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“Isn’t it?” Flowers agreed. “Anyway, we used to hang out. They were just, like, you know…kids.They didn’t live on a rez or anything, though. They said they were city Indians. You know any kids like that in school?”
“A couple.” He needed to steer Flowers away from talk abouthishistory. “So, what’d you use to be? Before the Marines?”
“You fishing for information, Doc?”
“Yeah, maybe. To borrow a couple lines, who are you really, and what were you before? What did you do, and what did you think, huh?”
“Ah.” Flowers grinned. “Channeling Humphrey Bogart.”
He was impressed. “You know your movies.”
“Are you kidding?Casablancais a classic. My grandparents used to watch it. Now that was one beautiful film, and acomplete accident. No one really knew what they had until the thing opened and then everyone went Casablanca-crazy…oh, oh.” Flowers suddenly straightened out of his relaxed slouch. “Shoot, now see you got me talking, gonna miss my turn, hang on.”
Flowers hooked a right. The turn took them from the packed earth that was the road and onto rougher ground. As the Humvee crunched over rocks and mounted a rise, John spotted two distant dust plumes. “There are our people,” he said.
“Yup. Toward that defunct village down there.”
“I see it.” An array of blocky structures were snugged at the base of a soaring, largely barren peak. Other than the few green patches of the foothills, everything was brown or yellow or red: barren rock and patches of gnarly scrub clinging to thin soil. Squinting into the sky above the peak, John spotted large birds circling on an updraft. “Vultures?”
“No, probably steepe eagles. Beautiful birds. They tend to hang where there are people.”
“Why is that?”
“Because where you got people, you got water and livestock. Baby goats, baby lambs make for easy pickings. Mice, too. Green stuff’s mostly wild almond and a variety of pistachio tree, but again, they’re kinda starved for water. You look down at the buildings there, well…what’s left of them, and you’ll see the old riverbed.”
The riverbed was an undulating, deep furrow which meandered between the near edge of the buildings and wide, regular swaths of nearly level brown earth. He noticed, too, that instead of heading for the village, the other Humvees in their convoy had veered off toward a large, oval depression in the earth.
“What is that?” he asked. “Is that a crater?”
“No, old collection lake. All aqueduct systems in this area had them.” Flowers pointed their vehicle down a steep slope. “Hold on. Gets rough from here on out.”
That was an understatement. As they bounced and jounced along, he shouted over the ping and pong of stones striking the undercarriage, “D-d-dried up n-now, t-t-too?”
“Pre-he-he-he-ty much!” Flowers had the wheel in a death grip, his knuckles tenting his skin white. “You get a little bit down at the very b-bottom in sp-spring.”
“An-and the r-r-rest…” he began then stopped as the Humvee caromed onto level ground and the bouncing ceased. “The rest of the system? It’s still here?”
“The karez?” The other vehicles had thrown up so much dust and red grit, Flowers was hunched over the wheel and squinting. “Yeah, we figure that original system tapped into a massive underground reservoir. We’re talking hundreds of millions of gallons. Like having the Mississippi flowing next to your window. Break the glass and you’d be in trouble.”
“Where’s all that water going?”
“Right now, back underground. Some has made its way to the surface, though.”
“Like the spring where the wolves are.”
“Exactly. In fact, it’s practically around the corner. When you’re in the access tunnel, you can hear water through the wall. A lot of water gushing through there. We figure the same missile strike that destroyed the original aqueduct weakened the rock right next to this tunnel. Because, you know, you drill into stone, adjacent rock cracks and gets weaker.”
“Sounds like a flood waiting to happen.”
“Only if there’s a missile strike. But this area’s not active and we stay off comms, so no one’s the wiser. In fact, the water’s why it’s such a nice hiding place. Stays pretty cool inside even when it’s hot enough to fry an egg on a stone. Anyway,” Flowerssaid as he swung them around the dead lake, “remember what I said. Not a word about what I told you about our lieutenant or Shahida or anything, man.”
“Cross my heart.” John drew an X over his left chest. He left out thehope to diepart.
No point tempting fate.
5
By the timeFlowers slid their vehicle into a large mudbrick building and alongside the other two Humvees, the others had dismounted and were arranging their gear.