Crimson Skies

Part 34 - They're Here

Rain showers down drenching the four runaways. Minutes into the storm, they begin to shiver.

            Teeth chattering, they quickly huddle close together. As best as Jex can recall, the nearest cover of rocks is an hour’s walk. The red soft sand turns to mud, capturing and pulling in their feet every time they dig into the sand. Walking is impossible.

The celebration is now hard to hear over the roar of thunder and the sky overhead flashes with electricity. But they know its sound, the celebration. They grow up on the resonance of merriment found after sacrifice. They watched month after month as selected men and woman were offered up for rain. They stood in the streets, listening to the deafening screams as the selected died. Then starring upwards at the blackening sky, raising their arms to the heavens, laughing as the first drops touched their faces, they sang and danced with everyone else given life that month. Now? Now it’s different. Instead of warmth in laughter, they find bitter cold in death rain.

            Jex leans over and rests his forehead atop Aila’s head, her face buried in his jacket. It does not help keep them dry, it only keeps the rain from splashing their faces; their wet hair still trickles the water down their features though. He feels Sarla snuggle closer next to him and Dyle move in towards them. The four shake and quiver in the freezing downpour.

            Four hours pass and even their brains turn numb to thought. Nearing the fifth hour, they begin to thaw, and wonder, how long has the rain stopped? How long has there been silence? Shifting in the mud, they peer upwards at the clear sky in the crack of rocks above.

            Dyle lifts Sarla from his lap and he stands, securing his footing in the slippery mud. He offers her his hand and brings her to her feet. She wrings her brown hair through her hands, draining out the lasting rainwater. Jex and Aila help each other up with great care. Very, very slow, the four of them grip onto the jagged walls and make their way out into the canyon bed itself.

            As they crawl through the hole and stand in the open canyon, the sun in the crimson sky already bakes the mud turning the sloppy red to hardening clay. Each step taken imprints the ground, cracking the clay and revealing wet red still inside.

            “This is no good,” Jex mutters starring at the prints left by his shoes. “When the army returns, they’ll see where we go.”

            “And they will return, the half-way mark is less than half a day’s travel,” Sarla agrees. “They have to come back this way, they cannot pass. How will we even slip around them?”

            Aila pulls her soaked clothing away from her skin, even the heat of day does little to ward off the chill of rain summoned by death. “We need to watch the sun. It’s moving. The demons will awaken again.”

            “No, we’re good on that front,” Dyle says reaching down to touch the ground. “It’s too hard for them to swim through. But you know it won’t last. Another few cycles and the mud will crumble into sand again.  I say we try as far as we can, hope we get to shelter before the demons swim again and hope the demons swim again before our footprints are seen by anyone...”

            “Fantastic,” Jex mutters rolling his eyes. “That gives us a narrow window period.”

            “Better plan?” Dyle raises an expectant eyebrow at him in challenge.

            Jex sighs. “Let’s starts walking then,” he replies as a way of ‘no.’

            Their hair dries first. Jex, Dyle and Aila are the fastest, with short hair. Sarla’s tips still cling together, damp.  The arms and shoulders of their jackets, and their pants, dry in patches. The folds and creases are still cold. The further they walk, they more they begin to undress. Jackets come off, and then long sleeve shirts.

            Jex is tempted to take off his shirt all together, but the sun is not kind to exposed skin.

            Aila squints against the haze of sunlight touching ground in the distance. As her mind connects the dots, her feet stop moving, eyes widen.

            Sarla is the first to notice, “My love?” She pauses to regard her cousin with knitted eyebrows and a concerned frown.

            “They’re here,” Aila replies, her mouth dry.