Sand: Omnibus Edition

by Hugh Howey

  “No chance at all.” This time it was Yegery, Palmer was sure of it. “One diver out of four can go that deep, and that’s what we’ve got. One in four of them made it. The sand down there makes it impossible to breathe and move at the same time. Besides, it’s been four days. He’s gone.”

  Four days, Palmer thought.

  I tried to tell you, his belly said.

  “So is this heavy-ass thing what we were after?” someone asked. They sounded doubtful. Disappointed. Palmer couldn’t see what it was they were referencing.

  “This is it,” Brock said.

  “Does that mean we can break camp?” someone else asked.

  “Yes. First light, and then we head south. We leave no trace.”

  “You sure this thing does what you say it does?”

  “Let’s see it,” someone said.

  “Set it on the table,” Brock ordered.

  Two sets of hands drifted down right in front of Palmer to grasp the large metal cylinder. Palmer took a deep breath to expand the sand around his chest, then powered his suit down. He couldn’t have more than a trickle of a charge left. He was buried up to his armpits, but he could still breathe.

  “You sure the table will hold it?”

  “It’ll hold.”

  Above Palmer, the metal table creaked and strained from the weight of the thing. He had only gotten a glimpse of the object in the lamplight, but it looked like old tech, something scavenged, a cylinder with wires and small pipes, made with precision and expensive-looking. Expensive and old.

  “Damn thing’s heavy,” someone said, as the table somehow didn’t buckle. Palmer kept a hand on his chest, ready to dive at any moment. He could feel that object overhead like a dark thought.

  “Looks busted to me. Wiring’s fucked. And look at this here. Ain’t no fixing that.”

  “Ignore that,” Brock said. “It’s what’s inside that matters. The rest of this is for setting it off, but we don’t need that.”

  The men grew quiet as they studied the object. The scavenger in Palmer grew intensely curious.

  “It’s a thing of beauty,” Yegery whispered.

  “But how does it work?” Moguhn asked.

  “I don’t know,” Yegery admitted.

  There was an uncomfortable shuffling of heavy boots.

  “I mean, I don’t understand the principle, the science. But the book says one of these can level an entire town—”

  “An entire town,” someone scoffed.

  “Shaddup,” Brock ordered. He told Yegery to go on.

  “It’s just a little sphere in there. That’s all the stuff on the inside is. It’s inert enough. The book says it stays good for hundreds of thousands of years. All you do is tighten that little ball real quick, like turning a fistful of sand into a child’s marble, and everything goes boom. This thing will send dunes to the heavens and turn the desert to glass.”

  “And you’re sure about that?” someone asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s fucked,” another said.

  “It’ll work,” Brock said. “Trust me. We could level all of Low-Pub with one of these.”

  “What about Springston?” someone asked.

  “We stick with the original plan for Springston,” Brock said. “We blow the wall, and then we hit Low-Pub. If there’s anything left of either of them, we’ll go back for another of these. Now that we’ve got a reference point for the map, we can grab as many as we like. Before long, there won’t be a structure standing south of our dunes, and the Lords can rule over the flat sand we leave behind.”

  There was chuckling at this, which grew into laughter. Someone bumped into the table, and there was the clink of a jar tipping on its side. “Fucking idiot,” someone grumbled. There was a rush to remove gear, the scrape and slide of bags and swords and guns. “Get the map,” Moguhn said. A rustle of paper and boots stomping into action. Palmer wondered when the fuck they were going to get out of there so he could grab something to eat, and then an object hit the sand in front of him, a dagger, plunging blade-first. A hand dropped down to retrieve it and gripped the hilt. And then a stooped head. Eyes flashed in the darkness.

  “What the fuck?” the man said.

  And then an angry roar as the pirate pounced toward Palmer.

  32 • Run

  Palmer barely got his suit powered on as the man scrambled under the table after him. There was a blow to his head, the swipe of a hand and sharp nails, and his visor was knocked off. He reached for it, got a hold of the headband, felt the visor snap off, lost. Dazed, he took a quick breath and pulled the band on, flowed the sand in order to sink down, and got his eyes closed just in time. He was blind and weak and on a sliver of a charge and barely a lungful of breath. In a burst of inspiration, he dropped the sand in the tent a meter and hardened it. It was a killing offense to use the sand against men, but these men wanted him dead anyway.

  He went sideways as fast as he could to clear the tent walls before rising toward the surface. There was drag in the sand, like something was wrapped around his feet, was wrapped around his entire body. The sand grew thick. Dense. His fucking suit was dying. Or the band had been damaged when the visor was ripped free.

  He went up as fast as he could, blind, half a breath in his lungs, and came up flat, was partway out, his head clear, when the sand froze around him. No more charge. Palmer grunted and worked his shoulders back and forth until he got an arm free. He began digging himself out of the sand, the stars twinkling serenely above, while two meters away, men were hurling insults and curses and shouting for help as they tried to dig themselves out as well.

  It was a race. Palmer got his other arm out. He kicked with his weak legs, twisted at the waist until his hips were free, was only in ten or so inches of sand, fucking close. A meter down, and he would’ve been buried. A few inches deeper, and he would’ve been trapped. He heard the stomp and crunch of sand in the distance as men were summoned from their tents. Palmer got up and ran, keeping the large tent between him and the rest of the camp as the men inside yelled at the others to fucking dig them out, to get out there and find that diver, to kill him fucking dead.

  With his heart in his throat, a canteen sloshing a quarter full, his visor with the proof of his dive and discovery of Danvar gone, and hardly anything for his efforts but the life in the marrow of his bones, Palmer ran. He kicked sand in the darkness, keeping to the well-trod valleys where the shuffle of feet would make it hard to follow, and he fucking ran.

  33 • Not Happening

  Vic

  Vic burst through the back door of Graham’s shop and ran across the hot sand. Gunshots rang out behind her. It sounded like both men had their weapons working now. Fountains of sand erupted from the face of the dune ahead of her; there was a zing off a metal roof, an explosion of sand near her feet, and then some wild animal took a bite out of her calf.

  Vic sprawled forward in the sand, her leg on fire. Someone yelled that that was his sister goddamnit, don’t fucking kill her. Feet stomped her direction. Vic could feel them coming, could feel a thrumming in the sand. But the thrum wasn’t from the boots chasing her down.

  The sand opened and swallowed her. Vic was too startled to take a breath, only just got her eyes closed in time. A regulator was pressed to her lips. She accepted it and took a deep gulp of air, felt the sand around her stay soft so she could breathe, could feel movement through the earth as she was hauled sideways like so much scavenge.

  The regulator was taken away for a moment. She was left with only blackness and motion. The regulator was returned. Someone was sharing their tank with her. Vic clutched this person, knowing they had saved her, hoping it was Palmer. The agony in her leg faded to a dull throb, and the sight of Marco’s head erupting filled the back of her eyelids and played over and over again—a bang and a fountain of what she loved best about him, a profound hollow in the pit of her soul, so that when she was brought up through the sand and into the open air, she was unaware of this, didn’t know she was out o
f the sand, couldn’t feel the hot sun on her flesh, wasn’t aware that there was air to breathe even as it filled her lungs, wasn’t aware of anything but that Marco was dead.

  There was just fact like an all-encompassing blackness. A cool pit in the center of her chest. Her cheeks were dry and dusted with sand, Graham holding her, calling her name, asking if she was okay, her leg coloring a dune like a sunrise.

  Graham worked on the wound while Vic sat there numbly. She gradually realized that they were on the back of a low dune in the training grounds, where at least it was legal to use a dive suit. Though they were long past legality. People were trying to kill them. No find was worth this. Danvar wasn’t worth this. Vic could feel the senseless violence of retribution attacks, that blank stagger when people mill about the dunes after a bomb has interrupted a funeral or a wedding or a queue at the cistern. Bang, and the world stops making sense. Bang, and mothers are wailing. Bang, and body parts mingle. Bang. Bang. Bang. The lucky make it out to mourn. For the lucky there is a click, a misfiring of fate, a dud of doom. Vic is there on that slope of sand, and Marco is dead. Life is capricious and cruel and totally fucking random and there is no hope of finding meaning in a nightmare. In a nightmare at least her enraged screams would come out a hoarse whisper, but Vic could not manage even that. Could not manage even a whimper.

  “You’re lucky,” Graham said. He was winded. Was tying off her calf with a strip of her own bloody pant-leg, had torn it without her realizing. “Missed the bone. Damn lucky.”

  She just stared at him. She could taste blood in her mouth. She hoped it was hers and not Marco’s. Hers from falling face first into the sand, from biting her tongue. Don’t let it be his.

  “I don’t have air enough for both of us,” Graham said. “Not for long. And my suit’s not on a full charge. But we need to get you out of here. They’re after me.”

  “They’re after Palmer,” Vic said, thinking out loud. Her voice had returned, but it was distant, like it was being carried to her on the wind from some faraway place.

  “Yes,” Graham said. “Do you think you can walk? I haven’t taken us far. You should get out of here if your leg is okay.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to bury those two.” He said it like a man announces his intention to take a piss. “And I can live in these dunes longer than they can search for me. If you want to stay here, I can try to snag a tank from the market. I know where there’s an extra suit—”

  “The marina,” Vic said. “My suit’s there.”

  Graham nodded. “I can get you partway. They’ll never catch you if you can stay moving. You should lay low for a few days. Get way out of town for a while.”

  Vic thought of her two brothers out camping. She wondered where Palmer was. Life had been simple and good an hour ago. Click. Boom. It can’t happen like that. It can’t.

  “Hey Vic, are you with me? You’re not going into shock are you? You’ve lost some blood—”

  “Marco,” she said. She focused on Graham’s face for the first time. He was the nearest thing she had left to a father. “I loved him. He’s dead. Marco’s dead.”

  “Well, let’s worry about you, then. You’ve got a sarfer in the marina?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll get you there. You just need to figure out where you’re going once I do.”

  “Brock,” she said. She remembered Marco’s words. Remembered his voice. His face. “The northern wastes. West of the grove, south of a spring. That’s where I’m going.”

  And Vic became aware of the sun on her cheek, the grit in her mouth, the wind in her hair. She came alive as one returns from sleep. Alive but different. An empty husk capable of thought, of hearing, of processing. Of wanting men dead.

  34 • That Final Embrace

  Palmer

  Palmer kept the wind on his left cheek and pressed south. He’d never felt so weak, so tired, so ready to lie down and succumb. Three nights of staggering in the dark, a lengthening furrow of sand trailing behind his shuffling feet. Three nights of marching and three mornings of sleeping in dwindling dune-shade. Three days of high noon spent roasting, trying to cover himself in sand to protect his skin. Three afternoons of watching the shade slowly form again, giving him someplace to starve in peace.

  His black dive suit was too hot to wear in the day, so he kept it draped over his head to cast a little shade. At night, the same thin suit couldn’t keep him from shivering. Whenever he stripped it off, he wept at the sight of his emaciated frame, his ribs jutting out like rolling dunes, his pelvis that of a dead man’s, his legs too frail to carry him one step further. It’d been a week or more since he’d had a meal, but he would thirst to death before he starved. Wouldn’t be long. Wouldn’t be long.

  And yet—knowing this—he took another step. Didn’t know why. Just did. His left foot dragged and left a furrow behind. The sun was coming up, the stars fading one by one until it was only Mars up there, ready to war with him another day. Have to peel his suit off soon. Last time. Palmer wouldn’t make it through this day, could no longer feel the hunger. The gnawing had become distant. He would die on the hot sand. This day—he was sure of it. Another two or three nights to Springston at that limping rate. The crows would get him. He could see them circling. They knew.

  “Caw,” he whispered, the word choked back by his swollen tongue. “Caw.”

  The sun topped the hill to his left and its naked rays struck his cheek like an open palm. A lucid memory of his father. Palmer remembered the only time his father had ever struck him. It was a joke. Just a joke. Second day with a dive suit on, wanted to show what Vic had taught him, was gonna do a full submerge, thought he was getting the hang of loosening the sand, making it flow. He opened a soft patch beneath his father’s boot and closed the sand around it, thought he’d be proud for the trick, thought he’d laugh.

  Palmer remembered the bright flash of light and the crack like wood splitting. The fire on his face. A thousand sunburns. He’d been knocked to the sand, had lain there with the taste of blood in his mouth. His father standing over him, yelling at him, telling him to remember the code, the code he’d learned just the day before, what happens to any diver who makes a weapon of the sand. What the other divers would do to him.

  It was the only time he’d ever hit him. And it was the last time Palmer had tried to make his father laugh. He’d been ten years old. Just about Rob’s age. Rob. Kid was too damn curious. Mom said he got it from their father. If it led to danger, whatever it was, it came from their father. What little good they had in them came from her. Her side of the story. Only left with her side, her version of events. That’s what Dad gets. His doing. His fault for leaving. Poor Rob. Too curious, that boy. Causing trouble. With only Conner to look after him.

  And Conner … who just wants to be like his older brother, who wants to starve like his older brother and stagger along, a sack of skin draped on bones, shuffling across that hot sand before he was eaten by the crows. A diver. A dream of being buried without a marker. Lost in the sand. Chasing his misfortune. No … camping. His brother wasn’t a diver. He was camping. Four days under the sand. Three nights marching. A week. He would die the day his father had. The note by his belly was truth. Poetry and truth.

  “Caw,” Palmer whispered to the circling crows. He reached down and shook the canteen as if it might have filled itself. Still the chance he might come upon a spring. An oasis. He marched for hours and hours, thinking on his brothers, on his life ending, amounting to nothing, watching for an oasis. The sun cooked the sand, and this day he didn’t stop. Didn’t pull his dive suit off. Didn’t bury himself in the sand. Wouldn’t make it to evening. Wouldn’t make it another step. But then he did. He doubted every step and took another. The crows cried in disbelief. Palmer tried to laugh, but his throat was closed tight, was swollen shut, lips cracked and bleeding and bonded together. When there, on the horizon, in the wavering heat of the afternoon sun, a tree. A solitary tree. A sign of
water. Another mirage to stumble through, to kick up dry sand right through the middle of, but maybe this would be the one.

  He veered toward the tree. Hoping. Moving with what vigor his bones had left. The tree was getting closer. Faster than his stagger ought to make it. The tree was rounding a dune. The mast of a sarfer. The crimson sail of rebels. Brock and his men.

  Palmer tried to run, his brain remembering back to when that was possible. But his damnable body reminded him of more recent events by collapsing onto the sand. Palmer spit grit. He coughed—his swollen tongue in the way. Peering to the side, he saw the sarfer speeding toward him. Maybe they didn’t see him. But the damn crows, circling and diving, a cloud of swooping arrows, betraying him. Here, here, they cried. And the sarfer came.

  Maybe to save him. The rebels would save him. Palmer nearly stood and waved his arms, and then he saw Hap’s gaping mouth full of sand, his body twisted out of shape, heard the shouts inside that tent to catch him and kill him dead. Two more nights of walking and he would’ve made it to the outskirts of Springston. This is what his fevered brain thought as he began scooping sand over his head. On his knees, his forehead against a dune, ass in the air, the wind offering little help, he scooped handfuls of sand and dumped them on the back of his neck, sobbed for help, sobbed beneath the gyring crows, trying to bury himself before someone else did.

  There came the approaching crunch of a sarfer’s foils carving the desert floor, and then a spray of fine sand as the wind-powered craft slewed to a halt. Palmer kept his forehead to the ground and bit down on his whimpers. His back remained arched up into the sky, his dive suit hanging loose around him, sand spilling through his hair and down the cuff of his neck.

  He heard the whir and zip of a line passing through gloves and wooden blocks. The creak of boom and mast and the noise of a sail depowered and left to flap in the wind. Boots landed on the sand and crunched toward him. A sword to spill him or a canteen to fill him, he didn’t have the courage or energy to look. Palmer had left his wits and senses a thousand dunes behind.