Hugh Howey - Sand

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.

“Where’s Vic going?” Rob asked.

“People out there still need our help,” Conner told his little brother. He stooped down to speak to him. “I’m going to go with her, okay? You’ll stay here with Mom and Palm.”

“I want to go with you.”

“You can’t,” Conner said. He was on the verge of tears, but he had to be firm. “You’re needed here. Take care of Violet. Imagine how scared she must be. How alone she must feel.”

Rob nodded. He scanned the room, perhaps looking for something to do, someone to help. Conner climbed the stairs toward his mom. He dreaded telling her he was leaving, but nothing had ever felt as right as pulling people out of the sand. The moment he carried his mother and Rob and Violet up into the attic and saved them was like that moment a snake sheds its skin or a baby crow pierces its shell. It had been a sort of birth, a discovery of purpose. He no longer felt like a boy. As he reached the top of the stairs, he thought even his mother was looking at him differently. Even Palmer.

“I’m going to help Vic for a few days,” he told them. “You’ll look after Rob and Violet?”

His mother nodded, and Conner saw her throat constrict as she swallowed back some word or sob. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder, and he was about to turn away when she reached into her pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper. “Give this to Vic,” his mother said. “Make sure she reads it. She needs to believe.”

Conner accepted the paper and stuck it into his pocket. “I’ll make sure she gets it,” he promised. “I’m going to let Violet know I’ll be gone for a while. You’ll look after her?”

His mother nodded. Conner thanked her and turned to her room, which no longer had the same repulsive effect it used to. It had been cleansed by the sand that had passed through it; it had been scoured clean. He heard Palmer hurry up behind him and felt his brother grab his arm.

“Hey, Con, we need to talk.”

Conner stopped. Over Palmer’s shoulder, he saw their mother heading back down the stairs to tend to the stricken. “What is it?” Conner asked.

Palmer glanced at their mother’s door like there was still something to fear there, like one of her drunk clients might lumber out at any moment and crash into them and send them over the edge of the balcony with its missing rail. “This way,” Palmer said. He guided Conner past the room where Violet lay, his voice a conspiratorial whisper.

“You okay?” Conner asked. His brother looked better than he had in the sarfer earlier that day, had salve on his blistered lips and food in his belly. But something seemed off.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. It’s just that… this girl who claims to be our sister—”

“Violet,” Conner reminded him.

“Yeah, Violet. It’s just that… Mom took me in there and told me her story, let me talk to her. She and Rob told me about the other night—the night you went camping—and about where she came from.”

“No Man’s Land.”

“Well, maybe.” Palmer glanced at the door again and pulled Conner even farther down the balcony. “It’s just a little unbelievable, don’t you think? I mean, you really buy her story? Because—”

“I was there,” Conner told his brother. “I’m telling you she speaks the truth. She knew who I was.”

“I know, I know. But here’s the thing. The guy who did this to me…” Palmer pointed to his face. “This guy Brock who hired us to find Danvar, who killed Hap, he’s got this strange accent. Everyone says it comes from the north. And this girl sounds just like him.”

“You think Violet is some cannibal?” Conner didn’t have time for this, but his brother really seemed concerned. Vic had told him that their brother was pretty rattled from his experience, that he’d been through a serious ordeal. It was strange, this, to pity an older brother.

“I’m not saying anything, Con. I just know what I hear. And her showing up and then the wall coming down at the same time? And Danvar? Everything happening at once like this? You buyin’ that?”

Conner squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said truthfully. “But I believe that girl in there is our sister, and I think Dad is still out there somewhere.”

Palmer nodded. There were tears in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “You’ve always believed that.” And there was nothing accusing in his brother’s voice. Something more like envy.

“I’ve got to go,” Conner said.

“Yeah.”

“Good to see you,” he told his brother. And the two of them embraced. They exchanged hearty slaps on each other’s backs that loosened the sand in their hair. And Conner remembered how angry he’d been at Palmer the last few days, at the betrayal of his not being there to go camping with them, and such concerns seemed petty. Beneath his worry.

“I love you, Brother,” Palmer whispered in his ear.

And Conner had to turn and go quickly away before his great facade crumbled.

Conner moved through the darkened dunes with an empty dive tank on his back and a regulator swinging by his hip. He didn’t head straight for the sarfer. There was one other person he needed to see before he left. He had to know she was okay. Had to see Shantytown and his home and some place where he could imagine life clinging and continuing on when he got back.

There were a few torches and lamps burning out across the dunes. Occasional voices could be heard as people shouted into the wind, calling for one another. The sand in the air was mild, the stars overhead bright. The glow of illumination in Springston that normally drowned out the constellations had been smothered. Extinguished. Conner thought of all the diving that would need to be done to reclaim what the sands had taken.

As he headed toward Gloralai’s place, Conner became aware of some guilty and latent thrill at his being alive. He felt a raw power for having survived being completely buried in drift. There was also some strange pang of guilt for having been present and on the earth for so momentous a disaster as the fall of the great wall. It wasn’t enjoyment—was nothing like enjoyment. There was too much a darkness over everything, too much a longing, a deep ache; but behind it all there was a tiny voice telling him how good it felt to be breathing, how great it felt to be above the sand, and could he believe what he’d just witnessed?

Conner hated this voice. There was no excitement in this. Nothing but tragedy and loss and now an uncertain and terrifying tomorrow. The wind-blown dunes would swamp Shantytown as never before. Another chaotic Low-Pub awaited here. A lesson was coming for his people, a lesson that there is always a new and greater misery to fall back upon. And thinking this caused the endless days to stretch out before him—days when hauling buckets away from the water pump would be remembered with the same blissful nostalgia as hot baths and flushing toilets. Always more room to fall. The sand went down and down and didn’t stop.

He veered slightly out of his way as he thought these things; he wanted to swing by his house. There was nothing there for him—he’d carried everything out of there for his trek across No Man’s Land, a decision and deed that seemed so very far away now—he just wanted to make sure the front door was unburied, that he and Rob would have a place to go to, that the sand around their home hadn’t collapsed shut from the grumbling of the earth.