by Hugh Howey
She screwed the cap back onto the canteen and reached for one of the metal cases. There was a silver and a black. The latter had much of its paint scratched off from the trip through the sand. The cases themselves would fetch thirty coin apiece. If the locks worked, her friend J-Mac could file up some keys. Cost five coins apiece but would add fifteen to the price, and Vic knew a couple shopkeeps in town who needed better safes. As far as she was concerned, both bags were already sold. Here was coin temporarily trapped in the shape of something else.
She started with the black one, knocked the latches with the butt of her palm and jarred the sand inside the mechanism loose. The latches were stuck. She had a dull metal rod for this, pulled it out of her boot and rested the case on its end. With a swift stab, she slammed the two latches, and both popped open. She put the rod back into her boot and set the case flat, was about to open it, expecting the typical jumble of clothes to pop out, when the sand rumbled beneath her—
Before Vic could slap her suit on, she and the two cases dropped down into the desert floor. The sand hardened all around her, leaving just her head and neck free.
Panic surged in her chest and sand blew into her mouth; it mixed there with the adrenaline taste of metal. She had filled her lungs by reflex—had expanded her chest—so she could still breathe. Her hand had flown toward her suit’s power switch, was nearly there. She strained against the packed earth, wiggled her shoulders and arm, just needed another inch—
In a fountain of sand, Marco emerged beside her. He floated up to his feet with a twirl and a flourish and shook the sand out of his dreadlocks. Vic averted her head as far as she could and squinted against the flying sand. “I’m gonna fucking kill you,” she said.
When she opened her eyes she found Marco lowering himself down beside her as if to do a push-up, until his grizzled face was just a few inches from hers. “Did you say you’re gonna fuck me?” He lifted his thick eyebrows, mocking her.
“I said I’m gonna kill you.” Vic spat sand. “I’m counting to three, Marco. One—”
Marco lowered himself and crushed his lips against hers. Vic bit his tongue and Marco pulled away, laughing.
“Two, motherfucker.”
Marco pointed a finger at her. “Now that’s totally not fair. I haven’t fucked your mother once since you and I started going steady.”
“Three, asshole.”
Vic got her finger to the switch, and the power in her suit surged. The rage of being pinned down exploded through her, that same rage she often felt when Marco got too rough in bed and would laugh and hold her wrists, that feeling of helplessness, of wondering when play became abuse, biting on her lip to keep from crying in front of him, remembering the last men who had held her down.
With her suit humming and teeth shivering, no one could hold her down.
A ram of buried sand flew up from beneath Marco and slammed into his chest, launching him and the two cases into the air. Vic heard an oomph escape from Marco’s lungs. She flowed herself up to the sand’s surface as Marco shot skyward, yelping now, waving his arms fruitlessly, an explosion of clothes around him like a flock of startled birds. Fuck. She’d hoped to send him up three feet. Marco went up thirty. Asshole was gonna break his neck.
Vic knelt and slid one hand into the sand. With her other hand, she adjusted the band around her forehead. She watched Marco plummet back to the earth, screaming like a crow, half a clothing shop raining down around him. He hit the flowing sand with a splash, and Vic had to avert her face from the grit. She flowed him up to the surface, but he was face down. Using the sand, she rolled him over, worried he’d blacked out, but Marco was spitting grit and coughing, his face up toward the sun. She froze him like that, partly submerged, shoulders pinned in hard pack, and crawled across the sand to lean over him.
“Fuck me—” Marco whimpered.
“Wow,” Vic said. “Still in the mood?” She ran her hand across the sand until it was over his crotch. “Maybe a few sand needles will take the edge off?”
“Please—” Marco said. “My ribs—”
Vic put a finger to her lover’s lips. “What I want to hear right now is the most goddamn convincing apology that pretty little mouth of yours has ever uttered. I want to fucking believe you. I want tears in those big brown eyes of yours. I want you to shed water for me. Say something to make my heart flutter. Go.”
A pair of pants struck the sand right by Marco’s face, knocking more sand into his mouth. He spit and sputtered and closed one eye.
“Not very convincing,” she said.
“I’m fucking sorry,” Marco told her. “It was goddamn stupid of me. I wanted to surprise you, just wanted to hold you down and kiss you so fucking hard because I love you. You’re the only one for me. I swear on all that’s holy I’ll never do it again, and I’ll rip the balls off anyone who tries—”
A pair of pink panties, caught in the wind, fluttered down and struck Marco in the face like a bright bird dive-bombing his worm-pink tongue. Marco yelped, the sound muffled by the underwear, and began shaking his head, trying to get it off. He spat and made blowing sounds. The panties fluttered but stayed in place. Vic covered her mouth and howled. She pounded the sand with the flat of her palm and rolled onto her side, doubling over with laughter.
Marco screamed for her to help. He shook his head back and forth, but Vic could barely see. She had a brief panic at the thought of not being able to stop laughing—ever. It was more difficult to breathe right then than it had ever been in the deepest of sand.
“Goddamnit,” Marco shouted through the underwear. “Help me!”
Vic managed to sit up straight. She wiped her eyes and looked down at her fingers. “Holy shit,” she told Marco, laughing and disbelieving. “You fucking made me cry.”
20 • A Scrounger’s Trade
Vic was still laughing fifteen minutes later. It took that long to round up the clothes scattered by the wind. She shook the sand out of every piece of underwear she found and asked Marco if he needed a new ker. While she howled, he ignored her. He seemed morose as they lugged the bags and her dive gear over a dune and to his sarfer. Marco had laid the mast back to make it hard to spot. A mast upright in the middle of nowhere was a homing beacon for other scavengers—or a warning to a girl that her boyfriend was gonna fucking prank her instead of just picking her up at the dive site like she asked. But she had gotten the last laugh. Was still laughing as they reached the sarfer.
“It totally isn’t as funny as you’re making out,” Marco said. He loaded her dive gear into his haul rack. “Maybe if the bag was full of clean clothes. Maybe then.”
“Oh, shit.” Vic grabbed his arm. She hadn’t smelled the clothes to see if they had been worn or not. The seals in those Samsonites were really that good.
“Yeah,” Marco said. “Shit is right.”
After half a minute, Marco had to help Vic up from the sand. Dabbing her eyes and seeing the tears there, she told Marco, “This is the happiest day of my life.”
“Yeah, you suck. Lesson learned and all that. And Jesus, can you please take it easy on who you tell?”
Vic smiled at him.
“Ah, fuck, Vic, I’m gonna hear about this for weeks.”
“Oh, hell no. This is going to last a lot longer than that. And if these clothes fetch a coin less for all the sand you got in them, that’s coin you owe.”
Marco looked like a kicked dog. Vic almost felt sorry for him. Almost. She loaded the black bag into the haul rack, and Marco did the same with the silver. Behind them, twin sets of ruts streaked their way across the dunes. Already, the lines in the distance were fading, filled in by the wind. Vic marveled, not for the first time, on all the wheeled conveyances she’d seen buried beneath the deep sand. To think there was some distant past or place where wheels made any sense—
“Ho, Marco!”
Vic turned. She saw where Marco was looking, hand shielding his eyes in the low morning sun. A figure stood atop a nearby dune, a silhoue
tte with a tall lance in one hand, the other arm raised in salute. The mast of a sarfer could be seen jutting up beyond the dune, the sail tightly furled.
“While you were screwing around, someone spotted your sarfer,” Vic said.
“Shit.”
“Wait, is that Damien? Oh, he’s gonna love this.”
“Please, please, please,” Marco begged. “At least wait until we get to town. Or tonight when everyone’s drunk and no one will remember. Don’t let him be the first to know. Not Damien.”
Vic squeezed Marco’s neck and laughed. “Some freedom fighter you are.”
Marco tensed. “That’s just it. I’m a fighter.” He made a fist, and his great and tan bicep bulged, scars and tattoos straining.
Vic stopped smiling. “I was stressing the freedom part. You forget that, and all you are is fighting. I’ll tell who I want, when I want. Freedom, Marco. Don’t get like these assholes and fall in love with the fighting. Then you’re just setting off bombs because you like the noise they make.”
Marco didn’t say anything as Damien glissaded down the dune toward them, causing a gentle avalanche and using his spear for balance. He stomped over with a grin, and his eyebrows lifted when he spotted the two bags in the haul rack. “Jesus. Nice find, guys.” His eyes went to the trails left in the sand, quickly filling. “How the hell do you two score every time you go out? And way out in the middle of nowhere?”
Vic didn’t say that it was usually her scoring while Marco watched their things on the surface. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“Clothes?”
“Mostly underwear,” she said. And before Marco could respond, she added: “For the ladies.” She fought off a bout of giggles.
“Hey, my wife could use some. Maybe hook me up before you sell to Jimbo or Sandy and they get their squeeze. I’ll pay what they pay.”
“Slow down,” Marco said. “Don’t be in a rush to get our panties off us.” He laughed.
“Maybe they’re for him,” Vic said, teasing Damien.
“Yeah, fuck you two. And here I was getting ready to do you a favor. But I guess you can wait until you get to town to find out the news yourselves. To think I was gonna ask you to tag along—” He turned and marched back toward his sarfer.
“Wait. Tell us what?” Marco asked.
Damien held up his middle finger and kept walking.
“Tell us fucking what?” Marco demanded.
“I’ll trade you,” Vic called.
Damien slowed. He turned and glanced at the bags. “Trade for what?”
“Give me the news, and I’ll tell you the funniest story you’ve ever heard in your entire fucking life.”
Damien waved his hand and spit sand. “News like this don’t go for a joke.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Marco hissed, but this only seemed to get Damien’s attention.
“It’s not a joke,” Vic said. “It’s a true story. And I promise you won’t be disappointed. You’ll be getting the good end of this bargain, I swear.”
“I dunno…” Damien said, walking back their way. “There ain’t never been news this big. But fuckit, I’d rather you hear it from me than from someone else.”
“You first,” Vic said. In truth, she didn’t care about his news. She was just rehearsing how best to tell this story, a story that would get many retellings.
Damien took a deep breath and searched their faces. The two sand divers waited. The clatter of Low-Pub spilled over the dunes, and sand rode through the sky above their heads.
“Fucking Danvar,” Damien finally said. “Somebody found it.”
21 • Buried Alive
Palmer
It was a crypt for a king. His friend Hap had left him to die in a crypt for a goddamn king—this tomb of untold riches. Palmer was going to take his last breath in a manor no Lord of Springston could refuse. A place where a truly great man should be laid to rest.
And it’ll do for me, he thought morosely.
The air in the buried sandscraper tasted stale and seemed to be growing thinner. But it had outlasted his water. Palmer had poured himself half-caps for what felt like five days. He had eaten both strips of jerky one tiny nibble at a time, like a mouse trying to win the cheese from a loaded trap. Now all of that was gone, along with fifteen or twenty pounds of himself. He hadn’t been eating that well even before the march north. The stress of a deep dive always messed with his appetite. No… it hadn’t been the dive. It had been the camping trip coming up, the anniversary. He never ate well before that trip. Had bugged out the year before. Damn… maybe he’d already been down there a whole week. Con and Rob would go without him, just like last year. Con and Rob. They would never hear from their big brother again.
Or maybe it hadn’t been so long. He had counted five days—five urges to sleep—but maybe it was four. Hell, it could be ten days or ten hours since Hap abandoned him. His mind was playing tricks. He heard noises and voices. Had a dream about his father that seemed so real, Palmer had truly thought he was dead and in heaven. Ah, a crypt fit for a king, and where was his asshole father buried? His father’s bones had ground to sand in No Man’s Land, that’s where. A pauper burial for a Lord. A place for desperate dying. It was as ironic as Palmer’s lavish crypt.
But Palmer had been old enough to remember a Lord’s life. He had bawled when his mom pulled them away from the wall. Had bawled when he was put in a different school with strange kids who smelled bad. Had bawled harder when he could no longer smell them because he had begun to stink as they did. What he wouldn’t give to have all those tears back. Just a capful.
He licked his cracked and burning lips. The dream about his father made sense now. Some part of him had been dwelling on the anniversary. He’d let Con and Rob down again. He was a shitty brother and a shitty son and did not deserve to die in so fine a place as this.
Such were his wild thoughts as he left the conference room where he’d been imprisoned by his hope of Hap’s return. He staggered out and through the dark building, his dive light as dim as he could make it, its staid old battery down to rations as well. Maybe he’d find a pool of water where a spring had flooded or where trapped moisture had drained down through the impossibly tight pack. But there was little hope of that. He left the conference room to get away from his nightmares and his failures. To let his body wander instead of his mind.
Before he died, he should go out into the sand one last time. Better to perish there and be discovered by another diver as they came to pick over this city. He still had a good charge in his suit, might see how far he could make it before the sand filled his lungs. But some naive part of him kept thinking Hap would come back, that Brock would send others, that he would be a fool to go out and die when there was still air in that building to breathe. At any moment, Hap would burst in with a second set of twin tanks, laughing and saying he’d only been gone two hours and here’s the coin those scroungers paid and all the beer and pussy in Springston would be theirs.
Palmer kept thinking this, but the hope had grown as stale and thin as the oxygen. The hope that had kept him prisoner in that room with the chairs and the great table and the brewing machine had weakened. Gone was the need to be there when the divers came for him. And as that hope waned, he left through the door that had damned him, that heavy door that Hap had slammed shut on his face, and with his dive light barely aglow, he nosed around his crypt for the first time.
He had seen many crumbling office buildings full of sand outside Springston, but never on such a scale as this, never so pristine. The buildings he had seen had been picked over for centuries. Men with mastery over the sand had ripped out great holes and had salvaged almost anything worth taking. But Palmer now strolled through a perfect recreation of that long-dead world. It was a museum for the buried gods and the world they had lived in. His fragile mind tallied stacks and stacks of coin as he felt his way down the hall. There were clocks; pictures framed and behind perfect glass; recessed lights and miles and miles of copp
er wire; unbroken tile; wood countertops. Coin everywhere.
Other divers would come and claim these things. Probably not Hap, for the guilt would gnaw at him. At least, Palmer hoped it would. No, it would be some other diver who would find his bones. They would remove Palmer’s skeleton from his suit piece by piece and marvel that he still had a charge left, that he had been too scared to make for the surface, and someone would point out that he didn’t have tanks, and some other asshole would say that there was a girl from Low-Pub who could’ve done it, and none of them would know that these bones in their hands belonged to that girl’s brother.
He tried another room. A bathroom. Porcelain fixtures and indoor plumbing. He felt insane for twisting the spigots, but no one was watching.
The next room was a jackpot. A bonanza of riches. A small room no bigger than a bed but full of tools. Brooms and mops and much else. He picked up one of the brooms. Synthetic bristles. Plastic. As good as the day it was made. Palmer kicked some of the scrum from his boots to the marble tile and whisked the sand around with the broom. His mother—the mother of his youth—would’ve loved such a broom. Palmer flashed back to chasing Conner through the house when they were boys, giving him a beating before his sister caught up to them both and dispensed two beatings. Back in the closet, he shook bottles of liquids, cracked the cap on one of them and took a sniff. His nose burned. If he needed an easier way out than the sand, here it was.
He surveyed all the useful things packed into such a small space, enough coin to retire on, and closed the door. Someone else would come and take these things. They would figure out a way to dive deep and bring it all back. Wouldn’t bother with him, though. Palmer thought of the city that would be built above these dunes on all that was stolen from the past. There would be an orgy of excess. A gold rush like the old-timers used to tell of Low-Pub’s founding. No one would remember the first person to set foot in that scraper. He pictured Hap in the Honey Hole at that very moment, blisteringly drunk, delicious golden beer everywhere, telling the gathered that he’d been the first one inside, that he’d discovered Danvar all on his own. Fucking Hap.