Stone Seeds Read Online Free Page A

dust, sand, rubble. Tomax stops moving.
    And now his right foot twitching and loosens something, sand makes a small wave from it, heaves up toward Tomax’s neck, throwing his jaw up and back, sharp and hard. There’s a surge of shrapnel sized rubble piling up against Tomax’s chin, forcing his head up and back agonisingly.
    Cracking sound, soft and sickening, running down Tomax’s left ear.
    He feels his neck strain with the tension.
    He’s not thinking anything at all for one long moment.
    And then Time, he thinks. I needed more time. Knowing what’s above him will move again in a moment. Swivels his eyes painfully up and left. There’s a beam, saved his life.
    But for how long? He cannot see but he can hear the wood tremble, strain. The weight above the beam moves. Something or someone is trapped over Tomax.
    The edge farm boy closes his eyes.
    When he opens them there’s a crack in the rocks near his face. A thin seam of light filtering in through it. Dust settles slowly out there and in a bit Tomax can see bent human shapes, and they’re moving. Something or someone out there. Hoving in and out of view. Whatever it was vanishes. And now there’s only steaming rubble. Light glancing off the tin roofs on the ground.
    Tomax tries to stay calm. He tries to gather his thoughts. The body above him alternates between struggle and exhausted pause and there is a thick pain in Tomax’s neck. Blood welling in a warm pool at his left ear. He can’t tell if it’s from him or from above.
    Some noise is trickling back, from his left ear. Then human sounds, he thinks, only not like human sounds.
    Groans and a low whirring whine.
    The living thing just above him is suffering. Whatever it is, it’s in pain, rocking and panicking.
    The sound pulls at Tomax. And then stops, as though the creature senses him too. Small thumps of its tail. Tomax’s mind is washing in and out of sense. In a little while he understands it’s next door’s dog. It often comes to his back door for scraps, it must have been caught in the blast. As though the dog knows it’s Tomax, down there, struggles again. More dust and rubble falling on to Tomax, more sand flooding in.
    Now Tomax recognises his mother’s voice. Outside. He tries to orient himself, where’s it coming from? And then strains toward the crack. His eye strung to the light through it. It’s as though he sees her for the first time in his life. She is standing by the rubble. Orange grain sack in each hand. Atfirst she seems bewildered. “Tomax,” she says. She drops her grain sacks, and he sees them spill and drifting windward, quickly gone. “Tomax,” she says. Quietly at first. And then, “TOMAX!” She screams. And there’s that pained sound again. Inhuman.
    You think it can’t be coming from you, Tomax thinks. But it is.
    The pain comes in rhythmic waves now, sending jolts to the base of his skull.
    There’s a different voice outside now. A man’s voice. “Stop,” says the voice to Tomax’s mother, not unkindly. And then, “Listen.”
    Tomax tries to identify the voice, the man sounds familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It takes a moment and then. Jengi. He thinks. It’s Jengi out there. Now Tomax knows he stands a chance. A slim one.
    Jengi is last of the Diggers tribe and the Diggers were salvage workers in the previous era. The old bomb clean up crews. The Diggers were skilful at extracting the bodies, both the living and dead, along with valuable metal pipes, and other useful things. People sometimes survived the bombs in the days when the Digger tribe still worked the clean up operations.
    â€œTomax?” Jengi yells. “Tomax? You alive, Boy?”
    Jengi. Tomax thinks. But he can’t say a word.
    â€œMake a sound if you can!” Jengi yells. And then there’s quiet.
    Tomax’s jaws are pinned closed by the sand, rubble. He