The Dust Pirates: Children

S3E4 • Cli-fi • Post-apocalyptic • Dark

This episode was featured in Top in Fiction

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 #11. You can find an overview of all the episodes here.

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Previously 👇

The Dust Pirates: Betrayal

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The Dust Pirates: Children

During the rainmaking festival, a young boy rescues a teenage girl from danger, but her secret sets him on a perilous journey.

I remember the anger—the all-consuming rage. We loved and loathed our misery. It was the rust to our iron hearts. And we wore our wounds and pains with pride and hope, our existence nothing more than a smoking mirror.

***

Just before dusk, at its darkest hour, the night is heavy with grief.

‘I’m sorry about your father and grandfather,’ Shia says when the Trapper is not within earshot.

‘I don’t need your pity!’ Sanse says, the words spilling out of him, raw and painful. Despite him, tears start flowing down his cheeks. Shia touches his shoulder, but he shakes her hand away. It’s hot, and the girl makes him lose his body’s water.

‘It’s all my fault! I should’ve just died in the Human Sacrifice. If Nova delivered the seedling, your family would still be alive,’ Shia says, crying.

‘Such is the burden we must carry.’ Until today, Sanse could never grasp the whole meaning of his grandfather’s words. Now, he feels their crushing weight.

‘Hurry up, you desert rats!’ The Trapper drops his bags on the ground.

‘We need water, we’re thirsty!’ Shia says, approaching him.

‘That’s ’cause you’re a stupid cunt who gave away all her water!’ The Trapper throws a bundle at Shia’s feet.

‘Monsutā, may the dust take you,’ Shia mumbles, picking up the bag.

‘Stop fucking around and get the tent up,’ the Trapper says. ‘We’re camping for the day.’

On the horizon, the sun starts rising with the promise of heat and thirst.

***

‘Wake up!’ The sun burns in the sky when Shia summons him from a dreamless sleep. Sanse grabs his stuff, and they slip away like thieves, leaving the Trapper snoring inside the tent.

‘Hurry up!’ Shia says. Sanse follows her, his body shaky with fear, tiredness, thirst and hunger. The land below their feet is parched, dry and painful to walk on. Sanse’s feet hurt. Shia has good shoes but no water.

‘Where are we going?’ Once they put enough distance between themselves and the Trapper, Sanse stops to catch his breath once. Shia removes a pair of boots from her backpack and throws each boot in opposite directions.

‘I stole his boots,’ Shia says, gasping. ‘And his pistol.’ She loads it and tries to take a shot, but nothing happens.

‘No chance, probably DNA locked!’ She dismantles the pistol and throws the pieces far away. ‘We can’t use the pistol and now neither can he.’

‘And now what?’ Sanse says.

‘We run!’ So they run. First in the heat, then under the darkening sky, until the moon and the stars shine on the silvery desert. Their biosuits keep them moist, but Sanse is thirsty. He licks his dry lips and fastens his pace. It’s like walking in an open-air oven. The night doesn’t give them a break. He finally gives in and pulls out his water bottle.

‘Is that water?’ Shia stops and watches Sanse swallowing a warm gulp of water.

‘You had water all this time?’ Instinctively, Sanse pulls the bottle to his chest.

‘If people cannot care for their water, they are not worthy of living on the Dust Road!’ Never share your water. That's what his grandfather had taught him.

‘But I was not born on the Dust Road! How should I know?’ True, she didn’t know. Sanse offers her the water bottle when something sharp hits him in his leg. He falls hard on the ground, and the bottle is gone!

‘You sand rats!’ The voice of the Trapper breaks through the night. Sanse finds his bottle, but it’s almost empty. All the water has spilled on the ground.

‘No, no!’ He tries to gather it with his hands, but there’s nothing left. Can’t fight for water with the thirsty ground.

‘Did you think you can outsmart a Trapper?’

‘Come on! Get up!’ Shia pulls him up, and they run again over the hard, crusty ground. Sanse tries to ignore the sharp pain in his leg where the stone hit him. Behind, he can hear the thumping steps of the Trapper getting closer. So he runs as fast as he can. Run! Run! Run!

Soon, the running turns to a fast walk, then a slow walk, and finally, just a crawl in the dust. By the time the sun comes out again, they are all exhausted. Sanse’s lungs are burning. His legs feel like heated rubber, and his muscles are weak and worn. His heart is thumping like a drum in his chest—thump thump thump—and he is so tired, so hot, and so slow, his body refusing to go any faster. But above all, he is thirsty. Mother of sand, is he thirsty! Shia staggers through the heat by his side, her lips cracked and dry. Behind them, the Trapper drags his feet in the dust.

‘Gotcha, you little rats!’ The Trapper mumbles to himself, moving his hands as if trying to remove something in his path. Then he falls to the ground. Sanse and Shia crawl some hundred meters away and fall exhausted. They sleep in fits and starts, their bodies tense, jumping at the slightest noise. The Trapper hasn’t moved. They are safe. Then, they drift away again, giving in to the tiredness.

***

Sanse is startled from his sleep when he feels something tugging at his leg.

‘Shia, run!’ Sanse says. The Trapper crawls on the sand, dragging his bloody feet, and grabs his ankle. Sanse’s free leg starts kicking furiously at the Trapper, but the hand clawing his ankle won’t let go.

‘Ah! You treacherous little shit!’ the Trapper says, then Sanse feels a sharp pain in his leg when the Trapper stabs him with his knife. Once. Twice.

‘Let him go!’ Shia cries.

‘Ah!’ Sanse screams and hits him harder with his free leg, with the desperation of survival, fear clawing at his leg, his heart, his gut, boiling in his head. And the heat, the cursed heat, is making him dizzy, dizzy, dizzy! But he manages to free himself, and off he goes, dragging his wounded leg, his mouth full of dust, his face caked in a mask of dirt, sweat, and tears. He is sobbing as he gets up, watching the Trapper chase Shia and close in on her.

‘You little cunt, you think you can get away from me?’ The Trapper grabs the backpack on the girl’s back and pulls her to the ground.

‘Give it to me!’ The Trapper screams, knife in hand, ready to attack. May the dust take him! Sanse looks for something to use as a weapon. There, a stone! His wounded leg is throbbing with pain, but he must get the Trapper away from the girl. He closes in as fast as he can, holding the stone fiercely with both hands. The Trapper’s knife is at Shia’s throat, cutting. Sanse lifts the stone and then hits him once in the temple.

‘You bastard, I’m gon…’ Blood rushes down the Trapper’s face, and his eyes are wide open when he turns to look at Sanse. The boy hits him a second time. Hard. A third time. Over and over.

‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut the heat up!’ The stone Sanse holds in his hand is red and wet. And the stone is a bleeding heart, raw and warm. Shia sobs next to him holding a blood-stained hand at her throat. And he is tired, oh, so tired. And it is hot, hot, hot! Then everything goes black.

***

A strange song fills Sanse’s ears as he floats over endless dunes that seem to be dancing in the heat, undulating like waves. Has he reached the ocean? The Japanese colonies where Shia lives? With the vast blue ocean like the sky? Is he finally delivered from the treacherous world of dust? No, it’s a mirage, the sane part of his brain screams. There is no water! Maybe he’s dead. But his parched lips and burnt skin tell him otherwise. Can you be thirsty and hot when you’re dead? Then the strange song stops. He opens his eyes to meet the hollowed-out, hungry eyes of the zombie children.

‘Stay away from me!’ Sanse says.

‘Sanse, it’s me, Kike, your friend. I came to help you!’ The figure of a child dressed in a biosuit steps forward.

‘Kike? Is that you? How did you get here?’ Sanse says.

‘After your grandfather and the Trapper…’ Kike glares at the human-sized package wrapped in preserving seaweed fabrics.

‘We took care of him. No need to be wasteful,’ the zombie children say, closing in on the boys. Their skinny bodies seem to undulate in the air, their molecules accelerated by heat.

‘Your uncles went to the ghost city to warn you! I begged them to take me along. But we were too late! The pirates don’t kill children, so I came to find you.’ Only three days ago, they were running around the patio watching tourists. Now, his friend was shy around him, watching him with tearful eyes.

‘The girl… is she safe?’ Sanse’s voice is small and thin.

‘We took her away. We’ll sell her on the other side. Such a young, pretty thing, we’ll have water and food for a whole year,’ the zombie children say.

‘You bastards!’ Sanse says, but the zombie children look at him innocently.

‘She will be safe. She wanted to be reunited with her fiancée,’ the oldest of the zombie children, a girl, says. ‘We bandaged your leg and left you the seedling dome and one liter of water, as we agreed with your uncles and friend.’

‘We gave you more water for him!’ Kike says. The zombie girl places a round parcel wrapped in seaweed silk and a water bottle beside Sanse.

‘Your friend is not fat with water like you!’ the zombie girl says. Then she looks at Sanse. ‘If you don’t find the Dust Pirates by the time you finish this water, they don’t want your delivery.’

‘Thank you for your sacrifice, amigo,’ Kike says, crying. ‘May the sand gods protect you.’

‘My abuelo will put a good word for me,’ Sanse says, hugging his friend.

The zombie children pick up the wrapped body of the Trapper and vanish together with Kike. Sanse’s body is still weak and his mind feeble. He wonders if it was all just a dream. Then he sees the water bottle and, overcome by thirst, he gulps it all down. The Dust Pirates might as well look for him.

***

When he wakes up, he is still not dead. The empty water bottle lies on the ground next to his head. There are no Dust Pirate in sight. Instead, a griffon vulture cocks his head on its long white neck, looking at him with one eye. Sanse pulls his red kite out of his backpack, and unfurls the flyline. The air is still, but he walks as fast as he can, dragging the kite behind him, hoping it will take off and that someone will see it. Friend or foe, it did not matter. It was up to the Dust Pirates. The griffon vulture hops behind him, bobbing his tiny head. The sun burns down mercilessly and his biosuit, punctured by the knife, is now useless.

Is he even going in the right direction? Will he survive? He imagines himself dead in the dust, his decomposing body a feast for vultures. Then he trips on his wounded leg and falls.

‘Pendejo!’ Sanse is too exhausted to be mad with himself. The sand is burning, but this is such a distant sensation. With the last bit of strength, Sanse murmurs a prayer to the God of the Smoking Mirror.

‘For I am blind, I am deaf, I am an imbecile, and in excrement, in filth hat my lifetime been. Perhaps though mistaketh me for another; perhaps though seekest another in my stead.’

***

A black-veiled figure walks over the rugged dust land. In the distance, a vulture circles a red kite flying in the air. The black-veiled figure rushes in the vulture’s direction. A boy in a bright blue biosuit walks on his knees, holding the red kite’s flyline. His eyes are half closed, and his lips move, but no sound comes out. As the black-veiled figure bends to touch the boy’s face, a gust of wind blows away the veil, revealing a bionic face mask with a golden visor.

‘We heard you have a delivery for us.’

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I need your vote 👇

One of the characters from The Dust Pirates will write a letter from the future that I will publish here on Story Voyager in August.

The character with the most votes will write a Letter from the future in August.

If you’d like to pick another character, please leave a comment.

Thanks for voting 🙌!

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I hope you enjoyed episode #11 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!