Sand

1 • A Quiet Dawn

There was a distant thrum. The sound of drums, of bootfalls, of God’s mighty pulse. Conner knew that sound. It reminded him of the thunder far east. It was the muffled roar of rebel bombs, a noise that came before chaos and death and red dunes and a mother’s wails. Conner dropped his spoon into his bowl of stew, pushed away from the beer-soaked table in the Honey Hole, and ran toward the stairs to warn his mom.

He took the steps two at a time. His brother Rob chased after him. There were more of the muffled blasts in the distance as they raced down the balcony. Danger outside. Violence. Or maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was cannon fire to celebrate the discovery of Danvar. Conner almost felt silly for running to his mother, a child doing what boys did in a panic, turning to a parent to save them, to tell them what to do.

He threw open her door, knew there were no clients inside, just his half-sister Violet who had emerged from No Man’s Land. And as he stepped into the room, Conner felt a rumble in the earth, felt it through his father’s boots, and he knew what was happening. He knew that this was more than the usual bombs. That great roar and that impossibly loud hiss meant the sands were coming for them all.

And in the brief flutter between two beats of his heart, as the din grew and grew, as his mother yelled for the boys to run, to hold their breath, to move, Conner thought only of diving onto the bed, of protecting the girl he’d spent the last two days looking after. He bolted across the room, Rob on his heels, got halfway there, when the wall of sand slammed into the Honey Hole.

The floor beneath Conner’s feet lurched sideways—a god snatching a rug out from under him. He tumbled. There was a crash of wood and tin, an explosion of glass, a sudden blindness as all light was extinguished by a press of solid dune, a splintering sound, and then the desert sands pouring in around Conner and his family.

He barely heard his mother scream for them to hold their breaths before he was smothered. Sand was in his nose and against his lips. He was frozen, pinned to the floor in a sprawl, the weight of ten bullies on his back, a sense, nearby, right beside him, of his brother Rob. Just a memory of where his brother had been—where his mother had been—before the sand had claimed them.

Pitch black. A residual warmth in the sand from having been outside in the sun. Complete silence. Just his pulse, which he could feel in his neck as it was squeezed by the drift. The pulse in his temples. No room to expand his chest. Couldn’t swallow. Hands around his throat. His brother nearby. And not enough room even to cry. Just a coffin to be terrified in. A place for dying. For panic. For muscles and tendons raging and flexing but not budging an inch—what a paralyzed person must feel. What everyone who has ever been buried alive must feel. This is how they go. This is how they go. This is how they go. Conner couldn’t stop thinking it. The dead had been bodies in the sand before. But now he could feel what they had felt. They had felt just like this, frozen and terrified and not able to move their jaws even to sob for their mothers.

He prayed and listened for the sound of digging—but heard nothing. His pulse. His pulse. Maybe the sand wasn’t so deep. Maybe his mother was okay, pressed there against the wall. Maybe Violet—his half-sister—maybe she would live and her story would be known. He might have a minute of air left. They could dig him out. But that rumble—that rumble—too much sand. It had gone black in the room. The sand had swamped the second story of the Honey Hole. The great wall must’ve gone. Collapsed. Blown up. And the sand on Conner’s back grew deeper and heavier with this thought. In the dark and quiet, he imagined the horror that must be taking place outside. His rapidly approaching death became a pinprick in a wider world of hurt. That grumble of sand he’d heard had been the dune coming at them, the great dune behind that teetering wall on which he’d been born. A life given and then taken away. It had come for him. Had found him. Was now going to claim him.

The struggle against the sand was futile, so Conner relaxed. As he did, it felt as though the bullies on his back grew heavier, like he had sagged within himself and the sand was eager to consume that space, to take whatever he might give. How much longer? The need to breathe grew intense. Like the training games with his brother, when they strained their lungs and counted with fingers. Dizzy. No way to inhale or exhale. Would just black out. And as he felt it coming, his panic surged anew, and there came an intense drive to not die. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to call out to Rob, to his mom, tell them he loved them, get them out of there, somebody please dig me out of here.

As his senses faded, the press of sand all around him softened. It was as if his skin were growing numb to the pressure. Or the blood flow was stopping. Conner had a bright flash of a memory, his father waking him up one morning with a finger pressed over his gray beard, urging Conner to be quiet. Conner, confused, half-asleep, leaving the room he shared with his brothers, his father taking him up the narrow stairs to the top of the great wall. They sat there with their faces to the east and their feet dangling over the ramparts. A windless, noiseless sunrise. The first quiet dawn he’d ever seen, one of those rare moments when the gods stop their thundering and become calm, when the sand isn’t blowing down on them—and Conner sat and watched the morning sun swallow the stars and then Mars, and then a golden dome of light grow and blossom into a perfectly blue sky.

“Why’s it so quiet?” he had whispered to his father. He was young and confused. “Will it always be like this?”

“Another half an hour,” his father had said, studying the sky. “If we’re lucky.”

This placed an enormous pressure on Conner to enjoy the moment. To remember it. To soak it up. The way that crow up there flapped its wings as it took advantage and made for the east. The way the sun warmed the cool morning air. The stillness on his cheeks. His father’s heavy hand on his shoulder. Remember. Remember, he told himself. That intense pressure to make this last forever, to cup his mind tight like hands under a running tap. And then he had glanced up and down the ramparts and realized they were enjoying this moment alone.

“We should wake the others,” he had whispered. “Palmer and Vic—”

His father squeezed his shoulder. “They’ve had theirs. This one is yours.”

And nothing more was said as the sun broke free of the dunes and the wind returned and whatever made that noise that haunted their sleep resumed its infernal grumbling. And it dawned on Conner, sitting there on the great wall with his father, that the world was full of secrets and strangeness. At some point in the past, he had slept while Vic and Palmer had been taken up into the darkness to witness this. They had never told their little brother, had never shared that moment, and Conner knew he never would either.

And it occurred to him there in the Honey Hole, buried under all that sand, that Rob had never been given a windless dawn with their father. Had never been given any kind of morning with him. Had never known him. And the sand loosened even more around his body, and Conner knew it was happening. The last of his breath. The last of sensation. He’d had a minute or two there under the press of dune to consider his life—and now his time was up.

But as the sand grew lighter, he felt his body more keenly, not less so. He swallowed back a sob. Swallowed. The fists around his neck lost some of their grip. There was a hum in the earth. A hiss. That sound of someone diving nearby. He’d heard this sound before, his ear pressed to the hard pack as he listened to his father scavenge beneath him. It was the sound a diver could only hear when his suit was off and another’s was on. And Conner discovered that he could move. Someone was loosening the sand.

He still couldn’t breathe, was still buried and blind, wasn’t sure how many ticking heartbeats he had left in his lungs, but he struggled against the sand to reach for his boot. Couldn’t swim in this. Couldn’t get anywhere. But might be able to bring his knee up, stretch his hand down, reach inside, bring out the band, hit the power, fumble with the wires, the scratch of the rough floor as he wiggled beneath what felt like a thousand heavy blankets, his little brother crushed beside him, his little brother who could never hold his breath quite as long. Got the band plugged in. Sand crunching between the contacts. Wouldn’t work. No way. Band on his head, the sand growing less viscous, and then feeling a connection with the drift, with the sand pressing in all around him.

No visor. No way to see. No way to breathe. But he could move. Not much time. Conner went to where he thought his brother would be and felt a body. He grabbed Rob, didn’t feel anyone grabbing back at him, didn’t feel life there, but he had no time to consider this. No time to think about the miracle of the boots or the nearby diver, only of getting to the bed. He pulled Rob along like some scavenged find. Another body. Someone on the bed. He felt someone on the bed moving.

Conner groped. His mom. Alive. Something in her lap. He didn’t wait, didn’t think, didn’t have a heartbeat of air left in him. He pushed up. Up. Made the sand hard over his head to protect him. Was back in that box Ryder had made, that coffin cube, breaking through, up through the ceiling and into the third floor. Dark. Loose sand. Light. Dim, but there. And then air. Stuffy attic air. A glorious pocket. And Conner, exhausted and choking on grit, passed out.

2 • A Buried People

He couldn’t have been out for long. He woke on top of a shifting pile of sand. His mother was beside him, her lips pressed to Rob’s, his young cheeks puffing out as she blew into his mouth, sand spilling from her hair and coating both their faces.

The sand beneath them was sinking. Swirling and draining out somewhere. A creak and the snap of timbers overhead. A thrumming violence all around. The whole world was moving. The Honey Hole was moving. Slashes and stabs of light lanced through fresh cracks in the wall. Barrels and crates were piled up, shoved aside when Conner pushed his family up through the ceiling. They were in the third-floor storerooms. But they were sinking back down, riding the plummeting level of the sand, fighting for purchase and stability, their mother cursing and losing her grip on Rob.

Conner remembered the boots. He hardened the sand beneath them all, made a platform. His mom breathed into Rob’s mouth again. The girl was there. Violet. Eyes open, alive, looking at Conner, taking deep breaths. Father had taught her well. But Rob. Poor Rob, with an affinity for all things diving but never a chance to swim beneath the sand. His first time. Don’t let it be his last. Don’t let it be his last.

Conner watched his mother work, was too tired and numb and afraid to speak. He just concentrated on keeping the sand firm as they floated down. All the sand in the Honey Hole was draining away, vibrating as though someone were making it move. The rigid platform of sand rode back through the hole and into his mother’s room. More light filtering in. Sand coursing through the shattered window and the splintered wall. The Honey Hole was now above the dunes. Conner didn’t understand. He felt a rage and a violence in the sand, could feel it through his boots and his band. A burn like the fabric was on fire, a scorch around his temples, and then that rage and heat were gone. The world fell still. A coat of sand stood on everything in the room, but the drift had poured out. Conner tried to piece the last few minutes together, wondered if maybe the Honey Hole had done a full roll, if he’d been buried for a minute as the world went upside down, had righted itself, and then the sand had drained away.