The Water Wars - Cameron Stracher [23]
As Will calculated it, we could ride north on our pedicycles at about fifteen kilometers an hour. It should be no more than three hours to reach the well. If we were wrong, and Kai wasn’t there, we could return before our father knew we had gone. If there was any trouble, we had the camera and could send the holos by wireless. The RGs could come within an hour. At least that was the plan.
But we made two mistakes. The first was that we assumed our pedicycles could withstand the grueling ride over forty-two kilometers of broken road. The cycles were meant for short trips—the market, school, a friend’s apartment complex. They were not meant for dirt and gravel roads that had not been repaired in years and were littered with old car parts, scrap metal, rubber, and glass. We made it about fourteen kilometers before I got my first flat. Will fixed the tire with the repair kit and some compressed air, but the second flat could not be repaired. The metal rim had separated from the tire, and no amount of pounding and banging would straighten it out. We had to abandon the cycle on the side of the road, and I climbed behind Will on his cycle.
The extra weight, however, soon exhausted Will. He couldn’t pedal for both of us, and we stopped frequently so he could catch his breath. Then he got a flat too and ran out of compressed air while fixing it. Now his front tire was half-inflated, and that made pedaling even more difficult. I offered to trade places, but I didn’t have the strength to cycle more than a kilometer. It took us six hours instead of three to reach the site of the old well. Neither of us said anything about how long it would take to get back.
Our second mistake was to think that there might be water at a place so desiccated and lost. The well had been drained years ago, and the coating of dust everywhere quickly told us there had been few visitors. Cracked and parched earth was all that remained where there had once been soft loamy soil. No water had flowed since at least the Great Panic, if not before.
Kai was not here and probably never had been. Whatever the notations meant in his father’s notebook, the well wasn’t related to the kidnapping. Our lengthy trip had been foolish—and needlessly risky. As it was, darkness was coming, and we had no way to reach our father without a wireless signal. It was all my fault for suggesting we come here in the first place.
“They must have taken him farther north,” said Will. His voice was barely a whisper.
“Maybe. Wherever they went, they’ve got a twenty-hour head start.”
“Don’t even think about it. We’ll never catch them. Not with the pedicycle.”
“But Will!”
He shook his head. “The only way to help them is to turn ourselves in to the Guard.”
“They’ll lock us up.”
“It’s our only chance.”
Then my eye caught it: the faintest glimmer, a slight twinkle in the sun that I might not have seen if the light hadn’t caught it in just the right way.
I picked up the syringe and showed it to Will.
“He was here,” I said.
“It’s just an old needle.”
“No. It’s a backup for his injector. He told me. If his pencil runs out, he can always use a syringe and a bottle. He was here.”
Will rolled the needle between thumb and forefinger like a valuable piece of silver. “There must be tracks,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, encouraging him.
“But which way?”
He walked backward slowly, his eyes fixed on the ground, scanning every inch of surface. I followed, trying to force my vision to see through the sand and dirt. If someone had been here, the wind would have covered the tracks quickly. And although the well looked untouched, half a day’s sandstorm would make anything look ancient.
At first the growl in the distance sounded like a storm. It came with very little warning. But as it got closer, the growl grew deeper, like a wild animal. Will straightened and tensed beside me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Trucks,” he said. “Lots of them.”
“Could it be Kai?”
Our view of the horizon was restricted, because the ground sloped away from where we stood. Several low-slung buildings also blocked our sight