Sand & Shadow by Laurisa White Reyes
Excerpt #1
He did not belong.
That was the first conscious thought in Adán’s head. Before he sensed that he was breathing or that his heart was pumping, he knew he shouldn’t be there. He’d known it for a long time but had kept it to himself. Hadn’t said a word right up to the moment the acrylic screen had come down and the icy serum entered his vein, but his apprehension was abruptly interrupted as he succumbed to the anesthetic that prepared him for cryo-hibernation.
Adán opened his eyes to a disorienting darkness. Light, he thought. There is supposed to be light. He squeezed his eyes shut, and then opened them again, straining to detect even the slightest glimmer. He felt his own hot breath collecting in the narrow space between his face and the cover above him. Had the respiratory system failed? Was that why his cryo had been terminated? He had been asleep only moments. At least it felt like moments. He awoke to his half-finished thought, still feeling the tightness in his gut, what Colonel Foster had deemed nerves.
“It’ll pass,” she had assured him. “It’s as easy as going to sleep.”
He breathed harder, faster. The moist air from his lungs condensed on his skin. Or was he perspiring? He lifted his right hand to wipe the sheen of sweat away, and his knuckles hit the underside of the screen. A dull thud reverberated through Adán’s unit, and something shifted just at waist level. Adán couldn’t raise his head more than a few inches, but it was enough to see the sudden speck of green light above his body. With his hand, he struck the acrylic over and over. With each collision, the spot of light grew larger.
It took a minute for Adán’s mind to clear, to recall his training, his protocol. He tried to speak, but his throat was dry. He swallowed and tried again.
“Systems on. 4-ENG-003.” His voice uttering his personal systems key in this confined space sounded too loud. “Cryo screen open.”
Nothing happened. He tried again, but still his unit remained closed.
Adán struck the acrylic cover a few more times until enough light had filtered into his unit that he could make out the emergency control panel at his left just beside his fingertips. On it was a rectangular button marked COMM and a lever marked RELEASE. They were crude apparatuses compared to the vocal commands he was used to, but he would use them if necessary. They’d gone over this in training, but even the simplest of thoughts resisted recall, a temporary effect of coming out of cryo. Gradually, as memories coalesced in his mind, he pressed his thumb against the COMM button.
“Hello? Can anyone hear me?” Adán forced himself to control his breathing to slow as he waited for a reply. Nothing. “This is Mission Specialist Adán Fuentes. 4-ENG-003. My unit seems to be malfunctioning.”
Again, he waited. Adán re-adjusted his thumb. “Hello? Hello?”
The screen, so close to his face, seemed to press in on him. He should wait for confirmation to clear his unit and that the Med Squad was ready for him, but he had to get out. He had to get out now.
Adán hooked two of his fingers around the emergency release lever and pulled. The dull click of the latch resonated through his enclosure. With a sucking sound, the screen slid open, pushing what seemed to be a layer of dust to the floor.
For a moment, Adán saw only green, and it reminded him of the time he and Saul had gone scuba diving off Catalina Island—how under water everything had that odd seaweed-like tint to it. Then the overhead lights blinked on, and the dim oceany color evaporated. The sudden brightness stung Adán’s eyes, and he shielded them with his elbow. When he thought he could tolerate the light, he lowered his arm and cautiously sat up.
He was in the Quarters just as he should be, the vast cavern-like hibernation compartment housing two rows of twelve identical cryo units each—twenty-four in all—and the main control panel at the far end. This room was the last image he’d had before his cover came down, but it had looked nothing like this.
The overhead lights that ran the length of the room blinked and dimmed at irregular intervals. The intermittent light made it difficult for Adán’s vision to fully adjust. Then, instead of cryo units, all he saw were two dozen oblong heaps of rust-colored dirt—his own open unit the only exception—like the mounds of earth on freshly filled graves.
What the hell?
The next thing he noticed was a thick, long bulge along the starboard wall, extending from the far end of the room to just past midway. The bulge was so large it had displaced several of the units.
Adán felt weak and lightheaded, which he had been told to expect. After the initial dose of anesthesia, the needle in his arm had first replaced the water in his body with a low temperature-tolerant liquid, and then later reversed the process, providing a nutrient-infused solution to revive his body once the six-year journey to Europa was complete. Even so, upon waking, his stomach felt horribly empty, as if the very core of him was missing. Adán ignored it. As he sat up, his muscles cramped, and his fingertips tingled. He made a weak fist and then cautiously unfolded each finger, allowing time for normal sensation to return. Once it had, he turned his attention to the I.V. needle in his arm.
Where were the medics? The MED squad was supposed to awaken first and help the others. They were supposed to follow protocol, otherwise how could they successfully fulfill the mission? But from what he could tell, none of the others had awakened yet. He looked at the bulge and the dust and swallowed back the panic rising in his throat.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
Adán walked his fingers up his arm to the circular silicon patch that tracked his vitals and peeled it off. He did the same for the one on his temple, the one that had recorded and archived his brain activity during hibernation. Then he slid his fingers around the needle above his wrist.
He considered just yanking it out, like tearing off a band-aid, but couldn’t quite get up the nerve. Instead, he tugged, gently at first. An acute pain rippled up his arm. He released the needle, gasping.
No wonder the medics were supposed to remove the I.V.s and then wake up the crew.
He tried again, this time sucking in a deep breath while sliding the metal tube out of his skin.
Adán pressed the heel of his hand against the small wound to stop the bleeding and shifted his legs over the side of the unit. As he set his bare feet on the floor, a cloud of dust puffed up, staining the hem of his white pants burnt orange. As he took his first step, the muscles in both calves seized, and pain stabbed at the backs of his legs and knees. Cramps. He had been warned about the cramps.
“Pull your toes up,” Colonel Foster had told him. “Stretch out those muscles.”
Adán let go of his arm and reached down to pull on his feet, straightening each leg as he did so. It took a minute or two, but eventually the cramping subsided.
He stood up, taking a few unsteady steps between the two rows of cryo units. If he was awake, then maybe others were, too. At least the ones whose lights were on, though after the MED squad, they were all scheduled to wake at the same time, but none of the other units were open yet.
He studied the pale green glow beneath the dust on his own unit. The light signaled that his body systems had stabilized and that he was ready to be released from cryo. He turned to the unit beside his own and wiped the dust away from the light panel with his arm. There was no green, no light at all. Not even the yellow LED that should have indicated the unit was in use.
The mound of dust on the unit’s cover had formed a sort of crust, like the plates of caked earth in a dry riverbed. Adán touched it with the tip of his finger, and the crust crumbled. It was so delicate that if he blew on it, it might all just float away, but something inside of him resisted. Instead, he stepped away from the unit and moved to the next one.
The green light was like a beacon. Adán was so relieved he had to steady himself. He wasn’t the only one awake. He was not alone. Scraping the dust from the cover with the side of his hand, he peered inside.
A pair of bewildered brown eyes gazed back at him.
Sand & Shadow by Laurisa White Reyes
Excerpt #2
Adán stopped cutting. Only a narrow strip of cloth remained. Once it was severed, the tent would fly off never to be seen again. Scott could be carried miles before landing in a deadly collision. He had to get Scott down.
“Tink!” shouted Adán. “Help me!”
“But the computer!” Tink called back. He hesitated only for a moment, but then set down the metal box. The wind instantly pushed at it, shifting its position in the sand. Tink hurried to Adán’s side.
Adán heard Dema, Fess, and Lainie calling out to him in his comm, but he didn’t have a moment to spare to respond to them. They were clear of the tent, standing far enough away to avoid injury. He hoped they wouldn’t try anything stupid. He and Tink alone would take the risk.
“Hold it here!” Adán jabbed a finger at the corner of the tent still attached. Tink obeyed, gripping the fabric with his gloved hands. Adán grasped the canvas several feet above Tink. Then he began to pull it, gradually drawing the fabric toward him. It was like trying to haul an anchor up from the ocean floor, the effort requiring every ounce of strength he could muster. He wasn’t sure his plan would work. He was battling a storm that at any moment could snatch him up and carry him off.
“Get me down!” Scott screamed, his voice piercing through Adán’s comm.
“I’m trying! Just hold on!” Adán kept pulling, but he made little headway with the wind pulling so hard in the opposite direction. “Scott, use your hands! Try to climb down!”
Scott started hand-over-hand down the column of living canvas. The distance between Scott and Adán slowly began to shrink. The sand pelted Adán so hard now that he could feel it through his gear.
“The rest of you get inside!” he called out. “It’s too dangerous out here!”
Fess grabbed the heating unit that Scott had dropped and made his way toward the shuttle. Tink held tight to the tent behind Adán.
“Tink! I’ve got it! Go on!”
“You don’t have it,” said Tink. “I’m not leaving!”
“But you have to—” Suddenly, a powerful gust tried to rip the silver tarp from Adán’s hands. The knuckle in his pinky finger snapped in a stabbing flare of excruciating pain, but he did not let go. Scott flipped around in the air, as helpless as a marionette on strings, though he was a good eight feet closer to the ground than he had been minutes before.
Adán tried to hold tighter to the fabric, but the pain in his hand throbbed ruthlessly and had robbed it of its strength.
“Scott! You’re going to have to let go!”
“Let go? Are you insane? This wind will blow me away like a kite!”
“Curl up into a ball! Wrap your arms around your knees and drop to the ground!”
Adán heard Tink’s voice. “This strap is tearing! When it rips all the way, that tarp is taking you with it, Scott!”
“Scott, you’ve got to let go now!”
He did. Scott released the fabric and pulled his knees to his chest. He fell like a stone to the sand below. He hit the ground, his limbs sprawling out in every direction. Then, getting to his hands and knees, he scurried away like a bug just as the tarp tore free from its strap. The silver snake curled and whipped like a flag in a hurricane and then vanished into the darkening sky.
Adán, his back to the wind, dropped to his knees beside Scott. “You all right?” he asked. “Can you get up?”
Scott collapsed into the sand, moaning. Adán felt a wave of relief. Their commander was dazed, possibly even hurt, but he was alive. A few yards off, Tink fought against the storm’s assault. He clutched the transmitter case to his chest and staggered forward one step at a time. The sky was so dark now and the sand so thick that the shuttle looked like nothing more than a broad mass of shadow.
Adán slid one of his arms beneath Scott’s shoulder and hoisted the barely conscious commander into a sitting position. “Dryker, listen to me! We’ve got to get back to the shuttle or we’ll die out here! Get up, Commander! On your feet!”
Scott moaned again, but Adán felt his muscles stiffen as he attempted to get his legs under him. With a bit of effort on both their parts, Scott was soon standing, though he leaned much of his weight against Adán. Adán looked back at Tink, who hadn’t made as much progress as he’d hoped.
“Tink, drop it!” Adán shouted.
Tink shook his head furiously. “We need it to communicate with the other shuttles! They’ll never find us without it!”
Tink’s words came back to Adán broken and staccato. He tapped on his earpiece. The storm had damaged his comm. “Tink? Can you hear me?”
This time Adán heard only static. He looked back to the shuttle, a mere ten yards away. Dema and Fess, clinging to each other, were scrabbling for the hatch lever. Adán looked back at Tink, half that distance behind him. He’d get Scott to safety, he decided, and come back for Tink.
“I’ll be back to help you in a second!” he said, though he couldn’t be sure if Tink had heard him, then he trudged forward with Scott in tow.
The two minutes or so that it took for him to hand Scott over to Dema and Fess felt like hours. He was exhausted and in pain, but Adán turned and headed back out for Tink, now on his knees hunched over the transmitter just four or five yards away.
He had just reached him when Adán saw it—a dark mass rising up from the ground behind Tink. “What the hell is that?” he said more to himself than to anyone else.
Dema’s voice crackled over the comm. “Adán, do you read me? Scott’s okay. A bit stunned but okay. Fess is with him in the common room now. Do you have Tink and Lainie?”
Lainie. Adán had forgotten all about her. But Tink. . .
“There’s something out here!” said Adán.
There was a pause before Dema’s voice returned. “Adán, get out of there. The sensors are picking up something solid, something big!”
He reached Tink and pulled him to his feet. Together, with the transmitter still clutched in Tink’s arms, they staggered toward the shuttle, which they could now barely make out through the thick haze of sand.
“Lainie!” Adán waited a moment for a reply. “Lainie, do you read me?” He shook his head. “The storm’s interfering with the frequency!”
“She was carrying the generator,” said Dema, her words nearly impossible to make out through the static. “She was closer to the shuttle than we were. You should see her!”
Adán and Tink continued trudging forward. Then just to right of the shuttle hatch, they spotted something square and black half buried in the sand at their feet. It was the generator tipped onto its side, but there was no sign of Lainie.
SAND AND SHADOW by Laurisa White Reyes
AUTHOR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Tell us about Sand and Shadow.
Mission Specialist Adán Fuentes awakes from cryo-hybernation and discovers that he is one of seven survivors of the shuttle Carpathia’s crew. The shuttle’s been damaged, and they are on a distant planet, way off course from their intended destination and purpose. When they are attacked by some unseen creature, the crew must race against time to figure out where they are, how they got there, and how to defend themselves – if they can. Think The Martian meets Alien.
What inspired you to write Sand and Shadow?
When I was kid, one of my favorite movies was Forbidden Planet, about a scientist on a distant planet who somehow taps into the deepest recesses of his psyche and unleashes a monster. I watched the video over and over for years and have always been fascinated with the plot. I watched it a few months ago. The movie is very hokie by today’s standards, but the premise still holds up. I wanted to create a new story with new characters but based on a similar idea: that humans and the human mind are capable of both great good and profound evil.
Most of your books are either fantasy or contemporary young adult. What motivated you to delve into science fiction/horror?
I’m a sucker for horror fiction. Every summer, I read nothing but horror. I’ve read a lot of zombie and haunted house books over the years. Most of the short stories I’ve written are either horror or speculative in nature. Even a couple of my novels have elements of psychological suspense. So, I was destined to eventually write something seriously hard core like Sand and Shadow. I would love to write more in this genre. I’ve got some good ideas.
What was the writing process like for this book?
I began writing the first draft in 2012, the year my very first novel was published. By then, I’d already written a dozen other manuscripts, each of which has taken about eight years on average from start to publication. Writing is a long process for me. I muddle over details for years before I ever begin to write. I finished the first draft of Sand and Shadow in about a year, but then it sat on the back burner while I revised and published my other books. Eventually, I came back around to it. I spent all of 2020 revising and polishing it, and most of this year on everything else it takes to publish a book.
Besides writing, how do you spend your time?
Writing is on and off, depending on which project I’m working on. I just finished the first draft of a historical novel that I’ve been working on for about five years. So, I’m not writing anything new at the moment. I’m currently focused on promoting and marketing my backlist, which is like a part-time job. I own my own small press, and we’re actually publishing our second contest winner this fall, a memoir called A Sacred Duty: How a whistleblower took on the VA and won by Paula Pedene. So, I’m spending time editing and designing that book as well. When I’m not writing/editing/designing, I spend the rest of my time with my thirteen-year-old son (he’s my youngest of five kids – the others are all adults now). I homeschool him and transport him to his many activities: scouts, horseback riding, theater, piano, voice lessons. I volunteer with scouting and theater as well. Oh, and I also teach college composition part-time, take care of my home and family, and I read. A lot.
What sorts of books do you enjoy reading?
I’ve always been an avid reader. As a kid and teenager, my brothers would spend Saturday afternoons outdoors pulling weeds and doing yardwork for my dad. I’d be lying in bed devouring a book. I read between 30-50 books a year in a variety of genres. Summers are devoted to horror fiction, especially zombies and supernatural thrillers. But I also love historical non-fiction, young adult, suspense, and mysteries. The only genre I won’t touch is romance. Blech. I’ll read a book with some romance in it but never a straight up romance novel. Some of the best books I’ve ever read include:
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Lilies of the Field by William E. Barrett
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
What do you enjoy most about writing?
Most novelists can tell you that something magical happens while you’re writing a first draft. When you get really into the story, the real world seems to dissolve, and you’re transported into a world of your own making. My husband and kids joke that they can ask me anything while I’m writing, and I’ll just nod my head and have no recollection of what I’ve agreed to. And then somewhere along the line, it’s hard to explain, but the story takes on a life of its own. Like you’re not writing the story but it’s writing itself, and you as the author are the conduit rather than the creator. The characters become, in some sense, real beings, and the writer’s job is to be faithful to those characters and the story. That’s why I love writing first drafts. It’s the creative, magical experience that is so remarkable. But then later, the real work begins with editing and revising. It’s a completely different mental process, and I enjoy that too but in a different way. Editing, to me, is like shaping clay on a potter’s wheel, molding the material that is already there into something really beautiful.
What kind of research goes into your writing?
I love research. I’ve spent countless hours researching for each of my novels: reading non-fiction books, newspapers, magazines, online studies and websites, conducting interviews, and even on-location travel. For my novel Sand and Shadow, I had to learn about cryogenics, habitable planets, ESP, light speed calculations, and a bunch of other stuff. My dad was a computer programmer for Jet Propulsion Laboratories working on deep space craft like Voyager and Ulysses. He first introduced me to the idea of planetary colonization and deep space travel. What we’ve always considered science fiction is, in reality, within reach. I didn’t want the book to sound too futuristic but something that could happen within the next few years. The secret to good research for any book is for the information to be so smoothly incorporated into the story that the readers don’t notice it. Like the beams and bolts make up the structure of a building. It should be invisible to the naked eye.
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