Chapter 2: Nobody Lives in the Sands

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“And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.” - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed.

I close the book and lay it kindly onto the desk. I’ve read it a hundred times, maybe two hundred. I’ve been here so long, hiding among all these silent words. They flow through me like the ancient waters of the bay, now flooded inwards against the dry and cracked husk of a shore’s embrace. An echo of a concept once familiar, now personal, and yet somehow oneiric. A prediction and a promise. But one that leaves the belly empty and the bones in ache. The heart, swollen like a tumor, flopping pathetically in its cage, a vestige.

Eyes lovingly pan across this castle of remnants. The library has three copies of this particular book, my first already a frail remnant. I read this second one with exquisite care, handling the pages with as much delicacy as these crude appendages can muster. This world was not made for us. It was only destroyed for us. I take care not to destroy any quicker than I must.

My throat welcomes the last drizzle of water collected from the morning dew in my wick tarps. It’s been particularly dry lately, which is less concerning for the scarcity of water and more concerning for the implications of a corrective snap in weather patterns. It’s been many years since we had a storm out here on the sands. As Shat would say, an offering to the no-rain gods may be in order next full moon.

At my side, just below the ledge of the paneless window, the sands curl and play. A taunting dance, whimsical but agonized. My bandage-wrapped fingers dip into their streams, causing ripples and eddies that flower out into the grand hillstream. Granules stick in the creases of the fabric, glistening and light, the color of bone with the occasional obsidian speck. A tiny darkness in the great absence. A thing that once was grand, now de minimus, a reminder of the inevitable kiss of nonbeing. All hopes and dreams marching with smiles gleaming in the warm solar radiation towards atomization. The sun is setting, the world getting colder.

A sound shatters my reverie, catapulting me into a prey’s alertness and shocking the hair on my hackles into perpendicular spikes. A terrible crackle, like the air itself tearing. My eyes dry, frozen open underneath my eyepiece. 

Unsafe!

There are five clear exits from the library. The fastest exit from my position is out the east window behind me, down the cable to the rooftops at 16th and Sanchez. I’ve got visual on a clear path to the drophatch at the back of the stacks, just in case the window is blocked.

My arm slithers like a snake along the shelf to where I keep my tool. Fingers pour over the handle, silent liquid survival into a grip like ice. The sound comes again and an infinitude of possibilities are sorted and collapsed into the recognition of the old radio. The old radio! It has not made a sound in months, since the last band of marauders passed through. Well, not through, but into the snare of those sadists from the dome. 

A voice pierces the static. “I’m… I’m alone in the sands. I’ve been left behind… -shkkkk- Nobody is here with me. And I know I deserve nobody… -shkkkk tztztztztzttt-”

It’s a man’s voice, raspy and deep but at the same time pitched, a mixture of confidence and regret. There’s a melodic staccato to his diction, words punctuating themselves like the birdsong of a thunderstorm.

Before conscious volition kicks in, I notice that my hand is on the receiver (my other hand still gripped frozen on my tool). A thumb laying gently on the transmitter button. It does not press. The voice continues speaking to nobody. Speaking to me. I am Nobody.

“I’ve found a secure shelter in an old bank, looks defensible. I’m running low on rations, but I know how to hunt and… -shkkkk-”

An old bank. Is he at the VenPal Securities down on Church? So close. But so… 

Not defensible.

That bank backs up against a thriving nest. Luckily for him, and unlucky for me, curiosity is stronger than fear. Or is it hope? Surely not. I would not recognize hope if it was crouching on my chest, tearing out my eyes. I’ve still got my eyes at least.

I shuffle out the window onto the ledge, fling my tool up and over the long black wire stretched between buildings, and soar out over the street. The sands coil up in my wake, cheering and laughing as I descend into their dense, churning currents. Feet catch me softly against the opposing building. The roof is an easy climb from here, back up out of the blinding ossified mist. I clamber quickly from rooftop to rooftop, a half gallop staying low behind the half walls at the edge, those old commercial parapets where machinery and alcoholics used to hide, where birds sat and cackled and shat, back before the birds all disappeared one day.

I uncap the scope on my tool and peer out over the broken street into the broken bank. Inside there is a man wearing crisp leather bindings and a gaudy red cape fluttering and catching on the barbed refuse of toppled walls. I see his own tool, a long, shining steel thing, almost as long as the man is tall, with a contraption on one end and a broad blade on the other. He walks up and down the old service counter, his tool swinging and swaggering about unapologetically, unsafe, half checking each empty drawer and cabinet. He continues his monologue into the radio device held high like a parading champion, but his words are silent to me without the radio I left behind. Unfortunately I am not the only creature answering his call of loneliness.

I see movement below on the street, between the craters of jagged asphalt where the old gas lines burst to create gasping eddies where the sandflow splits. Crawling, joints all akimbo, weaving with the slurry of sands, hungry and relentless, an elderbeast. The man with the absurd red cape is unaware. He appears armed and capable, but out of place in our cruel desolation. He continues his relaxed exploration while the vertebral tail whips about low and playfully. He will quickly become a meal under the current trajectory of events.

My fingers move swiftly, pulling a bolus from my satchel and nocking it into the sling of my tool. I float the bead over a fallen metal sign and release. Loud clang slashes the dusty silence, turning the man’s head. He ducks behind the service counter, alert. Now the mutual hunt begins. Now two predators can meet on equal footing.

From this vantage I can see the absurd red cape flapping through the wreckage of the bank’s outer wall. The two converge at the jutting spines of concrete, facing each other between cracks in the gusty sands. The beast snarls, ululating its fetid gullet about in boastful warning. The two figures dive in and out of the sands, disappearing under the thick currents splashing and bearing down on them. A tide of rage and regret.
A staccato snapping rises amidst the turmoil. My ears perk up under my wrappings. The echo of the snapping, not from the dull concrete walls of this ruined street, but all from the air in all directions.

I slink up to the crossbars of a brittle antenna stub and scan the landscape. Off the other side of the roof, I see another whip of vertebrae flick above the sandline. Then another. The first beast is a scout, a distraction from the rest of the pack approaching in stealth. The stranger may be capable of fighting a single elderbeast, but his victory will reveal only a maelstrom of gnashing hungry mouths, spiraling teeth piercing his fine leather wrappings and sinking deep into his healthy, enclaver flesh. 

I reach for another bolus, but my fingers freeze. Noise will make the situation decidedly less safe, silence demands my obedience. Instead, my fingers dive into the satchel to find the stash of herba and worm a pungent lump past my head wrappings, nesting it against my gums. A surge of green washes over my vision, light becomes faster and air thinner, gravity less demanding. 

My legs are in motion already, hands lowering me towards the churning ocean of dust, which is less opaque now and moving in a pattern that splits and caresses me, welcoming my body’s insertion. Fence posts and parking meters support my swift toes, carrying me in a nimble arc to the street corner just under cover of the sandline. I flick a latch, smartly placed long ago, the tiniest of clicks dropping a barricade from the storefront overhang.

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A discreet smile under my wrappings squeezes forth a gush of green tasting saliva, invigorating my eyes and ears and tingling my skin everywhere my wrappings slide tightly across my movements. The sands pause their gushing, particles briefly still in the air reveal the trail of flickering tails, the staccato of clacking claws. One raises its head and bursts forth a chittering screech, searching for an alternate route through. It moves northward, each gristly body swaying to follow like a school of hideous fish.

Feet vaulting from a canopy, sprinting along a window ledge to the corner. I am wind, splitting the sands like a messenger god from those books, ancients of the ancients. I rush to deliver a message of denial, diversion. A trickster in the bone mist, silent laughter sent moments into the future, to a safe resolution when words once again reunite with sound. When feet reunite with brain.

The blur of my fingers cuts the rope, spreading a flapping colorful wall of tattered, dusty rainbow flags across the pack’s path. The sands swirl away from the display, leaving the beasts disoriented, pawing and snapping at the soft cacophony of fabrics. Old forgotten symbols of what once was important. Struggles for identity and dignity in a world on the brink of collapse. 

Well, those proud warriors got the last laugh. According to The Fall of The American Dream by post-modern historian Dan Pfifer, as populations consolidated, overcrowding and dwindling resources triggered the queer epigenome, resulting in a surviving population that is now upwards of 80% non-heterosexual. It turns out in the end that contrary to the slovenly rants of the final religious zealots, homosexuality was not the cause of natural disasters, but the human-caused climate catastrophe was in fact the cause of widespread homosexuality. Now the United Conglomerate of Americanada practically begs its citizens to procreate, offering incentives and subsidies and lifetime discount programs. Few partake, there are already enough consumers in the settlements as it is. And really, continuance of this species barely seems an engaging goal at this point in history.

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Nobody has the stamina to have “hope for the children” anymore, anyway.

Below, the elderbeasts turn and toil in confusion like their idiot progenitors, unable to process the sights and sounds of a vibrant world. With a chuckle, my feet spin on the smooth endcap of a metal post and swing towards a graceful exit. But confidence has never been my friend, and one small toe curls to grip where an unexpected divot offered up only air. Gravity embraces me, the world rushes upwards towards me like a long lost lover. 

Remember you were here with me, once. Here on the ground, before you left for your distant tower. Remember, we were one. Born of sand, one day to become sand again. Return to me, lover. 

But I reject the seduction of unbearable lightness and a pinky finger compensates for the failures of its distant brother, whipping out to catch that cruel divot. My chest pounds hard against the post, ringing out like a tuning fork amidst a tympany of drum skins fluttering in the wind. The creatures below fall motionless and I feel their vertebral plates angle towards me, searching for a new potential target for their ire. Not ire, just simple hunger.

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They only want to feed and fuck and live and rejoice, the same as us all. But I will not be their meal, at least not today. Lithe limbs slither me back up the post and along to a rusty fire escape.

Green bile churns in my stomach, warning me that the herba is losing its patience with me. Slipping fingers drag me skyward back to the rooftop, safely above the sandline, and tear at the wrappings covering my mouth. My body tumbles forward into a pool of violent heaving. I feel the dry air on my wet skin, terrifying and refreshing at once. I pull the wrappings back over the still wet mouth, sticky and acrid air filling my nose. 

A shot rings out on the next street over, followed by two more, then a rising victory call lets me know one has died so the other may live. The absolute hubris of these scavengers, but a part of me is glad he has survived. I don’t root for the death of anyone. 

I peer out over the edge to see the red fluttering cape disappearing up the hill. 

“Goodbye, stranger,” bubbles from my cracked lips. 

I return to the library and listen to the dull, wet static on the radio, yearning strangely for contact. I am unclear why this man with the absurd cape captures my thoughts. He is a capitalist, a tourist, a consumer sent to finish consuming what little we have left in the bones of this city. This heaving skeleton, once a global icon of progress. 

If I wanted company I could elicit the warmth of any number of people at the station. The Embers are always more than glad to indulge in mutual hedonism, often with very little negotiation or repercussion. If I wanted closeness I could call upon Shattered Wind, but that would be predatory of me. I am no predator. Everyone deserves to be safe, to find an equilibrium amongst the natural churn of the ecosystem.

I suddenly resent the alternate implication:  that I if I am not predator then I am prey. That there is only the stark binary of aggressor and victim. If I had the choice I would be an anti-predator, halting the progress of brutality. I would be a flora that sedated, that released euphoria into a locale. I would be a diversion, a confusion, an indulgence of contented solitude, free of the survivalist interaction that involves continuous take or be taken from, possession or dispossession. I would be the moment of sunset, a release from the heat and exposure before the dangers of the dark, cooling sands are released.

I continue to dream up unattainable taxonomies for myself until my racing heart meets the silence of the books and I flutter into cool, dark dreams.