Devils Unto Dust(44)
“Will, he’s right,” Sam puts in. “We’ll suffocate.”
“Come on, Sis,” Micah says, pulling me forward. “We gotta go.”
“But it’s Silver, Micah,” I tell him.
“I know. We still gotta go.”
And so we do; we start to move at a pace somewhere between walking and running, an awkward stride that pains my joints. Every step sets the bones in my knees grating against one another, and I bite the inside of my cheek to stop from groaning. We follow Curtis, who pulls Nana along in a series of sprints and stalls. None of us can keep this up for long, not in this heat. The sun glares down at us balefully and the hot blasts of wind sear my lungs. Sweat pools at my collarbone and the small of my back, soaking my shirt. My breath comes hard and fast, rattling in my chest; I lower my head to stop sucking in the dusty air. I’m staring at the ground, my eyes watering so that everything looks like gray smudges. It’s better this way, that I can’t see the town coming closer. Somehow I’ve found myself in one of my nightmares, and I can’t even pretend I’m dreaming because my side is aching too sharply.
“Faster,” Curtis yells back at us. “We have to reach the town before the storm hits.”
He lets us stop only to drink hurried gulps of water, and each time the edge of the storm looms closer. I start to think it’s not a dust storm, but a mountain, and we’re the ones moving toward it. My body feels close to its breaking point when from the corner of my eye I see Micah stumble, his foot caught on a burroweed branch. He falls, his hands and knees slapping the dirt. I run over and hoist him up easily; he’s distressingly light.
“I’m fine, Sis, keep going,” he tells me, panting.
“Don’t be stupid, I ain’t going anywhere.” I have to shout to be heard over the wind.
Micah gingerly tests his weight on his foot; he winces, but it holds. I give him my arm to lean on and look for the others.
“Over here,” Curtis yells, barely visible through the haze. Behind him walls rise up out of the dust, more ominous because I can’t see where they start. My hands tremble, and I can’t tell if I’m afraid because I know I should be, or because I really am. Micah squeezes my arm and we make our way to the others, their figures strange and blurred.
“Stay as close as you can,” Curtis shouts, clapping his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “When the storm hits, the shakes won’t be able to see any better than we will. We’ll hole up in a house and wait it out.”
The wind pulls out strands of my hair and whips them back across my face. I squint and tug my hat farther down my head.
“Keep a hand on the person next to you,” Curtis goes on. “I’ll go first. Ben, you’re at back. Try and protect your face. Understood?”
Micah tightens his grip on me and grabs Sam’s free shoulder. Another hand settles on my own shoulder, heavy and warm, and I tilt my head up.
“Brace yourself,” Ben says, his voice muffled. I reckon he pulled his shirt over his mouth and I wish I could see him more clearly and then I realize I can’t see at all; we’re inside the storm.
36.
Everything is gray and murky, like my eyes are wrapped in gauze. The sun’s gone black and the air feels like it’s on fire, spitting and sparking in the dark. The wind whips and howls around me, an angry and vengeful thing; it freezes the sweat at my back and I start to shiver, cold and raw and frantic.
A tug on my arm brings me to my senses and I hurriedly raise my shirt to cover my nose and mouth. I can breathe, just barely, but the air tastes sour and sickly on my tongue. Micah pulls me forward, one painstaking step at a time. The wind screams and claws at me like I am insubstantial, like only the weight of Ben’s hand on my shoulder is keeping me grounded. Without it the wind would snatch me up and toss me around like so many cottonseeds.
It takes us forever to move forward, the wind fighting us for every step. I keep my mind away from where we are and think instead of what we must look like: five tall children playing red rover in a dust storm. I have a sudden and wild urge to laugh, and then something solid and warm slams into me and I go flying.
The ground rushes up to meet me and I land hard on my hip and shoulder. A beat later something lands on top of me; I try to push it off and meet cloth and hot skin. Then fingernails are clawing at me, scraping against my shirt and ribs, trying to tear through to my skin. I open my mouth to scream and a rush of dirt and sand and clay shove their way into my throat. I choke and cough and flail my legs out; one of them connects and I kick again as hard as I can and dislodge the shake from my body. I scramble away, crawling on all fours and gasping, and I can’t see or hear or breathe. This is what it feels like to drown in the desert.
I reach out blindly with one hand, desperate. But there’s nothing; there’s nothing weighing me down, there’s nothing to cling to. There’s dirt in my lungs and sand in my eyes and the storm rages on, unrelenting as life. The wind spits at me, pushing in from all sides like it’s trying to crush me. I dig my heels into the dirt and curl in on myself, lost and blind in the dark. Above me the air keeps to its crying, and below me the sand fights to escape. I am nothing at all to this storm. Just a piece of debris caught in her path, like an ant or a stone. I’ve never felt so insignificant, and all I can think is that I don’t want to be alone.