Survival Colony 9 by Joshua David Bellin Page A

sludge brown, and smelled like sulfur and petroleum, the kind of water you wouldn’t dream of drinking without boiling it first. The water that fell from the sky couldn’t exactly be called clean either, it had a gritty quality that caught in your teeth and throat. But it was clean enough that you could hold up a jar full of rainwater and see the particles slowly swirling. Plus whatever happened in the clouds took some of the stink away, so you could stand to drink it without plugging your nose. My dad never talked about the rain, but I knew he was constantly on the lookout for it.
    This morning, the moment he heard the first fat, sizzling drops smacking the dry ground, he came charging out of headquarters, limping around like someone trying to put out a fire, shouting orders.
    “Let’s go, people!” he boomed. “No time like the present. Move, move, move!”
    Everyone threw off blankets, pulled on boots, and ran for the supply basement. I was one of the first to get there, and I grabbed a tin pot from the soiled, rusty pile. Other people fought over jars, cups, mess tins, anything they could get their hands on to collect the water. Those who failed to secure a container took off their boots and set them up in the rain, or spread out tents and rucksacks to soak up every last precious drop. We rolled empty fuel drums out into the cloudburst and stood with our arms held up to the skies, hot rain burning our skin more than cooling it, filling one vessel after another and dumping the water into the drums. Everyone worked, even the littlest kids filled cups or caps with rainwater, and people who had nothing at all to fill filled their hands or else lay on their backs with their mouths open and filled their mouths, again and again, spitting a mouthful of water at a time into the barrels. Within minutes everyone was drenched, but we didn’t let up. We knew that, once the rain exhausted itself and we fell, equally exhausted, into bed, we’d look out over the parched land and curse ourselves for losing far more than we’d managed to save.
    I found myself standing right next to Korah at one of the fuel drums. Her black hair hung in a shiny sheet to her shoulders. Even if there’d been anything to say, we were both way too busy to meet each other’s eyes.
    My dad circulated through camp while we worked, urging us on, his shouts as steady as the rainfall, his hair and beard plastered to his face. His limp seemed less noticeable in the rain, as if the water lubricated him, and his eyes glowed with passion, even excitement. He still didn’t crack a smile, but the lines around his eyes softened a little at the sight of the whole camp bristling with purpose, the teams laboring in unison to fill and ferry containers to the fuel drums. As the rain picked up, falling in a downpour so solid I could barely see Korah’s fluid form beside me, his voice rose with it, until he was hollering encouragement over the raindrops’ roar.
    “That’s right!” he shouted. “Don’t let up, people! We can do it!”
    And we doubled our already impossible pace, water pouring off our hair and shoulders in such wild cascades I couldn’t tell what we were dumping into the drums and what was spilling in on its own.
    But it lasted no more than a couple hours. One minute I was working blind, scooping and hauling and pouring, the sounds of rain and shouting and bodies all mixed together in one steady buzz of noise, and the next I recoiled from Korah in her skintight top the way people do when they almost bump into each other. It ended so abruptly and completely I couldn’t believe it. I turned my face to the sky and waited for the next wave, but all that struck my nose and cheeks and forehead was sun.
    My dad’s voice died with the rain, and like everyone else he looked up. His brow contracted, his eyes darkened. Fifty faces turned to him. He squinted into the sun for a second as it seared away the last wisps of vapor that hung in the air. Then he