by Hugh Howey
“Sir, yessir,” he barked, and Foreman Bligh showed him the gaps between his teeth. Conner stooped to collect his buckets. The fine sand was piled up in flowing and shifting cones, precious veils of it cascading over the sides. Balancing his haulpole across his shoulders—the two buckets swaying from notches at either end—he forced his sore legs to straighten, turned to face the outhaul tunnel, and staggered up the long sloping walk out of there. It was programs like these new work requirements that made him itch to leave, even if he never came back. It was programs like these that made him feel less than sorry for the Lords when rebel bombs clapped over in Springston and someone was violently voted from office.
Above him—farther up the gentle slope of sand that rose on all sides from Shantytown’s lone water pump—he could see tomorrow’s work blowing over the lip and drifting down on the winds. What he carried up in his buckets was replenished by the minute, the grains rolling over each other like marbles, all seeming to seek the pump like thirsty little brigands rushing down for a sip.
Conner passed several other sissyfoots on his way up the ramp. Empty buckets swung on the ends of their haulpoles, and sweaty grime coated them just as it did Conner. A girl from his class, Gloralai, smiled as she passed with her buckets. Conner returned the smile and nodded, but too late realized she was laughing at something Ryder had said. The older boy followed behind, his haulpole and buckets balanced on one of his broad shoulders. He laughed and flirted and acted like it was a day at the dome, but still took the time to bump Conner’s bucket as he passed, spilling a handful of sand from one and sending the imbalanced haulpole teetering.
Conner shifted the pole and recovered. He watched the precious sand from his bucket drift back down to where it came from. Probably not enough to keep him from his quota. And not worth telling Ryder to fuck off. It was Friday, the day before his camping trip, and none of this bullshit mattered.
He continued his climb up the string of wood planks that zigzagged up the slope of shifting sand. A couple of young pluckers from the lower grades stomped up and down on either side of the planks, pulling them out of the sand by their ropes when no one was on them, to prevent them from getting buried. The after-school program was meant to provide a respite for the two shifts of full-time pluckers and sissyfoots who worked mornings and nights. The wind and sand never took a day off—and so neither did anyone else. They all toiled in that pit, working to keep the well from being buried, when everyone up and down the slope knew it would happen eventually.
But not today, they told themselves as they hauled their sand and shook their planks. Not today, they said. And the pump beneath the shroud bowed its head in agreement.
Conner neared the outhaul tunnel that burrowed through the bowl’s lip and out to the other side. It was a public works project from a decade prior, a visible admission that the sand would one day win, that they could only dig so much, that the way out was too steep. Laughter echoed inside the tunnel as several of Conner’s peers returned for another load. Most of them worked slowly, shuffling their feet until dusk. Conner preferred to grind it out and get it over with.
He entered the cool shade of the tunnel and passed his friends without a word. He chewed on the grit in his mouth, the sand that had frustrated him when he was younger, that he’d wasted time scraping his tongue after and wasted precious fluids spitting from his mouth, but that he’d finally learned to grind to nothing between his teeth and swallow down. It was the sand that was trying to bury his town, the sand that wanted to work its way into pistons and gears until things fell apart, the sand that paid for his day’s water if he lugged enough of it out of the pit and into the dunes where tomorrow it would blow west. It would blow west while new sand flew in from the east to take its place. One grain for every grain. An even trade.
Out of the tunnel, Conner entered the weigh station and bent his knees until his haulpole caught in the crook of the scales. The assayer flicked weights down a long rod. “Don’t lean on the pole,” he ordered.
“I’m not,” Conner protested, showing his hands.
The assayer frowned and made a note in his ledger. “That’s your quota.” He almost sounded disappointed. Conner nearly sagged in relief. He lifted the pole again, was glad to be done for the day, and hiked off toward the edge of the steep rise known as Waterpump Ridge. It was a new dune they were building here, a man-made dune downwind of the pump, which itself stood on the leeward side of Springston’s Shantytown. Conner reached the lip, dumped his sand, and watched plumes of his hard work spiral toward the distant mountains beyond the dunes. Go, he urged the sand. Go and never come back.
As he watched his last load swirl on the wind, he considered what sand and man had in common. Both were forever disappearing over the horizon. Sand to the west and man to the east. More and more of the latter in recent years. Entire families. He’d seen them from the ridge heading off toward No Man’s Land with their belongings piled up on their backs, fleeing the bombs and the violence, the wars between neighbors, the uncertainty. It was the uncertainty that drove men away. Conner knew that now. He used to see the beyond as some great unknown, but the fickle tortures of life among the dunes were worse. What could be certain was that elsewhere was different. This was a fact. A compelling one. It drew souls to the east as fast as Springston could birth them.
A gust of wind whipped his hair into a frenzy and tugged at his ker. Conner turned away from the view and saw Gloralai heading up with her own sagging haulpole. He gave her a hand dumping the buckets.
“Thanks,” she said, wiping her forehead. “You done for the day?”
He nodded. “You?”
Gloralai laughed. Her hair hung down over her freckled face in sweaty clumps. She untied what was left of her ponytail, gathered the loose strands off her face, and began tying it back up. “I probably got two more hauls. Depending how much I spill. Don’t know how you haul as fast as you do.”
“It’s ’cause I don’t want to be here.” He hoped the here didn’t sound as general as he meant it. It was more than school or the pump-pit. It was all of Shantytown. He picked up his pole and adjusted one of the buckets in its notch so it wouldn’t slide out. “C’mon. We’ll haul one load each, and you can be done for the day.”
Gloralai smiled and finished knotting her hair. She was seventeen, a year younger than Conner, bronze-skinned and pretty with dark freckles across her nose. Conner didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but part of him didn’t want to leave the pump right then. And hauling one more load didn’t feel like hell when it wasn’t mandatory, when he could choose.
Over Gloralai’s shoulder, he spotted Ryder trudging up the slope. The boy seemed to catch this moment between his two classmates. He turned his haulpole sideways, the buckets heavy and swaying dangerously, and Conner had to dodge out of the way. He danced down the loose sand and nearly lost his footing.
“Watch it,” Gloralai said.
“Fuck off,” Ryder told her.
Gloralai caught up with Conner and the two of them marched down with their empty buckets. Out across the jumbled rooftops of Shantytown, a hammer beat a rhythmic tune and a gull cried out. Conner tried to soak it all up, the sights and sounds of home, as he followed Gloralai back into the tunnel.
“You were serious,” she said, eyeing him. “I thought you were eager to get out of here.”
“Hey, I figure you’re itching to go as well. Maybe if I haul a load for you, you’ll buy me a beer at the Dive Bar.”
“You think so?” she asked, smiling.
Conner shrugged. At the bottom of the zigzag of warped planks, the groaning monster nodded its sad head and pumped water from the earth. It bobbed up and down while Conner and Gloralai stood in line to get their buckets filled. As the sand heaped in and spilled over, Conner watched a diver emerge near the pump and hand tools up to an assistant. Must be down there repairing a connector rod or part of the pipeline. That’s the life Conner should’ve had. If he’d made it into dive school, things wou
ld’ve been different. A diver, not a sissyfoot. Just like his brother and sister, out there scavenging and finding the spoils that cities were made of. Maybe then he wouldn’t have gotten worn down, would’ve spent more time out of the wind, wouldn’t be thinking of leaving.
“Get ’er going,” the foreman barked, and Conner saw that his buckets were full. Gloralai already had hers shouldered, was trudging up the planks. She yelled for him to hurry or she’d drink both their beers.
11 • A Date?
Conner and Gloralai dumped their buckets and turned toward town. From the top of the ridge, they had a commanding view of the Shantytown slums. Conner could pick out the corrugated metal roof of the small shack he shared with his brother. The dune behind their shack had been creeping; the back half was already buried. Another month, and the sand would tumble over the roof and pile up around the front door. They could dig their way in for a while, but then it’d be time to cut their losses and move. Unless Rob was on his own. The dive school would have to take him in, as much promise as he’d shown. Or Graham would make him an apprentice. Or Palmer would have to settle down and stop running around with that asshole Hap. Something would have to change.
Beyond his home and the scattering of roofs and half-buried shops sat Springston with its rows of sandscrapers jutting up into the wind. Conner could just barely make out the outline of the great wall beyond the scrapers. The wall disappeared as he and Gloralai made their way off the ridge and behind the dunes. Soon it was just the tops of the tallest structures, those misshapen and disjointed stacks of cubes—little hovels and homes and shops built one atop the other with no plan and no coordination. Wisps of sand streamed from their roofs and the wind howled through their eaves. And then the last of the city vanished, and only the location of the dump could be determined, flocks of crows hanging majestically in the air, blacks wings unbeating, riding that rolling zephyr that marched in from No Man’s Land and carried with it the thunder of the gods and the sand that was the bane of all their existences.
Conner listened beyond the wind and the crunch of sand beneath his boots and could just make out the distant and beating drums. These were the thundering booms that built and built in men’s chests. These were the echoes of rebel bombs that brought back the horrors of loved ones blown to bits. It was the sound that would not stop, the noise that pervaded men’s dreams and haunted their waking hours, the torture that drove them mad and madder until they could take no more of it. Until they fled to the mountains and were never heard from again. Or until they staggered into No Man’s Land to find the source of this abuse, to beg it to stop. This was why men packed up their families and left for another life elsewhere. Or abandoned them in a shoddy tent.
“You ever dream of getting out of here?” Conner asked.
Gloralai nodded. “All the time.” She shook the ker around her neck, dumping out the grit4. “I’ve got a brother in Low-Pub who says he can get me a job in a bar down there. He’s a bouncer. But I gotta wait until I’m eighteen.”
“Which bar?” Conner knew what sorts of jobs had age requirements. He tried to imagine Gloralai doing what his mother did, and a rage built up inside him.
“Lucky Luke’s. It’s a dive bar.”
“Oh, yeah.” Conner ran his fingers through his hair, shaking out the matte5.
“You know it?”
“I know of it. My sister used to work there. Bartending. You didn’t have to be eighteen to bartend back then.”
“You don’t have to be eighteen to bartend now.” Gloralai led him to the right of a dune and onto a path. A group of kids sledded past on sheets of tin, screaming and laughing. “You gotta be eighteen to work in the brothel upstairs,” she said.
Conner choked on sand. He fumbled for his canteen, even though he knew it held the barest of splashes.
“I’m only kidding,” she said, laughing. “My dad just says until I’m grown I have to live with them and obey their rules. Typical parental bullshit.”
“Yeah, typical,” Conner said. But what he thought was how great it would be to have someone else setting the rules. All he and his little brother had were each other. Palmer and Vic had gone off to make their fortunes diving, leaving the two of them to fend for themselves. When their father disappeared, he had left the entire family destitute when once they’d had everything. And their mom—Conner didn’t know where to start with her. He sometimes wished he didn’t have a mom.
He pushed this out of mind. Just as he pushed tomorrow's camping trip back to some dark corner. He concentrated on Gloralai there at his side—tried to live in the moment while he could. Together, they angled toward a half-buried strip of shacks jutting out of a low dune. A generator rattled and smoked on the roof of one. Inside, there was a glow of light, and hanging from the sand-dusted roof was a neon Coors sign with the jagged shape of the westward peaks lit above. Conner nearly pointed out that his sister had salvaged that sign, as he often did when he saw something she’d found and had rescued from the sand.
“Hey,” Gloralai asked, “are you going to Ryder’s bash on Saturday?”
“Uh … no.”
She must’ve caught his accompanying wince. “Look, he can be a dick, but it’s gonna be a good time. Laugh Riot is playing. You should come.” Gloralai held up two fingers to the man in the window and placed a couple of coins on the sill. Conner spotted the small homemade tattoo on her wrist and wondered if she had others.
“It’s not because of him,” he said. “I could give two shits about Ryder. Me and my brothers are going camping this weekend.”
“You and Palm are taking Rob camping? That’s sweet.” She handed him one of the foaming jars of beer. Conner took a sip. Cold from the deep sand. He wiped his lips.
“Yeah, it’s not really sweet to be honest. It’s something we do once a year.” He didn’t say that he was dreading it, that he was nervous, that he was packing for a much longer hike. This was too good a moment to spoil.
“So how is Palmer? He moved down to Low-Pub, right?”
“He’s good, I guess. He spends his time back and forth. He stopped by last weekend on his way to some salvage job. Probably back at my place right now. Unless he’s flaking out on us again.” Conner took another sip of his beer. “He’s the one who’s supposed to be looking after Rob, not me.”
“You do a good job. Besides, Robbie can look after himself.”
“Let’s hope,” Conner said. He took another sip, then caught the questioning look on Gloralai’s face. “To annual traditions.” He raised his jar.
“Yes, to this date.” Gloralai raised an eyebrow.
“The … uh … the actual date’s tomorrow,” Conner explained.
“Well, to the weekend, then,” Gloralai offered.
“Yeah. The weekend.” They sloshed their beers together. And then a flurry of sand blew off the roof, and they both shielded their jars with the flats of their palms, laughing. The wind carried the puff westward toward the setting sun, and all the dunes trembled in that direction a fraction of an inch, beams creaking, the residents of Shantytown glancing up from their various tasks and distractions at their sagging ceilings, a hungry bird crying out ha ha.
“Hey, thanks for this,” Conner said, saluting with his beer. He leaned back on the bar post and watched the sky redden, the little people up on Waterpump Ridge marching like ants, the lanterns and electric lights flickering on as shifts changed and day steeled itself for night, and the angry desert whispered right along.
“Yeah,” Gloralai agreed, seeming to know what he meant, that it was more than the beer. “This is nice. Why can’t it be like this all the goddamn time?”
12 • Father’s Boots
It was late by the time Conner got back to his place. There were lamps burning higher up his dune, two men on the scaffolding there hammering away at the new home being built on top of his. A scrap of tin fell from the scaffolding and pierced the sand outside his door. One of the men above peered down after it, the scaffolding creakin
g. He showed no remorse for narrowly missing Conner, no apology, just an annoyed grunt at gravity’s tricks and the tiring prospect of climbing down and back up again.
“I still live here, you know,” Conner called out. But one glance at the sand wrapping around his home, and he knew this was a complaint with an expiration date.
He pulled the door open and kicked the scrum6 off his boots before stepping inside. “Yo, brother! You home?” Pulling the door shut required heaving up with both hands to get the doorknob to latch. Sift7 fell from the ceiling, and the rafters creaked. There was no sign of Palmer, no boots or track of sand, no gear bag or detritus from a raided pantry. Just a voice calling out from below, muffled and distant. Sounded like Rob. The hammering overhead resumed. Conner aimed a middle finger toward the ceiling.
“You had dinner?” he called out. He set his leftovers on the rickety table by the door—half a can of cold rabbit stew from the Dive Bar. His little brother shouted another reply, but again his voice was a dull rumble. It sounded like he was a shack down.
It took four strides to go from the foyer, through the kitchen, and into their shared bedroom with the two little cots on their rusted springs. Rob’s bed was shoved off to one side, and three of the floor planks beneath it had been removed. It was dark below. The only illumination in the small house was what little lamplight filtered through the cracked glass set into the front door. A candle by Rob’s bed had melted down to nothing. Conner rummaged through the bin by his cot and grabbed his flashlight, turned it on. Dead. He threw it back into the bin. Three strides, and he pulled down the gas lamp from the living room. Shook it and listened to the splash of oil. Fumbled to get it lit. “You getting the gear together?” he asked.
Rob didn’t answer. Conner adjusted the lamp until the room was flooded with light. He sat on the bedroom floor and dangled his feet into the pit, then lowered himself down and reached up to grab the lantern. A pale glow filled someone’s former home.
