The sarfer raced across the dunes toward a field of debris where homes and shops had recently stood. Over the creaking mast and the taut and singing ropes, shouts for help and screams of horror could be heard. Screams from the past. Vic focused on a spot of sand at the edge of the destruction. There was a ridge of heaped tin and metal and wood blocking her path. She slewed the sarfer to a stop on the edge of town—was sixteen again as she jumped to the sand and raced between the dunes. Sixteen again and running half-naked across the desert floor. It’d been nighttime back then, and she’d been running away from the Honey Hole.
She had only gone inside for a drink. She and two friends. One drink had led to two drinks. She still had her wits about her, was able to tell the men no. She wasn’t laughing, not anymore. But the rooms were there, as was the expectation from those who had learned that anything they saw and wanted could be had for a price. A price. Cheap for them. Rent a room. C’mon, it’ll be fun. Firm hands. Friends egging her on.
Tears streaked down Vic’s face as she ran across the sand, remembering.
Two men. Laughing. Beer on their breaths. Strong arms from building and making. Strong arms for tearing and taking. Laughing. Her screams were funny to them. Her arms weak. But the way she squirmed made them roar. And Vic could hear her friends shouting through the walls, shouting now for them to stop, rattling locked doors, yelling at the people in another room, where similar horrors were more habit than happenstance.
Loose sand. Vic reached the end of intact houses, the extent of the onrush of that great dune. She ran past people gazing, people watching, people standing still, not helping, not hearing the muffled screams, the calloused hands over pretty mouths, the beer-breath lips crushing down, the feeling of sand piled on, of being buried alive, a pressure against new parts of her, the first time, crushing, crushing.
She hurried up the slope of sand until her legs were sore and would barely obey. She angled for where the Honey Hole used to sit. Vic pulled her band on, flipped her visor down, powered up her suit as she dove forward. She disappeared into the sand with barely a splash. Down where she was free and nothing could pin her.
Bright objects everywhere. The yellow and orange of great spoils, a scrounger’s paradise, so much worth saving. There were riches here carried all the way from the great wall. The rich were here as well. Vic saw a form trapped ahead of her, probably too late, but she formed a column of sand beneath the body and sent it to the surface. There were entire homes buried and flattened. There was debris everywhere to dodge. And ahead of her, right where she’d been running, was the three-story building she remembered, the house of nightmares, completely encased by the dune. No one would ever be harmed in that building again. They already had been. They already had been. The place was full of sand.
Vic slid through a busted window, hardening the sand around her to protect herself from the shards of glass. The walls inside were askew. The building had nearly buckled. It might have buckled were it not for the low concrete wall on the back side of the building to hold back the sand. Vic dialed her visor down to account for the loose pack inside the Honey Hole. Too bright in there. Bodies everywhere. Chairs and tables and the flash of glass jars and bottles. She raced up through the great hall and over the railing—or where the railing once stood. A purplish pocket of air along the third floor. The sand only got so high. Vic started to move who she could toward the air, but there wasn’t enough time. Not enough time. Even if the people there had gotten a lungful when it happened. Even if they had closed their mouths. Dead in minutes. Her mom was gone. Never got to say goodbye.
Vic saw the door to the room where it had happened all those years ago. The door was still whole, still solid, still closed on what took place in there. No one knew but those who had been inside. No one. Suffocating.
In her visor, her suit’s power glowed a bright green. A full charge. Ready for a deep dive, all that extra juice for holding the world at bay, for holding up that column of sand and air that was always pressing down on her, pressing down. Vic only had breath enough in her lungs for another minute or two. Her heart was racing, burning through her oxygen, not prepared for this. Not ready to see this. Not ready for her mother to die.