Camp Sunrise: Creek Road
Posted on 14 Mar 2023 @ 7:05pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri & Major Porter Wallace
Edited on on 15 Mar 2023 @ 5:36pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Korix, Camp Sunrise
Timeline: MD08 Morning on the island (following Camp Sunrise: Just One More Day)
1632 words - 3.3 OF Standard Post Measure
Ibis began the journey to the stream at the pail post. It was like a strange tree, a large post of scrap metal beam lashed with smaller cross posts from which various sizes of pails were attached by their handles, all clanging around in the breeze, forming a post-apocalyptic wind chime. Like most things they had made use of, the pails were cast offs from the mine, and had been scrounged from trash and patched. There were etchings and paint marks separating “clean” pails from “dirty” use pails: C and D, to be specific. Sometimes simple was best. Wallace had managed to fashion new handles on the broken ones. But now the bucket tree held far more buckets than the last four survivors could ever use in a day. It stood as a daily, sad reminder of everyone they had buried. She would have asked Wallace to help her take it down, but it seemed pointless to waste his waning strength and energy on deconstruction and demolition.
Beside the pail-post was the first major achievement the shanty town had crafted for themselves. A water filter. When they’d deposited them here, the Pyrryx left them nothing but the clothes on their backs— no tricorders, no commbadges, and by the goddesses no replicators— so several of the Sunrisers had pooled their knowledge and tested cast off materials from the mining trash until they hit on a microfilter process. It relied mainly on some porous clay they had processed out of the streambed, some changeable seaweed fiber layers, several layers of sifted sand, and a layer of silvered film from the process lab which the laborers were able to secret enough sheets away to basically last a lifetime of change outs. Each test sample of water from their build trials, Ibis had secreted back to the process lab to check under the microscope until it finally came back clean.
All of the layers amounted to a ten foot tall structure and, being a passive system, it was necessary to take the unfiltered water to the top via a ladder and pulley system and pour it in, allowing gravity to take it from there and the slow drip to work its way through to dribble into the C pail below. Around the foot of it they had collected stones and set them in the ground to spell out ‘CAMP SUNRISE’ in all caps, to claim their first big technological achievement against nature’s cruelty. The stone letters were covered in dust now and barely legible. She’d stopped pouring precious water over them and scrubbing to keep them visible long ago.
She gathered two D pails and two rods. One rod was to balance the pails over her shoulder, the other to beat the bushes along the trail ahead of her. At the trailhead she passed a crookedly pegged in sign with three arrows, one aimed ahead that said ‘Creek Road’ and the other pointing back to ‘Camp Sunrise’. An arrow added above them after the fact said ‘Risa 1mil LY’ and angled slightly upwards at the sky.
Being alone, she sang. She’d used to slay at karaoke night in the mess hall. It had helped to have a drink in her belly and the lyrics on the display. Long ago she’d resorted to making up her own lines for the top hits from last decade. But there was no one to tell her she was wrong, anyway. Partly she sang for her own sanity. But it was just as much for the lizards and rodents to hear her coming so they might opt for ducking back to their holes instead of biting her in the foot in their surprise.
“You never did hear the sound, Nuh uh, Until another go around. Baby, you made me, and now I’m the bad guy. Gotta tell you not to come around, Uh huh. Too late to play your games, Gotta call it a day. I’m gonna call it a day an yoo-ooo-oo-ou be on your way. Uh huh uh huh un uh uh huh.”
Her service boots had worn through a long time ago. A few patch jobs had helped them hold out a little while, but eventually the Sunrisers had cut every upper from every lower and fashioned new uppers for the treadless soles. She’d be out of shoes save for how many pairs had been left behind by the others. Since her last pair cracked through, she’d been wearing Laura’s.
The sound of the stream ahead was growing in her ears. It was flowing along nicely, which always made her feel better about collecting from it as opposed to during the seasons when it was low and murky.
She stood at the edge where they had dropped enough flat stones to overcome the sucking mud that was practically impossible to walk through at the bank. First she watched for a while. The black snakes were difficult to see among the reeds and she had to let her eyes adjust to be sure. When she spied the slender dark line along the bank, she used her pole to poke it so it would move along to the next sunny spot. Early on the Sunrisers had empirically discovered the black snakes were both edible and venomous which canceled them out as ‘not worth it’ in her reckoning.
Satisfied that it was safe, she knelt at the water’s edge, setting the pails on either side of her. Ibis stared into her rippling reflection. She'd gotten used to seeing her sunken cheeks and the prominence of her neck and shoulder bones in the dim image. She took a couple of minutes to finger-comb through her waist length hair until it was tamed down. She hadn’t grayed, but the shine had gone out of her dark locks, leaving it very dull and it seemed to her like every time she combed through it, it came out in fist fulls. She let the wind take the loose hair away, then made a quick braid, tied it with a strap she had been keeping on her wrist, and threw it over her shoulder.
“Maybe I’ll pass inspection now,” she snarked to her reflection before she dippered the pails through the image.
Reprising her verses, she stood up under the rod. Her shoulders told her no, they weren’t going to be made a part of this strain, but she winced and sang a little louder to distract herself, striking back out on the trail.
“Lie to me, Lie to me! I wanna know what I wanna know! You know so, Lie to me, lie to me. And make it go down easy. Lie to—”
Halfway back on the trail, she froze to listen when besides the sound of her own voice and the chime of the empty buckets on the post between herself and the camp, she thought she heard a shrill scream. An old telepathic reflex, Ibis strained as if she could reach out over the distance and ask the meaning of the sound, before she more reasonably dropped her load— one of the two buckets tipping over— and broke into a run towards their home.
She risked a quick short cut through some brush and then sprinted past the pail tree and around the dunes. Wallace was standing at the breakfast fire with Ikemba beside him. From a distance, he didn’t seem actively distressed and she allowed her dash to slow to a trot and then a walk, gasping for air. “I thought,” she said, breathlessly, holding a stitch in her side. “I thought I heard screaming?”
“Where’s the water?”
Ibis looked at him incredulously. “So no one is hurt?”
“Oh. Uh. Yeah, you’ll need to talk to her,” Wallace said cocking his head toward the shack that once belonged to Laura Winetrout. “I asked her to stay near home today, but she wanted to go diving in the bay.”
“You told her no, right?”
“I said no. Of course she didn’t think much of that. I said something…terrible. Actually, probably worse than terrible. It was cruel. Not my finest hour.”
“Shit,” agreed Ikemba.
Caught off guard by Ikemba’s commentary, Ibis looked between the boys. “Seriously, Wallace?”
He shrugged, “I’m really sorry. Really. It slipped out. But seriously, Ibis. She terrifies me. A lifetime of combat missions, nine years of this h- ” Wallace glanced at Ikemba. “H-E-L-L hole and she is the only thing that scares the living daylights out of me.”
“It’s, whatever, it’s fine. Not your wheelhouse.” She kicked the sand and bit back her own swear. “I’ll handle it.” As if she were somehow better with childrearing. “You should probably not keep N’to waiting.”
“Yeah. He brushed his hands on his shirt. “Little man still needs to eat. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Out of a long habit hardwired into his psyche, he patted his hips where pockets might be. Of course there was nothing there, not even pockets. They’d get their tools from the shed on the Temple Complex grounds and he didn’t own anything else. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek, ruffled Ikemba’s head, and walked down the path.
Ibis looked at Ikemba and shook her head. “If anyone ever told me I’d be the last adult left, I’d never have believed it.” She crouched down to check the pot and then looked back up to watch the old Marine trekking off on his bad knees. She felt sorry, knowing he was doing his best with the kids. “...But at least he can spell.”
