“Hurry and grab them!” he cried to his men, who didn’t need to be told twice.
Together, they collected the spears, finding enough to arm about half of his men. The armed ones formed a new line to the east of the holes, waiting for Thorne’s leadership, while those without spears waited further back, where they’d be safer.
A pride unlike any Thorne had felt in many years swelled inside him.
He’d trained his men well.
Forcing back his triumphant feeling, he focused on his mission. The beast might flee. But if it didn’t, they’d be ready. Rearing back his spear, he found a new place in which to plunge it.
A feeling of vengeance washed over him as he stared at the numerous holes around him, and the blood of his men. Too many had died today. No more.
Cocking back his decoy spear, he launched the weapon.
The tip hit the ground.
The sand burst open.
Teeth and an enormous mouth came into view.
The creature’s enormous body curved upward. Thorne’s men prepared their throws.
In an eye’s blink, he realized his mistake. The creature wasn’t coming sideways this time. It was coming at them.
The shadow curved upward and overhead, filling the sky above them and casting a darkness he feared they’d never escape.
“Run!” he screamed.
A few of his brave men launched their spears before turning to flee. Exploding sand drowned out more of his words as he urged his men onward, away from the beast’s massive body and out from under its shadow. Thorne curved to the west and away from the creature’s path. In his peripheral vision, he saw a few of his men doing the same.
But their head start was pointless.
Whether it was bad luck or the fate of the heavens, he’d never know.
The darkness grew thicker and wider.
The smell of blood and sand filled his nose.
Thorne’s body was pulverized underneath the Abomination’s weight, along with his men’s. His last thought was that they’d never reach the caves.
Chapter 69: Neena
Quiet pervaded the land outside the cave.
Red Rock stood silent, save the gentle ripple of the wind across the sand. To the southwest, the river flowed steady and true. The Green Crops fluttered.
The rumbling was gone.
Neena, Kai, Raj, Samel, Darius, and a few hundred others looked out from the mouth of the cave into the path of sandy desert between the cave and the shattered, eastern hovels.
The bodies of The Watchers lay everywhere. Those who weren’t eaten lay at odd angles. A few gnarled hands reached for a redemption they would never find.
Looking past the carnage and between the pathways, Neena saw only pockets of devastation. Houses lay in crumbles. Scattered belongings lay everywhere. Nothing moved.
It felt as if she and the several hundred with whom she stood were the only ones left.
They waited in terrified silence for so long that Neena’s legs cramped, and she could feel the roil of fear and hunger in her stomach. Eventually, the squawk of hungry birds overhead ripped everyone’s attention skyward. On their own, or in flocks, the scavenging birds landed to feast on the corpses. They pecked at the bodies, pulling sinewy pieces of flesh away and swallowing them in their beaks.
A memory came back to her.
“The animals won’t come out if the creature is close.”
Slowly, a few whispers circulated among the living.
“Is it over?” someone hissed.
People readjusted in the cave, holding their loved ones, waiting for an answer. The rumbles were a dark, distant memory.
“It’s gone, for now. But it will be back,” Kai said, loudly enough to be heard in the echoing cave.
A few around them turned to Kai, recognizing him as the stranger who they had feared. No one disputed him. How could they? Together, they’d survived the attack, or at least, they hoped they had.
Neena held her brothers tight. Their quiet tears had left them, leaving only tracks of grief on their faces. Looking out into the desert, Neena searched for a body she knew she’d never find. Helgid was gone. She closed her eyes and reopened them, wishing she could take back those final, fatal moments. She told herself she’d done everything to save her.
She couldn’t convince herself.
After a while of whispering and quiet conversation, some in the caves moved and stretched their legs. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the shifting shadows of too many people cramped into a tight space. None had wandered any deeper in the caves than they needed. They had no torches. They were afraid.
“What should we do?” someone asked, aiming their question in the direction of Kai, Neena, and Darius’s group.
“The caves are a place of safety,” Darius said. “We can stay here for refuge.”
“The caves are forbidden,” a woman whispered.
“They are only forbidden because the leaders tell us that,” Darius explained. “But today, they have saved us.”
“The beast can’t go through solid rock,” Kai told the people behind him. “If we keep quiet when we hear it, we will have a better chance at living.”
“How do you know?” asked the woman.
“It has attacked my colony for years,” Kai explained. “Too many of my people have died. We’ve learned from our mistakes.”
A few people looked around, processing the information, hugging each other. Some people relayed the message to others, who couldn’t hear from the back of the hemmed-in crowd. No one argued. After a while, new whispers reached Neena’s ears.
“My mother is missing. I can’t leave her out there.”
“So is my son,” whispered another woman from the back. “I need to find him. I cannot stay here.”
“The leaders will help us tend the wounded, and the dead,” said a third person. “They’ll put everything back in order. They’ll rescue us.”
“Like The Watchers did?” Someone waved a demonstrative hand toward the desert.
A man near Darius cleared his throat, turning to face the people behind them. “The leaders are dead. The beast crushed them. I saw it happen at the meeting.”
Silence permeated the cave as everyone absorbed a truth they had known, but were afraid to utter. A few women in the back of the cave burst into tears. A few children clung tighter to their parents. The finality of those words hung in the air for several moments, before a woman spoke.
“The leaders are dead, The Watchers are dead,” the woman said through her tears. “Our families are eaten or crushed, if we can even find them. What do we have left?”
Turning to the crowd behind her, wiping away her silent tears, Neena said, “We have us.”
Chapter 70: Neena
Slowly, some of the people dispersed from the caves, holding each other and walking out into the sand. Neena and Kai looked behind them at Raj, Samel, and Darius, who waited among a slew of others, watching from the entrance.
Each footstep came with the fear of a new rumble, but the beast seemed to be gone.
The area outside the cave was a nightmarish landscape.
The air smelled of blood and a foul odor she recognized from the desert. Among the bloodied bodies, Neena saw some of the clear, goopy substance that she knew was the creature’s bile. Among it was darker, blackish drips of blood that didn’t seem human.
“They wounded it,” Neena said incredulously.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it bleed,” Kai admitted.
“But that didn’t stop the thing from killing them.” Neena swallowed.
Keeping a wide berth from the holes, one of which had almost caused her death, she looked over at the crushed, pulverized body of The Watchers who hadn’t been swallowed. The men lay in the desert, covered in blood. Some of their bodies were so pulped that she could no longer make out their features.
One body, she recognized.
Thorne’s body was so mashed that she could no longer discern limbs
from torso. Only half of his face remained. She looked away, choking back nausea. She and Kai crossed the remainder of the desert, leaving the gruesome scene behind and entering an area that was less destroyed than others. They headed through the colony. The rest of the people walked behind them, following their lead, conversing in whispers.
A place of life had become a place of death.
More bodies laid everywhere. A man clutched his stomach in a dying grimace. It looked as if a piece of shrapnel had speared him. Arms and legs hung out from underneath piles of wreckage. Other colonists lay next to destroyed homes, covered by dust and debris. Some of the elderly seemed to have died without explanation. Their gaping mouths and wide eyes showed the fear that accompanied their last breaths.
More than one hole littered the ground, making some paths and alleys non-navigable, or turning some into piles of rubble. Neena and Kai skirted around them, looking for survivors among the dead. Some of the people fanned out to check on their loved ones, or continued on to other alleys.
In one half-broken house, they found a man who managed to survive unscathed. Moving on, they found a few more.
Maybe a horrific day would become a hopeful one. At least, Neena told herself that as they trekked through more destroyed hovels and littered pathways, leading the survivors.
They returned to the main path and headed north.
A line of uprooted dirt ran past the lines of fallen buildings. The creature had followed the slew of running people, or so she had pieced together, from what she’d heard and seen. Neena’s stomach bunched up as she looked down an adjacent pathway that led to Helgid’s house. She pushed away her mournful feeling.
Halfway to the Comm Building, one of the women with whom they’d split off approached them.
“There are some survivors in the leaders’ building,” the woman said, crooking a thumb over his shoulder. “Unfortunately, my boy wasn’t one of them.”
The woman smiled through her grief before continuing down another path, resuming her search.
Neena and Kai headed up the path and toward the towering structure.
The Comm Building stood tall and massive, rising above the wreckage around it. Not one of the walls had collapsed or cracked, at least that Neena could see. The sight filled her with hope. It was certainly better than despair.
Narrowing the gap, Neena had a moment of reconsideration.
What if The Watchers—or even the leaders—had survived?
The doors to the enormous building were open to a crack. People’s voices carried from inside. A few cried, while others talked in low tones.
Looking over at Kai, she said, “Stay here.”
Kai nodded.
She took the remaining steps on her own, until she was at the doors, parting them. The sun cast tentative beams through the dust clouds around the doorway. Inside, she found a few dozen people, tending to the wounded. Some of the colonists had managed to find their way into the building, but she saw no Watchers or leaders.
Her face lit up again when she saw a familiar face among the small crowd, tending to a man with a wounded arm.
Amos.
Spotting her, Amos rushed to his feet, hurrying to greet her.
“Neena!”
He embraced her, patting her back, before leaning back and appraising her. His weathered face seemed even more tired than usual, but he was alive.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Neena said, wiping some dirt away from her face.
“Thank the heavens,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“Nor I, you.”
Looking past her, a question crossed his face. “Where are your brothers?”
“They’re safe,” she said. “We made it to a cave on the eastern side of the colony. They’re among some others. A few hundred of us survived the monster’s attack.”
Amos nodded with relief and surprise, before an unspoken question bubbled to the surface. Neena’s eyes welled up. She didn’t have to answer it. Without a word, they embraced.
**
A voice echoed from the Comm Building doorway, distracting all inside.
A cluster of the people in the room walked toward the threshold, where a man stood, pointing. Neena and Amos followed the flow of people outside, joining Kai, who had come over to see what was happening.
“Up there! On the cliffs!” the man yelled. “I see others!”
Neena, Amos, and Kai stared up in disbelief. On the top of the eastern cliffs, gathered in the dying sunlight, a group of a hundred survivors stood waving their hands.
A small hope in Neena’s heart grew larger.
Maybe more people had survived than she thought.
Chapter 71: Neena
Neena and Kai walked back through the rubble and the wreckage. Returning near the pathway that led to Helgid’s house, Neena’s grief returned as she pictured the pile of stone and mud bricks through which they’d sifted.
Both Helgid and her hovel were gone.
And so were too many others—people she might’ve saved, if she had done something differently. Noticing the emotion on her face, Kai touched her arm.
“It isn’t only Helgid that I grieve for,” Neena said, shaking her head.
“Of course. Too many have died.” Kai lowered his head. He understood.
“Our warnings weren’t enough,” Neena said. “Maybe if we had said something differently, we could’ve convinced the leaders to do more than they did.”
“We tried,” Kai said. “They didn’t want to listen. Or maybe they weren’t ready to.” He squeezed her arm gently, checking on her.
Surveying one of the holes, she envisioned the monster that had sprung from beneath it, rending her people’s bodies in half, or swallowing them. No one had deserved a death like that.
She was angry. She wanted to lash out and make someone pay. The leaders were an obvious choice. But the leaders were dead.
Only her guilt lived on.
Looking at the remains of her ruined colony, a new desire struck her, until the emotion became so strong and so fierce that she couldn’t let it go.
Vengeance.
“What are you thinking?” Kai asked.
Forcing back her angry tears, Neena promised, “The next time that thing comes here, we will kill it, Kai. We will make sure it never hurts anyone again. I swear by the heavens.”
Chapter 72: The Man
The man clawed his tattered body through the darkness. His legs had no more sensation. Those parts of his body that he could feel, he wished he couldn’t. Searing agony shot through his torso and his face. Blood flecked his lips, rolled down his forehead, and dripped over the gaping socket where an eye had been.
Throes of pain threatened to pull him under, but he wouldn’t let go.
To stop was to die.
He pulled his wounded body over rocks, sand, and dirt, finding the will to climb upward. The darkness seemed to have no end, but he kept going until sunlight hit his face.
Reaching it, the man opened his good eye, pulled his crushed legs toward the top of a gaping hole, and let out a painful wail.
Boot steps hit the ground.
Someone had heard the man’s cries.
Hands grasped Gideon’s fingers, pulling him from the Abomination’s pit.
CONTINUED IN “DUSTBORN” BOOK THREE
DUSTBORN
A Dystopian Sci-Fi Story
Book 3 of the Sandstorm Series
Preface
Welcome to Sandstorm Book 3.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of a story—to me—is watching the characters develop and change. The characters in my favorite stories are not black and white, but multi-faceted individuals, driven by their own motivations and desires.
We sympathize with them because of their humanity, we empathize with them when they experience tragedy, and we cheer their successes.
More importantly, we see their flaws.
Hopefully you’ve enjoye
d the saga of Neena, Kai, Darius, Raj, and Samel (and Gideon) so far. As you’ve seen in the last book, things are bleak, but they are about to get worse.
Will our characters survive a new, emerging threat?
You’ll find out in DUSTBORN. Enjoy!
Tyler Piperbrook
June 2019
Chapter 1: Neena
“I can’t believe it’s all gone.”
Neena stared out from the cliff on top of the eastern rock formation, surveying the ruins of Red Rock. Two weeks after the brutal attack, the sight of her destroyed colony still filled her with sadness and grief. The remains looked like an eerie, abandoned monument to her old life. About half of the houses were now piles of mud brick, destroyed during the attack, or toppled over in the aftermath. Even the Comm Building, once an indomitable symbol of strength, seemed like an inadequate place of refuge.
Dots of color spotted the landscape between the hovels—pieces of clothing, ruined bedrolls, or broken supplies. Too many of those distant objects were bodies.
Every so often, when the wind was right, the foul odor of the dead drifted to where the survivors were now sheltered, in the caves at the top of the cliffs. Each time they smelled it, they were reminded of the people buried underneath the rubble, lost until the animals got to them, dragging out their corpses and feasting on the meat. Watching a bird take flight from the top of a distant building, carrying something in its beak, Neena shuddered.
“Sometimes, I feel as if I am looking at a place we discovered, rather than a place we lived,” she said, her eyes searching the colony’s wreckage.
“Not all the buildings are gone,” Kai reminded Neena, waving at some of the intact hovels, standing among the fallen. “And neither are your people.” He motioned over their shoulders, to the entrance of one of the caves, where Darius and some four hundred remaining survivors waited for them.
Sandstorm Box Set Page 37