Текст книги "Sand"

Автор книги: Hugh Howey

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

20 • A Scrounger’s Trade

Vic was still laughing fifteen minutes later. It took that long to round up the clothes scattered by the wind. She shook the sand out of every piece of underwear she found and asked Marco if he needed a new ker. While she howled, he ignored her. He seemed morose as they lugged the bags and her dive gear over a dune and to his sarfer. Marco had laid the mast back to make it hard to spot. A mast upright in the middle of nowhere was a homing beacon for other scavengers—or a warning to a girl that her boyfriend was gonna fucking prank her instead of just picking her up at the dive site like she asked. But she had gotten the last laugh. Was still laughing as they reached the sarfer.

“It totally isn’t as funny as you’re making out,” Marco said. He loaded her dive gear into his haul rack. “Maybe if the bag was full of cleanclothes. Maybe then.”

“Oh, shit.” Vic grabbed his arm. She hadn’t smelled the clothes to see if they had been worn or not. The seals in those Samsonites were really that good.

“Yeah,” Marco said. “Shit is right.”

After half a minute, Marco had to help Vic up from the sand. Dabbing her eyes and seeing the tears there, she told Marco, “This is the happiest day of my life.”

“Yeah, you suck. Lesson learned and all that. And Jesus, can you please take it easy on who you tell?”

Vic smiled at him.

“Ah, fuck, Vic, I’m gonna hear about this for weeks.”

“Oh, hell no. This is going to last a lot longer than that. And if these clothes fetch a coin less for all the sand you got in them, that’s coin you owe.”

Marco looked like a kicked dog. Vic almost felt sorry for him. Almost. She loaded the black bag into the haul rack, and Marco did the same with the silver. Behind them, twin sets of ruts streaked their way across the dunes. Already, the lines in the distance were fading, filled in by the wind. Vic marveled, not for the first time, on all the wheeled conveyances she’d seen buried beneath the deep sand. To think there was some distant past or place where wheels made any sense—

“Ho, Marco!”

Vic turned. She saw where Marco was looking, hand shielding his eyes in the low morning sun. A figure stood atop a nearby dune, a silhouette with a tall lance in one hand, the other arm raised in salute. The mast of a sarfer could be seen jutting up beyond the dune, the sail tightly furled.

“While you were screwing around, someone spotted your sarfer,” Vic said.

“Shit.”

“Wait, is that Damien? Oh, he’s gonna love this.”

“Please, please, please,” Marco begged. “At least wait until we get to town. Or tonight when everyone’s drunk and no one will remember. Don’t let him be the first to know. Not Damien.”

Vic squeezed Marco’s neck and laughed. “Some freedom fighter you are.”

Marco tensed. “That’s just it. I’m a fighter.” He made a fist, and his great and tan bicep bulged, scars and tattoos straining.

Vic stopped smiling. “I was stressing the freedompart. You forget that, and all you are is fighting. I’ll tell who I want, when I want. Freedom, Marco. Don’t get like these assholes and fall in love with the fighting. Then you’re just setting off bombs because you like the noise they make.”

Marco didn’t say anything as Damien glissaded down the dune toward them, causing a gentle avalanche and using his spear for balance. He stomped over with a grin, and his eyebrows lifted when he spotted the two bags in the haul rack. “Jesus. Nice find, guys.” His eyes went to the trails left in the sand, quickly filling. “How the hell do you two score every time you go out? And way out in the middle of nowhere?”

Vic didn’t say that it was usually herscoring while Marco watched their things on the surface. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“Clothes?”

“Mostly underwear,” she said. And before Marco could respond, she added: “For the ladies.” She fought off a bout of giggles.

“Hey, my wife could use some. Maybe hook me up before you sell to Jimbo or Sandy and they get their squeeze. I’ll pay what they pay.”

“Slow down,” Marco said. “Don’t be in a rush to get our panties off us.” He laughed.

“Maybe they’re for him,” Vic said, teasing Damien.

“Yeah, fuck you two. And here I was getting ready to do you a favor. But I guess you can wait until you get to town to find out the news yourselves. To think I was gonna ask you to tag along—” He turned and marched back toward his sarfer.

“Wait. Tell us what?” Marco asked.

Damien held up his middle finger and kept walking.

“Tell us fucking what?” Marco demanded.

“I’ll trade you,” Vic called.

Damien slowed. He turned and glanced at the bags. “Trade for what?”

“Give me the news, and I’ll tell you the funniest story you’ve ever heard in your entire fucking life.”

Damien waved his hand and spit sand. “News like this don’t go for a joke.”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Marco hissed, but this only seemed to get Damien’s attention.

“It’s not a joke,” Vic said. “It’s a true story. And I promise you won’t be disappointed. You’ll be getting the good end of this bargain, I swear.”

“I dunno…” Damien said, walking back their way. “There ain’t neverbeen news this big. But fuckit, I’d rather you hear it from me than from someone else.”

“You first,” Vic said. In truth, she didn’t care about his news. She was just rehearsing how best to tell this story, a story that would get many retellings.

Damien took a deep breath and searched their faces. The two sand divers waited. The clatter of Low-Pub spilled over the dunes, and sand rode through the sky above their heads.

“Fucking Danvar,” Damien finally said. “Somebody found it.”

21 • Buried Alive

Palmer

It was a crypt for a king. His friend Hap had left him to die in a crypt for a goddamn king—this tomb of untold riches. Palmer was going to take his last breath in a manor no Lord of Springston could refuse. A place where a truly great man should be laid to rest.

And it’ll do for me, he thought morosely.

The air in the buried sandscraper tasted stale and seemed to be growing thinner. But it had outlasted his water. Palmer had poured himself half-caps for what felt like five days. He had eaten both strips of jerky one tiny nibble at a time, like a mouse trying to win the cheese from a loaded trap. Now all of that was gone, along with fifteen or twenty pounds of himself. He hadn’t been eating that well even before the march north. The stress of a deep dive always messed with his appetite. No… it hadn’t been the dive. It had been the camping trip coming up, the anniversary. He never ate well before that trip. Had bugged out the year before. Damn… maybe he’d already been down there a whole week. Con and Rob would go without him, just like last year. Con and Rob. They would never hear from their big brother again.

Or maybe it hadn’t been so long. He had counted five days—five urges to sleep—but maybe it was four. Hell, it could be ten days or ten hourssince Hap abandoned him. His mind was playing tricks. He heard noises and voices. Had a dream about his father that seemed so real, Palmer had truly thought he was dead and in heaven. Ah, a crypt fit for a king, and where was his asshole father buried? His father’s bones had ground to sand in No Man’s Land, that’s where. A pauper burial for a Lord. A place for desperate dying. It was as ironic as Palmer’s lavish crypt.

But Palmer had been old enough to remember a Lord’s life. He had bawled when his mom pulled them away from the wall. Had bawled when he was put in a different school with strange kids who smelled bad. Had bawled harder when he could no longer smell them because he had begun to stink as they did. What he wouldn’t give to have all those tears back. Just a capful.

He licked his cracked and burning lips. The dream about his father made sense now. Some part of him had been dwelling on the anniversary. He’d let Con and Rob down again. He was a shitty brother and a shitty son and did not deserve to die in so fine a place as this.

Such were his wild thoughts as he left the conference room where he’d been imprisoned by his hope of Hap’s return. He staggered out and through the dark building, his dive light as dim as he could make it, its staid old battery down to rations as well. Maybe he’d find a pool of water where a spring had flooded or where trapped moisture had drained down through the impossibly tight pack. But there was little hope of that. He left the conference room to get away from his nightmares and his failures. To let his body wander instead of his mind.

Before he died, he should go out into the sand one last time. Better to perish there and be discovered by another diver as they came to pick over this city. He still had a good charge in his suit, might see how far he could make it before the sand filled his lungs. But some naive part of him kept thinking Hap would come back, that Brock would send others, that he would be a fool to go out and die when there was still air in that building to breathe. At any moment, Hap would burst in with a second set of twin tanks, laughing and saying he’d only been gone two hours and here’s the coin those scroungers paid and all the beer and pussy in Springston would be theirs.

Palmer kept thinking this, but the hope had grown as stale and thin as the oxygen. The hope that had kept him prisoner in that room with the chairs and the great table and the brewing machine had weakened. Gone was the need to be there when the divers came for him. And as that hope waned, he left through the door that had damned him, that heavy door that Hap had slammed shut on his face, and with his dive light barely aglow, he nosed around his crypt for the first time.

He had seen many crumbling office buildings full of sand outside Springston, but never on such a scale as this, never so pristine. The buildings he had seen had been picked over for centuries. Men with mastery over the sand had ripped out great holes and had salvaged almost anything worth taking. But Palmer now strolled through a perfect recreation of that long-dead world. It was a museum for the buried gods and the world they had lived in. His fragile mind tallied stacks and stacks of coin as he felt his way down the hall. There were clocks; pictures framed and behind perfect glass; recessed lights and miles and miles of copper wire; unbroken tile; wood countertops. Coin everywhere.

Other divers would come and claim these things. Probably not Hap, for the guilt would gnaw at him. At least, Palmer hoped it would. No, it would be some other diver who would find his bones. They would remove Palmer’s skeleton from his suit piece by piece and marvel that he still had a charge left, that he had been too scared to make for the surface, and someone would point out that he didn’t have tanks, and some other asshole would say that there was a girl from Low-Pub who could’ve done it, and none of them would know that these bones in their hands belonged to that girl’s brother.

He tried another room. A bathroom. Porcelain fixtures and indoor plumbing. He felt insane for twisting the spigots, but no one was watching.

The next room was a jackpot. A bonanza of riches. A small room no bigger than a bed but full of tools. Brooms and mops and much else. He picked up one of the brooms. Synthetic bristles. Plastic. As good as the day it was made. Palmer kicked some of the scrum from his boots to the marble tile and whisked the sand around with the broom. His mother—the mother of his youth—would’ve loved such a broom. Palmer flashed back to chasing Conner through the house when they were boys, giving him a beating before his sister caught up to them both and dispensed twobeatings. Back in the closet, he shook bottles of liquids, cracked the cap on one of them and took a sniff. His nose burned. If he needed an easier way out than the sand, here it was.

He surveyed all the useful things packed into such a small space, enough coin to retire on, and closed the door. Someone else would come and take these things. They would figure out a way to dive deep and bring it all back. Wouldn’t bother with him, though. Palmer thought of the city that would be built above these dunes on all that was stolen from the past. There would be an orgy of excess. A gold rush like the old-timers used to tell of Low-Pub’s founding. No one would remember the first person to set foot in that scraper. He pictured Hap in the Honey Hole at that very moment, blisteringly drunk, delicious golden beer everywhere, telling the gathered that he’d been the first one inside, that he’d discovered Danvar all on his own. Fucking Hap.

The next room was an office. Palmer checked the drawers, hoping for a canteen, even though the ancient peoples seemed rarely to use them. Dry pens. Knick-knacks. A silver key, which Palmer couldn’t help but slip into his belly pocket. Folded paper. He pulled this out and held it close to his dive light. A map. Dark lines and place names. The word “Colorado” caught his eye. Palmer slipped this into his pocket too. When they found his body, they would find something useful. Find that hehad been useful.

In the center drawer he found raw riches. Coin. An entire pile of them jumbled together as if they’d been swept inside ages ago. They weren’t even locked up, just left among paper clips and pens and other worthless artifacts as if these trinkets were as dear as money.

Copper and silver, they were unscratched by sand. Palmer studied them one at a time before throwing them into his stomach pocket with the key. There grew a jangle by his belly to go with the grumbles, a two-man band. He would die wealthy. Starving and wealthy. Whoever found him would bury him well and pour a beer into his grave. A note! Palmer would write a note to go with the coin, a note to his pallbearer and one to his sister Vic. He would brag about being brave in the first message and admit to being an idiot in the second. He rummaged for a pencil, found one, pulled out his dive knife and scraped the point sharp. It felt good to have something to do, something as simple as sharpening lead. He slipped the knife back into his boot and found a pad of paper. Eaten through with worms, but it would do. He scratched out instructions for his burial and a quick note to Vic saying he was sorry. He signed his name and started to write a date, was just going to guess, but then wrote the anniversary of his father’s disappearance instead. Probably not right, but it was close enough and there was poetry to it. Poetry was better than truth. He folded both notes and stuffed them in with the heavy sag of coin. Hopefully it wouldn’t be Hap who found him. Hap wouldn’t come back. Unless Hap was arriving right then and he was missing him.

In a panic—despite the days of staring at the drift of sand with no sign of Hap—Palmer imagined his friend coming back right then, seeing that Palmer was gone, and leaving him for a second time. Palmer rushed back to the hall, hands on his belly to keep the coins from sloshing around, and he heard a noise. The creak of an old building with the weight of a world on its head. Coming from across the hall.

“Hap?” He called out his friend’s name, felt a little delirious. How long had he slept the last time he’d lain down? Was he still dreaming? “Father?”

There was a noise on the other side of the door. Palmer looked up and down the hallway, the dim red glow of his dive light barely penetrating a dozen paces. He tried to get his bearings. Was this the room he’d been wasting away inside of? Did he get turned around? The darkness beyond the feeble reach of his dive light made everything seem distant and full of quiet potential. He tried the door and found it unlocked. A single door. A different room. He stepped inside and saw rows of desks, those flat plastic screens on each. Several of the desks were jumbled together; they had been shoved away from a large pile of drift pushing its way into the room.

Palmer’s brain wrestled with possibilities: An old breach, a building giving way from years of the crush. It was on the opposite side of the building from his approach with Hap, so he hadn’t seen it. He might have swum right in if he had.

Perhaps other divers had made this. A new hole. They had come here while he had slept. Brock’s men—with Yegery, the old divemaster, to confirm the find and salvage a few things. Yes, there were signs that others had come. Bootprints of sand. Two desks cleaned off and pushed together, away from the others. Yes. The plundering had begun. Divers must be descending on this place as he stood there. He would be saved.

Or was it Hap? Maybe Hap had come back. Hap had come back for him, hadn’t found the other way in, had made a new way, and had left tanks of air for him so Palmer could save himself. Yes! There were the tanks, a triple set, sitting beyond the reach of the sand like a gift from the gods. Unless he had gone mad. Unless this was an apparition like his father. Unless he was still dreaming as before.

Palmer staggered through the desks and toward the dive tanks, wanting to touch them to see if they were real. All the possibilities for how this drift of sand had breached the building, and the true answer never occurred to him. Never occurred to him even though he should’ve remembered. Should’ve remembered that he and Hap weren’t the first to be sent down to discover Danvar. And they hadn’t found the bodies of the other two divers in the sand. All of this would come too late. It would come to him as the animal shot out from behind a desk, claws out and teeth bared, hellbent and determined to kill him.

22 • A Fight with Madness

The man was naked. He was all bones and ribs and snarling mouth. The front of him was caked in blood, a smear of charcoal black in the dim red glow of Palmer’s dive light. There was just a flash of this grisly image before the man crashed into Palmer, knocking him to the ground, desperate hands clenching around his throat.

Palmer saw pops of bright light as his head hit the floor. He couldn’t breathe. He heard his own gurgles mix with the raspy hisses from the man on top of him. A madman. A thin, half-starved, and full-crazed madman. Palmer fought for a breath. His visor was knocked from his head. Letting go of the man’s wrists, he reached for his dive knife, but his leg was pinned, his boot too far away. He pawed behind himself and felt his visor, had some insane plan of getting it to his temples, getting his suit powered on, overloading the air around him, trying to shake the man off. But as his fingers closed on the hard plastic—and as the darkness squeezed in around his vision—he instead swung the visor at the snarling man’s face, a final act before the door to that king’s crypt sealed shut on him.

A piercing shriek returned Palmer to his senses. Or it was the hands coming off his neck? The naked man howled and lunged again, but Palmer got a boot up, caught the man in the chest, kicked him. He scrambled backward while the man reeled. The other diver. Brock’s diver.Palmer turned and crawled on his hands and knees to get distance, got around a desk, moving as fast as he could, heart pounding. Two divers. There had been two divers.He waited for the man’s partner to jump onto his back, for the two men to beat him to death for his belly full of jangling coin—

–when he bumped into the other diver. And saw by his dive light that he was no threat. And the bib of gore on the man chasing him was given sudden meaning. Palmer crawled away, sickened. He wondered how long the men had been down here, how long one had been eating the other.

Hands fell onto his boots and yanked him, dragging him backward. A reedy voice yelled for him to be still. And then he felt a tug as his dive knife was pulled from its sheath, stolen. Palmer spun onto his back to defend himself. His own knife flashed above him traitorously, was brought down by those bone-thin arms, was meant to skewer him.

There was a crunch against his belly. A painful blow. The air came out of Palmer. The blade was raised to strike him again, but there was no blood. His poor life had been saved by a fistful of coin.

Palmer brought up his knee as the man struck again—and shin met forearm with a crack. A howl, and the knife was dropped. Palmer fumbled for it, his dive light throwing the world into pale reds and deep shadows. Hand on the hilt, his knife reclaimed, he slashed at the air, and the man fell back, hands up, shouting, “Please, please!”

Palmer scooted away, keeping the knife in front of him. He was weak from fitful sleep and lack of food, but this poor creature before him seemed even weaker. Enraged and with the element of surprise, the man had nearly killed him, but it had been like fighting off a homeless dune-sleeper who had jumped him for some morsel of bread. Palmer dared to turn his dive light up so he could see the man better.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” the man said. “Thought you were a ghost.”

The blood on the man’s chin and down his neck made Palmer’s stomach turn. “Did you think I was your partner come back to get you for what you did to him?”

The thin man pointed a bony finger at Palmer. “You’re a diver. Did the others send you? Oh, thank the heavens. Thank the heavens!” He glanced down at his naked form. His eyes shot between the desks where the corpse lay. “No, no. I didn’t kill him. He died out in the sand. I brought him in here. I was… I was starving. Oh, god. Food. Do you have food? Water?” He staggered forward.

“Stay back,” Palmer said.

The man hesitated. “Juice,” he said. “I used up all my juice on the way down. Did you bring a charge? I’ve got a tank of air, but no juice. Help me.”

“You tried to kill me.”

“I thought you were a ghost.” He took another step forward, wild eyes on Palmer’s dive light. “Give me my knife back,” he said, baring bloody teeth. “I found that. Found it in your boot. In myboots.”

The man screamed and lunged, a bloodthirsty cry, naked limbs all bone and sinew, a mad and desperate creature in the red throb of Palmer’s flickering, dying light. The two men crashed together. A clatter as metal fell to tile, a single coin spilling out of the gash in Palmer’s suit, a sound two scroungers knew well, the price of one life saved and another taken as bare flesh impaled itself on a dive knife and a belly opened like a purse, a cost far graver than coin spilling to the floor.