Sand: Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey Page A

Springston’s Shantytown. Conner reached the lip, dumped his sand, and watched plumes of his hard work spiral toward the distant mountains beyond the dunes. Go , he urged the sand. Go and never come back .
    As he watched his last load swirl on the wind, he considered what sand and man had in common. Both were forever disappearing over the horizon. Sand to the west and man to the east. More and more of the latter in recent years. Entire families. He’d seen them from the ridge heading off toward No Man’s Land with their belongings piled up on their backs, fleeing the bombs and the violence, the wars between neighbors, the uncertainty. It was the uncertainty that drove men away. Conner knew that now. He used to see the beyond as some great unknown, but the fickle tortures of life among the dunes were worse. What could be certain was that elsewhere was different . This was a fact. A compelling one. It drew souls to the east as fast as Springston could birth them.
    A gust of wind whipped his hair into a frenzy and tugged at his ker. Conner turned away from the view and saw Gloralai heading up with her own sagging haulpole. He gave her a hand dumping the buckets.
    “Thanks,” she said, wiping her forehead. “You done for the day?”
    He nodded. “You?”
    Gloralai laughed. Her hair hung down over her freckled face in sweaty clumps. She untied what was left of her ponytail, gathered the loose strands off her face, and began tying it back up. “I probably got two more hauls. Depending how much I spill. Don’t know how you haul as fast as you do.”
    “It’s ’cause I don’t want to be here.” He hoped the here didn’t sound as general as he meant it. It was more than school or the pump-pit. It was all of Shantytown. He picked up his pole and adjusted one of the buckets in its notch so it wouldn’t slide out. “C’mon. We’ll haul one load each, and you can be done for the day.”
    Gloralai smiled and finished knotting her hair. She was seventeen, a year younger than Conner, bronze-skinned and pretty with dark freckles across her nose. Conner didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but part of him didn’t want to leave the pump right then. And hauling one more load didn’t feel like hell when it wasn’t mandatory, when he could choose.
    Over Gloralai’s shoulder, he spotted Ryder trudging up the slope. The boy seemed to catch this moment between his two classmates. He turned his haulpole sideways, the buckets heavy and swaying dangerously, and Conner had to dodge out of the way. He danced down the loose sand and nearly lost his footing.
    “Watch it,” Gloralai said.
    “Fuck off,” Ryder told her.
    Gloralai caught up with Conner and the two of them marched down with their empty buckets. Out across the jumbled rooftops of Shantytown, a hammer beat a rhythmic tune and a gull cried out. Conner tried to soak it all up, the sights and sounds of home, as he followed Gloralai back into the tunnel.
    “You were serious,” she said, eyeing him. “I thought you were eager to get out of here.”
    “Hey, I figure you’re itching to go as well. Maybe if I haul a load for you, you’ll buy me a beer at the Dive Bar.”
    “You think so?” she asked, smiling.
    Conner shrugged. At the bottom of the zigzag of warped planks, the groaning monster nodded its sad head and pumped water from the earth. It bobbed up and down while Conner and Gloralai stood in line to get their buckets filled. As the sand heaped in and spilled over, Conner watched a diver emerge near the pump and hand tools up to an assistant. Must be down there repairing a connector rod or part of the pipeline. That’s the life Conner should’ve had. If he’d made it into dive school, things would’ve been different. A diver, not a sissyfoot. Just like his brother and sister, out there scavenging and finding the spoils that cities were made of. Maybe then he wouldn’t have gotten worn down, would’ve spent more time out of the wind, wouldn’t be