Sand

by Hugh Howey

  He veered toward the tree. Hoping. Moving with what vigor his bones had left. The tree was getting closer. Faster than his stagger ought to make it. The tree was rounding a dune. The mast of a sarfer. The crimson sail of rebels. Brock and his men.

  Palmer tried to run, his brain remembering back to when that was possible. But his damnable body reminded him of more recent events by collapsing onto the sand. Palmer spit grit. He coughed—his swollen tongue in the way. Peering to the side, he saw the sarfer speeding toward him. Maybe they didn’t see him. But the damn crows, circling and diving, a cloud of swooping arrows, betraying him. Here, here, they cried. And the sarfer came.

  Maybe to save him. The rebels would save him. Palmer nearly stood and waved his arms, and then he saw Hap’s gaping mouth full of sand, his body twisted out of shape, heard the shouts inside that tent to catch him and kill him dead. Two more nights of walking and he would’ve made it to the outskirts of Springston. This is what his fevered brain thought as he began scooping sand over his head. On his knees, his forehead against a dune, ass in the air, the wind offering little help, he scooped handfuls of sand and dumped them on the back of his neck, sobbed for help, sobbed beneath the gyring crows, trying to bury himself before someone else did.

  There came the approaching crunch of a sarfer’s foils carving the desert floor, and then a spray of fine sand as the wind-powered craft slewed to a halt. Palmer kept his forehead to the ground and bit down on his whimpers. His back remained arched up into the sky, his dive suit hanging loose around him, sand spilling through his hair and down the cuff of his neck.

  He heard the whir and zip of a line passing through gloves and wooden blocks. The creak of boom and mast and the noise of a sail depowered and left to flap in the wind. Boots landed on the sand and crunched toward him. A sword to spill him or a canteen to fill him, he didn’t have the courage or energy to look. Palmer had left his wits and senses a thousand dunes behind.

  Someone asked him to show his hands, wanted to see his palms. They asked again. He tried to raise his hands but couldn’t. It was the sword. The sword was coming for him.

  Strong hands fell on his shoulders and rolled him over. Sand fell from his hair and across his face. “Palm,” the voice said again. “Palm.”

  The mirage of his sister. A hallucination. His sister, the red flapping sail of a rebel sarfer behind her. His sister, tugging her gloves off, wiping the sand from his cheek, the mud from his crying. She was crying as well. Fumbling with her canteen, hands shaking, a mask of horror on her face from the sight of him, Palmer unable to speak.

  She lifted his chin, crying, “Palm. Oh, Palm.” Precious water was tipped over blistered lips and around his fat tongue. Palmer’s throat was a clenched fist. There was no swallowing. No swallowing. He felt the water evaporate in his mouth, slip inside his tongue, become absorbed. Vic poured more. Her hand shook, canteen and eyes leaking, whispered his name. Had come looking for him.

  The water sat in his mouth until it disappeared. Another cap, and something like a swallow, a loud and painful gulp, a body remembering how.

  “Danvar,” he croaked. “I found it.”

  “I know you did,” Vic said. She rocked him back and forth. “I know you did.”

  “Might be trouble,” Palmer hissed. He needed to tell her about Brock, about the bombs, about getting out of there.

  “Save your strength,” Vic said. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  She wiped her cheeks, and Palmer watched as more tears spilled from her eyes. The loose sail flapped nearby, the crows watching to see what would happen, Vic telling him over and over that everything would be okay, even as she started sobbing. Even as she clutched him in her arms, whispering it would all be all right, but Palmer knew this was just a story, just a story told over a sputtering lantern in a family tent, and that it wasn’t true.

  Part 4:

  Thunder Due East

  35 • Oasis

  Vic

  The sarfer crunched across the sand and slowed to a stop. Sand hissed against the bright red sail and spilled over the edge of the boom in a veil. Vic lowered the sail and studied the depression between the dunes. A handful of stumps poked feebly toward the sky, but whatever tall trees had lived there had long ago been butchered. Between the stumps there was a dark spot of sand, almost if the sun were casting a shadow. It was no oasis, but it would do.

  She jumped down to the sand and helped her brother out of the haul rack. The small bimini she’d made to keep him in the shade was already tattered and threadbare from the half day of sailing due south. Part of her wanted to press on to Springston and get there before dark. The rest of her felt sure her brother wouldn’t make it that far without water.

  His head listed from side to side as Vic gathered him in her arms. He weighed little more than a tank and a gear bag. Vic lowered him to the line of shaded sand by the sarfer’s hull and grabbed Marco’s dive suit from the gear she’d crammed into his helm chair. She folded the suit several times, lifted Palmer’s head, and slid the pillow between him and the sand.

  Palmer asked for water. Vic slung her canteen around from her back and shook it. Empty. “Hang in there,” she said. “I’m getting you some.”

  She left him in the shade. Back at the helm, her own dive suit was plugged into the small wind generator that poked up from the aft of the sarfer. She unplugged this, stripped down in the hot sun, grabbed scoops of sand and rubbed it over her armpits and her sweaty chest, then brushed herself off as best she could. She tugged on the dive suit, which was hot and smelled like melting rubber. Tears wetted her cheeks. She cursed these and wiped them away. Her brother was dying. Her brother was a pile of chapped and sunburnt bones. It horrified her to see him that way. Horrified her to think of Marco, her lover, dead. Killed right in front of her. And now she was going to lose a brother, too.

  She dug her visor out of her gear bag, wiped her cheeks again, and promised herself that it wouldn’t happen. Not Palmer. Through clenched teeth, she promised. No one else would die that day. No one. She slung Marco’s canteen over her head. It rattled emptily against hers and Palmer’s. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She scanned the horizon for sarfer masts, had seen dozens in the distance on the sail south, but none right then. Supine on the sand by the sarfer’s hull, Palmer looked peaceably asleep. This is what she told herself as she powered on her suit and disappeared beneath the sand.

  ••••

  Palmer lay alone on the warm sand and stared at the dark patch his sister had vanished into. The minutes ticked by like hours. The crows that’d followed them as they’d sailed south circled overhead. His sister had taken his canteen. Hap’s canteen, the one with his name etched into the side. Palmer remembered the dive they’d been on when Hap had carved his name there with his dive knife. They’d left their gear buried in the sand. Hap had been worried they might get their canteens mixed up. Same models. Both new. So young then. Worried about whose was what. Worried about sharing. Tenuous friends. A lifetime ago.

  More minutes went by. Palmer stared out over the desert sand. Vic had emptied her canteen into his mouth one cap at a time. His stomach was in knots. Springston and hope felt so very far away. And where could they go once they got there? People wanted him dead. He remembered the way Hap’s body had been twisted out of shape. What the hell had he gotten himself involved in? And for what? Some coin?

  A crow swooped down and lighted on the sarfer. The mainsail flapped, and the bird flapped back. It pecked the aluminum with its beak, the reaper rapping to be let in. Palmer waved his arm and begged it to go. He wondered what he would do if Vic didn’t come back. How long before the sun slid overhead and his shade dwindled to nothing? How long before another diver or a brigand found the sarfer with its flapping sail? How long?

  The crow startled, and with a beat of its black wings, labored into the sky. Palmer heard a deep gasp. He turned to see Vic sliding up out of the ground, sand cascading off her and catching in the breeze. She took deep b
reaths. Rested on the sand for a moment. And then she flipped up her visor and startled Palmer with the barest of smiles.

  36 • A Note from Father

  Rob

  “We’re gonna put a tear in Father’s tent,” Rob warned. He could see at once what his older brother had planned, could tell by the way he was knotting the ropes. It wasn’t going to be good for the tent.

  “This is our tent,” Conner said, correcting him. “Yours and mine. Not Father’s. And we can’t very well carry her all the way to town.”

  Conner went back to his knots, and Rob watched his brother work in the pale light of the starry sky. The horizon was beginning to lighten beyond No Man’s Land, out where the sporadic bootfalls of stomping giants could be heard. The sun would be up within an hour, by his estimate.

  He turned back to the girl and watched her sleep. They had moved their bedding and the girl out onto the sand in order to collapse the tent. She lay flat on her back with her head to the east and her feet to the west. Sand gathered in her hair. She might appear to be dead were it not for the imperceptible rise and fall of her chest, which lay partly exposed by the rip in her shirt. Rob reached over and pulled the fabric shut, covering her pale flesh. He had watched as Conner had cleaned her wounds. His brother had two extra canteens of water and all kinds of bandages and supplies in his pack. Rob didn’t ask about these things. He knew what they were for. He didn’t ask why Conner had been out of the tent in the middle of the night. He knew where Conner was going. It scared him to think of being alone, but that’s what Conner had planned. Rob kept all this to himself. He often saw how things worked, how they fit together, and had long given up on explaining these things to those older than him. Adults just looked at him with strange expressions when he spoke his insights, like they didn’t believe him. Or were frightened of him. Or both.

  “If you’re done fondling her breasts, you can grab my pack and stop this damn tent from flapping.”

  Rob grabbed Conner’s pack. No point telling him he wasn’t fondling her breasts. It would just sound like he had been. Silence would sound the same way, too. Didn’t matter either way, so he saved his breath. He carried Conner’s pack and set it on the folded tent opposite where his brother was knotting the lines. The fabric stopped flopping around in that pre-dawn breeze.

  “Make a pillow for her. Up here where her head will go.” His brother sounded annoyed. No, something worse than that. Conner wasn’t being himself. He sounded scared and unsure. Rob didn’t like that.

  “We should put her head back here and drag her feet-first,” Rob told his older brother. “To keep the wind and sand out of her face.”

  Conner studied him a moment. That look. “Whatever,” he said. It’s what adults said instead of: You’re right.

  The girl was moved onto the sand for a moment. The bedding went onto the tent, and then the girl went back onto the bedding. All their gear was arranged on the flat canvas, which was now like a sarfer with no skids and no sail. Just two sets of lines to shoulder. It was a long way back into town, but neither Rob nor his brother complained as they adjusted their kers, draped the ropes over their shoulders, and leaned into the task.

  “What if she dies before we get there?” Rob asked.

  “She won’t.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I just do, okay? Now shut up and do your share or we’ll go in circles.”

  Rob pulled. He counted his steps. Whenever he could, he counted anything that could be counted. A few years back, he and Conner’s camping trip had come on a windless night, and when the fire had died down to coals and the stars had burst bright, he had counted five thousand two hundred and fifty-eight stars before he couldn’t be sure if he was counting the same ones over again. Numbers calmed him in a way that words couldn’t. If he thought with words, they went around in circles and crashed into each other and grew more dire and terrifying, just like they were right then as he forgot to count steps and remembered that camping trip and worried they were dragging a dead girl across the sand.

  “She made it out of No Man’s Land,” Conner finally said, as if he could sense Rob’s worry. “She’ll make it to town.”

  Rob didn’t argue. He dug his boots into the sand and tried to do as much work as his brother. He could feel a blister forming on the back of his heel. He was tired. They’d only gone to sleep what felt like a few hours ago.

  “What’re the chances someone would show up on this night?” Rob asked his brother. “This night of all nights?”

  “Not good,” Conner said. “The same as dropping a grain of sand and then finding it again. Those are the chances.”

  Rob thought so too. “She said she had a… a message from Father.” He grunted between words from the effort of the haul.

  “She was delirious. Keep quiet and pull. Let’s head to the right a little and around that next dune. Get in the lee.”

  Rob obeyed. He kept his thoughts to himself. Which meant he couldn’t know if Conner was piecing together all that he was piecing together. Coincidences didn’t make sense, but if they did happen, they could get you thinking really strange thoughts. He knew a boy in Shantytown—a kid in his class—whose roof had caved in twice, both times on his birthday, six years apart. It had buried him in drift both times, but they had dug him out. Now he sleeps under the stars every birthday and won’t listen to sense about it. He also hates the number six. And as much as Rob found this silly, he was pretty sure he’d be the same way if that had happened to him.

  And now his brain was whirling with all kinds of new facts. People came out from No Man’s Land. That wasn’t supposed to be a thing. So maybe Old Man Joseph wasn’t so crazy after all. Old Man Joseph claimed to have been to the other end of No Man’s Land and returned, but no one believed him. But maybe. And maybe Father was alive out there somewhere. Maybe he had sent this girl to them. And if so, he had sent her to arrive on the night he and his brother would be there. But there was something else about what she had said—

  “Hey, Conner?”

  “Jesus, Rob, what the fuck is it?”

  “She didn’t say ‘your’ father. She just said Father.”

  “Save it, Rob. I’m thinking.”

  Rob felt the blister on his heel go. Raw flesh began to rub. Sand would get in, and then the real hurting would begin.

  “I’m thinking too, you know.” He bit his lip and tried not to limp, tried to be strong. His brother took a deep breath beside him.

  “I know. I’m sorry. What’re you thinking, little brother?”

  “I’m thinking the way she said Father, it was like hers and ours are the same one.”

  They reached the lee of a great dune, and the whispering wind fell quiet and the rushing sand was no longer at their ankles but high above their heads. Conner eventually answered.

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he finally said.

  37 • The Sand-Filled Screams of the Dying

  Rose

  A pad of paper spelled out the bad news in a single column of numbers. There was more subtraction than addition taking place. Rose would’ve been happy to break even, for every dollar earned to be a dollar spent. But rarely were such balances kept. If there was a zero-sum game, it was played among a host of winners and losers. Businesses like hers going under—literally, more often than not—while riches piled elsewhere to the heavens. Coin was like sand in this way: it only flowed in one direction. And to compound the misery of those to the west, these two currents of woe ran counter to one another. The poor shipped off their coin to the east and got buckets of sand in return.

  It was the damn water prices. The cost per liter had nearly doubled that year, which meant a near doubling in the price of beer. And the Ladies of the Balcony still needed their showers. Not so much for their clients to stand them—clients who could hardly be expected to nose their wares over their own stench—but so the ladies could stand themselves. Rose had put it off longer than she should have. She’d have to jack up the p
rice of a pint and hike the room rates again. There would be bitching and moaning when she announced the both; people would act as though she were gouging for the fun of it. Truth was, the whole place would shut down if they had another month like this.

  The din of activity beyond her door, of people spending money, served as temporary comfort. News of Danvar’s discovery had the divers in a mood. Even the Lords seemed interested. They were already scrambling for who might have title based on mineral claims, arguing and spilling beer on ancient maps. Rose had seen this play out before. There would be a frenzy of spending all the spoils one hoped to make. This would be followed by the lean times of those same gamblers asking for loans and handouts. People hardly took a breath between these extremes. It was the stagger home of a drunk who could hit every dune on either side as he lurched a thousand paces in what he might’ve crossed in ten.

  But Rose knew a slow rise could lead to just as precipitous a fall. She had married a man who’d decried such fits of gluttonous frenzy. Her husband had made his gradual fortune, had climbed a slope of infamy up that peaceful dune to the heights of the great wall, and had stepped right off just as neatly. All he might have left her was snapped up by villainous thugs who gave themselves title and who thought a bath and a clean robe made them natural born princes. She had been left with nothing but the Honey Hole, which her husband had won in a game of dice.

  It had only been a place to stay the night she was tossed out with her children. But then it had been a business to manage, her only source of income. She took care of the girls and tended the bar, grew some vegetables on the roof, whatever it took to keep the water flowing. But each passing week drew the noose tighter and tighter around her neck. She looked for a buyer, but who would buy a place that barely broke even? Everyone else got their pay, she made sure of that. The drunks who swept up in the mornings for a pint made more profit than she. There was nothing left for Rose after the school fees for the kids, after the dive gear Palmer and Vic needed in order to not lose their spots. There was nothing left to help them start a life of their own, help them open a business, rent a stall in the market, anything. Nothing but mounting costs. Piles of coin transmuted into piles of resentment. Resentment that left her bitter toward her husband for bolting in the night, for leaving her a tent and a whorehouse to choose between.