He pulled the door open and kicked the scrum6 off his boots before stepping inside. “Yo, brother! You home?” Pulling the door shut required heaving up with both hands to get the doorknob to latch. Sift7 fell from the ceiling, and the rafters creaked. There was no sign of Palmer, no boots or track of sand, no gear bag or detritus from a raided pantry. Just a voice calling out from below, muffled and distant. Sounded like Rob. The hammering overhead resumed. Conner aimed a middle finger toward the ceiling.
“You had dinner?” he called out. He set his leftovers on the rickety table by the door—half a can of cold rabbit stew from the Dive Bar. His little brother shouted another reply, but again his voice was a dull rumble. It sounded like he was a shack down.
It took four strides to go from the foyer, through the kitchen, and into their shared bedroom with the two little cots on their rusted springs. Rob’s bed was shoved off to one side, and three of the floor planks beneath it had been removed. It was dark below. The only illumination in the small house was what little lamplight filtered through the cracked glass set into the front door. A candle by Rob’s bed had melted down to nothing. Conner rummaged through the bin by his cot and grabbed his flashlight, turned it on. Dead. He threw it back into the bin. Three strides, and he pulled down the gas lamp from the living room. Shook it and listened to the splash of oil. Fumbled to get it lit. “You getting the gear together?” he asked.
Rob didn’t answer. Conner adjusted the lamp until the room was flooded with light. He sat on the bedroom floor and dangled his feet into the pit, then lowered himself down and reached up to grab the lantern. A pale glow filled someone’s former home.
What had once been rafters holding up a roof were now floor joists in Palmer’s house. Someone else’s house stood below theirs, long abandoned and unclaimed. Soon, his own home would be someone’s basement and this a sand-filled cellar. And so it went, sand piling up to the heavens and homes sinking toward hell.
Conner swung the lantern around in the small space. He and Rob kept the few things they owned stowed down there. The bag that held the tent and all their camping gear was undisturbed. It sat right where they’d left it a year ago. It was covered in sift. Conner dusted some of the sand off the bag and wondered where the hell Rob was. He pushed open an old bathroom door and saw more floor planks removed. A light danced below. “What the fuck’re you doing down there?” he asked.
Rob peered up at him through the hole in the old floor and smiled guiltily. He was sitting on a pile of sand one more shack down. It was as far down as one could go, this next buried home nearly full of drift8. His brother’s hair looked wet, was matted to his forehead, like he’d been exerting himself. Conner quickly looked away.
“Aw, c’mon, man. You’re not down there jerking off, are you?”
“No!” Rob squealed, and Conner peered back into the hole. He saw his brother wiggling back and forth. Rob glanced up at him and bit his lip in frustration. “Where’ve you been?” he asked. “I’ve been calling for you and calling for you.”
Conner realized now that his brother was in trouble. Crouching down, he lowered the lamp below the floorboards and saw that the sand was up to his brother’s hips. There were gouges where Rob had been digging.
“What the fuck have you done?”
“I was just playing,” Rob said.
Conner hung the lantern on a nail and worked his way down another level. “I told you to stay out of here. Drift can dump through in a flash.”
“I know. But … it didn’t dump in. I kinda buried myself.”
Conner spotted the wires trailing out of the sand. He tried to pry his brother out, but Rob wouldn’t budge. The sand around him was hard as concrete. “What’ve you done?”
“I’ve been working on … something.” Rob showed Conner the band in his hand, a cluster of wires trailing off and disappearing into the hard pack. “I wasn’t diving, promise. Not all the way. Just trying to see what I could do with my boots—”
“With your boots—?”
“Father’s boots.”
“You mean my boots.” Conner snatched the band out of his brother’s hand. “Eleven fucking years old, Rob. You’re gonna get yourself killed playing with this shit. Where’d you get the band?”
“Found it.”
“Did you steal this?” Conner shook the band. He had half a mind to leave his brother there for the night, just to teach him a lesson.
“No. I found it. Swear.”
“You know what Palm would’ve done if he found you playing with this? Or Vic?” Conner checked the band. It belonged to an old pair of visors, but someone had removed those. “Did you find this in the trash? Because that’s where this piece of shit belongs.”
Rob didn’t say. A scavenger’s admission.
“Did you do the wiring?”
“Yes,” his brother whispered. “Con, I can’t feel my feet.”
Conner saw that his brother was crying. And one of his arms was pinned. Rob didn’t need to be told how serious this shit was.