H2O
Authors: Irving Belateche
2
O
Irving Belateche
Laurel Canyon Press
Los Angeles
H
2
O
Copyright © 2012 by Irving Belateche
All rights reserved.
This book is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events
or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or any
other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable
by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not
participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your
support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
ISBN: 978-0984026531
Laurel Canyon
Press
Los Angeles,
California
Cover design by
Karri
Klawiter
Cover design based on
the painting “Seal Rock 2” by Albert Beirstadt
Layout provided by
Everything
Indie
CONTENTS
The phone rang, waking me up from
a deep sleep. The kind of sleep where you don’t have a past or future, just a
murky present that you don’t quite understand. It was Frank and he wanted me
down at the plant. A pump in one of the pumping stations had broken down and I
was next in line to fix it.
That
I
understood.
But as I
dressed, I tried not to think about it.
I was always
thinking too much so I turned this into yet another test of whether I could
stop. I couldn’t. I knew that fixing that pump meant heading out into the
wilderness and I knew that heading out into the wilderness meant heading out to
die.
I drove up the rugged coast
toward the desalination plant. It was twenty miles outside of Clearview and the
road was empty. Just like the road into the wilderness would be. Except for the
trucks. They’d be driving that road, the cold gray sky hanging over them, the
dark forest pressing in on them, and the pockmarked road stretching out in
front of them. I’d be the only other person on that road.
I blunted this
line of thinking before it took over. I focused on the here and now. I looked
down to the shoreline below the road. The waves were breaking hard. The ocean
was angry, and that was fine with me. I liked the ocean regardless of its mood.
It reminded me of my dad. We used to walk along that shoreline and he’d tell me
how the world worked. He knew because he knew science. Others didn’t.
“The world is made up of four
elements,” my dad had said. “Air, Fire, Water and Earth.”
Of course, he
knew that these weren’t the real elements, but I was only four at the time and
he was laying the groundwork for something else. For a secret he wanted to tell
me. The biggest secret in the world.
We both looked
out over the ocean. The sun was red orange, the ocean dark blue, and the waves
broke white and big.
My dad said,
“Water is the most important element.”
I thought he’d
said that because we lived in Clearview, a water town. But that wasn’t the
reason. The reason was that groundwork. He wanted me to understand a few basics
first. Then he’d tell me the secret.
But he never
did tell me. Not on that day or any other day. Before he could, the marauders
murdered him.
I looked back up from the ocean
and the massive plant came into view. It was a grand structure, but it was old.
Its iron beams were coated in thick, brown rust and its concrete walls were
gouged from the battering of ocean storms.
I pulled into
the parking lot. One third full. The night shift was still on, and the morning
shift, my shift, wouldn’t pull in for another two hours.
I walked toward
the plant’s entrance and glanced up at the faded green letters above the doors.
I wondered if this was the last time I’d see them. They spelled out the name of
the company that used to own the plant, ‘Corolaqua.’ But Corolaqua, like all
companies, and all states and countries, was long gone.
Many decades ago, the Passim
Virus killed almost everyone. The few who’d survived it lived in small towns
along the west coast, and they fended for themselves. They hunted and fished
and grew their own food.
Then, as
things stabilized, the small towns started trading with each other. First food,
then machines. Computers, refrigerators, washers and dryers, and every piece of
equipment that still worked. They called them Remnants, and the more they broke
down, the more valuable the ones that still worked became. So valuable that
people risked their lives salvaging them from the dead cities where the Passim
Virus still lurked.
A few small
towns were luckier than others. They could still produce fresh water (like
Clearview) or fuel or electricity. Every town needed water, fuel, and
electricity, so these towns traded for the best food and the best Remnants.
And the truck
towns did fine, too. They supplied the trucks that kept the whole show going.
Without trucks, there wouldn’t be any trading, and without trading, there
wouldn’t be any Territory. (The Territory was the unofficial name for this
nameless affiliation of towns.)
I stepped into the control room
and saw Joe McDonough and Green Haily stationed up front, staring at the bank
of monitors. They both glanced at me without bothering to hide their contempt.
No big deal. I was used to it.
In the back,
Frank Bannon, the plant foreman, was sitting at his desk. He launched right in,
“It’s about two hundred miles south.”
“What’s it
running at?” I asked.
“About
seventy-five percent.” He handed me the paperwork: A visa with the Clearview
seal on it, directions for the trip south, instructions on how to repair the
pump, and a list of the supplies I’d need for the job.
I looked up
from the paperwork and caught a flash of regret on Frank’s face. Frank was a
good guy and he felt bad for sending me out. He knew it was a death sentence.
But it wasn’t his choice. The last hire was always the first to go and that
policy made sense. The man with the least experience was expendable. If the
marauders murdered him or if the Virus killed him, it wouldn’t be that big a
loss.
But Frank knew
that in my case, this policy didn’t make sense. If equipment right here at the
plant broke down, a far greater problem than a malfunction in the far reaches
of the Territory, I’d be the only one with a shot at fixing it. The other
workers at the plant knew how to operate the equipment assigned to them and
could perform minor repairs, but they couldn’t fix a major breakdown. They
didn’t even understand how each piece of equipment worked in conjunction with
the others to purify seawater.
The intake
valves under the shoreline inhaled the seawater into the plant. The water then
traveled through gigantic, high-density plastic pipes, where dosing pumps
adjusted the flow rate. (My job at the plant was to operate one of those dosing
pumps.) The water then spiraled through huge gravity filters and reverse
osmosis cells and when it came out of those cells, it was ready for the
Territory.
If you knew
the chemistry and physics behind the process, it really wasn’t too hard to
follow. But even McDonough and Haily, who monitored the whole process for the
morning shift, didn’t understand it. They were trained to read the monitors,
spot signs of trouble, and report that trouble to Frank. I gave Frank credit.
He understood the process as well as you could without knowing the science
behind it.
“After you
load up the van, go home and pick up whatever you’re gonna need,” he said. “If
it’s just a damn animal that crawled in there, you’ll be back tomorrow. But if
it’s a big job, count on three days.”
I loaded up the Corolaqua van,
left my car in the parking lot, and headed back to my place. It’d been three
years since the last pump broke down. Back then, Frank had sent Gary Ledic out
to fix it and that was the last anyone saw of him. Some people said marauders
had killed him, but most thought it’d been the Virus.
The Virus
lived everywhere. My dad had taught me that it was originally called the Passim
Virus because ‘passim’ meant ‘everywhere’ in Latin. I’d since learned that
‘passim’ meant more than ‘everywhere.’ It meant ‘scattered around randomly’ and
that was the perfect description. The Virus still lived in dead cities. In Seattle,
Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and every city in between.
And it lived in the wilderness. That’s why people never left their towns. That,
and the marauders.
As for myself,
I didn’t care whether the marauders had killed Ledic or the Virus had or that
he’d been killed at all. I didn’t like him. He’d tried to murder me. So when he
didn’t come back, it was one less thing for me to think about.
At home, I packed for the trip
south. My dad used to go on trips but they weren’t suicide missions like this
one. Town Councils would hire him when a crucial piece of machinery in their
towns broke down. My dad knew science, so sometimes he could fix the machinery.
There weren’t many around like him. Now there were even less. Way less.
The day before
he’d go on a trip, he’d fry us fish and potatoes for dinner. In the late
afternoons, we’d drive out to Hickemy’s and we’d pick out the fillets. That was
our ritual. But the day before he left for Merryville, the last day I ever saw
him, he changed our ritual.
We still
headed to Hickemy’s, but this time we stopped at the beach first. We never
walked the shoreline the day before his trips. And he didn’t launch into
whatever he was going to teach me like he usually did on these walks. He was
silent.
And
his breathing was faster than normal.
The red orange
sun was sliding into the sea, and some of the white caps were big while others
were small. The ocean couldn’t decide whether to be calm or anxious, just like
my dad.
We sat on the
sand and watched the sun turn deep red. The white caps danced. My dad put his
arm around my shoulders and I waited for him to talk, to tell me why we hadn’t
gone straight to Hickemy’s. Instead, he told me that there was the same amount
of water on Earth right now as there’d been millions of years ago. He said that
Earth never lost nor gained water.
That seemed
impossible and I didn’t believe him.
He said that
water went round and round. Evaporating, condensing, raining, and evaporating
again. He went into detail about the sun’s heat, transpiration, and cool air
and clouds.
But I was
thinking about Jimmy Hickemy, the fisherman.
Every dawn,
Jimmy sailed his boat out to sea and fished until noon. Every afternoon, in his
back yard, he gutted, cleaned and filleted his catch. Every evening, on his
back porch, he’d lay the fish out on beds of shiny ice, and people from
Clearview would come by and pick up their dinner.
“The world is
a big place,” my dad said.
I looked at
the ocean. He was right. I couldn’t see where the world ended.
