Dubai 2050: City of Gold Survivors - Unforgiving Desert and Beyond.

By Hassan Al Jabri

This is part of Dubai 2050 City of Gold Survivors series. Part I: The Dead End Sea. Part II: Unforgiving Desert And Beyond.

Zed's desire to find the secrets of his origins and probe the limits of his world remains unfulfilled.

And now, returned from his exploration of the Dead End Seaâ a voyage that appears to have taken him out of time for five yearsâ Zed faces new challenges in Atta. While his love for Nera blossoms, he finds that the unspoken taboo against leaving the bounds of the known world has become an unbreakable law. Sanctioned for the risks he has already taken, Zed does not repent, but instead makes plans to go west, into the trackless desert that surrounds part of Atta Mountain.

His journey will take him once again to the edge of the un-known world, and then beyond it. At the end, he uncovers another secret about his originsâ and in the process discovers that Atta is in more danger than he ever imagined.

He find himself has put Atta at risk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456619138

Book preview

side.

"Where the past not existed ,

it’s takes more than a courage

to find the hard truth."

Author

Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Introduction

The Year: 2014. The Place: Metropolitan city - Dubai.

A mysterious catastrophe has destroyed the city and left a small international group of survivors isolated and stripped of their memories. As they recover and begin the work of rebuilding, they find that they are alone on a mountain surrounded on one side by a sea filled with dangers and mysterious debris, and on the other by trackless desert.

Determined to survive, and having no inkling of their history or place in the world, the survivors found a settlement that they call Attah, and they find themselves reluctant to explore the past or to find out more about the strange land that they have claimed. No one breaks this unspoken taboo until Zed a first generation of survivors reaches manhood with a burning desire to understand his past through thrilling and terrifying adventures, putting his life at risk in order to find the truth.

Part I: Dead End Sea: Zed and his friends Azim and Junior explore beyond Atta for the first time. Sailed to unknown and discovered more than expected but only to find themselves arrived at the dead end sea full of strange creatures. Chased by these creatures, Zed and his friends escaped and sailed back home. Only to find their boat sinking and fight for survival to reach the shore of Atta that they left three days ago. Continue……

CHAPTER One

2045: Atta & Yet A Strange Place

Dawn broke in the east, and its light spread out across the water. The sun lit Atta mountain, and all parts of it, from the summit to the shoreline, lay bathed in the red glow.

The first light fell on three figures, still as corpses, who lay half-in and half-out of the surf. Beside them and around them lay a scree of metal parts.

Only the slow movement of their chests gave any sign that the three men yet lived; beyond that the only motion around them came from the rising and falling waves, and the wind- and wave- swept tatters of their clothing.

The first of the three to stir was Junior. His eyes snapped open suddenly, and then closed again; then he slowly lifted a hand to his eyes to sweep away the accumulated sand and salt. His eyes opened again, and he attempted to raise himself, but his exhausted body would not comply.

His arms seemed to have no strength, and the world seemed to spin under his body, making it impossible for him to keep himself upright.

Finally Junior managed to sit up. By now the sun had made it halfway over the horizon, and he swept his bleary eyes over the shore and the sea, looking for landmarks, looking for anything familiar. He noticed first Zed and Azim lying close by, and then the metal debris around him, the remains, apparently, of Leo’s boards.

Now Junior remembered: after a few hours’ operation, the heat they generated had begun to tear the boards apart; there had been a few more hours of terrified flying as the boards decayed and their legs nearly failed from fatigue, and then—a shadow rising before them and a last panicked sensation of falling as the boards broke into pieces. They had not been built to fly so far, but they had been built well enough to fly them to safety.

But where were they? With difficulty, Junior got himself to his knees so that he could survey the shore. As he moved, he heard Zed and Azim stirring, and soon all three of them were up and looking out on this strange territory.

Finally, Junior rose to his feet. He nearly overbalanced as he did so; he stumbled like one drunk. But then, shading his eyes, he looked up and down the shore.

Do you see anything, Junior?

Zed was trying to stand now, but he couldn’t seem to find his balance, and his legs seemed unwilling to support him. Junior?

Junior did not respond. He was staring south along the shoreline.

Azim groaned as he struggled to get to his feet.

Has he found something?

Zed called again.

Junior? At last, his legs shaking a little, he stood up.

He looked south in the direction Junior had turned—and he nearly lost his balance again, stumbling forward for a few paces until he could hold himself upright.

Beyond a narrow place in the beach, where a ridge of the land sloped down quickly and almost into the water itself, Zed saw the edge of an enormous structure. He staggered toward it, his mind instantly filled with images of the underwater building he had explored just a day ago, and Junior followed him, with Azim finally struggling to his feet and following them both in turn.

As they approached, the full size of the structure became apparent: They walked around it and found that it was two stories tall and about half a kilometer long.

The roof curved down around the building like the edge of a seashell, and under the tarnish left on it from years underwater and exposed to the elements Zed could see that the roof had once been made of gold, or a metal that was meant to mimic gold. For Zed could tell the structure wasn’t new-built. It was covered with the dried remains of algae and other sea life, and sand had drifted high on its seaward side.

Zed stared at the structure, certain it had been built by the same people whose drowned homes he had explored. His first urge—overriding even his hunger and thirst—was to enter and explore: if he did so, he knew, he would find more evidence of his origins. But as he and his companions circled the building, they discovered that every door, every window, every gap left by the elements within a twice a man’s height of the ground had been sealed off with scrap metal.

"I wonder where we