Hugh Howey - Sand

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.

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 brother 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.