by Hugh Howey
He broke into one house that had remained intact and found a family of four. A shriek as he approached, the red dive light around his neck aglow, drift pouring in through the hole he’d made. “Hold your breath,” he told them, not sure if he could lift four people at once. Two was a strain. But the sand was pouring into their home. A young girl screamed and clutched her mother. Vic had disappeared into another building. Conner needed his sister. The sand wasn’t going to give them time.
He held the regulator out to the young girl. “Can you breathe through this?” The girl’s mother told her to bite down on it and not to breathe through her nose, to stay close to the diver.
Conner nodded toward the window he had smashed. The family crawled across the rising sand with him, the girl tethered to Conner by the air hose. As the sand sought its level, Conner held out his arms and took a boy Rob’s age in one, the young girl in the other. The parents encircled them all in an embrace. One last look at their faces in the pale red light, deep breaths all around, cheeks puffing, eyes wide with fear, the sand tumbling in, and Conner flowed them toward the window. He strained, the pulse in his temples knocking against his skull like a hammer, a feeling of being in thick and heavy sand, the danger of sinking, but a thought of Vic lifting an entire building, and something surged in him, an anger at the world, and though Conner was too far gone in concentration to even know that they were moving, he glimpsed the purple sky overhead, watched it loom closer, and then felt the wind and the pepper of sand on his face, heard the gasps and gratitude of the family as they held one another, covered there in sand.
There was no time to tell them they were welcome. Just a regulator passed back to him, sand and spit of the saved on the mouthpiece. Conner bit down grimly on this before returning to the depths, a boy who had been told he couldn’t be a diver, becoming one now in the most terrible of ways.
••••
“Where are all the others?” he asked his sister, hours later. They shared a canteen atop the sand. The sun was going down, and both their tanks had long run dry, had been shucked off and set aside. They had gone as long as they could with visors and mere lungfuls, but the adrenaline had worn off, and the rescued had become more infrequent, and their exhausted bodies needed a guilty rest.
“What others?” Vic asked. She wiped her mouth and passed him the canteen.
“The other divers. I saw one or two down there looking for people to save. Woulda thought there’d be hundreds helping by now.”
He took a grateful swig while Vic gazed toward the west to keep the sand out of her eyes. “I saw those divers down there,” she said. “But I don’t think they were after people.”
“You think they were scavenging?” Conner didn’t want to believe this. He wiped his mouth with his ker.
“Looting,” she said, stressing the word like there was some great difference. “The rest of the divers are out hunting for a different buried city,” she added.
“Danvar.”
Vic nodded. “The people who did this, who did that—” She pointed to where the wall once stood. “They’re the same ones who found Danvar. Palmer was with them.” She must’ve seen the confused and horrified look on Conner’s face. “Not with them in that sense. He wasn’t a part of the bombing. They hired him for a dive. Palmer was the one who found Danvar.”
Conner didn’t know what to say. He remembered how his brother had looked in the sarfer, like a body fresh from a grave. “Is he okay?”
“He was down there for a week. If he lives, it’ll be a miracle. But he’s got his father’s blood, so who knows.”
Conner couldn’t believe how lackadaisical his sister could be about their brother’s life. But then—all the death he’d seen that day already had him inured to the sight of the buried. “Why would anyone do this?” he asked, though he knew the question was pointless, knew everyone who witnessed the aftermath of a bomb asked the same question and never got a response. Churches were overfull with these unanswered questions.
Vic shrugged. She pulled off her visor and checked something inside the band. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who did this were the same ones who spread the word about Danvar. Just to clear out those who might be here to help.”
“The divers,” Conner said. He grabbed his boot and tried to work a kink out of his calf muscle. “So what now?”
“One more run down by the scrapers. There are a few pockets we missed. Then I’ll get you back to the Honey Hole and check on Palm before I head to Low-Pub.”
“Low-Pub?” Conner glanced around at the people staggering across the sand, pulling what they could from the shallows, tending to the exhausted and the wounded. “Aren’t we needed here? What’s in Low-Pub?”
“The people who did this,” Vic said. She put her visor back on. “Palm said they were going to hit Springston first. He overheard them, knew this was going to happen, just didn’t know it would be this … bad. We came here as quickly as we could for some food and to warn someone. But we were too late.”
“You saved us,” Conner said.
Vic’s cheeks tightened as she clenched and unclenched her jaw. She said nothing. Just pulled her ker up over her nose and mouth.
“The people who did this are shacked up in Low-Pub?” he asked. “If you go after them, I want to come with you.”
He thought she would argue. But Vic just nodded. “Yeah. I’ll probably need you. And they aren’t shacked up in Low-Pub. I think they’re gonna strike there next. And that it might be worse than this.”
Conner surveyed the scene around him once more, the wind and sand blowing unfettered where it hadn’t blown for generations. He couldn’t imagine that anything could be worse than this.
49 • Half-Sisters
Vic
They arrived back at the Honey Hole to find a broken building where broken people were gathering—and Vic wondered if the place had changed at all. The battered brothel was the tallest structure left standing across all of Springston. What had once sat squat among its peers now towered. And as it sat on the new eastward border of civilization, it was also the new wall. A few tents had already been erected in its lee. Shantytown, spread out to the west, was all that remained whole and intact.
As Vic approached the building, she felt as though she could still see all the bodies beneath her feet, that her sandsight had become permanent. The dead were spots in her vision like you get from staring at the sun too long. They were motes of sand swimming in her eye.
She and Conner dropped their tanks inside the door. The building was still lined with drift. Dunes of it stood in the corners. An even coat covered the floor. Vic had flowed the sand like water as she’d lifted the place, but not all of it had gotten out. It had puddled in places and congealed. Dozens of people were scattered across those piles of drift. Lanterns and candles filled the space in glow and shadow. These small flames beat back the darkness as the sun set outside, and Vic saw people pouring caps of water, ladling beer from barrels. Those few who had survived would flock here. It was the most unlikely of sanctuaries.
She saw her youngest brother Rob tending to a woman laid out on the sand. Her mother was moving from person to person with canteens. There was the smell of alcohol, and Vic saw someone cleaning a wound with a bottle from the bar, tipping it into a dishrag before gingerly dabbing at injured flesh. There were people there that she had pulled out of the sand. Some Conner had as well. They had both told people to seek out the Honey Hole. There were so many and yet not nearly enough.
Her mother Rose was directing the chaos. Several of her girls were still in their balcony getups, but now they moved through the bar tending to the sobbing, the wounded, the thirsty. “There’s Palmer,” Conner said, gesturing toward the stairs. Vic saw her brother hammering nails back into place, wiping the sweat from his forehead between blows. She hung her visor on the top of her dive tank and hurried over to him.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, snatching the hammer away.
Her broth
er opened his mouth to complain, but then seemed to wobble. Vic steadied him. Conner was there as well. They guided him to a barstool while Palmer croaked about all that needed doing. “The stairs are gonna collapse,” he said.
“You’re gonna collapse,” Vic told him. “Get him some water.” And Conner hurried around the bar. Vic weighed the hammer in her hand. She could barely stand herself, was past the point of exhaustion, but she moved back to the stairs and started driving in the loose heads. Swinging back for another strike, a hand snatched her wrist.
“What do you think you’re doing?” her mother asked. She took the hammer away and placed a steaming mug of stew in Vic’s hands. “Sit. Eat. You’ve been diving for hours.”
Vic studied her mom, saw the creases of age in her face, the features so much like her own, and she saw the woman and not the profession, saw that this would be her in just a few years, exhausted, worn out, doing whatever it took to get by. She started to apologize, she wasn’t sure what for, but couldn’t form the words. And then she found herself fighting the urge to cry, to sob, to hold her mother and smear tears and snot into the crook of her neck, to tell her about Marco, how great a guy he was even if he was caught up with the wrong people, how he was dead along with so many thousands more. But she fought this and won. She allowed herself to be guided to the bar, where she sat and spooned stew between her lips, doing what she was told because she knew she needed the sustenance, because she knew her mother was right.
Palmer drank beer from a jar, probably to save water for someone else. Conner was given his own bowl of stew. Rob joined them, pulled from the crowd by the gravitational tug of so much family all in one place, and Vic tried to remember the last time they’d been together like this. She caught her mom giving her a look like she was having the same thought.
“How bad is it?” her mother asked. And Vic had been wrong. Her mother was thinking on more than just family.
“Pretty much all of Springston,” Vic said. She stirred her stew. “The east wells will have to be re-dug. They’re buried. The pumps with them.”
Conner stiffened. “I need to go see about the pump in Shantytown. And I need to find—”
“The Shantytown pump won’t be enough to water everyone,” Vic told him. “How many people from that side of town came over here to the cisterns?”
“What about Dad’s advice?” Conner asked, turning to their mom. “Maybe we should go west like Father said.”
Vic’s spoon froze halfway to her mouth. Stew dribbled onto the bar. “When did Dad ever say we should go live in the mountains?”
“Not in the mountains,” Rob told her. “Over them.”
Vic turned and studied her little brother, who was perched on a barstool. “You need to stick to water,” she told him, thinking he’d been into the beer.
Rose placed a hand on Vic’s shoulder. Palmer was looking at her funny. “What?” she asked Palmer. “What’s that look about?” It was as though everyone else knew something she didn’t.
“Don’t freak out,” Palmer said. “I just learned a few hours ago.”
“Let her eat,” their mother said. Then, to Vic, “Finish your stew, and then I need you to come upstairs with me.”
“Upstairs?” Vic felt her palms go clammy. Felt that old terror swell up within her. She didn’t think anything would get her up those stairs ever again. She had a sudden compulsion to yank out the few nails she’d driven in, to yank them all out so no one could ever climb those stairs again, not her or her mother or anyone. “Why do you want me to go upstairs?” Vic asked.
“Finish your stew. And then I need you to meet someone.”
Vic couldn’t very well sit there and eat with everyone acting strange, watching her like that. Her appetite was gone, anyway. “Who?” she asked.
It was Rob who blurted out what no one else would say. “Our sister,” he said. And when Vic shot him a look, he showed her his jar. “It’s water, I swear.”
50 • The Backs of Gods
“I don’t have time for games,” Vic told her mom. She stopped at the bottom of those stairs, her hand on the rail, unable to muster the courage to lift her boot. “What I need is to get back to the sarfer and get to Low-Pub. The people who took down the wall are hitting it next.”
There was a hand at her back, urging her up. Just like before. Like when she was sixteen. Vic resisted. Her mother went past her to the bottom step, turned, looked out over the lantern-lit and pathetic crowds, and then lowered her voice.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Rose said, “or what you might be involved in. I don’t know what’s happening out there.” She looked to be on the verge of tears, and Vic forgot her terror for a moment and truly listened. “This is all too much at once. It’s too much.” She shook her head and covered her mouth with her hand. Vic saw that her brothers were watching from the bar.
“Mom, you need to get some rest. What can be done is being done. There’s no one left to save. All of this can wait until morning.”
“Your father is still alive,” her mother blurted out.
Vic gripped the railing. The Honey Hole slid back down into the dunes and spun around her. “What—?” Her mother held her by the waist to keep her from sagging to the ground.
“I don’t know how all of this is happening at once, what games the gods are playing at, but Conner and Rob brought a girl here the day after you came to see me. The morning after I saw you, they came in with a starved and injured girl who made it out of No Man’s Land.”
“What?” Vic whispered again. She didn’t understand. “How long had she been gone? How far did she get?”
“She didn’t wander in from over here,” Rose said. “She crossed all the way. Come upstairs. Please.”
Vic found herself coaxed upward. It felt as though her mind and senses were floating above the ground. “What do you mean, Father is still alive? Why did Rob call her my … ?”
“Your sister. Half-sister. You need to hear what she has to say.” Vic glanced back and saw that Palmer and Conner were following them up the stairs. Rob was climbing down from his barstool.
“And Dad?” She looked to the balcony.
“He’s being held on the other side of No Man’s Land against his will. I’ll explain. But it means you have to put Low-Pub out of your mind. Your brother is right, that going west might be the only way. I think that’s what the gods are trying to tell us.”
Vic felt a flush of rage at the mention of the gods, at the talk of destiny. She’d seen too many dead to think of that bitch, Fate. She found herself standing there on that balcony, high over the scene of so many hurt and wounded, so many sobbing and mourning their loved ones. Listening to their soft wails, smelling the sweat in her dive suit, thinking on all the buried she’d seen that day, all the horrors visited on that already miserable place, the image of Marco shot dead, seeing a man’s face stove in behind Graham’s workbench, all the bombs over the years, the rape, the scars, the buckets of hurt more numerous than the sands.
“No one is watching over us,” she told her mother. She turned to her brothers, who were gathered on the stairs, looking up at the two women. “There isn’t anyone up there looking down on us,” she told them all. “Those constellations you see up there?” She jabbed her finger angrily at the ceiling. “Those are the backs of gods we see. They’ve turned from us. Don’t you understand? Our father is dead. I don’t have a sister. Now I’ve got to get to Low-Pub.”
She pulled away from her mom and forced herself down between her brothers, nearly knocked Rob over. Her mother yelled for her to wait. Vic stopped at the bar and screwed a lid on a jar of beer. She grabbed a heel of bread from Palmer’s plate and hurried toward the door. She started gathering her gear.
Conner rushed to her side. “Vic, don’t go.”
“I’m sleeping on the sarfer so no one steals it. I sail at first light. I’ll come back and check on you all once whatever happens in Low-Pub happens.”
“Low-Pub is nothi
ng,” Conner said. “You’ve got to hear what this girl has to say. There are entire cities out there—”
“Like Danvar?” Vic slung her tank over her shoulder. “Stop dreaming, Con. Start digging. This is the only life we’ve got.”
“Well, if you won’t stay, then I’m coming with you.”
“Suit yourself.” Vic nodded to the other dive tank and the gear.
“Okay. Good. I will. We’re leaving at first light?” Conner rubbed his hands together. He seemed shocked that she would have him along. In truth, she needed him and twenty more like him. “If so, I’m going to see if I can be of use here for a few hours. Let Mom know where we’re headed.”
Vic shrugged. “You know where the sarfer’s parked. You get there after dawn, it won’t be parked there anymore.” She turned and shoved her way out the door. It felt good, fleeing that place again. Here was where she had learned this skill all those years ago, where she had learned how good it felt to run away.
••••
Conner stood by the door and watched his sister go. It was a familiar sight, her leaving. It didn’t seem possible that he would see her later that night. He was used to it being months. A year. He was used to the fear that she would perish on her next dive and he would hear about it from someone at school. That loss would be even greater now that they had soaked the sand with their sweat together, had dived side by side to rescue who they could. His sister, always a bright and distant star in his life, had grown bright as Venus. It left him no space to stay behind while she went off to Low-Pub.
But he couldn’t run out as quickly as she could, didn’t have the years of practice. He turned back to the stairs, where his family was still watching from the balcony. Conner made his way to them through the crowded bar. A woman he passed grabbed his wrist and thanked him with tears in her eyes, and Conner remembered pulling her out of her home. Her little boy squirmed in her lap. Conner fought back tears of his own as he squeezed her shoulder. He wanted to say that she was welcome, but he feared his voice cracking, feared the facade this woman saw on him sloughing off. His brother Rob met him at the bottom of the stairs.
