Winner of the 11 - 12 years age category

Deadly Fate

Crouching in a ditch waiting for the right moment can be a nerve-wracking thing to do when you're dangerously dehydrated, near-starved insomniac, especially if the thing you're waiting for the right moment to do is going to get you something that'll keep you alive for a few more days.

The two of us are sitting in a hole we dug for protection and are planning a way to get to the water before anyone else who's hiding around us does. It's scorching. The midday sun is shining down hard on the dry, barren earth that used to be so fertile and green. We have nothing. I draw the cloth more tightly around my head and neck, not out of modesty but to protect my skin from the harsh rays of the sun, to conserve moisture.

It used to be so beautiful here. We used to go to school. Our parents used to be alive. Only Eli's are alive, so he stayed back at our little set up, our mock village, our home. We used to be able to run free, to do what ever we wanted with no care. Now we have to be highly aware, extremely cautious, someone always has to play sentry, though play's not quite the right word. I don't know why we weren't prepared; we were such a strong people. I wanted to do so much with my life, but now the best I can do is try to have a life, to keep it.

I catch sight of a rising plume of dust in the distance, close to the old well. How can we advance towards it without being seen? And if we get there, how will we fight everyone off? They'll kill us for the water!
"What are we going to do?" comes a weak, pleading cry. It is Kayshini. We are so desperate for any small, even temporary, chance of survival.

We concoct a plan: we are going to move out of the ditch and gradually edge our way to the pile of old rusty corrugated iron. From there well, we will have to improvise. What's the use of a plan when we don't even know who we're fighting, how desperate they are?

"I'll go first," I whisper to Kayshini. I'm not sure if she hears me, but I get the sense she doesn't want to go first anyway. I hoist myself out of the hole. I feel myself slipping through, and the only thing within reach to grab onto is a withered old root. I wonder what is happened to the tree. This place used to be covered by them, a 'leafy' suburb, now desolate but my thoughts are interrupted by Kayshini pulling me back.
"Something's coming," she says. I hear the sound of hooves pounding against the arid earth; they are nearing. All around us people are emerging from their hiding places, shrieking and running in all directions.

"Come on!" Kayshini shouts. We haul ourselves out of the ditch and sprint away from the fast advancing posse.
"The water!" I yell.
"Yes," she replies, "the water!"
I start running for it when she screams, "No, let me. You go ahead, I'll catch up."
"Are you sure?" I can't believe how she is suddenly so brave.
"Positive."
So she runs for the water, old petrol cans strapped to her sides, as I turn in the direction of home.

***

It was a heroic thing she did, building up all her courage and putting her life at stake, but some heroines have to fall.
And she did.
I remember, in the midst of the panic, I couldn't see much. All I heard was the single shot. They had come for the water, they killed her for it. I retreated across the railway line and up to where the dust swirled around the stout old bridge pylon. I clambered across the mangled and corroded iron of a once iconic bridge that spanned this once iconic, now putrid harbour. I realised that climate change had not only altered the geography of my world, beyond repair, but the people in it too. While we struggled against our very extinction, we also feared each other; we had become savages.

I though about the sacrifice Kayshini made to save us; I wondered what sacrifice I would have made twenty years ago to save Australia from this deadly fate.

By India Bennett