By Evangeline Giaconia
I cracked my eyes open to the peck of a beak against my cheek. Stared at the crow that was staring at me with a beady black eye, shocked as I was to find me alive.
I spat out a mouthful of sand, making the bird flutter backward in surprise. I felt like I’d swallowed gallons of it; sand crusted over my eyes and mouth and stung the inside of my nose. Never mind the fact that I was buried up to my armpits in a wave.
Under a starlit sky, I wriggled my shoulders and arms loose enough to lever myself up and see I’d washed up in the crest of a sand wave, the frozen remnants of which still encompassed most of me. For a heart-stopping second, I couldn’t feel my arms or wiggle my toes. Then I realized that was panic logic, and I could feel them after all—feel the weight of the sand weighing them down.
I hauled myself forwards, kicking my graceless way to the surface, finally breaching the wave with enough force that I toppled down over the peak of it. The crow squawked and fluttered down with me, and I rolled to an aching stop flat on my back.
It was dusk in the desert. Around me peeked the tops of saguaro cacti, swamped by the wave I’d rolled in on. Flotsam was scattered along the edge of the wave: sticks and trash and dead things, swept out with the sands and back in again. The only living animals were me and the crow.
“Goddamn,” I croaked. My throat felt like someone else’s throat; my voice sounded several octaves deeper. The crow hopped over to peck at my bare toes, barely flinched when I kicked out.
Those goddamn bone-bleached cowards. I never thought they’d make good on the promises they’d scrawled all over town in the middle of the night. The last message had been across the wall of my house, letters so big my bedroom window had just been a smear of red paint.
VANESSA REEVE, YOU’LL DROWN DRY
Well. Some of us die harder than that. They should have put a bullet in my head when they had the chance.
I picked myself up, uncertainly testing my arms and legs. I was bruised and scraped and sand-burned, but no bones were broken. Cowards had snatched me from my bed, sans shoes, socks, or brassiere. I was in my goddamn nightgown and bonnet. How the bonnet had stayed on in the waves, I had no clue. It must have been an act of divine intervention.
Just like me somehow surviving being tossed into the ocean of sand.
I looked around the desert, trying to keep hold of myself. Hope was not lost. Where there was a wave, there were beach-walkers. Trawling through trash, looking for treasure. They came out at dusk, the only comfortable time to traverse the sands.
I started walking west along the sculpted edge of the wave, with no idea of my whereabouts in relation to Wellspring. Despite having been nearly assassinated and despite being in my nightdress looking for merciful strangers, I was still struck by the beauty of the wave that I’d nearly drowned in. Lizards and insects that had made the crest skittered out of the shallow sand, darting to the closest rock formations and dipping into the middle leaves of aloes as big as me.
The crow zipped after a too-slow anole, injured by the wave, and fell behind to tear it into dinner-sized pieces. I carried on, scanning the sand.
Treasure hunters kept coming for a reason. Sometimes things of value washed up in these sands. For example: I waded out into the soft sand a ways to grasp a wooden handle. It took a bit of wiggling, but I hauled out a shovel.
A shovel was one of the better things I could’ve found in a wave. It was sound; I could trade it for transportation or use it as a weapon. But no one just leaves tools out when a wave is coming. If I were to take the shovel and dig, I was sure I’d come to its owner, sand-drowned. Somewhere.
I propped it over my shoulder and walked on. Worst came to worst, I’d walk my way home on tender feet and use my new shovel to bash Sam Jones’ brains in. And then I’d dig a garden.
Goddamn that man and his kin. Goddamn their wretched campaign, and goddamn every one of my neighbors who saw them coming to my home in the middle of the night and pulled their curtains tighter.
A sudden weight hauled the end of the shovel down, and I nearly tipped backward. The crow had perched himself on the join of the handle to the blade, lizard tail wriggling in his beak.
“Very well, then,” I told him. “But only on the understanding that I’ll eat you if it comes to it.”
I didn’t have to walk longer than an hour when I spotted what I was looking for. Or rather, who I was looking for. From this distance, they were only the silhouette of a strange tripod creature, two legs and a long detector arm skimming atop the sands.
They spotted me quick, tossed their detector in a skiff bobbing in the air beside them, and took out the unmistakable shape of a shotgun.
I couldn’t raise both hands without dropping the shovel and the crow. Instead, I put up one hand, waved it wide. “HELP,” I hollered, hoping they’d hear or at least extrapolate. “HELP! HELP!”
Finally, I heard them shout the same back, and lower the shotgun to their side—but not put it away entirely. I supposed it was good to know I hadn’t stumbled upon a complete idiot.
I trawled my way within shouting distance, then speaking distance, then seeing distance, under the bright moon. The treasure-hunter was a woman, I presumed, as old as I was with lines cutting a topographic map over her skin, gray hair streaked with black piled on her head. Broad-shouldered and slightly stooped, she wore standard wave-sifting gear: knee-high boots with linen pants stuffed into them, and a loose shirt and jacket wrapped with cloth at the sleeves to keep the sand out.
I stood a few paces back, and we evaluated each other. I attempted to forget about my purple nightdress and matching bonnet.
After a moment of what was likely not admiration, the woman settled her gun back into the skiff, nestled amongst scavenged junk. “You’re never Vanessa Reeve, are you?”
That took me by surprise; I’d never seen the woman in my life. “I am,” I told her. “Mayor of Wellspring.”
She nodded slowly. “Mayor of Wellspring, and wanted woman.” She pulled a square of paper from the floor of her skiff and unfolded an honest-to-god reward poster. The crime: THEFT OF TOWN COFFERS BY NIGHT.
“Horse shit,” I spat. The crow cawed in what I chose to interpret as agreement.
The woman grinned, revealing a gold tooth that added a hint of mischief to her smile. “I’ll say. For one, they say ‘armed and dangerous’. For another, they do not specify ‘clearly thrown directly from bed into the sand sea.’”
I laughed and shrugged, hefting the crow-laden shovel into the air. “Now, I’ll have you know I am very dangerous with this shovel. I am, in fact, planning a murder with it.”
The woman grinned wider. “That so? Nightdress and all, Mayor Reeve?”
I brushed some sand off my dress. “If I must.”
She guffawed, chucked the wanted poster into the skiff, and slipped out of her jacket, tossing it to me. The crow fluttered into the air, and I slipped it on, gratefully zipping it closed. “Thank you. Please call me Vanessa.”
“I’m Rosario Cruz,” she said. “Need a ride, Ness?
“I hate to drag you from your … surveying,” I said, shifting a box of scavenged junk off the skiff’s passenger seat. It was stuffed with sections of pipe, pop cans, metal scraps, and a scatter of rusted nails. I wedged it under Rosario’s metal detector and shotgun in the small back compartment, next to my shovel. The crow hopped stubbornly onto a tangle of plastic twine.
Rosario crammed herself into the cramped driver’s seat, which had a cushion covering the torn plastic. “This is just a hobby,” she said, wiping sand off her mirror. “Attempted assassination takes precedence over fishing for shit, I think.” She tossed another grin my way and stepped on the accelerator pedal a few times before the skiff finally lurched into arthritic motion. “Here’s what I’m thinking. I live a few miles thataway. We get you cleaned up, get some rest, and head to Wellspring at first light to see about that murder you’re planning.”
I was itching to get home tonight, but even I could see there was no sense in such a thing. Anger and spite had fueled me this far, but I’d almost died tonight. My body ached from being tumbled through the waves; my skin stung from the scrape of the sand.
“I’d be very grateful,” I told her.
She grinned as we sped up, dipping and skimming along the sand dunes as we pulled away from the wave’s edge. The sand-scattered wind whipped her hair from its bun and stung our cheeks. I pulled my bonnet lower and tucked my hands into my jacket sleeves.
“I’m happy to help!” she shouted to me, slipping on a pair of protective goggles. “You’re doing the right thing, fighting for those folks from across the waves!”
I hunched my shoulders, squinting against the gusts of sand. “That so? Seems like some don’t agree. On account of me ending up swimming in sand.”
Rosario slapped a hand on the skiff’s hood. “Don’t let those bastards get you down!”
Get me down. Get me drowned, more like.
Rosario raised her goggles to stare me in the eyes. “Hey! You’re still alive. And you know, it’s folks like me you’re fighting for.”
I straightened up, leaned closer to talk while she turned back to the wheel. “You’re a refugee?”
She nodded. “Sure am. Remember the big wave ten years ago?”
Only infants wouldn’t. The biggest wave in decades, it had buried Oasis under a mile of sand, leaving Wellspring, abruptly, the largest settlement for days. True hysteria had followed, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the ocean of sand had swallowed up the last farms.
I’d taken office a year later. It had been a bitter, ugly campaign that nearly ended in a duel with Sam Jones’ father. Benjamin Jones died in a wave the next month. The irony never registered with his son, clearly.
“I was one of those that made it out,” Rosario said. She leaned down to rummage between the seats and pulled a wide scarf from under a pile of metal scraps. “Here! Wind’s picking up!”
Gratefully, I wrapped it around my face and neck, and tucked my bare feet under me as the wind flung hard grit into our faces. It was too strong to keep talking and risk swallowing sand.
We made Rosario’s outpost before it got too cold. That’s the desert these days for you: only a brief window between extremes to be out skiffing on the sands. Nevertheless, I loved it when I wasn’t fighting for my life.
It was one of those outposts too tiny for a name, ramshackle and scavenged. Its continued existence, however, proved there was more to it than met the eye—defenseless settlements got raided before they could grow more than a few homes.
Rosario parked the skiff alongside a second skiff and a sled, chaining it down to a huge tire half-buried in the sand and tucking the key into her boot. She passed me my shovel and the shotgun and took up her metal detector and box of junk. The crow flew off into the night, presumably to find more lizards.
There were around seven makeshift dwellings, tucked against a semicircular sandwall built largely of plastic containers filled with more sand. A massive roll of metal sheeting was strapped to the top of the wall. In the event of a wave, they’d have minutes to unfurl it over the entire settlement, secured to anchors buried in the ground. It might save their lives … or it might prolong a slow death, buried alive in a bubble.
Some of the homes were rigs of canvas tents, some were sturdier plywood. Lights on in all of them—lots of folks in the outposts turned nocturnal to sleep through the killer sun.
Rosario’s home was clearly one of the older dwellings. Plywood bolstered by scavenged materials, old corrugated metal, and a tarp over the frame of the roof. Inside, it was a single room, but cozy and well-kept. A few chairs, thoroughly mended, sat around a small table, an old bookshelf served as pantry and shelf space, and a lovely bed rested in a corner, the nicest thing in the room.
“Mi casa, and all that,” said Rosario, turning on a flickering lamp. She noticed me eyeing the bed and winked. “Like it? Built it myself. I slept in my sleeping bag for a full year before I gathered all the wood. My back’s never been the same.”
“You’re a carpenter?” I asked.
“I am.”
“Why are you out here? You’d certainly be welcome in any town.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Rosario said. She put her box of junk on the table and propped the metal detector and shovel by the door. “Didn’t I say I was from Oasis? So’s most folks here. After the town was buried, wasn’t a soul who would take us in. And now I suppose I’m too spiteful to try again.”
I shook my head, disgusted. “Disgraceful. But then, it’s no mystery why Sam Jones moved in on me tonight. Emptied the town coffers, my ass. The first group of Redbud refugees are expected tomorrow.”
Rosario rummaged around her shelves and came back with a battered cookie tin and a jug of water. She opened the jug, eyed its contents, and then passed it to me. “You drink all that, now. We’re fine on water here, so don’t worry yourself about it.”
“Fine on water?” I asked skeptically, before guzzling it.
Rosario winked. “Outpost secret. Don’t tell.” She opened the cookie tin, revealing an eclectic assortment of first aid supplies. “Any open wounds from your swim, Ness?”
I took off her jacket, too exhausted to be embarrassed about the nightdress any further, and examined my arms and legs. The worst of it was a long, deep scratch down my right calf. I reached for the disinfectant, but Rosario batted my hand away and settled cross-legged on the floor with a groan of effort.
“I can do it,” I offered.
“I’m already down here,” she said, grinning. “But I might need some assistance getting back up. Now, let’s see.”
She cleaned the scratch quickly, then shook up a little bottle of liquid bandage. “One of my best finds,” she said, drawing out the little brush and painting it on over my skin, slicking the hairs down and sealing the cut tight. “Just rolled up on a wave one day. Like you, I suppose.”
“Lucky,” I said, wiggling my toes.
“Anything else while I’m down here?”
I opened my mouth to say, ‘no, thank you,’ caught the mischievous twinkle in her eye as she winked, and choked on a laugh instead of producing words.
“No, thank you,” I finally managed, once I had my breath back. “I’m afraid I’ve got sand in unmentionable places.”
“Don’t we all,” Rosario said, levering herself to her knees. As promised, I took her arms and assisted her back up. “Let me find you a towel and some clothes; you can brush off out back.”
Out back was a little gap between the house and the sandwall, cluttered with scavenged building material. I removed as much sand from my body as was humanly possible, changed into a set of clothes from Rosario, and gingerly removed my bonnet at last. Underneath, my hair-tie still somehow held my twists fast, wrapped around my forehead to sleep. I patted them carefully and decided then and there I’d never wear another bonnet again.
Hair inspected, wound sealed, sand lessened—it was as if I’d never been nearly assassinated.
Inside, Rosario was working at her table by a flickering electric lantern rigged to a homemade battery. She’d put the other lamp out, and when she glanced at me the orange-ish light turned her brown skin earthen. “Can you sleep with the light? We’re fairly nocturnal here.”
“I can,” I said, settling into her wonderful bed. She even had a quilt stitched up from scraps of clothing, burlap, and canvas, and I drew it over myself with great relief. “Thank you for your hospitality, Rosario Cruz. I’m lucky it was you I found out there. I’ll repay you any way I can.”
“I don’t need repayment.” She stared down at the tangle of wires and plastic she was prying apart with tweezers. “I just want you to take your town back, and maybe kill Sam Jones with your shovel. See, I don’t just walk the waves to scavenge.” She extricated a wire and set it in a pile, face drawn. “My sister wasn’t as lucky as me. Caught up in that big wave, buried. I remember her best on the edge of the sea. Before you called out, I thought …”
She shook her head, trailing off.
“That I was her,” I finished, staring at her weathered hands picking a knot out of a length of plastic net.
She smiled down at the table. “Ten years, and I’ve never quite stopped hoping.” She glanced over at me, that golden tooth glinting. “All the same, Ness, I find I’m glad it was you out there after all.”
She went back to sorting through scrap, and I watched her, eyes drooping. The orange of the flickering lantern grew blurry and diffuse, seeping into dreams of warm hands around a fire. I woke only once, when Rosario settled into bed next to me, and I drifted off again to the press of her leg against mine.
It’d been a long time since I woke up with anyone besides my dog, and my dog died last year. Rosario smelled faintly of mesquite syrup, plastered to my back like a second blanket. Pleasant as this was, it meant I was already drenched in sweat, for it was nearing mid-afternoon by the glare coming in through the cloudy windows.
Throwing off the quilt, I clambered right over Rosario to get out of bed, and she was already laughing as she woke. “Last person to leap out of bed with me that fast was my ex-husband.”
I snorted, taking off my bonnet and letting my hair loose at last. “He had a lot in common with my last partner, sounds like. Though I still talk to her.” The thought of Nectar made me pause. Had she known about the attempt on my life? Had she fallen for the lie Sam Jones was telling? It was unfathomable … but an assassination attempt had been, too.
“We’d best get you home,” said Rosario, reading my mind. “It’s hot as hell out there, but I suspect you won’t take no for an answer.”
I shook my head. “I’ve got to know what’s happening. Got to let everyone know I’m alive. Do you have a spare pair of shoes?”
“No,” Rosario said, levering herself out of bed, “but my neighbor will.” She gave me a pair of socks so the soles of my feet didn’t scald off, opened a makeshift parasol made of battered cardboard, and we ducked out into the burning sun. The crow, perched atop a cactus, greeted us with a croaking call.
Rosario’s neighbor was two shacks down, and she hammered on the plywood door so hard I thought it would splinter. We waited a few moments, ‘til I was hopping from foot to foot from the heat, and then she banged louder, shouting: “Ángel!”
Muffled angry noises came from inside, and then the door swung open. A half-awake man in ragged pants and a holey shirt glared at us, his black hair sleep-tousled. “It’s the middle of the day, Rosario!” he said.
“I know, but we have a political guest who is lacking shoes.”
Ángel glanced at me, and his eyes widened. “Mayor Reeve?” He stepped back to let us in. “So you’re alive after all. My money was on Jones shooting you and burying you in the dunes.”
“He’ll wish he did,” I said, ducking into his home. Unlike Rosario’s organized house, his little space was cluttered with junk, a sleeping bag tucked in a dark corner, surrounded by battered, dogeared books.
“This is Ángel Santos, hoarder of things,” said Rosario, picking up one of the books with interest. “Ángel, can Ness have a pair of shoes?”
“You’ve got to be a bit of a hoarder to make it out here,” said Ángel, digging into a battered cardboard box. “Mayor, you here to stay?”
“Call me Vanessa,” I said, gratefully accepting a pair of threadbare sneakers, the soles sewn on with twine. “And of course not. I’ve got to get back to town and put a bullet through Sam Jones’ heart.”
Ángel crossed his arms, looking at me with concern. “You sound confident. What about Jones’ posse?”
I looked uncertainly at Rosario. She shook her head, looking lost. “What posse?” I asked. “His family?”
“Jones has a militia,” said Ángel, dark eyes widening in alarm. “Someone managed to radio out of Wellspring last night—they’ve locked folks in their homes and thrown a dozen people in jail. Said Sam Jones shot some man outside the bar!”
A wave of queasiness swept through me. How goddamn naive I had been, assuming this was all about me—a plot to kill me, to run me out of town. No, this was Sam Jones’ play for Wellspring itself. All the sudden the heat of the day was unbearable, and stars swam across my vision.
“Whoa there,” said Rosario, reaching out to steady my elbow. “Ness?”
“I must have been born yesterday,” I growled, finding my feet. “That bone-bleached bastard—he shot a man, you said, you have a name?”
Ángel wrung his hands. “Someone O’Neil?”
My stomach heaved. “The judge.” The judge, my staunchest ally for the refugees streaming in, and an old, dear friend. I prayed he was still alive, but I doubted it.
I turned to Rosario, who was now gripping my hand. “I’ve got to get back. I’ve got to.”
“Wait a moment,” said Ángel, eyebrows drawing together. “You’re a wanted woman. Jones won’t be so quick to leave things to chance next time.”
I shook my head. “If Sam Jones has his way in Wellspring, you best believe he’ll have his way as far as he can reach … and he’ll just keep reaching farther. I’m duty-bound to stop this, whatever it is.”
“And I’ll help,” said Rosario, squeezing my hand, her lined face drawn and worried. “But we’re going to be wise about this, Ness. And wisdom ain’t going in guns blazing against a militia. It means being smart.”
“I’m sure as hell not coming,” said Ángel. “I learned my lesson after Oasis. But I can send you off with more than shoes.”
We ended up waiting ‘til the evening, aiming to slip into Wellspring at night. That left us stewing in our own stress and tension, trying and failing to sleep through the heat of the day. I helped Rosario build a set of shelves out of scavenged wood, though I was mostly just holding nails for her.
My mind was spinning itself apart trying to guess what was happening to my town. Had Sam Jones made his move before or after they tossed me in the ocean? Who had he thrown in jail, and who had thrown their support behind him?
What had happened to the Redbud refugees slated to arrive today?
Come dusk, Ángel sent us away with a revolver and ammunition, shot for Rosario’s gun, and a hunting knife.
“And I expect those back,” he said, frowning at Rosario. “With you. We didn’t make it out of Oasis just to get killed by the scum who refused us help.”
She clapped him on the shoulder. “I won’t die today, Ángel. But if I do, you get first pick of my shit.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “That means a lot.”
We loaded the guns into Rosario’s skiff, and I retrieved my shovel. The crow, apparently aware of our imminent departure, fluttered down to join us.
This time we both had shoes, protective goggles, and scarves to wrap around our faces. I propped my goggles on my forehead while Rosario fussed with the engine. I felt ill with the bob of the skiff and the terror of what shape my town would be in.
“Hey.” Rosario came around to my side, reached out and tucked my scarf into my borrowed shirt—my nightdress and bonnet were stowed under my feet. I leaned into the steadiness of her hands. “I’ve only known you for a day, Ness, but I can tell you’re the kind of woman to take care of her own. And we’re gonna take care of your people.”
I squeezed her hand for a moment, then let go and slipped the goggles over my eyes. “That’s right,” I said, as she settled into the driver’s seat and slammed the accelerator. “If the ocean couldn’t kill me, Sam Jones sure as hell can’t.”
Night descended as we sped across the dunes, moonlight critters scurrying out of our way. Bats swooped overhead, armadillos trundled across the sand, possums watched us with glowing eyes from inside the hollowed trunks of petrified cacti.
On a normal night, the glimmering expanse of stars overhead was enough to make me slow and vulnerable. Tonight, I hardly noticed them, though Rosario glanced upwards every so often, the stars reflected in her goggles.
When the silhouette of Wellspring appeared on the horizon, something in my chest relaxed. I hadn’t realized the toll being unmoored from home was taking. We made the town by midnight, Rosario slowing as we closed in, until we were gliding softly to a stop by the salvage heap on the edge of town. I directed her to tie down in the shelter of a half-buried rowboat, and we silently took up the guns and shovel. The crow, done with us, flew silently into the night.
“Where to now?” Rosario breathed.
There was only one person I could think to go to in a crisis like this, if she hadn’t been thrown in jail or shot already. Silently, I led the way into town, Rosario creeping behind me.
I’d never heard Wellspring so silent, or seen it so dark. We slunk through the newer adobe homes towards downtown and didn’t see a single light on. Though we weren’t as nocturnal as Rosario’s outpost, folks still enjoyed the cool of the night.
Just as we were about to pass the courthouse and enter the town plaza, Rosario grabbed my elbow, tugging me back into the shadow of the old courthouse mesquite tree. I went without complaint, hand closing around my gun. Rosario got up close behind me, making the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and pointed over my shoulder.
Coming into the moonlit plaza were two men with bandanas over their noses and mouths, bundled up against the oncoming cold. One carried a pistol on his hip; the other had a length of metal pipe, likely snatched from the salvage heap. Laughing in an inebriated kind of way, they were offensively loud against the uncanny silence of the night.
They passed close enough to our alley that I could get a look at their faces, between bandanas and hats. Maybe they thought they’d managed some anonymity, but I’d known John Graves and Hernán Martin since they were in diapers.
Red-hot rage surged through me, and I lunged for their slimy backs. Rosario grabbed my waist and hauled me back, making a low, warning noise deep in her chest.
“Those little rat bastards,” I breathed to her, feeling fire lick up my spine. “After what I did for their momma—”
“Hush, Ness,” Rosario murmured. “Look.”
The boys had run into two others at what had once been the plaza’s fountain and was now a tangle of blackberry bushes. The party traded a few bright words and then continued on their way. John and Hernán faded into the distance. The others passed us by again, headed the opposite way. I knew them too: Elise and Noah Morse, my across-the-street-neighbors.
I was seeing red as we passed through the plaza, creeping quietly across the sandy cobblestones. Any other night, this plaza would be full of folks, mostly young ones. Tonight it felt crowded with ghosts.
We dodged a few other members of Sam Jones’ posse, and I knew every single one of them. With each formerly-friendly face, my heart sank closer to my soles. Nurses, librarians, gardeners, actors. How long had resentment against the refugees, against me, been growing? And how could I not have seen it getting so bad?
By the time we made it to our destination in the old quarter, we were both wound up so tight that one strong breeze could have tipped us over.
It was only called the old quarter to distinguish these patchy, repaired homes from the new ones slowly being made from adobe as we re-learned the technique. I lived on this side of town, in a ramshackle little ranch house. But though it was familiar, this home wasn’t mine.
It was dark as pitch, but I was sure the inhabitant wouldn’t be asleep on a night like this. We crept round to the back door, and I gave a quick rap on the wood.
Response was immediate. A muffled curse, a clatter, and then the door cracked open and the muzzle of a shotgun nosed through.
Rosario jerked back, hand going to her own gun, but I rolled my eyes. “Come on now, Nectar. I know that trigger’s been rusted in place for thirty years.”
Another curse, and then the gun disappeared and the door was flung open. Nectar Jeong stood there gaping at me, cheeks flushed with fright, wearing a lacy dressing gown that I remembered fondly.
“Vanessa Reeve!” she hissed, voice gravel-low. “Come to return the town coffers, have you?”
I laughed quietly. “Oh, yes. Just as soon as Sam Jones gives me a little something in return.”
Nectar grinned wide and stepped away from the door. “Get in here, Vanessa, goddamn you’re a sight for sore eyes. And who’s this?”
“Rosario Cruz,” said Rosario, sticking out a hand for Nectar to shake. “Concerned party.”
We trooped inside. Nectar had nailed cloth over all the windows so there was hardly any light to see by once she’d shut the door. In hushed silence, we unwound the scarves from our heads, shaking out our hair.
“Vanessa, everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket so fast I can hardly track it,” said Nectar, her disembodied voice moving away from us. “Come into the bedroom; I’ve boarded up the window so we can light a candle.”
I could find her bedroom fine without sight, but Rosario cursed as she bumped her shin on a low table. I took her hand and led her carefully through the room.
We closed the bedroom door, and Nectar lit a candle, the flame throwing her face into steep angles, illuminating the nervous bob of her Adam’s apple. The windows had been plastered with layers of cardboard, and her bedroom was otherwise in nervous disarray. Clothes and books were scattered across the floor, several lengths of metal pipe were propped near the door, and a carving knife was jammed into the doorframe.
Rosario and I sat side-by-side on the low, squeaky bed, and Nectar pulled up a stool, bouncing her legs nervously. “They’re shutting us in at night,” she said quietly, mouth tight with tension. “Those thugs stormed into folks’ homes and took all the radios and guns they could find. Yesterday there was a riot in the plaza. Sam Jones shot Judge O’Neil, and his posse grabbed as many rioters as they could manage and locked them in jail with the refugees. He’s put this whole town under some sort of … of martial law.”
Every part of this sentence was more alarming than the last. “Wait,” I said, taking her trembling hand. “What do you mean about the refugees?”
She took a deep breath, squeezing my fingers. “That’s the first thing Sam Jones did. The moment those folks from Redbud arrived, he rounded them up and locked them in the jail. No one knows what he’s going to do with them. They’ve got us locked in all night while he and his posse wreck the bar and shoot out windows.”
Hate so cold I thought my heart would freeze started to fill my veins. Nectar must have seen it, because she was shaking her head before I could even think of words to say.
“Don’t you go looking for that man tonight, Vanessa,” she said.
I stood up, the weight of the revolver on my hip burning.
“Hey, now,” said Rosario, rising with me and taking my arm. “Ness, think about this. We all want that man dead by dawn. But you’re about to hand him a second chance to kill you on a silver platter; don’t think he won’t take it.”
“He didn’t have the guts before,” I said, feeling cold and hard. “Bone-bleached coward.”
Rosario’s hand was tight on my elbow. Part of me could hear she was talking sense. But that part was buried deep in the sand. I lifted her hand from my arm but kept hold of it, meeting her eyes.
“This is my town,” I said, trying to make her understand. “Sam Jones may be a coward, but I’m not.”
“I’m not going with you to do this,” said Rosario, face set. “And I won’t pick up the pieces after.”
I dropped her hand, pretending that didn’t feel like a bullet to the heart. “Then thank you for your assistance,” I said. “Nectar, make sure she gets out alright. This town isn’t her concern.”
“Vanessa, wait!” hissed Nectar, but I walked out of her bedroom and out of her house, only the gun on my hip to reassure me.
I slunk through the shadows of Wellspring like I hadn’t been the goddamn mayor of this town for twenty years. I was so angry I almost didn’t realize it when I passed my house.
I hardly recognized the place over the smashed-in windows, the destroyed garden bed. But the words reminded me.
VANESSA REEVE, YOU’LL DROWN DRY
I scowled and spat onto the ground. I hadn’t drowned dry, and Sam Jones was going to pay.
Putting my back to my house, I circled back around to the plaza, from there making my way to the bar. I passed the library, the clinic, the grocer, all of them boarded up tight.
The bar was lit up like a bonfire, windows blazing with light against the black of the town. I could hear Sam Jones’ crew before I saw them. Shouts and laughter and the scratchy sound of music came from within, and the smell of liquor oozed out, perfuming the air. They’d shot up the establishment’s sign in an astonishing waste of ammunition.
Digging my heel into the sand, I spat once more, swept my twists over my shoulders, and flung open the door.
For a moment no one understood who I was—long enough for me to see what I was looking at. Sam Jones’ posse was hanging over the pool table and crowding the dart board, what looked like every lantern in town, electric or not, set across the room. One of the seized radios was playing something old and classic, but the reception in the bar was too poor to hear more than the occasional tinkle of a piano.
Ellie, the bar’s owner, was nowhere to be seen, and Jones’ posse had ransacked her liquor cabinet. Every bottle in the house was in someone’s hand or draining on its side. If I didn’t get to him first, Ellie was going to flay Sam Jones alive.
He was behind the counter, doing some trick with a bottle of mezcal, and when he caught sight of me he spilled it all over his hand. For a split second he appeared terrified. Then he looked around at his men and back at me, and that fright turned to amusement.
I walked halfway into the room, reached out and shut the radio off. By that point everyone had hushed up, and a fairly gratifying silence filled the bar.
Sam Jones set his bottle right-side-up and licked the mezcal from his wrist, then swung himself over the bar. Members of his crew scrambled to snatch bottles away from his boots.
“Vanessa Reeve,” said Sam. His slow drawl was so obviously a mimic of his daddy’s that it made me snort, and some of that amused glint in his eye turned to rage.
“That’s Mayor Reeve,” I said sharply. “Seeing as you failed to do things civically before throwing me in the sand, I believe I haven’t yet been expelled from office.”
“That was my mistake,” said Sam, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “Next time I’ll file the right papers.”
“There won’t be a next time.” I put a hand on my gun. “Prove you have an ounce of honor in your miserable gut, Jones. Right now, me and you.”
His eyes glinted. “Winner takes the town?”
I nodded shortly, heart thundering.
He palmed his own gun, tucked into his waistband, and tapped his chin with a mezcal-sticky finger. “Here’s the thing, Ms. Vanessa. I think I’d rather get back to drinking.”
He inclined his head to John Graves, and before I could draw my gun John had drawn it for me, tossing it to the ground while Noah Morse hauled my arms behind my back.
I gave as good as I got, and by the end of things Noah had a broken nose and John a bruised shin, but they were two strong young sycophants and I was an old mayor too bull-headed to listen to good advice before I shot myself in the foot.
“Throw her in with the others,” said Sam Jones, picking up my gun. “And come dawn, we’ll try again and see if it sticks.”
“Noah Morse,” I snarled, “see if I ever babysit your children again, in this life or the next.”
“Sorry, Ms. Vanessa,” muttered Noah, at least doing me the grace of cuffing my hands in front of me. My shoulders ached from the yanking earlier.
“You’ll be sorry!” I shouted, as he hauled open the jail cell door and pushed me inside. I threw myself into the door even as he slammed it shut. “Sorry when I come for you after I put Jones in the ground!”
All I heard was his footsteps as he walked away.
“Goddamn!” I yelled, slumping against the door.
“Mayor Reeve?”
I spun to face the rest of the cell. It was a barren cinderblock room, a single barred window high above letting in a meager amount of moonlight. Obviously meant for a single inhabitant, there was a toilet and a camp bed, and that was the extent of the furnishings.
The cell was not housing one prisoner. At last twelve folks were packed inside, all staring at me with wide eyes, most of them strangers to me. A few children had been tucked in to sleep on the bed. But the woman who’d said my name was rising from the corner, slipping between sitting folks to come clasp my bound hands in hers, broad smile across her face.
“Ellie Croft,” I said, squeezing her hands thankfully. She looked worse for the wear, a dark purple bruise on her cheek, the black edges fading into her skin. Her afro had been smashed in on one side. “I’m sorry to say they’ve gone through all the liquor in your bar.”
She scowled. “There will be consequences for that. Vanessa, we all thought you were dead for sure.”
I let her hands go, taking in the folks in the cell. “Not yet. Maybe soon, though. I’ve been remarkably idiotic tonight. What’s happening, Ellie?”
She gestured to the rest of the people. “Meet the Redbud refugees. Everyone, this is the heroic Mayor Vanessa Reeve, who was supposed to be the one to welcome you to Wellspring. Vanessa, this is June Cho, Matty Thompson, Bria Smith …”
She introduced me to the whole cell. Most of the adults put up a smile or a wave, but a few of them just closed their eyes. The Wellspring rioters, Ellie informed me, were in the second cell—the jail only had the two.
“Come over here,” said Ellie, leading me to the corner where she’d been sitting with June Cho and Matty Thompson. “This is the planning committee. Keep your voice down for the kids, all right?”
I settled cross-legged into their small circle. June and Matty sat shoulder-to-shoulder, holding hands. They both smiled grimly at me. “Welcome to death row,” said June softly.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Ellie put a hand on my shoulder, her arthritic fingers squeezing tight. She wasn’t too much older than me, but life had been hard on her joints. All joviality had slipped from her face.
“Vanessa,” she said quietly. “We aren’t here awaiting trial. Judge O’Neil’s fate was proof of that. Tomorrow morning Sam Jones is going to walk us out into the sands at low tide and leave us there to drown dry.”
My blood went cold. June and Matty leaned hard into each other, and Ellie cast a glance back to make sure the children were still asleep.
“He is not,” I said resolutely, even as I felt the phantom of stinging sand against my back. “Nectar Jeong knows I’m alive. Nectar and …” I hesitated. Rosario, too. But Rosario wasn’t going to pick up my pieces. “Nectar knows,” I repeated. “She’ll do something.”
“Like what?” Matty asked.
“I don’t know. Something. And if she doesn’t, I will.” I took a deep breath, trying to appear assured. I was the mayor of this place. I had invited these people here. They were my responsibility. “What have you thought of so far? Does anyone have a weapon?”
No one had a weapon. No one had so much as a spoon, and they hadn’t been fed since being thrown in the cell. Everyone was cuffed, including the children.
The night wore on, and the best we came up with was to ambush whoever came to retrieve us in the morning, and keep fighting until they killed us all—better a bullet through the skull than a forced march into the waves.
“I’m so sorry,” I told them, Ellie and June and Matty, when we were all wilting with exhaustion. “I promised you refuge, and you got a grave.”
“From one grave to another,” said Matty, as he and June leaned their heads together and closed their eyes.
Ellie had fallen asleep long ago. I found myself alone in my wakefulness in a cell full of condemned souls. I did the only thing I could to keep myself sane in that moment, and stared up at that little square of window letting the moonlight in.
How many times had I failed these people? I’d made promises I didn’t keep. I’d ignored the threat of Jones and his people until it was too late. I’d delayed in coming back to town. And when I finally made it home, I ignored the advice of two good women, and I’d gone and gotten myself and everyone else killed.
My last words to Nectar and Rosario rung through my head. This town isn’t her concern. A wonderful way to thank a woman who’d saved me, fed and clothed me, thrown her lot in with mine and who’d looked like she might be amenable to waking up next to me again.
Maybe I was too old for this job.
In that little high-above window, something silver glinted.
At first I thought it was the stars, but then the glint started to lower. I stared at it dumbly, trying to puzzle it out, until I stopped being a complete fool and realized someone was lowering me a silver key.
I rose and stepped carefully over my sleeping cellmates. I caught the key as it passed low enough, untied it gently from the string.
Someone pulled the string back up, and then it came down again, tied to … a sleep bonnet. My bonnet.
I laughed softly, clutching it to my heart. The top half of Rosario’s face peeked through the bars, and I waved my cuffed hands.
“Can you speak?” I hissed up.
Her face vanished, then returned. “Thirty seconds,” came her voice, just above a whisper.
“Tomorrow morning they’re marching us into low tide,” I said. “Tell Nectar to gather anyone who’ll make a stand with me.”
“Will do. Anything more?”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “I apologize for my previous words. I’m glad you didn’t leave.”
“You’re forgiven.” Her gold tooth glinted as she smiled. “See you at dawn, Ness.”
Dawn came. As the sound of shuffling feet and murmuring voices came from down the hall, I took my trusty bonnet off, having snatched a few sparse hours of fitful sleep. I tucked it in my pocket and made sure my hands looked cuffed.
The key only fit my cuffs; that’s what happened when a town was scraping by on the dregs of society. You made do, in all respects.
Nonetheless I stood myself in front of the room when Sam Jones ordered the cell door open. Made him meet my eyes, and then spat on his boot.
“Real nice,” he drawled. “That how a mayor conducts herself, Ms. Vanessa?”
“Not in the face of swine like you,” I said. “You look me in the eyes and tell me you’re sending children out there, Jones.”
He looked me in the eyes. His were bright and cruel and hateful. “I’m not, in fact,” he said lowly. “I’m sending animals, Reeve. And you’re one of them.”
“I’ll follow you to hell, boy,” I snarled, “and pick up the whip when the devil gets tired.”
He turned away. His posse filed in. Elise Morse made to take my arm, and I yanked away from her. “I’ll walk on my own,” I said coldly, and she shrugged.
We were led out into the soft dawn sunlight, ordinarily one of the most beautiful times of day. The rising sun made the crests of sand into endless heavenly fields, the blue sky so shocking it hardly seemed real. A flutter of wings caught my eye, and I spotted that crow perched atop the jailhouse.
The prisoners from the second cell followed us outside, letting out shouts upon seeing me. “Mayor Reeve!” called the other librarian. “Thank god!” One of Jones’ men, the grocer, promptly hit him in the stomach with the butt of a shotgun.
“Hurry up!” shouted Sam Jones. “It’s only low tide for a while longer.”
Murmurs of alarm rippled through the crowd. A pocket of refugees made to break past Sam’s men and were knocked to the ground in a second, boots driving into stomachs.
“Get them up and get moving,” snarled Sam.
We started to walk.
Wellspring was on the edge of the sea. Well, these days, everywhere was on the edge of the sea. But the waves had been merciful to my town, so far. No cataclysms. Predictable tides.
What I wouldn’t have given for less predictable tides.
We marched down Main Street, through the plaza, past the courthouse, the church, the greenhouse made of precious scavenged glass. Along the way, we picked up a following. One by one, townsfolk began to trail some distance behind us, not making trouble, just watching. Sam Jones glanced over his shoulder at them a few times, but didn’t pay them much mind.
A cool breeze blew in. Our following grew. We left the town behind, and another group tried to run for it—the rioters this time. Hernán Martin hit the postman on the back of the head so hard he slumped to his knees.
Icy nausea rushed through me. This easy violence, from folks I’d known my whole life. From a boy I’d walked around town on my hip so his folks could catch a nap.
Ellie Croft slipped her arm through mine, steadying me. “Come on, Vanessa. We’ve made it through worse.”
It was hard to recall that, though, as we took one step after another out of town, across the sands, and into the sea.
The children started screaming. They’d learned at their parents’ knees the first rule of survival in these times: no one went into the sea.
It was a flat expanse of sand at the moment, almost indistinguishable from the desert around us. But when I squinted to either side, I could see the sand roiling. And in ten minutes or so, a wave was going to crash down on this flat expanse and turn it into a tsunami of sand.
We marched out into the middle of the flat, muzzles pressed into our backs. And then Sam Jones turned to address the rest of the town, who had halted on the edge of the sea to watch us in a silent mass.
“Listen here!” he screamed, sweat pouring down his face. “This is what happens when you cross me! This is what happens when you let vermin into my town! There ain’t enough anything for us all, folks—that’s without us giving it away to anyone who begs hard enough. This is how we survive! And if you disagree, well, come take your place with the others!”
Deathly silence echoed back. Not a whisper nor a twitch from the crowd. Sam turned and squinted into the distance, a smile creeping across his face. “Here she comes,” he muttered, fingers flexing around the grip of his gun on his hip. “Let’s get gone, boys.”
It looked just like sunlight for a moment. A pool of sunlight, spilling forward like honey. But then the sound registered: a shushing as loud as an avalanche. A wave of sand rolling in, making to bury us alive.
Jones and his posse turned to leave us there.
A bullet sang from the assembled mass of townspeople and blew his hat off his head.
“Damn it!” cried Rosario, charging forward with revolver in hand, Nectar at her side with my shovel, the entirety of the town surging behind them. “Missed by a hair!”
Screaming and shouting broke out. I let my cuffs fall and tackled Elise Morse to the ground, backhanding her across the face so hard her blood smeared across my knuckles. I liberated her revolver and scrambled away, keeping low.
Folks went down. My people and Sam’s. But by the time the dust cleared, the refugees were fleeing, flanked by townspeople with shovels, clubs, and guns. The remnants of Jones’ posse were regrouping around him, casting uneasy glances at the advancing wave.
“SAM JONES!” I yelled, shooting a bullet into the air and then shoving the gun into my holster. “It’s you and me, you bone-bleached coward!”
Hatless with a bloodied lip, he turned to look at me, hellfire in his blue eyes. John Graves started to step towards me, but Sam shot out an arm to hold him back.
“You and me, Vanessa Reeve,” Sam said, putting a hand over his gun. His posse circled around to watch as the ground started to shudder from the oncoming wave. “John? Count to three.”
“One!” yelled John Graves, face pale and terrified. He had to shout over the noise of the sand. Sam took one step clockwise and I circled opposite, only conscious of Sam’s blazing eyes and the gun on my hip.
“Two!”
We took another step. I was facing the wave now, and the size of it stopped my breath. A golden mountain rising above, sand raining down in sheets. Neither of us was leaving this ocean alive.
“Three!”
The shadow of the wave towered over us. My gun was in my hand and I was staring down the barrel of Sam’s, sand cascading into our faces. Our fingers tightened together.
Overhead, a crow called. Sam glanced up, and his elbow shifted. His bullet passed over my shoulder. Mine passed between his eyes.
He fell to the ground, and sand began to bury him. I looked behind me, but his posse was already running for land. It was too late for them. It was too late for me. I was going to drown dry after all.
“HEY, MAYOR REEVE!” hollered a dearly familiar voice. “AREN’T YOU A WANTED WOMAN?”
Rosario pulled her skiff alongside me just long enough for me to drop the gun and haul myself in, and then we were screaming for the shore. We leaned forward like that would make the thing go faster. We skimmed inches above the ground as sand started to fill the back of the skiff. I turned to bail it out and caught sight of the wave lowering like a ceiling over us, the world darkening into a second night.
“NOT TODAY!” screamed Rosario, as we breached the shore. “NOT EVER, GODDAMN IT!” The tip of the wave kissed the skiff’s tail, sloughing sand in and making us spin wildly off to the left in dizzying circles. We landed nose first in a dune to the sound of waves breaking on the shore behind us.
I spat out sand, blinked it from my eyes and wiped it from my cheeks. Then Rosario had ahold of my neck and was kissing me with abandon. We fell right out of the skiff and onto the sand, rolled down the dune and came up with lips still locked.
Rosario pulled away to spit out some sand, her eyes glinting. “Mayor Reeve, you have some luck.”
I grinned up at her. “I’d say it’s the bonnet, but I think it might just be you.”
She laughed in delight as I staggered upright and then took her arms to haul her after me. “I’d better stick around, then.”
The crow flew down to perch on the tail of the skiff. Sun on our backs, we set to digging it out of the sand. The waves rolled in behind us.
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