Hugh Howey - Sand

She screwed the cap back onto the canteen and reached for one of the metal cases. There was a silver and a black. The latter had much of its paint scratched off from the trip through the sand. The cases themselves would fetch thirty coin apiece. If the locks worked, her friend J-Mac could file up some keys. Cost five coins apiece but would add fifteen to the price, and Vic knew a couple shopkeeps in town who needed better safes. As far as she was concerned, both bags were already sold. Here was coin temporarily trapped in the shape of something else.

She started with the black one, knocked the latches with the butt of her palm and jarred the sand inside the mechanism loose. The latches were stuck. She had a dull metal rod for this, pulled it out of her boot and rested the case on its end. With a swift stab, she slammed the two latches, and both popped open. She put the rod back into her boot and set the case flat, was about to open it, expecting the typical jumble of clothes to pop out, when the sand rumbled beneath her—

Before Vic could slap her suit on, she and the two cases dropped down into the desert floor. The sand hardened all around her, leaving just her head and neck free.

Panic surged in her chest and sand blew into her mouth; it mixed there with the adrenaline taste of metal. She had filled her lungs by reflex—had expanded her chest—so she could still breathe. Her hand had flown toward her suit’s power switch, was nearly there. She strained against the packed earth, wiggled her shoulders and arm, just needed another inch—

In a fountain of sand, Marco emerged beside her. He floated up to his feet with a twirl and a flourish and shook the sand out of his dreadlocks. Vic averted her head as far as she could and squinted against the flying sand. “I’m gonna fucking kill you,” she said.

When she opened her eyes she found Marco lowering himself down beside her as if to do a push-up, until his grizzled face was just a few inches from hers. “Did you say you’re gonna fuck me?” He lifted his thick eyebrows, mocking her.

“I said I’m gonna kill you.” Vic spat sand. “I’m counting to three, Marco. One—”

Marco lowered himself and crushed his lips against hers. Vic bit his tongue and Marco pulled away, laughing.

“Two, motherfucker.”

Marco pointed a finger at her. “Now that’s totally not fair. I haven’t fucked your mother once since you and I started going steady.”

“Three, asshole.”

Vic got her finger to the switch, and the power in her suit surged. The rage of being pinned down exploded through her, that same rage she often felt when Marco got too rough in bed and would laugh and hold her wrists, that feeling of helplessness, of wondering when play became abuse, biting on her lip to keep from crying in front of him, remembering the last men who had held her down.

With her suit humming and teeth shivering, no one could hold her down.

A ram of buried sand flew up from beneath Marco and slammed into his chest, launching him and the two cases into the air. Vic heard an oomph escape from Marco’s lungs. She flowed herself up to the sand’s surface as Marco shot skyward, yelping now, waving his arms fruitlessly, an explosion of clothes around him like a flock of startled birds. Fuck. She’d hoped to send him up three feet. Marco went up thirty. Asshole was gonna break his neck.

Vic knelt and slid one hand into the sand. With her other hand, she adjusted the band around her forehead. She watched Marco plummet back to the earth, screaming like a crow, half a clothing shop raining down around him. He hit the flowing sand with a splash, and Vic had to avert her face from the grit. She flowed him up to the surface, but he was face down. Using the sand, she rolled him over, worried he’d blacked out, but Marco was spitting grit and coughing, his face up toward the sun. She froze him like that, partly submerged, shoulders pinned in hard pack, and crawled across the sand to lean over him.

“Fuck me—” Marco whimpered.

“Wow,” Vic said. “Still in the mood?” She ran her hand across the sand until it was over his crotch. “Maybe a few sand needles will take the edge off?”

“Please—” Marco said. “My ribs—”

Vic put a finger to her lover’s lips. “What I want to hear right now is the most goddamn convincing apology that pretty little mouth of yours has ever uttered. I want to fucking believe you. I want tears in those big brown eyes of yours. I want you to shed water for me. Say something to make my heart flutter. Go.”

A pair of pants struck the sand right by Marco’s face, knocking more sand into his mouth. He spit and sputtered and closed one eye.

“Not very convincing,” she said.

“I’m fucking sorry,” Marco told her. “It was goddamn stupid of me. I wanted to surprise you, just wanted to hold you down and kiss you so fucking hard because I love you. You’re the only one for me. I swear on all that’s holy I’ll never do it again, and I’ll rip the balls off anyone who tries—”

A pair of pink panties, caught in the wind, fluttered down and struck Marco in the face like a bright bird dive-bombing his worm-pink tongue. Marco yelped, the sound muffled by the underwear, and began shaking his head, trying to get it off. He spat and made blowing sounds. The panties fluttered but stayed in place. Vic covered her mouth and howled. She pounded the sand with the flat of her palm and rolled onto her side, doubling over with laughter.

Marco screamed for her to help. He shook his head back and forth, but Vic could barely see. She had a brief panic at the thought of not being able to stop laughing—ever. It was more difficult to breathe right then than it had ever been in the deepest of sand.

“Goddamnit,” Marco shouted through the underwear. “Help me!”

Vic managed to sit up straight. She wiped her eyes and looked down at her fingers. “Holy shit,” she told Marco, laughing and disbelieving. “You fucking made me cry.”

Vic was still laughing fifteen minutes later. It took that long to round up the clothes scattered by the wind. She shook the sand out of every piece of underwear she found and asked Marco if he needed a new ker. While she howled, he ignored her. He seemed morose as they lugged the bags and her dive gear over a dune and to his sarfer. Marco had laid the mast back to make it hard to spot. A mast upright in the middle of nowhere was a homing beacon for other scavengers—or a warning to a girl that her boyfriend was gonna fucking prank her instead of just picking her up at the dive site like she asked. But she had gotten the last laugh. Was still laughing as they reached the sarfer.

“It totally isn’t as funny as you’re making out,” Marco said. He loaded her dive gear into his haul rack. “Maybe if the bag was full of clean clothes. Maybe then.”

“Oh, shit.” Vic grabbed his arm. She hadn’t smelled the clothes to see if they had been worn or not. The seals in those Samsonites were really that good.

“Yeah,” Marco said. “Shit is right.”

After half a minute, Marco had to help Vic up from the sand. Dabbing her eyes and seeing the tears there, she told Marco, “This is the happiest day of my life.”

“Yeah, you suck. Lesson learned and all that. And Jesus, can you please take it easy on who you tell?”

Vic smiled at him.

“Ah, fuck, Vic, I’m gonna hear about this for weeks.”

“Oh, hell no. This is going to last a lot longer than that. And if these clothes fetch a coin less for all the sand you got in them, that’s coin you owe.”

Marco looked like a kicked dog. Vic almost felt sorry for him. Almost. She loaded the black bag into the haul rack, and Marco did the same with the silver. Behind them, twin sets of ruts streaked their way across the dunes. Already, the lines in the distance were fading, filled in by the wind. Vic marveled, not for the first time, on all the wheeled conveyances she’d seen buried beneath the deep sand. To think there was some distant past or place where wheels made any sense—