Hugh Howey - Sand

Conner nodded. It was a dangerous heresy for a diver to mutter, using a suit against another. But they were dealing with people who killed others by turning their own suits against them. They were dealing with people who leveled towns. He wouldn’t hesitate. Yesterday, he had saved lives. Today, he steeled himself for the more gruesome task of taking them. He pulled his band down over his head and followed his sister into town. The two of them moved in a crouch. Low-Pub felt dead. Like everyone was gone or locked up in their homes. It was a hand past noon, the wind and sand whistling through town. The gunfire had stopped, which left them moving toward the area they thought they’d heard it emanate from. Vic turned and pointed down toward the sand. Conner nodded and lowered his visor. His sister disappeared, and he powered up his suit, pulled his ker over his mouth, and followed.

They moved beneath the town where it was forbidden to dive. There was a purple roof of open air overhead, dots of buried garbage and scraps here and there, a few iron cages around basements, erected by the paranoid, but they were blind to what was going on above the dunes. This was a safe and quick way to move, but they couldn’t see where they were moving to or if anyone was up there. Conner just trusted his sister and kept close to her boots. He noticed that she kept studying the mass of magentas and deep purples above them as if there was information in that great bruise.

She slowed and began to rise. Conner followed. He saw the bubble and swell of sand they were entering and realized they were coming up inside a mounded dune. Vic pierced the top, just her head, and Conner did the same. They flicked their visors up. Shifting the sand around her, Vic slid forward, away from Conner, just her head moving across the surface of the dune’s ridge like a ball in a game of kick. His sister could move the sand in ways he’d never thought of; he had to learn on the fly how to adjust and mimic her. It was difficult, keeping the same level as he pushed the sand against his back. He took deep gulps of air through his ker, reminded once again that he couldn’t stay down as long as she could.

She lifted a hand out of the sand and pointed down into the middle of a large square that was ringed with makeshift shacks. It was the market at the center of Low-Pub. There were goods and wares hanging in the shacks, smoke rising from food stalls, the smell of meat burning, but no one shopping or tending the stalls. A dozen or so bodies were strewn throughout the market. Bloodstains. People had been shot, everyone else running for cover. Explained why it was so quiet. Conner spotted a small group of men working in the dead center of the market. Someone, somewhere, screamed in agony. Not all of the shot were dead. Not yet.

“Wait here,” Vic said. She flipped her visor down and slid beneath the sand.

“No fucking way,” Conner told the empty air. He flipped down his visor and dove after her. She was already a receding green form beneath the sand. She glided down the face of the dune and toward the wide flat space where the market square lay. Conner strained to catch up. He joined Vic as she slowed and slid through the earth on her back, gazing up at the waves of purple, looking for the boots of those above, was probably planning on pulling them down into the sand to immobilize them, to smother them.

Conner felt the need to breathe. He wondered if he should turn back. He couldn’t hold his breath like Vic could. Would need to surface. He should’ve stayed and watched from the dune like she’d said. He’d been too impulsive, too eager.

When she saw him following along behind, he knew the same thoughts were occurring to her, could almost see the anger in the orange and red shape of her, the way the bright yellow of her visor trained on him. He lifted his palms in apology, to tell her he was going back, when the sand around him ceased to flow.

He thought it was Vic at first, that she was pushing him back, had put the brakes on him, but then she flew violently up through the sand. A moment later, with a sickening lurch, Conner shot up as well. He broke the surface and went into the air several feet, came down with a grunt as the air was knocked out of him.

He tried to flow the sand beneath him, but it was stonesand, locked tight. A gunshot exploded nearby, and Conner heard his sister cry out. Something was pressed against his back. His band and visor were torn from his head, the blinding world of purples returning to the orange sand and the bright sunlight. Someone patted him down roughly, two sets of hands running across his suit. They told him to sit up and patted along his chest, under and down both arms.

“No guns,” someone said.

“She’s clean,” said another.

Conner blinked and looked around. He found himself among a gathering of legs and boots, those men at the center of the square. His sister was lying on the ground ahead of him, her visor gone as well. A man was pointing a gun up in the air. Conner tried to tell if his sister had been shot. He thought maybe she’d been punched or had cried out in alarm. An older man with a beard approached her. He had a crazy patchwork dive suit on—strips of varying cloth sewn together, wires trailing up along the outside in tangles and coils. He jangled as he walked.

“What the hell’re you doin’ here?” the man asked. When Vic tried to get up, he made a fist. She sank a foot down into the sand and cried out as the ground pinched her. “Trying to sneak up on me? ” It was a question soaked in disbelief more than anger.

Vic grimaced, but stopped fighting the sand. “Don’t do this, Yegery. You don’t have to do this.”

Behind the man, Conner saw a solid column of sand sticking up from the desert floor. A smooth metal sphere stood atop this, gleaming in the high sun. Vic was looking at it too.

“Oh, but I do.” Yegery knelt down beside her. The man by Conner kept a hand on his shoulder. There was a gun in his hand. Conner knew sorta how to use one if he could wrestle it away. He was pretty sure.

“You see,” Yegery said, “we’ve been fed a lie. We’ve been told to feast on the sand and be happy. But there’s a bigger and better world out there, and I’ve been promised a piece of it. All it takes is learning to let go of this—” He waved his hands around at the market, then stood up. “We’ve been digging for something better all this time. I’ve spent my entire life digging. Your father spent his life digging. And then he wised up. He knew where to look.”

“I have a note from him,” Vic said. “You wanna read it? He says it’s hell over there!”

“Ah, that’s because he’s on the wrong side .”

Several of the men laughed. Conner pulled his feet up underneath him and was told not to fucking move. “Sit on your hands,” the man standing over him said.

Gladly , Conner thought. He tucked his hands and boots beneath him. His sister strained against the clutches of the stonesand.

“What is that thing?” she asked, staring at the strange column.

“This is an atomic bomb.” Yegery walked over to it. “Don’t ask me how it works. All I know is how to work it. Easy as making marbles,” he said. “Easy as pinching it down.” He stared at the column, and the sand rose up and surrounded the sphere.

Conner could feel the hum in the sand beneath him. He wiggled his foot half out of his boot and toggled the power switch Rob had wired up. He got his hand around the band. Worked it out slowly. The man with the gun was watching Yegery as the divemaster continued to talk.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, the rest of us are going to strap on some tanks and get down where it’s safe. You and your friend here can see how far you can run before this goes off, but I should warn you, if this does what I’ve been told it can do, you won’t get far enough. And I really do hate that for you, Vic. I like you. But this is bigger than us.” Yegery looked at the men. “Get your tanks on. And bring their bands with us.”