Chapter Text
Emily wakes up. She gets dressed. She makes instant coffee, and grimaces as she drinks it. She hauls her daily bucket of water from the pump outside. She cleans up some litter the wind has carried in. She swears pleasantly at the crows on the building's roof. She does not think about the silence.
She heads back inside and grabs a can of something nonperishable, heats it up and eats without tasting. The fresh produce section spoiled some time ago, but she still hasn't gotten it all cleaned out. She brings a wheelbarrow over and loads it up with rotting apples. The crows flock around her as she dumps the fruit in the lot behind the store. If there was water, maybe she could use them as fertilizer or something like that. If there was water.
The pump is starting to rust, and every day it's a little harder to move the handle. Maybe she should be scared of that. She doesn't really feel much about it though. She doesn't really have any connections anymore. The pump and the little water it brings is the only thing holding her to this ten-house town. When the water goes, she'll vanish into the desert and find another place to blow in--or maybe she'll drift off into the lone and level sands. Maybe she'll disappear like footsteps before the bone-dry breeze. Maybe she'll just crumble into the dunes and debris and empty, open silence.
She shakes her head and takes a jug of oil from the store, heading out to the pump and carefully wrangling the old metal into working order. There's no way to tell how much water is left for the pump to bring up, but she hasn't encountered any sputtering yet, so she should have at least a couple days. Maybe she has more time. Maybe she has less and before she knows it she's going to shrivel up and float off like the plastic bags she keeps finding in the yard.
Her shirt is off and there are flecks of rust mixing with sweat all over her arms and back by the time the pump's moving smoothly again. She considers trying to clean herself off, but there's still plenty of work to be done. The shutters on the store's windows are loose, and the rattling is driving her crazy. One of the houses that cluster a short distance from the store has collapsed, and there's good material to be salvaged. The stack of firewood next to the store's heater is dwindling, and though the days are filled with sun, the nights are cold enough that she shivers and shifts without sleep. And, as always, there is the stinging sand, ever-present and endless, heaping in corners with withered dreams and demons and other things that the wind blows in.
She is not yet one of those things, but every day, the wind tugs harder, weightless, winged, waiting.
***
It is morning again. She wakes up. She pulls her hair back into a messy ponytail. She drags on an old pair of shorts and a ragged t-shirt. She stumbles downstairs, still half asleep. She shades her eyes against the summer sun and blinks as a rough wind rises. She does not think about the silence.
She draws another creaky bucket of water from the pump, then heads back inside to the gutted-out kitchen in the back room of the store. The tank for the gas stove is low--not empty yet, but low enough that the stove coughs like a sick child as she tries to coax it to life. There's more gas in the closet, though. It won't run out until long after the water is gone.
She boils the water for coffee and ramen, chewing a nut bar as she waits. Her diet's about as out of balance as it gets, too many carbs and salts and not enough protein and fiber, but it's keeping her alive, along with the vitamins she pulled from the store's skeleton shelves. She drinks the coffee and swallows a handful of vitamins, then eats half a cup of ramen--she can't stomach any more.
The smell of gas lingers in the kitchen long after she's shut the stove off. It smells bitter, acrid, like some kind of dying dream. Like the mummified ghosts that crumbled to dust without water. Like the desert, like failure, like giving up.
There's a broom resting against the wall just inside the shop's door. She grabs that and heads outside, clearing away the sand that had gathered around the pump and the firewood, dancing in on last night's storm and nesting in the silence. It's hard work; not because her muscles are angry at her, but because the silence is making her twist and tense and turn to look over her shoulder as her skin crawls. She tries to laugh a little, to talk while she sweeps, but it's a hollow sound--a small sound wilting in this desert dressed up as a ten-house town. The silence smiles, and curls up, and waits, and when her voice trails off, scratched and cracking in the brittle air, it oozes back into her footsteps and rubs up against her legs, cracks open her mouth and drips down her throat.
It tastes like defeat--or rather, like giving up.
The air rustles above her and a shadow swoops down to perch on the pump, watching her with bright, beady eyes. The crow caws, throaty and harsh, and the silence snaps in half. Several other birds land nearby, cocking their heads and uttering inquisitive croaks, and Emily finally finds it in her to grin back. There's a part of her that almost cringes, waiting for the silence to crawl back in, to drag her away, but it doesn't even echo around, just sighs and slinks off into the dunes.
When she goes back inside, she makes sure to leave some more decomposing produce out as thanks to the black birds.
***
It isn't morning yet, but Emily can't sleep. She sits on a block of cement at the edge of the yard, where dirt and desert meet. She's got a wooden pole in one hand, the old handle of a broken rake, that she's using to trace words and patterns in the sand--god, she misses writing. It's quiet out, but predawn stillness is different from the silence that stifles and chokes during the day. Predawn silence is gentle, tranquil, like the world is resting--nothing like the oppressive scorching silence that beats down with the sun, burning in a mockery of dreadful anticipation.
A breeze coasts through the yard, and Emily shivers. She should go back inside. The darkness out beyond the run-down houses is starting to turn gray, and she can hear the crows stirring in their nests. An early riser flaps down to perch on the pump again. The pump is a popular place for them to perch. Another bird settles on the ground by the woodpile, tugging on something between two logs with a quick jerk of its head.
Emily squints.
It's a piece of paper, crumpled and sand-specked. The wind must have blown it in overnight.
The crow loses interest and hops away toward the remains of the rotting apples, and Emily stands and crosses the yard. She kneels, picks up the page and shakes off the sand. Black ink wanders across the pale page, Times New Roman hiking trails in a wild white wasteland, but it's still too dark to make out the words. She folds it up and tucks it into a pocket. She'll save it for later--for the heat of the day when the sun is scorching the sands and there's nothing to do but wait--which Emily has never been very good at.
She doesn't even know what the paper says, but it doesn't really matter. It could be a tax form, and she'd still read it. Whatever it is, it has to be better than the dull creeping monotony of the midday sun and whistling wind and swirling sand and the ever-present lurking silence.
***
It is noon. Or maybe it isn't. It might be later. It could be earlier, but probably not. It might be noon, or it might be almost sunset by now. Emily can't tell, not with the way she's got the shutters locked tight against the wind. Most likely it's somewhere in between.
Her body doesn't have much to say about time. It's not hungry, but that doesn't mean anything anymore. Her biological clock's all screwed up. She hasn't been sleeping well, or even eating much lately, trying to make the cup noodles and nut bars last. There's not a lot of them left, but at least when they're all gone she'll have a couple weeks' leeway before her body gives out. Not like with the water.
She stands and begins to pace the room, flinching every time a gust slams into the shutters. Most of the windows still have glass, but if the western shutters break, she'll be feeling the full force of those howling winds. Already drifts of sand have piled themselves in the corners and below the shuttered windows, and the floor is rough and gritty beneath her feet. From somewhere outside comes the screech of metal on metal, and Emily winces and covers her ears.
She's nervous. She's incredibly on edge, she knows this. There's something about being trapped inside during a sandstorm that gets to her in a way that nothing else really has so far. She's gotten very good at blocking certain things out, pushing them to the back of her mind, but the whistling wind-driven sand makes that impossible. She can't stay still, but she can't go anywhere either. And in the dark of the shuttered, shaking store, it's much harder to not think about all the things she can't afford to think about.
She flops down on the bed and closes her eyes as the mattress sags. God, she's bad at this. She wasn't made to sit around inside. She jumps around too much, switching from idea to idea, restless unless she gives her hands or legs or brain something to do. She fidgets. Shifts. Taps. Anything but staying still with nothing to do.
She sighs and rolls over, then halts at the crinkling sound that follows. The paper, she remembers, and reaches into her pocket and pulls it out. She unfolds it and scoots over to the one shaft of light coming through the crack between the northern shutters.
The page is torn in places, faded and stained by sun and mud. Most of it is illegible, but there's still one paragraph in the middle of the page where she can still make out the words.
"So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever. With masks down, I walk, talking to the moon, to the neutral impersonal force that does not hear, but merely accepts my being. And does not smite me down."
Emily stares at the paper for a moment. Reads it over again. Sits. Stares at the boards of the far wall. Looks down at the page and reads it again.
"I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon..."
She stands. She walks over to the western windows. She places a hand on a shutter and feels it shiver beneath her fingertips.
She makes a decision.
***
It is morning. The pump is creaking again. Emily has drawn a good four buckets out of it already today, and transfered those to plastic water bottles in a backpack, trying it on after each bottle. Water is heavy, but she's gonna need to carry as much as she can. The pack is about two thirds of the way full, and she staggers when putting it on. She can fit more in there, though. She has to fit as much as she can.
She's leaving. She's walking away from this empty shell of a ten-house town. She's heading off across the desert to see where her feet take her, before the wind blows in and chooses for her. She's getting out while she still can, while the pump still draws enough water to fill her bottles, while her legs and arms and eyes still move, while her determination lasts.
The pump starts to sputter after the next bucket, and what comes up is dark and grimy and full of mud. It doesn't matter, though, because her pack is filled with all the water weight she can carry, and tonight she'll eat one last dinner in the store's gutted kitchen, and then she'll snatch a few hours of sleep, and then she'll wake and say her goodbyes and start walking westward in the blue-silver of the cold moon. She'll walk to the horizon, away from the rising sun, and without a single glance behind.
She's leaving, and when she goes, she won't be coming back.
***
It is afternoon, and Emily has been walking since well before dawn.
There's a shape in the sand up ahead, a rusted-over horse trailer half-covered by the sand. It provides a thin sliver of shade on its eastern edge, ever-growing as the afternoon rolls on. She takes the respite gladly, slipping her pack off and leaning back against the warm aluminum. She allows herself an hour's rest and three sips of water, along with a handful of salted nuts. Then she packs everything up and steps out of the trailer's shadow.
She takes a moment to stare over the sands, doubting. The mounds and dunes roll on, receding into a dream-like distance, hills and valleys resolving into a vast plain that seems too flat to exist in this world. The sky above seems to mimic that plain, curving around in a great expanse, a rounded lid of its own. There is not a cloud in sight. There has never been a cloud in sight. The sun tracks steadily westward. The wind sighs distractedly and then lies down to rest. Around her, the silence hangs, and echoes, and waits.
For all she knows, there are no other people in the world.
Emily smiles. "Here's to finding some."
She shoulders her pack and begins to walk, scuffing her feet in the sand, eyes fixed on the vanishing points of the horizon, an infinity away. She walks for a long time, throwing heartbeats at the sky.