn attention to it.
"Got more, huh?" Dick threw the empty jug aside and rushed the closet.
Cam tackled him, sending him to the floor, elbowed him in the head. Leaping over the pile, he grabbed the keys from Scott's hand before snatching the jar of water (which did not have a lid) from the shelf. He ran around the pile of people killing his brother-in-law and threw open the door.
Outside, the air kissed through his sweat-stained shirt and cooled him a bit, but it was still sweltering. He saw the ground around the observation well was already dry, and knew the water in the jar would soon be gone. The truck was unlocked when he reached it, a blessing since he wasn't sure which key unlocked it. He threw the keys in the ignition just as Dick and the crowd (many of them covered in Scott's blood) came rushing out at him.
He didn't think about what he did next.
Flooring the gas, he drove straight at them, one hand on the wheel, the other holding the jar of water. As crazy as the crowd was, they didn't want to die, and dove out of the way.
Except for one, the blonde girl he'd hit with the crowbar, The truck bounced up over her body and spit her out the back where she went rolling into a cloud of dust.
When he was on the highway again, numbed by what he'd just done, he stuck a finger in the jar of water and licked it, felt his body shake with the need for more. No, it was for Cobe; he'd already had his jarful.
He drove in a daze for a little while, his head still reeling from the blow, his ears still ringing from screaming.
How would he tell Becky what had happened? She'd been through so much, anything more was just unfair. First her parents, and then her brother. Not to mention he'd cheated on her and broken her heart. How could he look her in the eyes and tell her Scott was dead, that he couldn't save him?
Part of him wanted to die right then and there as well. It would be easier than seeing the horror in her eyes when she found out. Easier than waiting for dehydration to take his life away, painful cramp by painful cramp. The other part of him knew he had to get this water home to her and Cobe before it disappeared. Paternal instinct, they called it. Or so he assumed.
Time was short. He had spilled some already, and the rest was down to about a half a cup.
Not enough to sustain life, but enough to prolong it.
The cramps in his gut came back stronger than ever, compounded by the guilt of not being able to save Scott. Eventually he put the jar between his legs and held his gut with his free arm.
At some point he turned the radio on, but all it played was news reports about the ocean receding. No one had an answer. This was followed by reports of people dying, mostly elderly, but some babies as well.
He cried the whole way home; his tears were thin and painful.
CHAPTER 17.
The air conditioning in the house was no longer working. Becky didn't know much about that kind of thing but she was pretty sure the AC unit used some kind of liquid coolant, so that explained it. ...Anything with water in it. Ironically, sweat beaded on her upper lip, pooled under her arms, and ran down from her hair. Why did some waters evaporate faster than others? Why couldn't AC coolant be one of the slow ones?
An insatiable thirst was growing in her belly, and her head was starting to pound. It felt like the onset of a bad hangover. What the hell was going to happen to them, to her baby, if they didn't find water soon?
Scott would think of something though, he always did. He was the brains of the family, the scientist, the only one good with math. Scott said all the world's problems could be solved with science. As soon as he got back from finding Jack, he'd straighten everything out. He had to, right? Otherwise...no, she wouldn't dwell on it.
She looked at her watch, checked it against the wall clock to make sure it was correct. They'd been gone for almost two hours. Was that good or bad? She didn't know.
Turning away from the air conditioner, she went back over to the television where Cobalt lay on his blanket watching a children's DVD. She had turned the news off when they started showing dead bodies in the streets.
So quick, she had thought. Only two days without water and already people were dying. Some stations showed scenes from overseas, where the situation was the same, but most focused on America. All of them were talking about the ocean. For some reason, people were drinking the seawater. Or they had been, anyway...you had to walk out pretty far to get to the water now.
How does the ocean evaporate, she thought. It's just not possible. Only some kind of higher power could take away all the water on earth.
Instinctively, she thought of the crucifix hanging in the kitchen, the one that belonged to her mother. It took all of her strength not to go in there, yank it off the wall and throw it in the garbage.
"Sometimes God has to test our strength," her mother had told her when she was young. This was more than testing strength, though, this was impending death.
Still, she believed God was benevolent, and she wouldn't give in to the temptation to believe otherwise. Science might save them, but faith couldn't hurt.
She reached out and stroked her son's head, marveling at how soft his wisps of hair were. That's when she noticed his cranium looked odd, misshapen somehow. On closer inspection she saw that the baby's fontanel-the soft spot-was sunken in.
Panic seized her and she scooped him up. "Cobe!"
The baby came awake crying, startled from sleep. She hated to set him off, but better she deal with his crying than find out he wasn't breathing; there were worse things than a baby's cry, and one of them most certainly was a baby's eternal silence. As she bounced him to calm him down, she played with his skin, shocked at how stretchy it had become. Dehydration was taking him away from her.
The smell hit her next, something beyond just a baby with a dirty diaper, something biologically foul. He has diarrhea, she realized, laying him down again so she could get a clean diaper.
Before she could get up, though, the door flew open and Cam rushed in, his face awash in blood, his shirt torn and stained red. In his hand he carried something that looked like- "Water," he said, racing to her side. "Take a small drink. Hurry, before it goes away."
"There's hardly any," she said.
"Just do it. Then get Cobe's bottle."
She tipped the jar to her lips and felt the water soak into her dry tongue, slide down her throat and land like heaven in her stomach. Not too much, she thought, fighting back the urge to swallow it all; Cobe needed it more than her.
Unscrewing the lid of the baby's bottle, she poured the water in.
"Careful," Cam said. "Don't spill any."
"I can do it. Look out."
Picking up Cobe again, she thrust the bottle in his mouth and tipped the water toward the nipple. "Come on, Cobe, drink."
The baby wasn't drinking.
"Shit!" she screamed.
"Squeeze it," Cam said, "Push the water in his mouth."
"It's not that kind of bottle. It's hard plastic."
"Then take the damn top of and pour it in."
"Just let me do it!"
Cam backed off, his arm up in an okay-you-do-it gesture. She shouldn't have yelled, she realized, but she knew she had to do this herself, tense as it was making her. She was just about to take Cam's advice, dumb as it was, and squeeze the hard plastic bottle when Cobe finally began sucking on the nipple. Elation and relief flooded through her as the baby sucked in the water. Had Cam not held her and told her to relax, she wouldn't have even noticed she was shaking.
"What's wrong with his head?" Cam asked.
It wasn't that she didn't know the answer, she just didn't want to talk about it, and so said nothing.
When the water was gone, she changed the baby's diaper, saw there was hardly any waste. Her head spun, realizing he must be sick, not with diarrhea, but with dehydration and constipation. How she wanted to take him away from this slow torture. Dealing with diaper rash was bad enough, but watching him wither away...she would open her own veins and pour her blood into the baby's mouth if it would help.
It didn't even feel real when, for the first time that day, Cobe cooed and reached up toward her. When it sank in that he was happy, she cried and rocked him on the couch, ignoring the fact she could barely make tears. He didn't look any different than he had a few minutes ago, though. His skin was still stretchy, his pigment slightly sallow, his head still oddly shaped.
Had Cam not shown up when he did, the situation could be worse.
If it could get worse.
"Hey, Cam...?"Across the room, Cam looked up from the recliner where he sat, still covered in blood. She was about to thank him for the water, but instead said, "Where the hell is Scott?"
DAY FOUR.
CHAPTER 18.
There were no birds singing as Cam rolled off the couch, stumbled into the kitchen, and stopped at the sink. In fact there was little sound at all; no cars, no planes, no dogs barking or cats meowing. Nothing. His eyes were itchy and his stomach was thick with a dull ache. The concussion was keeping him dizzy, and he had to hold onto the edge of the counter to stay upright. It was worse now than it was last night.
"Come on, baby," he said, turning the faucet on.
The pipes knocked as air rushed through them, breathing a cloud of nothingness into the sink.
Still no water.
Oh God how the thirst was killing him.
Holding onto the counter, he walked over to the small television that sat near the microwave and turned it on. As the picture faded into view, he stepped over the broken pieces of the crucifix that lay on the floor, and made his way to the kitchen table. He sat down and looked at the jagged bit of Christ's head that lay near his foot. Becky had smashed it yesterday after he told her what had happened to Scott.
Since then, he hadn't seen her. She'd been locked in her room. No attempt to go in and console her had been successful. Even worse, she had left Cobalt in the living room. That was out of sorts for her. She never left Cobe for this long.
The baby had cried all night, sleeping on the floor next to the couch. When Cam opened his eyes this morning he could see his son's skin was drier, cracking at the joints, and the baby's eyes were sunken.
On the television, the first channel that swam into view showed only a station identification logo. The clock above the stove said it was past noon. (It wasn't rare for him to sleep this late, but rare enough for Becky.) How long had it been since he'd had any real liquid? How long since the newscasters had had any?