The empty food containers were filled with water, albeit slowly, the backpacks put on, and the long climb up the hillside began.
Reaching the top, they could see a range of hills in the far distance which seemed to have a green haze over them.
‘Now that could be vegetation,’ Arki surmised, ‘and there might be other food plants among it.’
As it was in their general direction anyway, they marched on, the thought of new fresh food adding a spring to the step of even the most unhappy member of the tattered remains of humanity.
At the bottom of the hill, what had looked like a different coloured strip of ground turned out to be a great gash in the Earth’s surface. Some time in the past, the Earth must have suffered a series of earthquakes, the surface being stretched or compressed, depending on which forces were working on what. This was a stretch, and a big one.
It was too wide to jump, except for the most agile, Glyn and Arki both agreeing it would certainly be too much for two of the men and all the women, especially Mia, who was now sporting a very large bulge at her middle.
They had to go eastwards along the ravine for several kilometres before coming to a place where the gap in the ground was only a metre or so wide, and Arki reckoned that everyone could get across that.
Peering over the edge, Glyn was surprised to be unable to see the bottom of the rift, and dropped the obligatory stone down it. There wasn’t a sound for some time, and then a very distant rattle as the stone clipped the side of the rift somewhere deep below them.
The long haul up the other side of the hill put everyone in a bad mood, as the sun was doing its best to cook them and there wasn’t the faintest breath of wind.
Reaching the top didn’t help much either, as the distant green smudge seemed just as far away as before.
Glyn called a halt and gave instruction that they could drink one third of their water, but only one third. And that didn’t go down any too well, as most could have quite cheerfully quaffed their entire emergency supply.
The break was only a short one, and soon they were on their way again. Beginning the downwards slope of the hill, a wide open plain stretched out before them. Glyn really didn’t like the thought of crossing that much open space.
It seemed threatening somehow but he couldn’t quite figure out why he felt that way. He didn’t mention his thoughts to Arki, as he saw little point in getting him worried as well.
Near the bottom of the hill they saw something new. Little lumps of what looked like dirty glass lay scattered about, as if sand had been fused into small nodules by some very powerful blowtorch.
The further down they went, more of the nodules appeared, until at one point they were crunching their way along quite noisily.
Suddenly, a high pitched squealing rent the air, and everyone stopped dead in their tracks.
The noise seemed to be coming from one of the packs, and Glyn instructed the carrier to take his pack off and find out what was causing the disturbance.
The culprit was a small electronic device, and once out of the pack the noise was deafening. Glyn took it from the proffered hand and looked at the printing along the top of the little oblong box.
‘Quick everyone, out of this crunchy stuff and up the hill. Move it,’ he shouted, but Brendon was in no mood to trudge up any hill, especially the one he had just come down.
The others had begun to do as they were told, but Brendon stood his ground and opened his mouth to argue. Glyn swung around and planted his foot at high velocity on Brendon’s rear end, sending him sprawling. He managed to regain his feet, gave Glyn a filthy look and took off after the others as if the demons of hell were after him.
‘There was no need to do that,’ he whined, slowing down a little. Glyn came up behind him and he took off again as fast as his stubby little legs would allow.
‘This area’s dangerous, and we must get out quickly.’
‘I did what I had to do to get you moving. When I say move, you move, you don’t stand around arguing the toss about the finer points of moving. When I say do something, it’s for your own good, but you might be too thick to understand the reason. That’s why you must obey at once.’ Glyn was getting out of breath now, so he saved the rest of his diatribe for later, when he could deliver it with a little more emphasis and in a more dignified manner.
Once clear of the glassy nodules, the radiation monitor cut its screech back to a series of loud ticks, and as they went a little higher up the hill the device went silent, apart from the odd tick caused by the ever present background radiation.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Arki, although he had guessed most of it.
‘That area down there must have been at the centre of a nuclear explosion, or something like it. The radiation is still hanging around and I suspect that we got a good dose of it.
‘How much do you think,’ asked a pale faced Arki, ‘in round terms.’
‘Don’t really know. The line of lights which indicate the dose rate were all lit, so I think we can safely say we got a generous helping. There’s nothing we can do about it now, so we may as well get on with the march to the south and steer well clear of any areas like that in future.’
Having explained the situation briefly to the rest of the travellers, they moved along the top of the hill, the idea being to outflank the deadly sands, and then continue on with their journey towards the hazy green hills on the horizon.
Glyn and Arki were in the lead and setting the pace, while the others were strung out behind in groups of two or three, some talking, some deep within their own thoughts, Brendon bringing up the rear, and mumbling away to himself.
‘I know it may not seem important right now, but what do we do when our clothes wear out?’ asked Arki, who had obviously given the subject some thought.
‘Don’t know. If they do fall apart, it’s going to be a bit undignified, especially for the older ones, with all the dangly bits on full view,’ the visual imagery of such an occurrence had them both laughing heartily.
‘Actually, the material seems to be darn near indestructible, I can’t remember the last time I had a replacement set,’ Glyn said, the tears still running down his face. ‘I put ’em in the wash after picking up the second set, and as far as I know they just keep cycling round.’
‘Well, we can’t use large leaves as in the old myths,’ Arki continued, ‘as we haven’t found any big enough.’
‘You mean nature’s been that generous!’ Glyn responded, and the laughter rang out again, being the only sound apart from the muffled sound of their footsteps.
As the sun dipped towards the western horizon, the slanting rays lit up the area of fused sand nodules turning them into a myriad of twinkling stars, winking in and out of existence as the travellers walked along.
‘It’s surprising that such a beautiful sight could hold such a deadly threat to life,’ said Arki with a sigh.
‘I agree,’ replied Glyn, stopping for a moment to look at the scintillating sands, ‘at least we can now see the outline of the dangerous area, and that’ll save us quite a bit of extra walking. I had intended going right to the end of this ridge, just to be sure of missing the radioactive area.’
They now turned at right angles to their old line of walking, and headed off down hill again, Glyn considering that if they kept going straight ahead, they would safely bypass the danger area by a small margin.
Holding the radiation monitor in his hand, he lead the way past the edge of the knobbly glass area, listening out for the slightest increase in the steady tick, tick, of the sensor.
A warm breeze drifted across the deadly area towards them, carrying with it a harsh dusty metallic smell, but as the monitor didn’t warn them of any dangerous radioactivity, they carried on, oblivious to the microscopic particles they were ingesting into their lungs.
By the time they had cleared the danger area, the sun was only about two hours from disappearing below the horizon, and it was decided to seek out a suitable place to stop for the night.
The terrain was changing again, with smaller hillocks and deep gullies replacing the rolling slopes of the early afternoon, and it was in one of these that the first sign of life in that day’s travel came to light.
A blob of grey green could be seen at the end of the gully they were travelling along, and this induced an increase of pace without a word being spoken.
As they neared the strange looking plant, it became obvious that no one recognized it as being anything like those they were used to on board the ship.
It stood alone at the end of the gully, surrounded by copious amounts of dead time whitened branches, the remains of those plants which hadn’t quite made it in the dry and harsh environment in which they had tried to grow.
‘Well, we’ve got some fire wood at least,’ someone exclaimed, ‘but who’s going to gather it up with those spikes on it?’
The white gnarled and twisted branches were smothered in closely packed vicious thorns, some ten centimetres long, and with points as fine as any needle.
‘I don’t think we’ll find a better place to make camp tonight, so let’s clear an area over there of these prickly branches, and build a sheltering wall with our packs. It all came so naturally to Glyn.
Removing the dead plants wasn’t quite so easy as had at first been assumed. Some still had deep roots attached, and although the wood was dead, it still had considerable strength.
One particular dead plant was right in the middle of the area they intended to sleep on, and despite all efforts, it remained stubbornly fixed in the ground. They had snapped all the thorns off using their feet, but two men pulling as hard as they could wouldn’t free the plant from the firm hold it had in the ground.
Someone had the bright idea of digging the earth away from around the plant, and after much hacking away with a large flat stone, they had managed to make a small crater around the base, and then they saw why it was so firmly rooted to the spot.
Where the plant protruded from the stony ground, a network of thick roots spread out in all directions, some sideways and some directly downwards. There was more of the plant below ground than there was above.
Four of the biggest men grabbed hold of the naked stem and pulled in unison, but it still refused to come free, and they gave up the unequal struggle.
One of the fire makers of the previous night came forward and suggested that they burn it out of the ground, and as no one could think of a better idea, he set about rubbing his sticks together, which he had fortuitously saved.
It was several minutes later when a very hot and tired fire maker produced a small glowing bundle of tinder which he proceeded to blow on, encouraging it to burst into flame.
Once a few small twigs had caught fire, the process speeded up, larger twigs and handfuls of thorns being added to the small fire around the base of the plant.
The next event took them all by surprise. The main stem of the plant began to writhe about like a thing possessed, emitting squeaking noises amid the crackle of the general fire, and then the living bush, many metres away began to follow suit, the pair dancing and twisting like a pair of drunken ballet dancers.
Everyone backed away from the performing bushes, not knowing what else might happen.
‘Must be connected by underground roots,’ exclaimed Arki, ‘and what one feels is experienced by the other.’
‘But this one is dead, unless it’s not as dead as we assumed,’ one of the fire makers added.
There was a sudden gush of flames as a small oil storage nodule at the base of the main stem split open, expending in a few seconds the energy it had taken years to store.
Soon after that the fire died down, with just a few wisps of smoke drifting up into the still evening sky.
‘Right,’ said Glyn, ‘let’s gather up some of this loose dead wood and get a good fire going, we are going to need the heat later on, and the light will enable us to see what we are doing with the food packs.’
Everyone opened a food pack, adding the water they had saved from the last time they drank, and making up the difference from the emergency water supply, which was being used for the first time.
‘Keep all empty containers,’ Arki called out as the evening meal got under way, ‘they will be useful for holding extra water, or whatever we might find to eat,’ if we ever do he added under his breath.
After the meal, general conversation carried on for a while, but as everyone was exhausted after the gruelling march that day, they soon huddled down behind the wall of packs to get some sleep.
A few of the more fortunate ones had a sandy patch to lay on and were able to scoop out a depression for their hips, so ensuring a good night’s rest. They were only disturbed once by a strange wailing noise which drifted across the gully, and then was gone. A vivid imagination kept a few awake for a while, and then all was quiet apart from the soft moaning of a light wind across the top of the hill.
Next morning they all seemed a bit more cheerful, as they were getting better adjusted to sleeping out in the open. There were a few requests for another ration of food, but as Glyn pointed out, they may be hungry but the previous night’s ration would sustain them for twenty four hours.
After a limited drink from the emergency water supplies, they were off again.
The rising sun spread a pink glow over the tops of the surrounding hills, adding a fairyland touch to the scene and thereby disguising the true nature of the hostile land through which they were to travel.
‘I could do with a good shower,’ Arki commented to Glyn as they began the ascension out of the gully.
‘Me to, and our clothes could do with a wash. The fine dust particles lodged in the material will cause it to wear before its time if we’re not careful, so a bit of laundry is called for, at the earliest opportunity.’
The climb out of the gully was steep, and everyone was a little out of breath by the time they had reached the top, but fortunately the cool morning air had made the ascent a little more bearable.
The view from the hill top was a little more encouraging than the previous sightings of the distant green clad hills. They must have travelled a lot further than they thought, weaving in and out of the gullies the previous day. The plant growth could now be plainly discerned, with what looked like tall trees poking up out of the overall green mantle of the undulating ground ahead. On the far horizon, a jagged row of mountains poked their stark black sombre heads up into the clear blue sky of the early morning.