“Come on, Samel!” yelled another boy. “Pick it up!”
Feeling the pressure of a half-dozen older boys, Samel bent toward the vicious creature, reaching out his hand.
“Don’t do it, Sam!” Raj yelled.
Before anyone could stop him, Raj pulled a sheathed knife from his side, ran into the circle, and pushed his brother away. He bent and stabbed the scorpion to the ground, dead. Ooze dripped from its pierced middle. He pulled the blade free, watching its body sag and its pincer go lifeless.
“Are you okay, Sam?” he asked his little brother, waiting for an answer before he felt relief.
“I’m fine, Raj,” Samel answered, as Raj wrapped a protective arm around him.
Raj had seen too many people die when they’d had a reaction. That didn’t mean Samel would, but it wasn’t a risk anyone should take willingly, and certainly not at the behest of a half-dozen bored boys.
“Let’s get out of here,” Raj said, staring furiously at the slack-jawed boys in the circle.
Disappointment crossed more than a few faces as they realized the fun was over.
“What the hell?” shouted one of the older boys, a freckled kid with long, brownish hair, a boy named Bailey.
Raj took a step to leave the circle, but Bailey got in the way, glaring menacingly. His eyes flicked to the blade in Raj’s hand.
“Are you threatening us with that knife, orphan boy?”
Raj stared at him without answering.
“I asked you a question,” Bailey said.
“The sting could’ve killed him,” Raj answered through gritted teeth, as if he needed to explain.
“I pick them up all the time,” Bailey said with a coy smirk. “They’re harmless.”
“Out of my way,” Raj said, waving his knife.
Edging in, a kid with a pointed nose said, “Maybe it would’ve made a man out of him, instead of a sissy like you.”
Bailey laughed.
“Move!” Raj demanded.
“Or what?” Bailey watched him. “You’ll send your boyish sister after us?”
“Maybe he’ll send his old hag-lady friend.” Another kid laughed.
“Are you bringing back water so she can cook lunch?” asked the boy with the pointed nose. “A pair of sissies, raised by a man-girl and an old woman.”
“No wonder your father left,” sneered Bailey.
Raj’s pulse pounded behind his eyes. He took a step toward Bailey, still clutching his knife, pressing close enough that he could smell the sand rat on the boy’s breath.
“What are you doing, Raj?” Samel cried.
“Yeah, what are you doing, orphan boy? Are you going to cut me?” Bailey smirked as he stood his ground.
Out of the corner of his eye, Raj saw several of the other kids inching closer, their hands moving toward their blades. Too late, he realized he had made a mistake. He’d never take them all out, knife or not. He held Bailey’s glare, clutching his blade and preparing for a fight he wouldn’t win.
A long, blaring horn blew.
The kids in the circle looked around, confused. A few of them spun and stepped back. Bailey’s stare broke as he looked from Raj to the cliffs, glimpsing The Watchers hurrying down the paths at the top of the red rocks. A man held his curved instrument in the air, blowing a loud, droning note.
“A storm!” one of the dim-witted boys cried.
Near the river, people scrambled and pulled their buckets from the water. A few of the boys scattered, making for the path that cut between the mud brick houses, or separating down different alleys.
Raj looked back at Bailey, who held his ground, his sneer stuck to his face. “This isn’t over,” he promised, jabbing a threatening finger before breaking off with the rest of his friends.
Raj stood for a moment, shaking.
“Come on, Raj!” Samel cried, grabbing his brother’s arm and breaking him from his angry trance. “We have to get home!”
Instinct kicked in, and Raj moved.
Together, they ran, scooping up the bucket Raj had dropped and veering toward the path, joining a cluster of other running colonists.
Chapter 3: Neena
Sand and debris pelted Neena’s body, stinging her skin beneath the thin fabric of her shirt and pants. She squinted, afraid that the storm would rip away her goggles, exposing her eyes, or that it would tear away her shawl and fill her mouth and ears with sand. Every so often, she let a hand off her spear and pulled her clothing tighter. Heart pounding, she stared through the enormous brown cloud around her, watching the sky for flashes of light that would force her to reconsider her position. As blinding as the storm was, lightning could cut through it.
By the time that she saw lightning, she might be dead.
A rumble of thunder emanated from the sky, piercing the wind around her and sending rippling premonitions through the ground. After what felt like forever, the wind subsided a notch and the sand settled into swirling pockets that hovered over the surface of the uneven, eroded dune on which she perched. A lull. No lightning had struck, but given the intensity of the storm, it might.
Neena needed shelter.
Pulling her spear from the sand, she headed down the dune, navigating through a lingering film of dust and debris as she retraced her path. Of course, her footprints were gone. She no longer saw the twin moons, or even the sun, all of which were hidden by the clouded landscape. The dunes around her were silhouettes, shaved down by the force of the wind. A few of the smaller ones had thinned so much that they were only bumps on the landscape.
She recalled what she knew of the area. She had only been this way a few times, and always out of desperation. This was one of the driest regions of Ravar, filled with only dunes and endless sand. The Heads of Colony forbade it. Areas like this were desolate and prone to death—a hunter was likely to die of thirst before making it out. All the hunters stayed away from it.
At the time, she had thought that might give her an advantage.
Instead, it left her farther from home.
She hadn’t seen any other hunters since a day ago, when she had encountered a group on a hilltop, searching through some red, adobe formations. Of course, she had avoided them. None of the hunters respected her. None had ever broken the rules of Red Rock out in the desert, but she knew how quickly hunger could turn to desperation. She wouldn’t risk interacting with them.
Neena clamped her mouth shut beneath her shawl, breathing through her nose. Every few steps, she reached up with her free hand, smearing the sand away from her goggles. She scoured what little landscape she could see, hoping she might find a large, sheltering rock, or a formation.
Rounding the corner of a large, sandy dune, she found something else instead.
A body.
Neena’s heart raced as she saw a person lying facedown in the sand.
Whoever it was looked dead. She stabbed her spear in and out of the ground as she moved faster, heading for the fallen figure.
Whoever it was, the person couldn’t have been there long. They were covered in sand, but they weren’t buried. Neena was positive she would’ve noticed a body if she had passed it earlier. Unless the wind uncovered it.
She looked around, as if she might spot more of the hunters she’d seen a day ago, but she saw no one.
The whistling breeze warned that the storm wasn’t finished. Dipping her head against a pelt of sand, she approached the motionless, fallen body. It looked about a man’s size.
“Hello?” she called.
No answer.
“Hello?” she asked again.
She gripped her spear and waited longer for a response. No movement, no sound. A realization hit her.
The man wore darker clothing than her, with more pockets and folds. In fact, she’d never seen garments as strange.
It couldn’t be a hunter from Red Rock.
Who was it?
Neena’s breath caught in her throat. When she was younger, she’d heard whispers that several, strang
e people had made a long, hot trip through several deserts, reaching her people and visiting The Heads of Colony. That supposed visit had been almost a decade ago. The Heads of Colony had kept the contents of those conversations mostly private, except to tell the colonists they were in no danger. She remembered the cloud of fear that hung over the colony after that visit. Eventually, weeks turned into months, and the story of the visitors became legend, just like the stories of the supply ships from Earth that used to grace the skies.
Outside of that, she’d never heard of anyone visiting Red Rock. And she’d certainly seen no one.
Was this one of those same, strange people?
Whoever he was, he needed help.
Neena took several careful, tentative steps toward him as she kept an eye on her surroundings. Where there was one stranger, there might be more. She saw no one else.
Bending down, she poked the man with a finger.
He didn’t move.
Was he unconscious, or dead?
Slowly, carefully, she tucked her hands under the man’s side and tried rolling him. She waited for a grunt or a moan—something that would indicate she’d aggravated a wound. Or entered a trap. Looking around, she saw no one. Finally, she got the man on his back.
The man remained silent and still, with his eyes closed. His dark hair was plastered to his head by a dried gash of blood on his forehead; strange markings were imprinted on his temples. The markings appeared as if they’d been burned in.
What were they?
Deep in the distance, a wall of debris moved in their direction. She needed to check the man’s breathing and see if he was alive. If he wasn’t, she needed to move before—
The man moaned.
Neena jumped back and fell on her butt, avoiding his reaching hands.
“Stay back!” she warned, getting her spear in front of her.
The man’s moan turned into an indecipherable mumble. He sat up, coughing, and opened his eyes. His sand-crusted face was filled with fear. When he saw Neena, he leaned back and thrust his hands in front of him. It looked like he was afraid—afraid of her. Neena kept her spear pointed.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
The man didn’t answer.
“Can you understand me?”
The man coughed through a response. His eyes were blue and wide. Feeling the weight of Neena’s unanswered question, he pointed at his throat.
Slowly, Neena pulled one of her flasks from her belt and scooted toward him, clutching her spear tightly. She kept her body at a distance, where he couldn’t easily attack, and held out the flask. Cautiously, the man reached out and took hold of it, pulling it toward him. He uncapped it and sipped with the vigor of a person who hadn’t drunk in a while. After several large gulps, he handed it back, carefully.
“Thanks,” he croaked, retracting his hands.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Kai.” His voice was hoarse, barely audible.
“Where are you from?”
“New Canaan,” he managed.
“New Canaan?” Neena furrowed her brow. “I haven’t heard of it.”
Kai stared at her, as if he was figuring out where she’d come from. Or maybe he didn’t know where he was. “Who are you?” he croaked.
“My name is Neena. I’m from…” she stopped herself before revealing anything. The wind whipped her attention back to the returning cloud of dust and debris. “We have no more time for questions, Kai. Can you walk?”
“I-I think so,” he answered.
“We have to find shelter, or we’ll get caught in the storm again.”
Kai dragged a hand over his sandy face.
“Don’t rub your eyes,” she warned. “We’ll flush them out when we get somewhere safe.” Instinctively, she looked down at her flasks, thinking about her water supply.
“Okay.”
Unslinging her bag, she took out her spare pair of goggles, getting close enough to hand them to him. She didn’t trust him fully, but right now, something more pressing was coming. “Take them. They’ll protect your face.”
Kai nodded appreciatively, reaching out to accept them. “Thank you.”
He slipped the goggles over his head. Shakily, he found his footing. Thunder rumbled in the distance, making him jump. He took a faltering step. He seemed delirious and dehydrated. Whoever he was, he didn’t seem like he was in a condition to hurt her, that was for certain.
Lowering her guard, she said, “Here, let me help you,” and offered an arm.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I haven’t seen lightning yet,” Neena called over the increasing gale. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming.”
Together, they started moving. Another, massive rumble reverberated off the ground, closer this time.
Responding to his terrified expression, she explained, “Thunder!”
Kai said something she couldn’t hear, his eyes growing wide. Tilting her head, she asked him to repeat it. Her heart pounded as she made out the words.
“It’s not thunder! It’s coming for us! Run!”
Chapter 4: Raj
Raj and Samel fled north on the worn path, running past several people who scrambled for their children, or called urgent warnings to relatives. Throngs of people hastily carried their buckets up the pathway, spilling water. Men and women grabbed laundry from the lines. A few people stopped to assist the elderly, leading them inside their mud brick homes as the long, urgent note of the horn blew again. The wind had already picked up, whistling around the cracks and crevices of the square buildings, keening in a way that reminded Raj of the death and destruction that similar storms had caused.
The last sandstorm had claimed five lives. By the looks of it, this one might take more.
The path ahead was quickly filling with people. Raj and Samel’s home was in the middle of the colony—halfway between the river and the rows of houses facing the northern desert. Helgid lived a few rows farther north.
“Come on!” he told Samel, weaving off the path and cutting between several houses, dodging swarms of colonists who had the same idea to take a shortcut. Raj bumped shoulders with several frantic people. Unlike the man who scolded him earlier, all of them were too preoccupied to notice.
A few excited cries called Raj’s attention west, where a wall of debris lifted high above the houses, engulfing the northern limits of the colony and obscuring the first of the homes. The sandstorm looked like a gigantic, dirty blanket, looming over the colony and folding it in a suffocating embrace. A swell of panic coursed through Raj as the rising wind kicked up around him, stinging his face. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his goggles.
“Get yours on, Sam!” he called.
Skirting through another alley, Raj changed course.
“Where are we going, Raj?” asked Samel, struggling to keep up.
“We don’t have time to get to Helgid’s! We have to get home!”
Racing through a few more alleys, they reached their house—a ramshackle building in a row of others—and hurried inside. Operating on muscle memory, Raj collected their cookware, tied it up in a blanket, and placed it near the sturdiest wall. He repeated the precaution with their piles of clothing, before placing their bedrolls in the middle of the room.
With their goggles pressed firmly over their faces, Raj and Samel huddled on their bedding. Raj no longer heard the cries of the colonists herding their children, or the elderly scuttling to safety. It was as if everyone else in the colony had been swept away. Or maybe the opposite was true, and he and Samel were in some strange place, whisked far from the colony.
The wind shrieked like a dying, terrified woman. A particularly loud gust rattled the door in its frame, making Samel shiver.
The house’s entrance was built in an easterly direction to block the prevailing winds, and all of the houses had the advantage of the red rock formations on either side of the colony. Still, the sandstorm felt like a raging monster, finding its way thro
ugh crevices Raj didn’t know existed.
Holding his brother, he recalled a vicious storm that had torn through the colony years ago, knocking over several houses and burying a child Samel’s age. Raj remembered the wails of that child’s mother as they pulled her son’s lifeless, sand-covered body from the wreckage. It almost didn’t seem right that they had buried him again. The story of that death had weighed on the colonists’ shoulders for weeks.
Raj couldn’t help but relive that memory now, as he clung to his brother and said a silent prayer to the heavens for protection, even though no one ever answered. When he was younger, his mother had held him in her safe, protective arms, the way he was doing for Samel now. The last time he had seen Mom alive was when she ducked into the house to give birth to Samel.
He recalled the frantic, panicked faces of the healers, and his father’s grief-stricken expression when Dad finally came out of the house. At the time, Raj was only four—too young to understand how permanently that day would change things.
It was times like these he missed Mom.
And of course, he missed Dad, too.
All they had left was Neena.
Thinking of his sister, out in the desert and on her own, Raj had another fear. Was she stuck in the storm? Was she waiting it out, like they were?
Wherever she was, he hoped she was safe.
Chapter 5: Neena
Neena clutched Kai’s arm as they ran. Kai seemed to have found a burst of terrified strength, keeping up with her. Neena had no idea what he feared, but the panic in his eyes made her believe that something worse than a sandstorm was coming. She could no longer see the valley ahead of them, or the dunes toward which they headed.
What was chasing them?
Another rumble reached her ears.
It felt like it was coming from below.
She recalled a nightmare Samel had had a few months ago. He’d woken up, shivering, and Neena had consoled him. He’d told her about a dream he’d had. He’d been out in the desert, with no one around, when the ground opened up, revealing a hole with no bottom. Samel had tried running away, but wherever he went, another hole opened, then another, as if the planet was trying to consume him.
Sandstorm Box Set Page 3
