The Dust Pirates: Betrayal
S3E3 • Cli-fi • Post-apocalyptic • Dark
The Dust Pirates is part of my cli-fi series There Is Hope about life on a planet devastated by climate change and the things that give humans hope.
This is episode #10. You can find an overview of all the episodes here.
Previously 👇
The Dust Pirates: Betrayal
During the rainmaking festival, a young boy rescues a teenage girl from danger, but her secret sets him on a perilous journey.
My grandfather, Acalan Ahuic, was born on a climate refugee boat sailing the Atlantic Ocean. The boat and the water are included in his name: acalan means narrow rowing boat, and ahuic means goddess of running waters, rivers and streams. His parents, two young engineers specializing in indigenous water management systems, were some of the last mexihcah to leave their homeland. There was no going north, as the Canadian Colonies had already closed their borders to climate refugees. So there was nothing left but to hop on a boat, sail over the Atlantic, deliver a baby in the storm, cross the treacherous Iberian desert and arrive in the even more treacherous Dust Bowl of Central Europe. It was hot, but you could survive most months of the year. Dust as far as the eyes could see. And climate refugees. The underbelly of the rich and cool colonies up north.
Over the years, the Dust Bowl turned into the Dust Road, the underground trading route and the only source of income for the Dust Tribes. Life was rough, but people cared about each other. They called us Dust Pirates. But you see, that was technically incorrect. The Dust Pirates own the Dust Road. But only a few people know who they are and where they live. We, the tribes, only know the legends. Nobody ever meets a Dust Pirate and lives to tell the story. That’s what they say.
The night of the rainmaking dance, my grandfather sent us away with my father to deliver Shia’s date palm seedling. We walked away from the safety of our tribe and into the unknown, three lonely shadows creeping across the dust bowl concealed by darkness. We walked and walked until sunrise. And then we walked some more until it was too hot and we set our tents.
That night was the last time I saw my grandfather.
***
The snow squeaks and crunches under his shoes. His father is ahead of him, walking fast on the glacier trail path, and he tries to keep up with him. Crunch, crunch, crunch and squeak, squeak, squeak he runs up the trail path, but the more he hurries, the further ahead his father appears to be. Suddenly, the sun starts going down fast, and his father summons him. They need to go back home. So he runs, runs, runs down the now thawing trail, jumping over pools of glacier blue water. Rivers of icy water start to run fast all around him, and soon, he is surrounded by blue water flowing from all directions, and he has nowhere to go. He tries to return, but the trail is almost gone. Only a few patches of snow are left, and he jumps from patch to patch, trying to reach his father, who is floating on a fast-melting ice shelf. Then, the glacier river swells, and a huge wave crashes into his father, swallowing him whole.
Sanse wakes up with his heart pounding. He touches his face, realizing it’s dripping wet. His whole body is a pool of sweat. Next to him, Shia is asleep in her cooling bag. The air in the small tent is hot and depleted of oxygen. For an instant, he is back in his dream, breathing the fresh air of the glaciers, enjoying their coolness. Then, the memory of his father swallowed by water punches him in the gut. He hadn’t had this nightmare in a long time. It was a bad omen. Careful not to wake Shia, he unzips the tent. A wave of burning hot air hits him, and he averts his face, glancing back at the sweaty tent. When he steps out into the furnace air the heat lashes at him, whipping his skin with fire.
‘Que paso?’ Fully suited, his father rummages through the electric cart.
‘Tengo sed.’ Sanse trips and tries to find something to balance himself.
‘You think water falls from the sky?’
‘Sometimes,’ Sanse says, trying to grab his father’s arm.
‘And you think you’ve got a right to it, don’t you?’ his father says, shaking him off. Sanse lands on his butt in the hot burning sand.
‘Do you see any water? You think there’s a pyramid at every corner for you to drink whenever you’re thirsty? This is the real Dust Bowl, muchacho! Here, we never drink! Especially not if you’re stupid enough to give your body’s water to the dust!’ His father points to the vast mass of hot, parched and rugged earth surrounding them. The air is moving as if it were on fire. On the hazy horizon, Sanse can see the contours of a ghost city, eyeless and toothless skyscrapers caked in dust and baking in the sun. Never go to the ghost cities, his grandfather had warned him.
‘Suit up and wake the girl. We’re leaving,’ his father says.
‘Where are we going?’ Sanse unzips the tent. His father points a finger at the ghost city.
***
Click-clack. Click-clack. A loose wheel in his father’s electric cart hops over the uneven ground. They walk and walk but the ghost city doesn’t seem to get any closer. They stop once to drink water and chew on dry seaweed. Above, the burning sun looks like a giant orange koi fish in an ocean of blue sky.
‘Imagine if we could plunge into it for a swim,’ Shia says, looking at the sky.
The things the hafu girl says! He doesn’t answer. No need to lose precious moisture on idle talk in the desert. The girl stops to drink water again. He had never met someone so thirsty! And slow. They were leaving her behind. Should he turn and look for her? Should he slow down? He cannot think. Just walk. She’s going to drag herself along. Click-clack, click-clack, following his father’s cart, hypnotized by the elliptical shape of the loose wheel turning and turning, too tired to look up, too hot to think, too thirsty to talk. Click-clack. Click-clack. And then the wheel stops to a halt.
His father parks the electric vehicle and takes out his gun. The ghost city spreads in front of them, caked in dust and ravaged by the passage of time, a heavy mastodon staring at them through the empty sockets of its windows, hollow and grim like its past that had unleashed the wrath of heat on Earth. Sanse crosses his fingers to avert the evil eye of these worthless ancestors.
‘Why did we come here?’ His father eyes him in silence. He casually searches through his pockets, takes out a package of seaweed crackers and offers it to him. Sanse takes it, chews and waits. At a distance, Shia is dragging her feet over cracked soil.
‘We’re leaving a tip for the Dust Pirates,’ his father says.
‘The Dust Pirates live here?’ Sanse gawks at the ugly ruins.
‘Do you think the Dust Pirates live here?’ His father searches again through his pockets and lights up a pipe.
‘No idea.’ Sanse shrugs and licks his fingers.
The koi fish sun, now lower on the horizon, paints the ocean sky orange. The evening wraps them in its stillness, a hot and suffocating embrace. Sanse’s thoughts are melting away like cheap plastic, and, for a moment, he believes he is hallucinating when something looking like a tall zombie emerges from the gray ruins. It’s a bone-skinny human being pulling a cart of what looks like scavenged goods. Sanse stares at the emaciated figure with a mix of horror and fascination.
‘We’re not here to buy today, but I’ll have some lithium batteries. Do you have any?’ his father says taking out a jug of water. The tall zombie man searches through the scraps in his cart, hands two batteries to his father and takes the water.
‘Thanks,’ his father says, placing the batteries in his cart. ‘We have a delivery for the Dust Pirates.’
‘Unfortunately, you’re a bit late.’ The tall zombie man looks his father in the eyes and nods thoughtfully.
‘What do you mean?’ his father says.
Shia stops next to Sanse, breathing heavily.
‘Are these the Dust Pirates?’ Shia searches through her backpack and takes out a water bottle. She’s about to drink again when a strange song fills the air.
Blue ice melting Melting into the sea Our drinking water Flowing into the ocean The salty ocean We’re melting in the heat Dreaming of cool Blue ice melting.
Several zombie children leak through the hollow doors and windows of the ruined buildings and surround Sanse and Shia.
‘Water?’ a zombie child says, tugging at Sanse’s sleeve. Sanse looks into the cavernous voids of the child’s thirsty and hungry eyes.
‘You poor little thing. Here,’ Shia says, offering her water bottle to the zombie child. The child snaps the bottle and runs away.
‘What are you doing?’ Sanse stares at Shia, who is busy digging through pockets and bags and handing all her food and water to the greedy little hands.
‘At this rate, you won’t survive on the Dust Road long enough to meet the pirates!’ his father says, extracting Shia from the insatiable hands of the little rascals and shooing the children away.
As the zombie children scatter, another figure emerges from the ruins, scrawny but well-built, indeed not a zombie, and for the second time, Sanse believes that he is hallucinating when he recognizes the Trapper they had put to sleep the day before.
‘He was a tough old man. He wouldn’t talk.’ The Trapper stops before them and throws a bloody patch of long white hair on the ground. Sanse stares at his grandfather’s scalp.
‘You fucking bastard!’ His father points his gun at the Trapper, but before he has a chance to shoot, the Trapper puts one bullet straight through his heart in one clean shot. His father falls to the ground, pressing his hands on his chest.
‘Papa!’ Sanse says, rushing to his father but the Trapper cuts his way.
‘It’s not personal, you know,’ the Trapper says, keeping Sanse at gunpoint. Behind the Trapper, the tall zombie man lifts his father’s still body from the pool of dark red blood and wraps it in preserving sheets to conserve the organs.
‘Never interfere with a Trapper’s business. Remember this, kid!’ The Trapper shoves his gun in Sanse’s face and hits him hard knocking him to the ground. Sanse’s head is ringing.
‘This should teach you a lesson!’ The Trapper kicks him in the ribs. Sanse braces his head to protect it from a second kick that never comes.
‘So, you two, shed your weapons, taser, blowgun, yeah, nice and easy, drop them to the ground, that’s it, stand back, easy… if you run, I shoot,’ the Trapper says, collecting the weapons. Sanse crawls away from him.
‘The dome, young lady!’ the Trapper says. Shia glances at Sanse and then at the blood-soaked patch of dirt where his father’s body lies wrapped like a cocoon, and her eyes fill up with tears. With trembling hands, she hands over the parcel containing the seedling dome.
‘Smart girl!’ The Trapper slips the dome in his backpack. ‘Alright, you two are coming with me! Move it!’
‘Are they gonna sell my father’s body?’ It was a stupid question, Sanse knew. Nothing got wasted on the Dust Road.
‘We're all vulture food, kid!’ The Trapper spits on the ground and turns away. Sanse picks his grandfather’s scalp and rushes behind the Trapper.
Gutted, the red-orange koi fish sun sinks on the horizon, bathing the cavernous ruins of the ghost city in a blood bath. And somewhere in the belly of this long-dead giant, the half-dead zombie children scavenge for survival in the remains of a long-gone civilization.
Next👇
I hope you enjoyed episode #10 of There Is Hope, a cli-fi series. You can find the series overview here. Please don’t forget to subscribe, like, comment & share. This goes a long way in supporting this independent publication!
That's rough kid. I feel like dad was idealistic as Shia in his own way. In a world without rules, or limits, he should have killed the trapper the first time.
Well, that got ugly fast! I like it. Raise the stakes. Wonder what’s going to happen next to Shia, seems she’ll need new allies. In a way it feels like it’s more Sanse’s story at this point than Shia’s. Either way, that Trapper has it coming! I hope!