The Well: The Well, #1

By R E Rice

In the Year 2070 in a California valley, the earth appears barren and people have deserted the land to go east, all except David's family. David, in his brief life has experienced everything imaginable, including eating insects and worms to tame his never ending hunger. With the disappearance of animals, vegetation, and clean water, the only well in California which is produced drinking water, is dry. David's father makes the decision to travel to the east, where the government promises an abundance of food and water. What the United States government didn't tell the people was, that three thousand miles on foot, with no food and no water is a death march.

When David and his family leave their only shelter to search for water, they hope that a map holds the secret to finding the well which is thought to contain water and life. On their search for the well, they will embark on a journey of despair, revelation, and a series of misfortunes that will test David's will to live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R E Rice
• Release date: Jul 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501414473

R E Rice

These are the first books(The Well 1,2,3,) R.E. Rice has written in the science fiction genre for ages 13 and above. She enjoys reading and writing mysteries and romance as well as science fiction. Her favorite read is books of poetry. She has a BA in education and is a member of Romance Writers of America.

Book preview

Books by R.E. Rice

The Well: book 1

The Well 2

The Well 3

"Like a red morn that ever yet betokened, Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds, gusts and foul flaws to herdsmen and to herds."

—William Shakespeare

Book 1

I sat clutching a dead stick in my dry palms, twirling it around and around in the parched earth, wasting time before my father was due home from the hunt. It had been a week since he headed out on his hunting ritual. He and Uncle Robert had taken a hunting party of five men in search of game. Signs of game meant that we could have some meat. I missed meat. Not that I had a clear notion of what meat was, but I had heard my mother and father lamenting over the disappearance of meat. Sometimes I swore I could smell it cooking in our lifeless kitchen.

People ate red meat years ago. Killed animals and cooked them and ate them, my father would say, day after day, month after month, and year after year.

My mother reminded me that I had tasted some meat as a child, but I couldn’t remember. I thought that if I had, I would have remembered, considering how glorious the experience sounded. Father described meat as thick and juicy, with red blood oozing in the pots. Mother would make gravy to eat with potatoes. I do remember the potatoes. I wished I had one now. My father would raise his head in reverence at the memory. The smell, heavenly, he would say, and then his mouth would turn downward. Once I swore I saw a tear.

The first time I saw a cow with an advertisement of a steak, I was thumbing through my mother’s old tattered magazines. For hours at a time, Father and Mother would talk about their childhood as they sat looking at the pictures of meat. They would remember how they ate big juicy hamburgers on buns layered with lettuce and tomatoes and cheese on top of the meat. All things I never knew existed until I saw them in the magazine. I remember I was so hungry listening to my parents that I closed my eyes and licked the paper, trying to imagine the taste.

With these memories crowding my mind as I sat outside still playing with the stick, I heard a jarring sound and I stood, turning in a circle, realizing that lightning had just struck to the west of our home.

The lightening broke in the sky and I glanced at the powdery dust riddle road, where my father had walked off to search for food and where he would return. I prayed he would find something to kill. We needed to eat. Or, if he could just find some fertile ground where he could dig something up for today, even that would do. Tomorrow would have to take care of itself.

After the loud warning of lightning striking in the distance, the sky opened up, not with rain but with a shower