by J. S. Bailey
“Is it getting darker?”
“What?”
Chumley leaned closer to the windshield. “I’d swear it’s getting darker.”
“I’m wearing shades, and the sunlight’s still trying to sear off my eyes.”
“Take them off.”
Dalton was about to object when something ticked softly against the driver’s side window, and the entire vehicle gave an unexpected lurch.
He yanked off the shades just in time for a shadow to pass over them.
“Dalton? Are you there?”
It was Errin Inglewood’s voice, barely masking worry. Dalton dug one-handed for his comm unit, which Chumley plucked off the floor and handed to him. “I’m here,” Dalton said. “What is it?”
“Our sandstorm sirens just started going off.”
“But it’s too early for—”
“Wildfires can disrupt normal atmospheric conditions. What’s your current location?”
Dalton braked and put the motorhome in park as the left-hand side of the vehicle ticked more frequently. He relayed the location back to Errin using the comm’s positioning system, then said, “Do we know how big this storm is?”
“Just by looking, we think it’s . . . ometers wide.” Errin’s voice dissolved in a burst of static. “No other reports . . . other towns . . . moving toward . . . theast?”
The sky continued to dim. The motorhome rocked in place. Chumley’s knuckles turned pale from gripping the armrests so tightly.
Dalton glanced out the window toward the southwest, regarding the kilometers-high wall of airborne sand barreling toward them.
He’d been too preoccupied with looking at the smoke ahead of them to even notice it coming.
It slammed into them within seconds, turning the sky and everything else around them such a dark shade of brown it was nearly black. The wind shrieked like ten thousand ghouls, and fine particles of sand found their way through the tiniest gaps and sifted into the vehicle.
“Errin?” Dalton shouted into the comm unit. “Errin, do you copy?”
The comm unit only hissed.
“How long do these things last?” Chumley asked, making an admirable effort to appear calm.
“Up to five days.”
“We can’t be stuck in here that long!”
Dalton rose and went into the kitchenette, pulling two dishcloths out of a drawer and dampening them with water from the sink. “Put this over your face and breathe through it,” he said, tossing one of the cloths to Chumley. “It filters out the particles you’d be breathing otherwise. It can cause lung problems.”
Chumley’s eyes went round as he put the cloth over his mouth and nose. Dalton did the same with his own cloth, then shut off the engine.
They wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.
Not like he’d been in a huge rush to get to Green territory, anyway. Maybe getting stuck in the sandstorm here was saving his life.
The storm raged onward.
“What’s the shortest one of these things can last?” Chumley asked when the outside world grew to the color of pitch. Dalton couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face and sneezed in spite of the cloth protecting him.
“About two hours.” Dalton sneezed again. “I wouldn’t count on it, though.”
“What are we supposed to do if we’re stuck in here for five days?”
“Sing songs, talk about our feelings.”
More static burst from the comm unit, making Dalton jump. He patted around for it, and once he’d located it, held it up to his protected face and said, “Is anyone there?”
Words in a language unknown to Dalton spilled into the room: “Pip-pip! Ammru gugaa’a shora . . . ”
Dalton tapped the comm. “Who’s there?”
“ . . . jejeshu ku’a himms . . . ”
“I take it you don’t understand that,” Chumley said.
“Do you?”
“Aside from the obvious one, I speak a little Gujarati and Punjabi because of my family, but that’s not either of those.”
“It’s not Hindi or Spanish, either. Who is this?” Dalton demanded of the speaker as they continued to carry on. “Why are you contacting me?”
“I think it’s picking up a stray signal,” Chumley said. “I used to have a radio that randomly spouted jargon I couldn’t make sense of. I thought it was haunted until my gran told me it was picking up signals from the lorry drivers on the motorway.”
“But we’re in the middle of nowhere,” Dalton said. “There shouldn’t be anybody out here to give off a signal for us to pick up.”
“So, someone else is stuck in the storm, too.”
“Then why can’t we understand them?”
“You said this planet is a melting pot. Do you have a way to home in on the signal, see if someone out here needs help?”
“Suppose I can try.” Dalton felt his way into the kitchenette and blindly pulled open drawers, feeling for anything shaped like a flashlight. He struck gold in the third drawer down and clicked it on.
Now that he could see, he examined his comm unit and tried to remember if this one featured a trace function. The voice continued to speak in garbled bursts as Dalton located the menu on the tiny comm screen and scrolled through it, finding options like “Group Call” and “Sleep Mode.”
When he selected the option for “Trace Caller,” nothing happened.
“Of course,” he muttered.
“Hmm?”
“If it’s a stray signal coming through, it won’t be able to latch on to where the signal is coming from. The trace can only work if someone intended to call us.”
Chumley twisted around in his seat to look at him. “They’d have to be close, though, right?”
“You’d think.”
“Well . . . we could get moving again; turn the headlights on and see if we can see anyone through all of this.”
The comm unit fell silent. The voice hadn’t really sounded urgent. In fact, there hadn’t been much emotional inflection at all, which seemed kind of odd for someone trapped in a sandstorm.
“I can try to move this thing,” Dalton said, “just to see if we can find our way out the other side of it.” He hated the thought of having to do it. He didn’t think there had been anything treacherous in front of him before the sand blotted out all visibility, but what if he was wrong and drove over an exposed boomstone, or hit a rock formation? Surely it would be safer to stay put and ride out the storm.
But we could be stuck here for days, otherwise.
Grudgingly, Dalton got back into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The interior and exterior lights came on, illuminating copious quantities of sand still seeping in through cracks that Dalton couldn’t see.
The headlights shot through the sand as far as they would go, which was about three meters.
“Here we go,” Dalton said, and set the vehicle into motion.
Very, very slow motion.
He kept the towel over his face with one hand while he steered with the other. The vehicle rocked and lurched so violently that Dalton almost couldn’t keep it straight, yet they were still making progress, small as it may have been.
Chumley glared at the filthy maelstrom. “It doesn’t look any lighter yet.” He lowered the cloth from his face, immediately sneezed, and hastily replaced it. “If anyone had told me two weeks ago that I’d soon be witnessing plants murdering a man, spotting ghosts that no one else can see, and getting myself stuck in a sandstorm, I’d have said they’d had one too many Soul Rippers during Happy Hour at Major Tom’s Bar and Grill.”
“Soul Rippers?”
“They’re made from Kaktian Rum. One shot can drop a man twice my weight if he hasn’t eaten anything first.”
“Mm.” Dalton kept his eyes wide, seeking out any obstacles that mi
ght hinder their trip. This part of the desert was supposed to be mostly flat, “supposed” being the operative word.
“I can buy you one sometime,” Chumley went on.
“Why would you want to buy me a drink?”
“You seem like you could use one.”
Dalton had no response for that. He was too busy trying not to drive them off any cliffs he might have forgotten about.
They continued in that creeping, lurching fashion for a time that felt like hours. The gloom neither lightened nor darkened, and the ceaseless wind howled like a thousand angry banshees.
Since the sun could not penetrate the storm and give them any extra juice, the power Dalton had been pleased to regain ticked lower, and lower, and lower.
“I’m turning the interior lights off,” Dalton said, flipping a switch that plunged them into gloom relieved only by the illumination of the high beams.
The foreign voice burst from his comm unit again. “Pip-pip! Annjui mish himms.”
“I wish it would stop doing that,” Dalton said. “The way I see it, if you’re going to land on Molorthia Six, you should at least know Hindi, Spanish, or English so someone can understand if you’re sending out a distress call or not.”
“Or Gujarati or Punjabi,” Chumley pointed out.
“Those too.”
“Maybe they’re not human.”
Dalton shivered. “I met some Heemins once.”
“Here?”
“It was on a spaceport layover when my family was coming here. I thought they were human until I saw their eyes. That can scare a kid, you know.”
“You must not have gotten out much.”
“Aliens don’t really visit Cornwall.”
Chumley moved in the darkness beside him, and a sudden burst of ancient electropop music from the dashboard speakers nearly ruptured Dalton’s eardrums.
“I didn’t mean to push anything!” Chumley shouted.
Dalton flicked the lights back on. Chumley had dropped his face cloth and was scrambling at the dash.
Dalton recognized the cacophony as “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga, an old Earth-based singer whom Summer had been obsessed with some years before.
“It’s the dial right in front of you! Turn it to your left, and it’ll—”
Dalton never got to finish his sentence. The motorhome shuddered, and the ear-blistering music was not loud enough to mask a great shrieking like metal peeling back from itself.
Gravity changed directions. Dalton, who had not buckled himself into the driver’s seat, found himself lying on top of Chumley, who was squashed against the passenger side door.
Lady Gaga told them it would be okay as Dalton killed the blaring sound system with the slap of a hand. He clambered over the side of the passenger seat and stood against the main side door, which was now his floor.
“Dalton?” Chumley coughed. “I think you should look at this.”
Dalton turned. An error message flashed above the power indicator: Warning: solar panel disconnected. Please reconnect solar panel before complete system failure.
Dalton said a word that his daughter Imani had said before Darneisha grounded her for a week.
He scrambled for his comm unit, keyed in Carolyn’s number. “Carolyn? Carolyn, come in, please!”
The device emitted only static.
He keyed in Errin Inglewood’s number. “Errin? Are you there? We have an emergency!”
More static.
“Storm’s disrupting the signal.” Dalton fought to keep his rising panic at bay. “I’ll try calling Paris.”
He tried the numbers of a few of his contacts in that neighboring city closer to the forests. Either the signal couldn’t get through at all, or every human on Molorthia Six had inexplicably begun to hiss.
“Maybe we should try reconnecting the solar panel,” Chumley suggested.
“You might not have noticed,” Dalton said, “but this vehicle is lying on its side. Even if we can reconnect it, we won’t be able to get it on its wheels again.”
“But we’d have power.”
Dalton grunted. “Fine. We’ll see if we can’t repair it. But we’ll need goggles.” He walked over to the cabinets, which were basically now the floor. Dealing with the drawers below the cabinets proved sort of an issue, however, since sliding open full drawers against the pull of gravity tended to result in a struggle and then a mess. Among the mess, Dalton located three pairs of swim goggles and tossed one to Chumley, who promptly slid them over his eyes.
“Try to keep the cloth over your face,” Dalton said, slipping on his own pair of goggles and tucking one corner of the cloth beneath it so he could use his hands. The only logical door through which they could exit was the driver’s side door, which now comprised part of the ceiling.
He went to the door, which lay just a bit out of reach from where he stood. “You’ll have to give me a boost,” he said. Chumley clambered his way and laced his hands together as a sort of step, and Dalton stuck one booted foot onto them and heaved himself upward.
He pulled on the door handle above him, bracing himself for the storm, and shoved the door open.
The howling wind practically yanked the door out of his hand. The hinges groaned as the wind bent them to an angle they weren’t supposed to attain. Dalton hooked his fingers around the doorframe and pulled himself up and out of the motorhome, onto its side, feeling sand particles stinging his few bits of exposed skin.
He lay on his stomach and reached a hand down for Chumley to take. Chumley, slightly taller than he was, stood on the side of the passenger seat to give himself a boost, and Dalton got hold of his hand and helped pull him from the vehicle.
“Why do I feel like we’re going to regret this?” Chumley asked, hopping down from the side of the motorhome onto the ground, which bore scant illumination from the high beams. The cloth on his face fluttered beneath the hand pinning it there.
Dalton didn’t answer. He patted his coat pocket for the flashlight he hoped he remembered to stash there, then pulled it out and clicked it on. He motioned for Chumley to follow him around to the other side of the vehicle, then drew up short when he saw the motorhome’s roof.
“Ah,” Chumley said, joining him.
The solar panel wasn’t just disconnected.
It was missing.
Dalton aimed his ineffective flashlight beam toward the east; the direction in which all this was blowing. Sand stung his ears, his cheekbones, and his hands. He could barely see two meters in front of him. The solar panel was probably kilometers away by now, forever out of reach.
He would not risk walking blindly out into the desert to find it.
Chumley huddled close to the side of the motorhome, which was technically the roof. Dalton could see where the wind had yanked the solar panel from its fittings, and spotted a few disconnected wires flapping in the gale.
“What are we going to do?” Chumley asked.
“We’re going back inside to ride this thing out.”
“But it could be days!”
“Good thing we brought provisions.”
It was an extra effort climbing back on top of the prone motorhome without blowing away, and even more of an effort to yank the door closed. Dalton strained every muscle in his body to get the door to latch into place, but the wind had warped the hinges so badly that all he could do was leave it open and hope the sand didn’t smother them.
“Get into the very back,” Dalton said, stepping across the cabinets into the sleeping area. He walked along the wall between the upper and lower bunk, stepped up to the bathroom door, and yanked it open. “In here.”
Chumley didn’t protest. Still keeping the cloth pressed over his face, he followed Dalton into the cramped room and closed the door above them.
The motorhome’s bathroom contained a sink, a narrow shower
, and a chemical toilet, none of which were currently in the proper position to function as intended.
“Never thought I’d have to take a shit sideways,” Chumley giggled as he pulled off his goggles and rubbed his eyes. He sat cross-legged on the tile shower wall and put his head in his hands. Dalton sat beside him with his knees drawn to his chest.
The wind continued to howl.
“You’d think,” Chumley said at one point while they waited, “that your people would have a better warning system about this sort of thing.”
Dalton shrugged. “We have sirens. When high winds hit the sensors twenty kilometers outside of town, it triggers the sirens to go off. You and I are just too far away to hear them.”
“Maybe Frontier Care United ought to give you something a bit higher-tech.”
“Like a fancy colony ship that can haul everyone off this rock to somewhere nicer.”
He felt Chumley shift beside him. “I thought you said Molorthia Six was home.”
“That gives me the right to complain about it.”
Hours passed. Dalton made a few more attempts to contact Carolyn, Errin, and the folks over in Paris, without success.
He ventured into the kitchen at one point to unearth some of the food and water they’d brought with them, trying not to worry too much about the fact that nearly the whole front end of the motorhome had filled with sand. His flashlight revealed that the wind had torn the driver side door clean from its hinges. It and the solar panel were probably off having a party somewhere.
“How is it out there?” Chumley asked when Dalton handed him a packet of mixed nuts and dried fruit.
“Not good.” Dalton sipped at a bottle of water.
“Should I be worried?”
“Nah. We have enough provisions to last us until the storm’s over, and once the skies have cleared, I can get through to Carolyn and have her send out a rescue crew.”
“And we still won’t have seen what’s causing the fires.”
“Maybe it’s better this way.”