Hugh Howey - Sand

“Down to two hundred?” one of the men asked, slinging a tank of air over his back.

“Two hundred,” Yegery said. They were right back to business, not worried about Vic, who was still pinned by the stonesand, and not worried about Conner, who didn’t have his band or visor, didn’t have a gun.

But he had his father’s boots. He had spent enough time in them to be comfortable there, to know what they could do, what he could do. He held the band Rob had made in his hand, his palm sweaty, and he remembered what he’d told his brother beneath their house, about not shorting the wires. He loosened his grip on the strip of fabric and wire. There wasn’t much time. The men were testing their regulators with sporadic hisses, getting the sand out of the mouthpieces, cranking valves and cinching up their harnesses. They would disappear beneath the sand, and Conner and Vic would have to run as fast and as far as they could. But only if they released his sister. Only if he could free her with his boots. Or he could take her straight down while the bomb went off. But then what? Would they let them go free after? The man in charge said this wasn’t about him and his sister. They didn’t seem too angry. But they were about to blow up the square. Conner didn’t know what to do as he prepared to throw the band on and act. He had to do something. Had to stop them.

“Where’s Brock?” Vic asked the old divemaster. “Why can’t he do his own dirty work?”

She was stalling. But she was also getting their attention, which Conner didn’t want. Yegery pulled his regulator out of his mouth and walked back to her. “If he could do this himself, why would he need me? You’re a diver. You know not everyone can do what we do. It’s a good thing he needs me, or I’d be in your situation right now.”

“What about when he doesn’t need you anymore?”

Yegery hesitated. Eventually, he smiled. “He’ll always need me. I’m taking the secrets of diving to his people. For all the magic they possess over there, it turns out some of our tricks are known only to us. Don’t you worry about me.”

“I think he’ll betray you,” Vic said.

“We’ll see,” Yegery told her. He stared down at Vic, made a gesture, and she slowly rose to the surface. She flexed her arms, was free of the stonesand. “You might want to run,” he told her. He reached up for his visor, and Conner knew the time was now. He kept the band close to his body and slid his hands into his lap, then up to his chest. He tried to pre-visualize what he wanted the sand to do, just like his sister had taught him to prep the dunes before diving into them.

“You sure about leaving them up here?” one of the guys asked. “I feel like we should shoot them. Just to make sure.”

Vic turned and glanced at Conner. He had both hands around the band, was making sure he had it lined up right. The wires trailing out from the boot were visible, but there was nothing he could do about that.

“No. Don’t shoot them,” Yegery said. “It’s not my fault they came here. Their death is on their hands, not mine.” He looked down at Vic, who was still in a crouch. “Think of it as a favor on behalf of your father. A gift.” He flipped down his visor and smiled.

“I’ve got a gift from our father,” Conner said. The men turned in his direction. He had the band down over his forehead, could feel the sand beneath him, humming with some terrible power. “Here.”

The world erupted into violence. For a moment, Conner thought the bomb had gone off, that Yegery had triggered it with his band, that this was what it felt like to die in a blast, a split second of noise and a jolt of pain and a flash of light. He had told the sand what he wanted, had built up the vision in his mind, pictured it like a coiled spring, ready to unleash. But he had to go and say something as the connection hit. He saw a gun come up, the flash of light and a loud noise, so fucking stupid, a burst of agony in his chest, shot, falling backward into the sand, but the sand wound tight in his head and exploding out in the shape he’d imagined, inspired by that column with the bomb on it.

That column of sand with the sphere inside collapsed. The silver ball rolled across the blood-soaked sand toward Vic. Five other columns had shot up, sharp points of stonesand beneath each of the men, impaling them, one of them screaming and writhing before falling silent, all of them quickly dead.

Conner groaned and held his chest, cursing himself. Beneath him, the sand slipped and swirled as he lost his concentration, his connection with his father’s boots. He ripped the band off, and the world was mostly still. Just the thrumming of his pulse and the agony of the wound.

“Easy,” Vic said. She was beside him. She ripped the dive suit along a seam, opened it up to inspect the wound.

“I’m gonna fucking die,” Conner whimpered.

Vic swept his hair off his forehead. “You’re not gonna die,” she said. “It’s not that bad.”

Conner kicked the sand in pain. “It feels fucking bad,” he said. He watched as his sister surveyed the mess all around them, the towers of gore that her brother had made.

“I’ve seen worse,” she said.

The brigands were still staining the sand with their blood as the people of Low-Pub began to brave the market. Soon Vic wasn’t the only person kneeling and tending to a loved one. A mother wailed and clutched what must’ve been her son. Someone shouted Vic’s name, a young man with short dreadlocks and tattoos on his dark skin. Conner tried not to yelp as the two of them tended to his wound. Every time he cried out about his chest hurting, Vic assured him it was his shoulder, that he’d be fine. He couldn’t feel his hand, but his sister was saying he’d be fine.

The dive suit was cut away from him with a knife, the wires in the fabric popping as they were severed. That suit would never move the sand again. Vic stood and left his side and ran over to shoo someone away from the metal sphere, telling them not to touch it. She didn’t dare touch it either. Instead, she searched one of the impaled men and found her visor and band. Conner watched as she loosened the sand and sent their bodies beneath the market floor. She buried the bomb in the sand so no one could move it.

“Thank you,” Conner said, as the man with dreadlocks finished wrapping his chest and his arm with scraps torn from a t-shirt. Conner managed to wiggle his fingers, which comforted him somewhat. But it still felt like he’d been kicked by a goat. One whole side of his body ached. His feet grew warm, and he realized the boots were still on. As he kicked them off and reached in for the power switch, he caught Vic eyeing them.

“Rob,” Conner said, as if that would explain everything. He remembered yelling at his brother for fooling around with their dad’s boots. The shoes had been nothing more than a memento for years and years, just sitting in a corner or shoved under a bed. Now they had saved Conner’s life. Several times. Instead of yelling at his brother, he should’ve thanked him. He would thank him. And he would have his brother wire up the fucking power switch where it was easier to reach.

Vic clasped her dreadlocked friend on the arm. The man used his teeth to tear more of a shirt into strips of cloth, then surveyed the market, looking for someone else who needed tending to.

“Can you stand?” Vic asked.

Conner nodded, but he wasn’t sure. He got his boots back on, and Vic helped him up. He swayed there. The sight of his blood on the sand made him feel sick. His mind went to Gloralai, the sudden panic of how close he’d come to never seeing her again. And then a flush of guilt that he’d think of a classmate before thinking of his mother and his family. “What now?” he asked. “None of these guys was the one we were looking for, was he?”