Hugh Howey - Sand

They sailed in silence for an hour. They passed other sarfers heading north, crossed tracks that led east to west, saw half a dozen craft out with their masts laid back, dive flags flapping from the rails to warn away others. Conner’s thoughts whirled. He gave his sister as much time as he could, but he had to know. When she returned from a trip to the bow to check the lines for chafing, he finally asked.

“So who was that guy? Someone you knew?”

“A friend,” Vic said, taking the tiller back from him. “He used to run with Marco. Some of the Legion guys left a while back to join up with another outfit. I think a few had a change of heart, maybe said some shit they shouldn’t. Damien was unfortunate enough to hear.” She shook her head. “Bastard could never keep a secret.”

“They… what they did to him.” Conner didn’t really have a question, was just trying to process the level of fucked-up they were dealing with. He couldn’t believe there were people who would kill so many, even those amongst themselves, and all for what? What was there to gain when everything was gone? “What was that you took off him? His last rites?”

Vic nodded. Conner knew about this tradition, but he also knew you weren’t supposed to ask divers what they carried in their bellies. And then he felt like an idiot. He remembered the note his mother had given him to pass along to Vic. He hadn’t seen Vic later that night, had spent that time with Gloralai, so he’d forgotten. This didn’t seem like the appropriate time, but he was scared he would forget again. “I’ve got something for you,” he said, digging into his own pocket. Vic tried to wave him off. She was obviously lost in thought, but Conner took over the tiller and forced the letter into her hand. “Mom gave it to me last night. She said to give it to you. I forgot about it until just now.”

Vic started to put the letter away with the other one. But then she hesitated. While Conner manned the tiller, she opened the letter. She kept it down in her lap and behind her knees so the wind wouldn’t tear it from her grip. Conner adjusted his ker and concentrated on where he was steering.

“Who is this from?” she asked, turning and shouting over the noise of the wind and the shush of the sarfer as it tore across the sand.

“Mom,” he said.

Vic bent forward and read some more, then flipped the letter over, studied the back, studied the front again, seemed to read it a second time. Conner glanced repeatedly from the bow to his sister, watching her head swing across the lines on the page. She turned and looked at Conner for a long time; whatever was spinning in that head of hers was lost behind her goggles.

“Dad wrote this,” she said.

Conner’s hand nearly slipped off the tiller. “What?” Maybe he didn’t hear right.

“What the fuck is this?” Vic asked. “Where did this come from?” She tucked the letter under one leg and eased the main, let out the jib. They lost some speed, and it got easier to hear, easier to talk. She pulled the letter out from underneath her and showed it to Conner. “Dad signed this,” she said. “Is this why you said we should go west? This letter?”

“I didn’t read it,” Conner said. He gave his sister the tiller and took the letter. He read it. It was the note Violet had mentioned, the one that got lost. He turned to his sister. “Violet told us some of this. She’d read some of it when Dad wrote it out. She said she lost the letter. Mom must’ve found it. I had no idea. But yeah, this is what we were trying to tell you. Screw rebuilding, Dad wants us to move on.”

“But Palm says he doesn’t believe this story—”

“Palm is fried. He said this girl talks like someone else. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“This girl who’s our sister.”

“Yes.”

The sarfer sailed on. Vic took in the main a little.

“So what’s she like, this supposed sister of ours?”

Conner laughed. “Headstrong. She sounds a lot older than she looks. Has all of our more annoying traits.”

Vic laughed. “A half-sister as half-crazy as the rest of us? That means Mom’s right about where all that comes from.”

“Heh. I guess. You’d like her. She’s a diver, too. Dad taught her. But she does talk funny—”

Vic stiffened. She turned and stared at Conner, pulled her goggles down around her neck. Her eyes were wild. “But what if Palmer’s right? ”

“Vic, I’m telling you—”

“No, what if this girl and Brock are from the same place?”

“I don’t think—” But then Conner realized what she was getting at. That her conclusion was the opposite of Palmer’s. “Oh, fuck,” he said. “Yeah. God, yeah.”

“Why would anyone want to level Springston?” Vic asked. “Why would they want to level Low-Pub? And Palmer said these people found Danvar but didn’t seem interested in scavenging from it, that they were just using it to fine-tune some map, to locate this bomb of theirs—”

“They don’t give a shit about what’s left out here,” Conner said, “because he’s not from here.” He nodded, remembering something else. “Violet said there were more and more of our people appearing in their camp, that we’re becoming a nuisance to them, like rats—”

“Because there’s been more people jumping the gash,” Vic said.

“So how do they turn that dribble off?”

“It’s not by making us want to stay here.” Vic clenched and unclenched her jaw. “It’s by getting rid of us.”

“How many do you think there are? The guy back there, your friend, was he—?”

“No,” Vic said. “He grew up in Low-Pub. I’ve known him forever. I know a lot of the guys running around with this crew, and they didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. They were recruited.”

“But why would any of our people help them do something like this?”

Vic didn’t answer right away. She tightened the jib and got the sarfer back up to full speed. Finally, she turned to Conner. “One crazy fuck could do this,” she said. “One crazy fuck with a pocket of coin who knows how to say the right things. That’s all it would take. He could find enough people to kill for the thrill of it, for some bullshit cause, for bread and water and copper and a chance to blow shit up.” She slapped the tiller. Shook her head. “Fucking Marco,” she said. And she must’ve gotten sand in her eyes, because she had to pull her goggles back up over them.

Conner slumped in his seat. He wondered if all they were thinking was possible. He suspected he and his sister were being crazier than Palmer with all of this speculation and nonsense. It didn’t seem like any of what they were positing could be true. But which was more likely? That the girl who’d crawled half-dead into his campsite was a cannibal from the north? Or that the crazed assholes who had leveled Springston were working for someone who’d brought his thunder clear across No Man’s Land?

“What’re you thinking?” Vic asked. She turned and studied him, could tell he was mulling it all over.

“I think you’re fucking crazy,” Conner said. “And I think you’re probably right.”

They parked the sarfer on the north side of Low-Pub. Conner and his sister had debated where to start as they approached town. There were no obvious targets in Low-Pub; not like Springston and its great wall. They still didn’t have a course of action, but as they lowered the mainsail, the pop of its canvas in the wind was replaced by the pop, pop of distant gunfire. They both turned toward town. Finding trouble might not be as hard as they’d feared. And there were no columns of black smoke to indicate that they were too late. They sat on the sarfer’s hull and pulled their freshly charged dive suits on. Vic suggested they go without bottles so they could move more easily. “And don’t hesitate to bury these guys,” she told him. “Send them straight down.”