THE ASH BARGAIN

Jillian Cross walked the perimeter of the settlement's water tanks and counted what was left, her boots crunching on salt-encrusted earth that used to be soil.

Forty-two thousand gallons. That was the total across all six tanks in Fort Mercy, a rusted settlement clinging to the bottom of what used to be the Colorado River basin before the basin dried up and the river became a memory and the memory became a legend and the legend became a joke that people told when they had too much alcohol and not enough water to get drunk properly. Forty-two thousand gallons for three hundred and forty-seven people, including the forty-two new arrivals who had walked in from the Salt Flats with nothing but cracked lips, blistered feet, and desperate eyes that had seen other settlements and known they did not want to live there.

Jillian was the water coordinator, which meant the math was hers to do. Every morning at dawn, she opened the tank hatches, ran the gauge