Rain - Intro

It is a brave new world indeed. Brendon & his mother are challenged by that fact every day in this character-driven YA novel that deals with some harsh realities and the possibility of an all-too-conceivable future.

       The rain had not come to quench the earth for many days.  That’s the way things were in Brendon Corbin’s world; hot and dry – very, very dry.

         Brendon knelt to scoop the last remaining drops of water from the shallow pool that had once been a flowering fountain.  Once it had blossomed in every direction with lively droplets of liquid gold. He had never seen it for himself, but his mother told him it was so. She never lied to him.

         Brendon carefully funneled the meager drops into an old plastic Pepsi bottle that was brown with age. The label had long ago given up its fight with time and repeated use. Now there was only a light film of adhesive where the label had been affixed.

         Pepsi; Brendon knew the name but had never tasted the sickeningly sweet drink. Carbonated drinks were a luxury that had gone the way of others such as bottled water, fruit pouches and sports drinks since the Worldwide Drought.

         That was not the only thing that had changed. Brendon remembered the first time he had turned the faucet on and nothing had come out. That was over two years ago. Like most kids, Brendon was not sorry to hear that he would no longer be expected to take his nightly bath, but after two years, his body yearned to be immersed in water. Ground water was too polluted to drink. It was also too toxic to swim in. Swimming in any of the few remaining lakes or sea waters was like taking a bath in acid rain. It wasn’t a bad idea, unless you were attached to your skin and wanted to keep it.

         You could no longer go to the fridge for a cold glass of ice water. With no electricity, there was no fridge to go to. Crops and herds of animals dried up and died all around the world for lack of water and lack of people to tend them. The majority of dry land was nothing but a dusty, brown, barren wasteland. Most of the countryside now looked like a Martian landscape.

         For people in Brendon’s world, water was the only commodity that counted any more. In his world, ‘water is life’ was more than just a catch phrase.
Brendon cradled the Pepsi bottle like it held nitroglycerin; carefully tucking it in his knapsack amidst a nest of ragged t-shirts.

                Brendon sat down on the sidewalk, next to one of the hundreds of open water hydrants. Like all the others, this one had long ago gone bone dry. He dropped his head into his hands. Sometimes it was so hard to keep going. Sometimes Brendon wanted to just lie down and not get up until it rained. Unfortunately, if he waited for that, he would never get up. He looked up at the sun. It would be time to meet his mother at the dispersal center soon.

         He settled the pack on his shoulders and started on his way. It was twenty blocks to the dispersal center where he would meet his mother. There were other centers of course. This one was the closest to where they were living this week.

         He stopped at Harold’s corner. “Hi Harold, you ready for a walk to the dispersal center?”

         “You mean a push, doncha’ kid?” Harold grumped.

         Brendon and his mother had found Harold, stranded in his wheelchair, over a year ago. They had been friends ever since.

         “Don’t be so cranky.” Brendon said. “It’s a beautiful day.”

         “What’s so beautiful about it? The sun’s blazing, there’s no relief from the heat and there’s not a drop of moisture in sight? My idea of a beautiful day would be a nice, old fashioned, thunderstorm with buckets and buckets of rain.”

         Brendon was already eleven and he could only vaguely remember a time when rain fell freely from the sky. It seemed as if this Drought had lasted his whole life.

         “You bein' gloomy isn’t going to make the rain come any faster. If it did, we’d be drowning by now,” Brendon said with a grin.

         Harold laughed. “If you weren’t the motor for these wheels of mine, I’d put you right over these creaky knees and show you what for.”

         Brendon laughed and skittered out of range. “You’d have to catch me first.”

         “Snot-nosed brat!” Harold said, chuckling.

         “C’mon, let’s go. I don’t want to be late to meet Mom.”

         “Okay, I guess you’d better put your shoulder to it then.”

         Brendon grabbed the handles of Harold’s wheelchair and started pushing. It should have been an easy trip. The problem was that maintenance of the city walkways had met with serious decline since the Drought. These days, everyone had bigger concerns than filling pot holes. Besides, there wasn’t much point in repairing streets that would never see traffic again, except for foot traffic.

                The world, as Brendon knew it, had suffered an energy crisis of biblical proportions. It had been the big news of the day – until people started dying. Once the clean water ran out, it was hard to get worked up about the fact that you had no gas for your car and no electricity for your air conditioner. Somehow, struggling to stay alive had a way of putting everything into perspective.

                Brendon ran right into a large chunk of asphalt in the road.  Harold’s wheelchair was in lousy condition. It let out a tortured squeal of protest. “Sorry, Harold. How did your wheelchair get all rusty anyways? It’s not like you left it sitting out in the rain,” Brendon joked.

         “Hey, wise guy, you don’t see me complainin’. An old coot like me - with legs that don’t work - I was lucky to get these wheels.”

         They continued on in silence for awhile.

         “Harold, tell me again what it was like before you came to the city.”

         “Why do you want to hear that? It’s depressing.”

         “No, it’s not. I like to hear about how it used to be.”

         “Okay. Way back, before the Drought, I lived in the country. I used to be a farmer in my old life; I raised all kind of crops. We had acres of wheat fields, corn for miles and the biggest apple orchard you ever did see. It’s not an easy life, being a farmer, but I didn’t mind.”

         Harold’s wheelchair shuddered when they hit another rut. “Hey kid, easy on the pot holes. Those eyes of yours aren’t just painted on; you’re supposed to use ‘em.”

         “Sorry Harold.”

         “Anyways, from dawn till dusk, I tilled the fields and tended the crops and the animals. We had a small herd of milking cows, some chickens, pigs and a couple of horses. It was a good life; hard but honest.”

         “Tell me about the dogs.”

         “Well, we had a lot over the years, but my two favorite were Chunky and Spuds. Best darn farm dogs you ever could have. Kept the foxes out of the hen house and rounded up the cows in the field. Chunky - she was a bit round in the middle, but that didn’t slow her down none. That son of a gun could clear a five-foot fence from a stand still, with room to spare. I miss those mutts.”

         “What happened to them?”

         “Don’t rightly know,” Harold said sadly. “I brought ‘em to the city after the Drought killed off all the other livestock. When my legs gave out, I ended up in the hospital, and we got separated.”

         “Do you think they’re okay?”

         “That was over two years ago. That’s a lot of time in dog years. Besides, there ain’t a lot of hope for animals these days.”

         “Maybe they were lucky,” Brendon said wistfully, patting his knapsack.
He slowed his pace as they turned the corner and fell in line behind a raggedy looking teenage boy.

         “They open yet?” Harold asked the boy.

         “Nope, be another ten minutes.”

         Brendon scanned the line. ‘Not too bad’. He guesstimated about 200 people in front of them, but already there were at least twenty more behind them. As the day wore on, the numbers would increase until they were in the thousands. Anyone who could walk, limp or crawl made it to a dispersal center. If you did nothing else all day, you did that. Brendon wondered what happened to other people like Harold.

                No matter where he and his Mom were in the city, Brendon always made sure to get Harold before they went to the distribution center. Harold never said it, but Brendon knew that Harold was grateful. It was a big responsibility for a kid his age; that along with his other responsibilities weighed heavy on his mind sometimes. Brendon worried that he wouldn’t be able to save them all – what then?

                He couldn’t think about that now, wouldn’t think about it. Things would be alright for all of them. He would make sure of it.

Author's Note

All feedback is appreciated.

Reviews

[Larry Dyson]

good setting and good introduction of characters..who why when and where..more or less...good start I would read some more if written.Laury