An Unforgiving Desert – Chapter 19

“We’re lost, Skylar! We should hunker down and wait this out!” Kalvin stumbles next to me, and I struggle to stay upright. The parachute wrapped around our shoulders connects us, so whatever he does affects me and vice versa.

I reach down to pull him up and wrap my arm around his.

“Just a little farther! The sun will be up soon, and maybe we’ll be able to see through the storm!”

Every time I raise my voice over the howling wind, more sand ends up in my mouth. Blech! It crunches between my teeth, and there’s not enough moisture in my body to fix that.

“We should test the sand again. Right?” he insists. “It’s been a while, and we could use a win.”

But I’m tired of trying. I’ve been sticking my hands in the sand about every thirty minutes on this hike, and I’ve had no luck yet.

“We could use a win, but we’re not going to get it.”

“Come on, princess. Show some positive thinking!”

“I’m one-hundred percent positive that’s a waste of time, Kalvin. How’s that for positive thinking?”

He merely glares at me.

“I could have told you to eat shit,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. “It would have been more in-character, that’s for sure.”

‘Eat shit’ was my first instinct.

“Just do it.” His voice has lost all humor, and I regret not complying in the first place.

I release some of the parachute from around my shoulders, enough to give me room to kneel and drive my free hand into the sand.

Are we still alone out here? The sand entity, whatever it is, could be long gone.

But my hand tingles. It’s not acute shocks like last time but a sensation of pins and needles, as if my hand has fallen asleep.

“There’s… something.”

I squint my eyes against the sand in the air and look around. Visibility is down to a few meters, and my exposed skin is starting to smart from the sandblasting. Maybe we’re close to this alien being, but I can’t tell. Do the sandstorms bring them out? Are they connected to the sandstorms? I have no idea.

“Something? What?” Kalvin hooks his hand under my armpit and drags me up.

“I think we’re close.”

But which direction should we go to see if the entity is nearby? It could be anywhere, including deep below us.

I decide on the process of elimination.

“Stand right here and don’t face any other direction!” I release myself from the shelter of the parachute and let out a quick yelp as the sand pummels me from all directions. I tie my head towel in a firm knot before I head to Kalvin’s left to put my hands in the sand. Same slight, tingly feeling. Behind Kalvin, there’s nothing. To his right, nothing. I hurry to his front and jam my hands in the sand. Okay, I have the tingles here too.

I point towards the two places I felt tingling and run back to Kalvin. “There. That direction!”

Getting back into the protection of the parachute is a relief. It may not hold out for the whole storm, but it’s better than no shelter.

We hike up the nearby dunes until, finally, something has gone right… or really, really wrong. I’m not sure.

A pillar of sand stretches from the dunes up into the sky in front of us. It whirls in a tight circle, almost like the images I’ve seen of tornados.

“Oh shit,” Kalvin shouts. “This doesn’t look good for us!”

“Let me try something.” I drop into the sand next to him and stick my hand in. This time the jolt is strong enough for all the hair on my body to stand up.

“Help us, please,” I say, directing all my words and thoughts at the sand. I don’t know if that helps, but I’m willing to try. “We want to get to the rocks. You took our compass, and we’re lost.” Then I close my eyes and try to picture what I want to say. Rocky outcroppings in sand appear in my thoughts. I can’t tell if it’s my own memories of photos I’ve seen or if the sand is suggesting them. Doesn’t matter.

“Yes! Where is that? Please help us.”

The tingling in my body increases for a moment before it lessens along with the wind. When I open my eyes, the pillar of sand has moved away from us and waits.

I withdraw my hands from the sand, and my eyes tingle with dry tears. My fingernails are black and blue, and the skin of my fingertips is bright red.

Kalvin pulls me into a hug, folding me against his chest. It’s the safest I’ve felt in days.

“I think I made progress,” I say, tipping my face up to him. “We should follow it.”

“Follow it?” The unspoken ‘Are you insane?’ makes me smile.

“Yeah!” I shout over the noise of the wind. “Follow it!”

My hands have now gone beyond hurting to numb. I try to grab the parachute and pull it around me, but I can’t get my fingers to grasp the slippery fabric. Kalvin wraps his arm over my shoulder, pulling the parachute around us as we trudge on behind the whirling sand.

The parachute whips around our legs, and my face stings from the pelting sand. Are we going in the right direction? I have no idea. I don’t even know what happened back there if any communication occurred. Who the fuck knows?

But at this point, I have to put my faith in the universe. There’s nothing much else I can do. We’re out of water, and we’ve been walking for the equivalent of two days. We have no compass and no radio. This is our only hope.

This is our only chance to make it out of this alive.

—-

The pillar of sand twists in front of us for so long I lose track of time. We follow along until it stops.

“Is it going to kill us now? Hide the evidence?” Kalvin’s voice is so ragged, I barely recognize it. He sinks to his knees on the sand, pulling the parachute with him and yanking me sideways.

“Kalvin!” I panic as I watch him fall to his side with the wind still raging around us.

No, no, no. I place my fingers on his neck to check his heart rate, and it’s thready and rapid. Not good.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I place my hands on his cheeks and force him to look up at me. “Kalvin, you’re going to be okay. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll figure it out.”

The wind howls, so I tear my eyes from Kalvin. Why is the pillar just sitting there?

I wrap Kalvin in the remaining parachute and stand up to face the sand. It doesn’t make a move. If it wants to kill me as it did to all those other people, then fine. Get it over with. This is the literal worst week I’ve ever had, and the military stole my goddamned ship over a year ago. I thought that was bad. Turns out, I had another think coming.

My body aches, and air rips through my dry-as-a-bone lungs as I drop to the sand and make contact with my hands. I push into the sand, all the way up to my elbows, hoping the extra surface area of contact will make this process easier. My heart skips a beat as the shocks run through me. I smack my lips and taste copper.

“We need land or rocks… and water. And you need to stop this wind. It’s too much. Please,” I stress. Please. Give us a chance to survive.

The pillar of sand vibrates, the wind comes to an abrupt stop, and the sand falls in a giant lump, knocking me backwards. All the air leaves my lungs in one big huff. I blink my eyes and try to claw air back into me as I watch the sky turn from dark red to morning blue. Daybreak is coming, and the storm is over.

“Sky?” Kalvin whispers. I’m not sure if he sees the sky or if he’s calling for me. But he’s alive and conscious, so that’s good.

I roll over and push myself up… and gasp. We are ten meters from the rocks. I couldn’t see it through the sandstorm! The sand led us right here, and it listened to me when I asked it to stop with the wind.

What about water?

I crawl over to Kalvin. “Hey, we’re right next to the rocks. Any chance you can walk just a little more?”

I’m too exhausted to carry him, and I have a feeling he’s pretty heavy with all that muscle.

“Help me up,” he says, nodding and trying to move his arms from inside the parachute. “I can drag myself.”

I smile as he gets to his feet and throws his arm over my shoulder. “See? I told you I would figure it out. I’ll look for water next.”

We limp to the rocks, and I’m impressed by how far they reach into the sky. They must be about forty or fifty meters tall, and it looks like they stretch about a kilometer into the distance. Maybe there’s water here. This might have been underwater once in the past. There could be natural springs in the crevasses.

Don’t get your hopes up, Skylar.

I set Kalvin down on a rocky ledge just high enough to sit on. He slumps back against the rock and lifts his eyes to the sky. “The storm is almost gone.” He breathes heavily for a few labored breaths. “We need to hold on until rescue. What about… cats?”

“Sand tigers,” I fill in. “Yes, big cats. Keep an eye out. They’ll come out looking for food now that the storm is over. Be right back.”

I use the rocky ledge to brace myself as I drag my ass around the perimeter, looking for water. I don’t want to go too far, just in case. I have the backpack, which has all the emergency flares and the shovel that I can use as a weapon, but it also has the empty water bottles.

After ten minutes of searching, I’m ready to give up, though. What was it my mom used to say? My brain is fuzzy for a moment before I remember. Right! You can’t squeeze blood from a stone. If there was water once on this continent, it’s not here anymore. I can ask for water, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get it.

When I turn to head back to Kalvin, my brain spins, and the world blackens at the edges. No. I snap my hand out and hold myself up against the rock wall.

No, Universe. No way. I have to hold on until rescue. Fuck you and your shitty desert. You’re not taking Kalvin or me.

But I take one step, and my legs can’t hold my weight anymore.

“Skylar!” Kalvin’s voice is terrified, and the sound brings a rush of adrenaline to my system. I force my legs to carry me back around the rocks, and my knees knock when I see Kalvin. Two sand tigers have him penned in on each side. They dip their heads low, and their bodies slink forward, muscles rippling under their dusty orange fur. Their ribs are visible along their sides, so Kalvin is looking like a tasty meal right about now.

Kalvin’s face is white, and I can tell from several meters away that he’s on death’s doorstep if his fight-or-flight response gets tripped again.

“The flare,” he calls out.

Shit. Right. We have two flares — a ground flare and another that can be shot in the air. I don’t want to use either of them until rescue comes, but this is an emergency.

I drop the backpack without making too much noise. The sand tigers probably smell me, but noise will call their attention, and I don’t want their attention until it’s time to scare them away. My hands are tender and sore, and they ache as I quickly rummage around in the bag until I find the flare. The last time I used one of these was ages ago in my first round of flight school training. Hopefully, nothing has changed since then.

I rip off the top, turn it over, and bang the striker against the top. Once, twice. Come on. I strike again and again.

“Come on, you motherfucker!”

Well, if the sand tigers didn’t know I was there before, they do now. Their heads whip around as I light the flare. It shoots bright red flames from the end, and smoke billows up and out. The flare was so dry that once it’s lit, that’s it. It’s going to burn fast.

I swing the flare left and right and scream at the sand tigers. Their heads cock to the side.

Guess what? Hungry sand tigers think flares are no big deal. They laugh in the face of flares.

I am not amused. But at least now I’m more interesting than Kalvin.

The bright light of the flare, coupled with my lightened head, makes me nauseous. I slap my left hand over my mouth as I swing the flare at them again. One tiger backs off, but the other is feeling frisky today. She woke up this morning ready to rumble.

My stomach leaps into my throat as the tiger springs, heading for my mid-section. I jab the flare forward, and it connects with the upper chest of the tiger. The impact knocks me backwards, and I crash to my butt and knock my head on the rocky ground. Squealing like mad, the sand tiger rolls and skids away. The air is heavy with the stench of burned fur and blood, and nails scratch the rough ground. Is she coming back for me?

The flare is no longer in my hand!

I grab the back of my head and try to sit up, but the world spins again. A high-pitched whine is all I can hear. Is that my life ending? Is my brain damaged now?

“Skylar? Skylar! Are you okay?” Kalvin is pressing his hands to my face. “The cats are gone, but… Oh no. No.”

“Help,” I whisper. I can barely focus on the bright red blood all over my hand.

Kalvin’s head turns to the sky. I’m afraid to close my eyes and sink into the blackness, but I can’t keep them open.

“Shit,” he swears, scrambling away from me. I turn my head to the side and watch him crawl over to the backpack. He tips everything out, and huffing a frustrated breath, he spreads everything from the backpack on the rocky gravel with his hand until he finds what he’s looking for.

“Yes.” Coming up to a half-kneel, down on one knee, he lifts his arm, and shoots a flare into the sky.

“Am I dying?” I whisper, trying to form the words with a mouth so dry, it cracks and bleeds.

“No,” he says, crawling back to me and pulling my head to his lap. He untwists my towel from around my head, folds it so the bloody part is tucked away, and replaces it on my injury, putting pressure to stop the bleeding. “We’re about to be rescued.”

The high-pitched whine I heard earlier turns into a scream as a shuttle rockets over the top of the rocky outcropping looming above us. Kalvin folds me close to him and shields me from the blast of hot wind and flying sand as the shuttle drops to the ground.

I get a quick glimpse of the shuttle door opening, and I catch my breath.

Vivian! And Mat! Mat is her fourth consort, and he lives on Sonoma, out on the northern continent where all the wineries are. I shouldn’t be surprised to see him, but I am. I’m surprised to see them both. I thought I would never see them again.

Two other people spill from the shuttle and shoot rifles into the distance. The scream of sand tigers follows quickly afterward. I guess there were more than I saw.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” The words rush from Vivian’s lips as she slides to a stop and kneels beside me. “Skylar,” she says, bursting into tears and tipping her forehead down to mine. “Thank the heavens you’re alive.”

“Barely,” I croak out.

“She fell and hit her head,” Kalvin relays to Vivian. “She’ll need a stretcher.”

“Kalvin can hardly walk,” I say, squeezing Vivian’s hand.

“Okay.”

She waves Mat over, and he gently picks me up from Kalvin’s lap. Mat is mute, so he has no words for me but a reassuring smile. I appreciate his steady silence.

“Thanks,” I say, and he nods as he carries me to the shuttle. Vivian supports Kalvin right behind us.

Once I’m strapped in, and Kalvin is beside me, the other people board, and the parting view of circling tigers and sand for kilometers on end is one I’m happy to leave behind.