Conner concentrated on keeping up with Vic, tried not to think of the great wall and the sight of empty air where it had once loomed. He could taste the fear in his mouth at the sight of such permanence ended. Dont think about it. Follow Vic who for some reason wasnt diving beneath the dunes to rescue others like he thought she might. She raced instead through structures that became more intact the farther west and north they went. Conner was out of breath, his heart pounding. He chased her around a home, was fighting for the voice to call out to her, when he spotted the sarfer sitting out on the open sand.
The mainsail was still up, the fabric luffing, boom swaying. A rebel sarfer with a red canvas. Some part of Conner knew that his sister being there when the great wall collapsed was no coincidence. The thuds he had heard before the sand had rolled inhe remembered the sounds like distant bombs. Dozens of them. Vic spent time with the sorts of people who might do this. The thought that she might be involved, might have a hand in the death of thousands, might have come there only to rescue their momthis was a more personal and direct hurt than the toppling of the wall. It was the scratch that burns rather than the blunt trauma that knocks a man numb.
At the sarfer, Vic rummaged for something in the haul rack. No not something, someone. Conner drew near and realized it was his brother.
Palm? he asked, the confusion piling on now. He rested against the sarfers hot hull and caught his breath. His older brother gazed at him from the shade of a makeshift bimini. His face was blistered. His lips swollen. He managed a wan smile. Vic was giving orders to them both. She pressed something into Conners hands. He looked down. A pair of visors. A band. She pulled a dive suit from a bag in the passenger seat. Palmer was saying that he was okay to dive, to give him the suit. He tried to get up, but Vic shoved him back down.
You can barely walk, she said.
Conner wondered what was wrong with his brother. Palmers face had shrunk; his cheeks were sharp; there were the beginnings of a beard on
his chin. I can walk, Palmer insisted.
Vic took all of two beats to consider something. As rarely as she stood still, it felt like a lifetime. She reached some decision. Head to the Honey Hole, then, she said. Help Mom. Wait for us there.
What about the sarfer? Palmer asked.
Leave it be. Just take the water. And be careful. The sand is loose, and theres debris everywhere. She turned to Conner. Whatre you waiting on? Get that suit on and lets go.
Conner fell to the sand and kicked his boots off. Stowed the band away. His shirt was already gone, left behind in the Honey Hole with his sisters blood on it. He pulled the dive suit on. It was big for him and smelled of another mans sweat. His sister helped him with the zipper, bitched about the sand in it. She gave Conner instructions as she pulled the dive tanks from their racks and cracked the valves.
Its been too long to save anyone buried in solid drift, she told him. Were looking for air down there, okay? Any spot of purple, thats what you aim for. Well start here on the edge of town where chances are best. No point in checking every small building, just the intact ones. Anything with an eastward window you can skip. This regulator jams now and thenyou have to take it out and knock it against your tank. Can you handle that?
Conner nodded. He slipped his arms through the tanks harness as his sister held the worn cylinder aloft.
Good. Lets go.
It was another long run back toward the wasteland of broken homes. Soon the dive suit smelled of Conners sweat. And then his sister pointed toward the edge of a roof jutting up from the smooth sand, and she dove forward and was swallowed by a dune. Conner pulled the visor down over his eyes, wrangled the flapping regulator at his hip and shoved it into his mouth. He vibrated the air and the sand so that it slid out of his way as he tumbled forward. The desert claimed him as it had claimed so many others. But he could breathe. And he could help those who couldnt. There was so much to do and not enough buckets.
48 A Fortunate Few
After depositing a man hed found beneath an upturned tub, he dove back into the sand and raced alongside his sister beneath the dunes. He had a sensation of flight, the suit and band shed given him more powerful than any hed ever donned before, a rebel suit turned up to dangerous degrees. Every shimmering flash of purple or dark blue where the visors sandsight was broken by a pocket of air stood out as a beacon of hope. Conner drifted past bodies and around shattered homes, bashed his way through walls and intact windows, told the terrified he found there to hold their breath as he gathered them up and lifted them toward the light.
He broke into one house that had remained intact and found a family of four. A shriek as he approached, the red dive light around his neck aglow, drift pouring in through the hole hed made. Hold your breath, he told them, not sure if he could lift four people at once. Two was a strain. But the sand was pouring into their home. A young girl screamed and clutched her mother. Vic had disappeared into another building. Conner needed his sister. The sand wasnt going to give them time.