by S. A. Beck
“That’s in case we get bombed. With the tents far apart, fewer of us will get hurt.”
“Bombed?”
“From the air, we look just like a terror cell hiding out in the desert. The US Air Force has drones all over this area. They might mistake us for some of the bad guys and decide to wipe us out.”
“Great, the first time I leave the States, and I might get blown up by the American military.”
Jaxon finished staking the last peg in her tent, thinking how she had never been camping before, but there she was in the middle of the Sahara Desert, worrying about missiles falling from the sky. She was beginning to miss Hidden Hills Academy. Even seeing Courtney every day would be easier.
But in a strange way, this was actually kind of fun. The thrill of danger she had felt when prowling bad neighborhoods with Brett was a constant feeling. She felt more awake, more alive. Instead of slumping through her depressing daily routine, she was seeing places she thought she’d never get to and doing things she never thought she could.
They hauled gear into the tents, including sleeping bags for the surprisingly cold nights, some jugs of water, the next day’s clothes, and a survival pack Vivian always kept with her.
“Got anything in there to keep the missiles away?” Jaxon asked.
“No. Sure you don’t want to share a tent with Otto? Might be your last chance.”
“Very funny. Do all soldiers make jokes about dying?”
“It’s called gallows humor, and yes we do,” Vivian said. “It keeps us sane.”
“Sane. Right.”
They arranged the interior of the tent as they had the previous night. Jaxon found it odd that they did it the exact same way they had the last time—Jaxon’s sleeping bag on the left, Vivian’s on the right. The survival pack was placed at their heads. Their feet pointed toward the opening of the tent. Their spare clothing was piled between them, creating a little wall and the illusion of privacy. They had already fallen into a routine. As with her morning practices in the secret hotel, routine seemed important in a strange situation. Vivian obviously believed that too, and from the little Jaxon knew of her life, she was always in strange situations. Maybe having a little bit of predictability in a chaotic life was important.
Once they finished, Jaxon sat down and turned on her tablet. One good thing about being with that band of lunatics was that she had access to technology again. Edward had filled her tablet with movies and games, enough to keep her entertained for months. That was a bit of normal, Western life she clung to. She might have been sitting in a tent in the middle of the desert in Africa, but at least she could catch up on her favorite series. Thanks to the Grants, she was way behind. She laughed at the irony. Because of their weird ideas, she actually had even more to entertain her.
She tapped on an episode of her favorite comedy show. Those days, she wasn’t in the mood for anything heavy—too much real-life drama. Vivian sat beside her, looking at herself with a small mirror while combing her hair. How that woman managed to stay so beautiful so easily in that place was a bit of a mystery.
“Ugh, what’s going on?” Vivian grumbled a few minutes later.
Jaxon looked at her and saw strands of her blond hair standing on end. No matter how much Vivian tried to brush it, static electricity kept pulling some hair up to almost touch the canvas of the tent.
“Maybe it’s because it’s so dry?” Jaxon gestured toward the tent opening.
As she did, she happened to move her hand too close to Vivian’s, and there was a loud snap as they both got a shock.
Vivian and Jaxon laughed, but the laugh didn’t last long. They both became aware of a prickly sensation all over their bodies. The dry air crackled with static electricity. Jaxon touched the side of the tent and jerked her hand back as little arcs of electricity passed from the canvas to her fingertips. For a moment, she thought she had discovered another power, but then Vivian cursed, her sleeping bag making crackling noises and lighting up inside as she crawled out of it, creating a series of pops that sounded as if she was making popcorn inside it.
“What’s going on?” Jaxon asked.
“Bad news.” Vivian grasped the tent’s zipper and winced as it gave her a loud shock. Wisps of her blond hair still stood on end, drawn to the top of the tent like feelers. She opened the tent, and they stared out.
The door to the nearest Land Rover slammed shut. Inside, Grunt and Otto were gesturing at them to come over. Beyond that, they saw Yuhle and Yamazaki hurrying to the second Land Rover, but Jaxon barely noticed them. What she saw farther away captured her full attention.
There was lurid yellow light on the horizon, and a sound like dull thunder rumbled in her ears. The horizon looked strange, too thick, and Jaxon needed a moment to realize what she was seeing.
A sickly yellow cloud was rapidly thickening as it approached. The light dimmed as if someone had turned down a lamp. Jaxon glanced up at the sun and saw it half obscured, the sky turning a gritty blue.
“Sandstorm!” Vivian pushed Jaxon back inside and zipped up the tent.
“Wait, wouldn’t we be safer in the Land Rover?”
“No time.”
The words barely got out of Vivian’s mouth before there was a loud rasping sound on the tent as if someone was rubbing it with a giant piece of sandpaper. A hard wind flailed at the canvas, snapping the sides inward and lashing at the two women. They huddled closer together in the center of the bucking and swaying tent.
“What do we do?” Jaxon shouted over the howling wind.
“Sit here and try not to die!”
“Shouldn’t we get into the Land Rover?”
“We wouldn’t make it five yards, honey. It’s better to stay here. You sank the tent pegs in pretty good. Don’t worry, the tent probably won’t blow over.”
The way she said that made Jaxon think something worse was in store.
The wind picked up, the sides of the tent flapping back and forth like a sail on a stormy sea. Vivian and Jaxon sat right in the middle of the tent so they wouldn’t get slapped by the flapping canvas. The interior dimmed. When they’d first entered the tent, the sides glowed with the late afternoon light. Now, they turned dull brown then pitch black. The only light came from Jaxon’s tablet. Television characters cracked jokes while a laugh track played in the background.
Slowly, Jaxon became aware of another sound, a low hiss that came from all around them. It steadily rose in volume until it sounded like a blaring radio tuned between stations. The sides of the tent no longer flapped but bowed inward, practically touching the two frightened occupants as they clutched each other in the center. After a moment, Jaxon realized what the sound was—sand rasping against the canvas.
“What do we do?” Jaxon asked, having to shout to be heard over the sandstorm.
“Nothing we can do, honey. Just sit tight and hope for the best.”
Then came the longest wait of Jaxon’s life. They sat there, listening to the rasp of the sand and the howling of the wind as the comedy show chattered on in the background. The tent sides sagged down as sand piled up against them. Vivian and Jaxon pushed against them to move the sand away, only to have to do it again a couple minutes later. Each time, it grew harder and harder as more and more sand piled up all around them.
“We better hope this blows over soon, or we’ll get buried!” Vivian shouted over the sound of the storm.
“Maybe we should risk getting out of the tent.”
“Not a good option. Only if the tent collapses.” Vivian pulled a Bowie knife out of her bag. “Take this. I have another. If the tent falls down, we’ll have to cut our way out. Get on top of the sand, curl yourself up into a ball, and hope for the best.”
The two women sat there, still pushing on the sides of the tent to try to keep the sand off. Soon, they were crushed into a little corner of the tent, the rest of it flattened by the weight of the dune forming on top of them.
Just as Jaxon was getting ready to slash the canvas an
d get out of there, the hiss of blowing sand lessened, and the top of the tent lightened as sunlight poked through the murk.
Within a few minutes, the wind died down and the light came back, as strong as before.
Jaxon and Vivian sighed in relief. Using their feet, they pushed away a big lump of sand in front of the tent entrance and unzipped the flap. A heap of sand poured in, covering most of their gear. They clambered over it and out. Jaxon looked back and saw only about a third of the tent poking out from the surface. Beyond it, the yellow cloud of the sandstorm was quickly receding into the distance.
Then she turned to look at the rest of the camp.
She couldn’t see it.
The other two tents, the Land Rovers, the campfire Yuhle had been preparing—all were gone, replaced with featureless sand dunes.
Slowly, Jaxon turned 360 degrees. There was nothing… nothing but sand for hundreds of miles. The rest of the Atlantis Allegiance had disappeared, and they were alone in the Sahara Desert.
In Book 5, The Atlantis Origins, Jaxon makes a startling discovery in the Mauritania desert that could save—or ruin—humanity. The Atlantis Allegiance has survived sandstorms, starvation, and bombings to find the lost civilization of Atlantis, but not everyone will get out alive. Read an excerpt at the end of this book!
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About the Author
S.A. Beck lives in sunny California. When she’s not surfing, knitting or daydreaming in a hammock, she’s writing novels.
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All Books by S.A. Beck
The Atlantis Saga (7-book series)
Book 1: The Atlantis Girl
Book 2: The Atlantis Allegiance
Book 3: The Atlantis Gene
Book 4: The Atlantis Secret
Book 5: The Atlantis Origins
Book 6: The Atlantis Guard
Book 7: The Atlantis Ascent
* * *
The Mage’s Daughter Trilogy
Book 1: Blood Magic
Book 2: Angel Magic
Book 3: Demon Magic
Excerpt from The Atlantis Origins
August 1, 2016, IN THE DESERT NEAR AIN BEN TILI, ON THE BORDER BETWEEN MOROCCO AND MAURITANIA
4:45 P.M.
* * *
Sand. Sky. Nothing else.
No buildings, no clouds, no roads. Just sand and sky.
Jaxon Ares Andersen looked out across the low, rolling dunes of the Western Sahara desert and felt fear in a way she had never felt before. She had been attacked by government agents, fought thugs in the back alleys of Los Angeles, and walked alone through the medina of Marrakech, but she had never known fear like this.
Fear that over the next forty-eight hours, she would probably die a lingering, agonizing death of thirst.
The fact that she wouldn’t die alone didn’t help. Her friend and supposed protector, Vivian, was pacing through the desert, looking for the rest of the Atlantis Allegiance.
They’d been camping in the desert of Mauritania, heading on a secret mission to Timbuktu in the neighboring country of Mali, when the sandstorm hit. Vivian and Jaxon’s tent lay half buried next to her. If it hadn’t been for some desperate digging, they might have been dead already.
They weren’t sure about the rest of the group.
The scientists Yamazaki and Yuhle, the mercenary Grunt, and Jaxon’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Otto, had all disappeared. Their tents, their equipment, the Land Rovers they’d been driving in—all had vanished without a trace.
And that left them alone with the sand and sky.
“Find anything yet?” Jaxon called out.
Vivian turned from where she had been sticking the supporting rod from the roof of their tent into the sand. She shook her head sadly.
She’d been at it for half an hour now, as the blazing sun lowered into a brass-colored sunset. Vivian had gone to where the other tents and vehicles had been, in the dip between two large sand dunes, and had been pacing in regular lines along the spot, sticking the rod in every couple of steps in the hope of hitting something buried beneath. So far, no luck.
Neither of them spoke about the terrible possibility that the entire rest of the camp might have been buried so deep that Vivian couldn’t reach them with a seven-foot-long rod.
For the hundredth time, Jaxon studied the bleak terrain around her. Yes, the dunes had shifted. Had they shifted enough to bury two tents and two Land Rovers? Their own tent hadn’t been buried, after all. Jaxon tried not to think of the fact that they’d pitched their tent a little up the slope of one of the dunes.
“Maybe they drove away,” she called to Vivian.
“Maybe,” the mercenary replied, sticking the rod into the loose sand again.
“The storm would have covered their tracks.”
“Maybe.”
“They could be looking for us right now,” she said.
“Could be,” Vivian muttered, pulling the rod out of the sand again.
Jaxon bit her bottom lip and turned away.
“I’m going to go look again,” she called out.
“Okay,” Vivian replied. She did not sound hopeful.
Jaxon tromped up to the top of the dune. It stood higher than most of those in sight and gave a good view of the surrounding desert. She made a slow 360-degree turn. Nothing.
Bending her legs, she leapt ten feet in the air. That gave her an even longer view and brought into sight parts of the nearer desert obscured by dunes. Still nothing. Turning, she repeated her jump while facing different directions three times. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Sighing, she went back to the remnants of their tent. Vivian walked up to meet her.
“So now what do we do?” Jaxon asked.
Vivian dropped the rod at her feet. She wiped the sweat from her brow but did not reach for the one-gallon jug of water Jaxon had recovered from their half-sunken shelter. It was only a little more than half full, and it was the only water they had.
They looked over the rest of their equipment—a bunch of spare clothes, two sleeping bags for the Sahara’s remarkably cold nights, a pair of flashlights, a few cereal bars, and a heap of ruined electronic equipment. That included Jaxon’s tablet, a pair of high-range walkie-talkies, and a GPS. The tablet had GPS capability too. Any one of those electronic items could save their lives, but they’d all been buried in sand, and the tiny particles had worked their way inside and wrecked the circuits. The fact that their flashlights still worked was a miracle. Given the right tools, they might be able to fix the electronics, but those tools were in Grunt’s Land Rover, and neither of them knew how to do it anyway.
Vivian sighed. “Well, at least let’s get this tent fixed.”
Jaxon didn’t reply. Quietly, they reassembled the tent. The weight of the shifting sands had snapped a supporting rod, so the tent sagged on one side, but at least they had shelter.
By the time they were done, the sun had set and it was almost dark. Dusk was short in the desert, and it went from brilliantly bright to pitch dark in less than half an hour.
“I’m going to go up to the top of the dune and look for flares,” Vivian said. Both vehicles had been provided with flares and a flare gun. Neither woman had thought to take one of them for their tent.
“No, I’ll go,” Jaxon said. “I can jump higher, get a better view.”
It was one of her special abilities thanks to her Atlantean heritage. To all appearances, she was a petite sixteen-year-old girl, but appearances were deceiving. She could outfight a grown man, run as fast as an Olympic athlete, and even make plants grow simply by touching them. She couldn’t make water appear, though. She wondered if the fact that she never got sick meant she’d die of thirst more slowly th
an Vivian. She certainly felt thirsty already. Would her special abilities, which so far had only made her feel isolated from everyone around her, give her an even slower and more lingering death than her friend?
She stood there, feeling lost emotionally as well as physically. The rest of the Atlantis Allegiance had disappeared. Swallowed up by the desert for all she knew. She had been with them for such a short time, and yet they’d begun to feel like family. A maladjusted, weird, quarreling family, but still a family. They cared for each other, looked out for each other. She only realized that now that they were gone.
“Anything?” Vivian called up. There was no hope in her voice.
“Nothing,” Jaxon called back.
“Well, we might as well turn in,” she said.
“Why don’t we pitch the tent up here?” Jaxon asked. “We’ll have a better view in case they shoot a flare tonight.”
“Good point,” Vivian said, forcing a smile, although her words still carried not a trace of hope. “That’s good thinking, Jaxon. You’re adjusting to this life well.”
Just in time to lose it, Jaxon thought.
Jaxon helped Vivian strike the tent and set it up again on top of the dune. By the time they got all their things inside, it had become pitch dark. They stood outside, pointing their flashlights in opposite directions. No signal came back.
After an hour, Vivian switched hers off.
“We better save the batteries. I’m turning in.”
“I’m going to stay out for a while,” Jaxon said. “Maybe they’ll send up a flare. I’ll try with the flashlight every half hour or so.”
“All right,” Vivian said from inside the tent. “We’ll stay here tomorrow, try signaling again tomorrow evening, and if we don’t get anything, we’ll try our chances by heading for the road. We’ll travel by night.”