by Hugh Howey
Page 20
“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 crea
k 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.
Someone asked him to show his hands, wanted to see his palms. They asked again. He tried to raise his hands but couldn’t. It was the sword. The sword was coming for him.
Strong hands fell on his shoulders and rolled him over. Sand fell from his hair and across his face. “Palm,” the voice said again. “Palm. ”
The mirage of his sister. A hallucination. His sister, the red flapping sail of a rebel sarfer behind her. His sister, tugging her gloves off, wiping the sand from his cheek, the mud from his crying. She was crying as well. Fumbling with her canteen, hands shaking, a mask of horror on her face from the sight of him, Palmer unable to speak.
She lifted his chin, crying, “Palm. Oh, Palm. ” Precious water was tipped over blistered lips and around his fat tongue. Palmer’s throat was a clenched fist. There was no swallowing. No swallowing. He felt the water evaporate in his mouth, slip inside his tongue, become absorbed. Vic poured more. Her hand shook, canteen and eyes leaking, whispered his name. Had come looking for him.
The water sat in his mouth until it disappeared. Another cap, and something like a swallow, a loud and painful gulp, a body remembering how.
“Danvar,” he croaked. “I found it. ”
“I know you did,” Vic said. She rocked him back and forth. “I know you did. ”
“Might be trouble,” Palmer hissed. He needed to tell her about Brock, about the bombs, about getting out of there.
“Save your strength,” Vic said. “Everything’s gonna be okay. ”
She wiped her cheeks, and Palmer watched as more tears spilled from her eyes. The loose sail flapped nearby, the crows watching to see what would happen, Vic telling him over and over that everything would be okay, even as she started sobbing. Even as she clutched him in her arms, whispering it would all be all right, but Palmer knew this was just a story, just a story told over a sputtering lantern in a family tent, and that it wasn’t true.
Part 4:
Thunder Due East
35 • Oasis
Vic
The sarfer crunched across the sand and slowed to a stop. Sand hissed against the bright red sail and spilled over the edge of the boom in a veil. Vic lowered the sail and studied the depression between the dunes. A handful of stumps poked feebly toward the sky, but whatever tall trees had lived there had long ago been butchered. Between the stumps there was a dark spot of sand, almost if the sun were casting a shadow. It was no oasis, but it would do.
She jumped down to the sand and helped her brother out of the haul rack. The small bimini she’d made to keep him in the shade was already tattered and threadbare from the half day of sailing due south. Part of her wanted to press on to Springston and get there before dark. The rest of her felt sure her brother wouldn’t make it that far without water.
His head listed from side to side as Vic gathered him in her arms. He weighed little more than a tank and a gear bag. Vic lowered him to the line of shaded sand by the sarfer’s hull and grabbed Marco’s dive suit from the gear she’d crammed into his helm chair. She folded the suit several times, lifted Palmer’s head, and slid the pillow between him and the sand.
Palmer asked for water. Vic slung her canteen around from her back and shook it. Empty. “Hang in there,” she said. “I’m getting you some. ”
She left him in the shade. Back at the helm, her own dive suit was plugged into the small wind generator that poked up from the aft of the sarfer. She unplugged this, stripped down in the hot sun, grabbed scoops of sand and rubbed it over her armpits and her sweaty chest, then brushed herself off as best she could. She tugged on the dive suit, which was hot and smelled like melting rubber. Tears wetted her cheeks. She cursed these and wiped them away. Her brother was dying. Her brother was a pile of chapped and sunburnt bones. It horrified her to see him that way. Horrified her to think of Marco, her lover, dead. Killed right in front of her. And now she was going to lose a brother, too.
She dug her visor out of her gear bag, wiped her cheeks again, and promised herself that it wouldn’t happen. Not Palmer. Through clenched teeth, she promised. No one else would die that day. No one. She slung Marco’s canteen over her head. It rattled emptily against hers and Palmer’s. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She scanned the horizon for sarfer masts, had seen dozens in the distance on the sail south, but none right then. Supine on the sand by the sarfer’s hull, Palmer looked peaceably asleep. This is what she told herself as she powered on her suit and disappeared beneath the sand.
••••
Palmer lay alone on the warm sand and stared at the dark patch his sister had vanished into. The minutes ticked by like hours. The crows that’d followed them as they’d sailed south circled overhead. His sister had taken his canteen. Hap’s canteen, the one with his name etched into the side. Palmer remembered the dive they’d been on when Hap had carved his name there with his dive knife. They’d left their gear buried in the sand. Hap had been worried they might get their canteens mixed up. Same models. Both new. So young then. Worried about whose was what. Worried about sharing. Tenuous friends. A lifetime ago.
More minutes went by. Palmer stared out over the desert sand. Vic had emptied her canteen into his mouth one cap at a time. His stomach was in knots. Springston and hope felt so very far away. And where could they go once they got there? People wanted him dead. He remembered the way Hap’s body had been twisted out of shape. What the hell had he gotten himself involved in? And for what? Some coin?