12 Water Bodies

"See ya, see ya! Wouldn't wanna beee ya!" a little girl's voice sings.

"Aliyah!" a fearful voice screams into darkness.

"Sia, Sia! Can't catch meeee ya!"

"Aliyah!"

"Sia!" The cheerful child's voice becomes distant.

"Aliyah, wait! Come back!" Sia scrambles in the dark searching for her little sister.

A blue holographic plane flies off into the darkness. The plane soars into a nuclear plant and a huge explosion devastates the area around it.

The flames light up the darkness and the wind blows dust and glass into Sia's face. She holds up her arm, and the debris flows through her and her blue dress. She's invisible. She runs toward the blast zone and passes by burnt corpses on the dark ground.

"Aliyah!"

A small red triangular piece of glass is laying on the ground. Sia hears Aliyah's giggling voice emitting from the piece of glass. She picks up the glass and she gazes at the images of Aliyah playing behind the small pane.

"…..."

Sia watches as a tiny chip in the corner of the glass spreads all over. She hyperventilates as she sees cracks creep up her arms.

Then she shatters.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'

2034

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Sia rolls off her seat onto the floor. She gasps into the dirty truck bed.

"Sia! Are you alright?" Raymond's voice can be heard from behind her.

Sia stops herself from curling into a ball and looks up in the direction of the voice. The truck has stopped again. Raymond leaves after checking on Sia, and inspects the creatures obstructing the road. It is raining.

SUBJECT 001 DEFINE STATUS

"It was just a dream. I'm fine," she mutters to herself.

She gets up and jumps from the truck. The men are kicking at something large and green. Others are holding out jugs to fill with water.

"What is that?"

Ahead of the road is a trail of green, long-legged insect creatures laying across the ground.

APPEARS TO BE A CLOUD OF DEAD CAELIFERA ORTHOPTERA

COMMONLY KNOWN AS GRASSHOPPERS

"I've seen this before," Vanessa says from beside Sia.

Sia looks over at her. "What made this happen?"

"The land here dips downhill. Worms probably worked their way out when the rain started."

The ground is muddy and there are lines leading downhill. Deep trails of lines that crisscross over each other.

"See these grooves?"

Sia looks over at Vanessa's arm as the rain slides down a scarred bicep. She looks at the lines in the mud and nods. Vanessa's blue eyes are squinting down the hill, and she raises quickly and wipes some water out of her eyes.

"Worms?" Sia asks.

"There!" Vanessa calls out to get everyone's attention.

Eli and the others look over at Vanessa and turn to where she is pointing. At the bottom of the hill, a pond has formed from the gathered water. Writhing in the pond are long, thick worms. They wriggle and knot together as they travel through the water.

Sia's stomach turns at the sight.

'What are those?!' she thinks as she backs up to the truck and turns to jump back inside.

The truck shakes a bit as a worm pulls out of one of the nearby grasshoppers. It pushes out of the grasshopper into the side of the truck; rocking it slightly; as it struggles to get free. Vanessa watches as it pulls up around the top of the truck and wriggles through the air. It almost appears to fly between the droplets falling from the sky. Its sleek black skin shines brightly with the bit of light seen shining through the clouds. It's like a living rainbow as it glistens pass Vanessa to join its fellow invertebrates.

'Do they eat humans?' she thinks as she picks up the crowbar lying under a seat.

NEMATOMORPHA, OR HORSEHAIR WORMS, ARE HARMLESS TO HUMAN BEINGS

Sia gets out of the truck still wielding the crowbar. Seeing the creature disappear down the hill doesn't make her feel safer. The hairs on her neck are raised. She tries not to look to see if it is returning up the hill, but she checks anyway. It doesn't make her feel any better.

"We have to get out of here," she says.

Eli holds his hands on his hips while looking at all the grasshopper corpses blocking the way.

He opens the driver side of his truck, wipes his wet hair out of his face, and calls out to his men, "Detour! Back up!"

Water from the top of the truck canvas is running down the back in large droplets. Sia watches Raymond drink the rainwater from his jug. She holds the funnel on the mouth of her jug steady, as she holds it still. Her jug is filled by the time they stop. She can't wait to purify and boil it all. As they drive along the bumpy road, she cuts the back off the empty jug that used to be Greg's. Vanessa pointedly ignores her the entire time. The detour brings them to their destination a few hours off schedule, but they still reach it before sundown.

During the past few days of travel, Sia has had to endure the odd looks of her travel companions as she collected bits of coal from their fires. Foraging in their campfires got her a good supply of coal stored in her backpack. Whenever they stopped by a murky water source to collect their water, she would skip collecting water and poke around the area. She lucked out and found some sandy material. Finally, she has enough to try out the information she has learned from Lil Putter.

While the mercenaries pack the stuff into the new checkpoint, Sia sits out her empty ration jar. It still has a vinegary smell to it, but she hopes it doesn't affect her results. She shoves a cloth into the spout, pours in the crushed coal bits, and pours the sand on top of that. When she steadies the jug filter into the glass jar, she slowly gets up and grabs her water jug that is filled with rainwater. Then she takes the cap off her water and slowly pours it into the improvised charcoal filter. Slowly, drops of water fill the jar.

While everyone rests, Sia checks the fire and pours her jar into a pot she borrowed from Raymond. As that boils, she pours more water into her filter. She feels so accomplished and giddy with the success.

When the whole water purifying process is over, she holds her jug up proudly and sips at the water.

"I am a mighty water scientist. Parasites! Beware science!"

Sia thinks back to the horsehair worms and shutters.

Meanwhile, Vanessa and Raymond eat their rations and sip their murky water.

Vanessa rolls her eyes at the woman's antics. "All of that for half a jug of water? When you had a full jug?"

Sia stops filling her belly with water to answer the uneducated laymen behind her.

"You scoff at me now, but you will beg for me to share my mystical wisdom in da future," Sia says before capping her almost empty jug and eating some more jerky packets.

"I don't understand how you can stand drinking something that might give you diarrhea."

"Diarrhea hasn't killed anybody."

"IT LITERALLY HAS!"

Vanessa rolls her eyes.

"A little discomfort hasn't killed anyone."

"But you can't measure discomfort when you drink bad water. It's either kind of safe or death by diarrhea. That's the scale."

"There are worst ways to die."

"I think you're just lazy."

"Whatever, Princess."

Raymond grins at their conversation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eli touches at his belly as he hears the women talking. He nudges Ika's foot as he cleans his rifle.

"You saw that contraption she made for her water?"

"…"

"Can you make one of those?"

"…."

"I've got an upset stomach. You think that's a sign of anything? You think it's the water?"

Ika looks up at Eli from his position on the ground. "...Too early to tell."

"…"