SAND

послесловие: epilogue

She woke to silence, darkness, and dead air. She found her headlamp. Her candle had burnt out, leaving a clot of wax and the black stub of the wick. She climbed the ladder and found the main room equally dark and quiet. Pulling up the ladder, she ascended to the attic. It was in utter darkness. The roof seemed to sag and groan, as if in pain, and tiny streams of sand sifted down from cracks. Under the stub of the stovepipe was a cone-shaped pile, imperceptibly growing and spreading.

She tried to push the attic door open– it might as well have been nailed shut. The sand had drifted in, filling the space outside. The house must be completely covered. Panic set talons in her and she gasped. But took a deep breath and started to think. There was plenty in the cache to sustain her: food, water, batteries, candles. But the air would go bad. Candles, no matter how comforting, were out.

From the sag of the roof planks, there was quite a bit of sand above. Could she cut through the boards at one end and dig her way out? She went down the ladder and shifted it, going down to the cache. Pawing through the tools, she selected a brace and large bit. Her shovel and her father's tools, that she used to cut the floorboards, were in the room above. What else might she need?

Something to probe the sand. She played her headlamp over the shelves as she thought— there. A bundle of steel tent poles, each fitting a socket on the next. There were a couple with pointed ends, for the tent roof. She dragged the bundle over and tied the rope around it.

Once she'd carried and hauled everything to the attic, she sat crosslegged and thought hard, trying imagine the place from the outside. There wasn't much overhang to the roof at the ends, but there might be a small void just under the edge.

She fitted the bit into the drillbrace and made a neat hole as high up as possible. As the bit cut through the last bit of wood, it grated: drilling into sand. She withdrew it and sand streamed through the hole and started a pile against the wall. If she cut though, made an opening big enough for her to dig and then crawl out, how much sand would come in? Could it fill the attic?

She tried to imagine it: as she dug outwards, sand would collapse into the hole. The more she dug, the more sand would come down. If she actually made it out and tried to dig upward, it might fall in and trap her. When she was young, some friends had buried her in beach sand, then made as if to leave her. She shivered at the memory.

The cone-shaped sandpile under the stovepipe caught her eye. The pipe extended at least a meter above the roof, perhaps more. Could the sand be deeper? She tried to look up and got sand in her eyes. Damn!

There must be a signal mirror down in the cache. She started down again, thinking that she ought to eat something before she got the shakes— she could feel a gnawing in her belly.

It wasn't hard to find a mirror. Then she tore open a field ration, peeled the foil back, and wolfed pork stew, beans in tomato sauce, fried squash puree, hard biscuits, and mixed fruit jam. Once she was full, she crammed several chocolate bars and some packets of drink mix into her pockets, and filled a jug with water.

Back in the attic, she held the mirror under the stovepipe and could see no light. So it was covered. With the mirro in her right hand, she shined her headlamp with the left, seeing the underside of the metal cap with a line of rivets. It seemed to be squashed down against the end of the pipe, with just enough space to let in little streams of sand. Obviously, the end of the stovepipe was closer to the surface—to light and air— than the roof. But how close?

She looked at the bundle of tent poles. I need a hammer, she thought, and a block of wood so I won't dent up the sockets on the ends. Back down to the cache, with two shifts of the ladder, and back up. She set her shovel handy against the wall and socketed a section into the pointed top piece. Then she slid it up into the pipe, lodging against the cap. Holding the wood block fast, she gave it a whack with the hammer. Sand streamed down more quickly. The gap had opened. She gave it another whack and felt the sharp end pierce the sheet-metal cap, bringing more sand in a soft gyre to the attic floor.