prompt: Write about a contest with life or death stakes….
available at Reedsy
I’m going to die. The thought that ran through my head. No matter how hard I tried to shake it, the words echoed like a dark mantra.
The sun hung low in the sky, daylight running out on me. Force of will kept my legs moving, a long-stride lope that ate miles faster than it ate my energy. My only hope for survival was the fact that I had survived this long already.
“Carla, it’s up to you,” Micah had said, his long grey beard flapping with every word. He fixed me with his steel-grey eyes, his oil-tanned leather face craggy with years of exposure.
“What do I need to do?”
He handed me a satchel. “There’s enough explosive in here to seal up the well-head, or….”
“Or?”
“If they get there first you can at least destroy their vehicles,” he said, “give us time for the caravan to show up.”
“And if I seal the well,” I asked, “what good does that do us?”
“It’s better if you don’t know all the details,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “But you need to run, now!”
I wondered how far the caravan had come since I left this morning, and how far ahead of them the raiders were. When Jacob returned in the night, the decision was made to send a runner to “protect” the well. On foot the distance was shorter, as a runner could cross the ravine on the rope bridge. The raiders’ vehicles, like the caravan, however, would have to detour around the ravine. Even once past that obstacle, rough ground made for a slow ride.
It occurred to me, before I’d even left, that this was a one-way trip for me. If I beat the raiders there and capped the well, I’d be too exhausted to outrun them from there. If they beat me there, well, I’d take as many of them with me as I could.
As I ran, I chanted the names of the people in the caravan whose lives I was fighting for; “Caleb, Micah, Sarah, Tillie, Sam, Monique, Ty, Marisol, Denny, Donna….” Even as I remembered each of their faces, the thought that I would never see them again took over. I’m going to die.
The hills were growing in front of me. I had the thought that I might make it there before the raiders. I was still troubled by the thought of capping the well, though. Without it, our crops would die. Unlike a well that relied on a large aquifer, it was a dry well in the high summer, refilling with snowmelt off the mountains and what little rain we did see.
Despite our care in burying our pipes and planting our crops in places too inaccessible to be found accidentally, the raiders had found one of our fields. After capturing Jacob with a bag full of cabbages and beans, they tortured him until he told them where the crop was and how it was watered. They stripped the field while Jacob escaped back to the caravan. What frightened us most was that they had a water tanker. Not large enough to steal all the water at once, but it could take between a third and a half of it; enough that we would lose most of our crops.
Losing the crops would mean the loss of the small game that gathered around the fields for food and water. Meaning we would lose our main source of meat as well. I squashed the desire to run faster, knowing that it would tire me out before I could reach the well.
The rise into the foothills was on me before I knew it. From here there was only a narrow path to the well. To the left, a steep wall that often dropped boulders into the track; to the right, a drop-off that grew more treacherous as the track ascended. Nestled at the end of the track, in a natural nook of the mountains, lay our well. Six years of work blasting, digging, and moving the stone in order to catch the run-off that burbled out of the cliff wall behind it. Six years of work followed by nine of survival by careful placement of irrigation and tending to crops in areas that previously only contained harsh scrub.
Still I ran up the track, keeping my objective in mind. I’m going to die. No! Protect the well!
The track narrowed as I neared the well, a large section having broken loose on the right and fallen into the ravine. Micah said once that it had been a river and from here it was obvious where it had cut through the landscape. It hadn’t seen water in forty or fifty years, though.
I reached the well and stopped for a breath. My legs threatened to buckle under me, so I kept moving, walking around. That’s when I saw it; the cloud of dust in the distance. The raiders were close. I opened the satchel and looked at the five charges. All we had left. Together with my two magazines of 9mm ammo and a knife I was meant to stop a band of raiders with automatic weapons and trucks.
I examined the rock wall behind the well. Somehow, I needed to blast in such a way that a slab would drop over the well, without filling it with debris and forcing all the water out. I looked back out to the cloud of dust moving my direction. I was given two choices: cap the well or destroy their vehicles. I just have to give the caravan time to get here.
It would take precious time I didn’t have to place the explosives; plus, I’d have to climb, and I wasn’t sure I had it in me. The track, however…. I made up my mind. Returning to the point where the track was narrowest, where the side had collapsed, I placed the first charge in a crack near the center. I covered the charge and the wire to the detonator under the loose sand and gravel of the track.
I looked again at the dust plume, trying to gauge how many trucks they might have. If they were traveling in tight formation, there may be as many as fifteen or twenty. More likely, though, they were traveling spread out. It’s the way to keep from losing more than one vehicle at a time.
I paced off the space of seven large trucks. With the explosives I had it would be at the outside range for my plan. With my knife I dug a small pit in the middle of the track, where I set in the second charge and buried it and its wires as I did with the first. Then, spacing them evenly between the two outside charges I set the remaining three in nooks in the cliffside, about three feet above the road surface.
I packed as much gravel as I could around those three charges, hoping it would serve as shrapnel. I dropped the wires down the low side of the track. It would be safer to do this from above, but that would put them on the wrong side of the road; besides, I was pretty sure I could climb down, but not up.
I clambered partway down the wall where an overhang offered me a hide and gathered up the wires. The three center charges I wired together, with the first and last on their own. It would require touching the wires to the battery I carried; sort of a frontier detonator. The raiders started up the track as I finished setting up the wires.
The first vehicle was a military truck with a machine gun on top. Behind that was the water tanker. Then three more military trucks like the first, a bus, and a cargo hauler bringing up the rear. They stayed spread out, but picked up speed on the track, their electric motors whining. I’d seen it before when we had to drive one of the caravan vehicles up; the driver gets nervous and wants to get through it as quickly as possible.
I held one wire to the battery and the second an inch away, waiting for the lead truck to reach the charge highest up the hill. As it passed over, I touched the wire and truck bucked up in the front, a cloud of smoke and dust filling the space it had just been, even as the boom of the explosion made my vision blur and my ears ring.
I grabbed the wires for the charge lowest on the hill and held it ready. The raiders’ vehicles closed up on each other, the tanker unable to stop in time rammed into the back of the burning truck, sending it tumbling off the side of the track which was now even narrower than it had been. It missed me by just a stone’s throw. The convoy stopped at the point where the bus was two thirds over the charge I held the wires for. Touch. Boom! The bus split open, fire spreading through the entire thing in a flash. It had ignited the batteries beneath the bus, burning with a blinding white flame. I could feel the heat, even from here.
The last three charges would work best if I could get most of the raiders out of their trucks. There was no place to turn around, nowhere for them to go, except on foot. I pulled out my pistol and fired six shots into the tanker. “Get away from my well!” I screamed. I followed that with two into one of the military trucks. It wouldn’t penetrate, but the raiders knew I was on the downhill slope. They scrambled out of their trucks, taking shelter behind them, exposing themselves to the cliff wall at their rear. Touch. Boom-boom-boom! A hailstorm of gravel tore through them and rained down on me. I couldn’t see through the dust and smoke, and could barely hear, except for a high-pitched whine; a tone that I’d never heard before.
I made my way down the wall to the dry riverbed, then followed that downhill. I could see the cargo truck, still backing down the last few yards of the hill. One of the raiders was outside and behind, guiding the truck down. I slipped up onto the road in front of the truck and stood to aim at the driver. Unlike the military trucks, this one wasn’t armored. The driver was so focused on his rear-view that he didn’t see me as I pulled the trigger twice in quick succession. He slumped over the wheel and the truck dropped its rear axle over the remaining two feet of drop-off, getting stuck.
As I tried to locate the guide something got in my eye. I rubbed it away and realized my head was bleeding; probably from the gravel shower. It bled faster than I could clear it out. I stayed low, hoping he would show himself. Instead I heard a shot whiz past and the rifle’s report.
Not knowing where he was shooting from, I dropped to my back in front of the cargo truck’s tire. I tried to locate him but still couldn’t see him.
“Hah!” I heard, “Headshot, baby!”
I held my breath, willing myself not to move, not to blink, not to look anywhere but at the spot I’d just been looking at. When he nudged my ribs with his rifle, I lay slack, playing dead. He did this a couple times then laid the rifle next to me. That’s when I reacted, rolling towards him and firing point-blank at his chest. He looked at me with shock, then fell over.
I didn’t know how many others were in the truck, or how many had survived up the hill, but I’d done what I could. They still might be able to load their tanker if their hoses were long enough and none of my shots penetrated it. Even so, they’d have to wait for the bus fire to burn itself out first. I changed out my magazine and started walking, dizziness staggering my steps, expecting a bullet to tear through my back any second. I’m going to die.
With nothing left to me I continued out towards the caravan. With the time it took to ready the caravan the raiders had at least a four-hour head start, so they wouldn’t be along any time soon. The moon rose nearly full and the light gave me incentive to walk faster. I was still waiting for the bullet in the back when I passed out.
I woke to the muffled sounds of a firefight in the distance and Marisol talking as through a pillow. My ears still rang with a pitch I’d never heard before yesterday, and no other sound was entering my right ear. A hand to my face confirmed that my head was heavily bandaged.
Marisol leaned close to my left ear and said, “You’ve lost a lot of blood, and your right eardrum is perforated, but you’ll heal.”
“Will I get my hearing back?” My own voice sounded muffled and distorted.
“Some,” she said, “but we won’t know how much for a while.”
As I moved, I felt a sharp pain in my left arm. I reached for it and felt another bandage.
“Through and through,” Marisol said, “and missed the bone. You’re lucky.”
“I didn’t know I was shot.”
“Adrenaline will do that,” she said. “Rest now, and I’ll see if I can find something for the pain after we clean up the last of the raiders.”
“I thought I was going to die.”
“Not today, you won’t.” Marisol dabbed my forehead with a cool cloth. “You saved the well, Carla.”
The last thing I thought as I let unconsciousness take me again was, I’m going to live.
