Red Sand by Ronan Cray Read Free Book Online Page B

anyway? He must be at the front of the line.
    She could see a third boat emptying half-clothed survivors down the beach. That made a total of eighteen.  The rest of the boats only carried debris and salvage.
    Eighteen souls out of 1200. Incredible. She thought maybe the boats would go back out for more, but already the White Hairs were stowing them in a cave below the massive red wall.
    Two million dollars. Two million dollars. She repeated it to herself to keep going. She had to stay alive for it.
    They reached the base of the red wall. As they approached, Lauren was shocked. It was man-made. The walls were fifteen feet high, massive and thick, and seemed to demarcate the divide between sand dunes and lava flats. The sand piled up against it, assaulting it, but unable to scale it. The wind exposed black scars of lava at its base. The wall glistened as if wet. It had a deep red hue with veins of orange and white marbling as if built of frozen cubes of beef, reminding Lauren of the Bodies exhibit she’d seen in New York. 
    “What is the wall made of?” Lauren whispered.
    Carter stretched his fingers out from the oar and scraped his fingernails against the wall. He frowned. He couldn’t lift his hand to inspect the fragments without tipping Max out. Instead, he leaned over and licked the wall.
    “Salt!”
    They followed the base of the wall for some time, heading inland. Finally they reached a portal. To the right, another trail led off into the heart of the dunes. The sturdy oaken hull of a rowboat formed double doors.  As the party approached, two men with spears and large, heavy bags at their waists silently opened the doors from the inside.  After they passed, the two guards bolted the doors shut again.
    Just on the other side of the wall lay a heap of clothing like the sale bin at a thrift store. Lauren and Carter put Max down. She couldn’t wait to put on something with sleeves to ward off biting insects.  Carter tempered her delight when he observed, “It looks like Dachau. Where did all these clothes come from?”
    For the next ten minutes, they all played dress-up, digging through the pile for clothes that fit. Lauren settled for a white dress-shirt and a pair of shorts. She preferred flip-flops to shoes. Carter took one look at her outfit and said with a straight face, “Laundry day?”
    Emily couldn’t find anything small enough for her, so she draped herself in an oversized University of Maryland t-shirt, sporting a grinning turtle in a fighting stance. Mason grabbed a pair of jeans, a blue t-shirt, and some white tennis shoes. Somehow Carter managed to dress sharply, the cleanest of them all. They felt almost civilized again.
    While dressing, they took in the view. At best, Lauren hoped to find a modern village of stone huts with tin roofs and an army of children to greet them. She’d seen that in a movie once. Instead, an expanse of lava fields stretched out to the horizon like the negative of a frozen river. To the right, toward the cliffs of the volcano, what looked like a junk yard huddled in the shade. As their party trudged closer, she could make out individual units, dwellings, cobbled together from randomly shaped panels in all different colors and states of environmental degradation. The wind rustled tattered sheets of plastic across this shanty town.
    A band of five White Haired men approached from the village. The White Hairs left the line and joined their cohorts. They were a ragged bunch, but their clothes were civilized. One of them, apparently the leader, stood out in a starched but discolored white suit.
    Lauren’s heart dropped. These were not natives. They were survivors. All hope of rescue abandoned her.
    The leader stepped forward, arms wide. “Welcome to our island! Here you are safe!”
    An American! He had a strong, masculine voice with no hint of accent. Nevertheless, it felt like a lie. He seemed to have a whole speech prepared, like a merchant who starts his negotiations