Summary: by Brian Trent read by Veronica Giguere Links for this episode: This story has not been published previously. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Brian Trent About the Author… Brian Trent is a 2013 winner in the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Competition for his story “War Hero,” and has sold work to Apex, Daily Science Fiction, COSMOS, Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Clarkesworld. Trent resides in Connecticut where, in addition to writing science-fiction novels, he works in film. His website is briantrent.com. Veronica Giguere About the Narrator… from her own website… Veronica is a voiceover artist whose foray into podcasting and audiobooks began with the heroic science fiction series, The Secret World Chronicle in mid-2006. While she continues to work with The Secret World Chronicle series, she is also the voice of Jill Woodbine for the new series from the Parsec-winning HG World,’The Diary of Jill Woodbine.’ The Nightmare Lights of Mars by Brian Trent Before discovering the moths, Clarissa Lang stumbled blind in the Martian sandstorm and admitted she was about to die because of a painting. Granules of sand flew past her head at 90 kph and crunched between her teeth. The storm hissed around her ears, a terrible insistence that she hush forever. There was no excuse for this death, Clarissa thought. Weather advisories had been in place for an hour. Her death would become a digital footnote, filed under foolishness, for all time. She staggered blind and tacked through the needle-spray. Red sand piled around her neck and shoulders, grew around her mouth like exaggerated lipstick. “Overlay!” she shouted — tried to shout — but her mouth instantly filled with gritty particulate. She panicked then, the first moment of true mindless panic. But the Martian Positioning Satellite had heard her cry: Maureen’s property map sprang up in her left eye, drawn scarlet against each blink. The house was thirty meters northwest. Upwind. Clarissa tucked herself into a protective ball and scuttled sideways, like a crab. The sand struck her exposed hands and face in a shifting, relentless wave. _I’ll never make it._ Clarissa could no longer breathe. A recent story from the Japanese colony in Cydonia leapt to her mind, in which a grandmother had been caught outside in a sandstorm, wandered around in circles for ten minutes in the hissing tempest, and finally suffocated _an arm’s length from her front door._ When they found her, her stomach, throat, and mouth were bulging with sand. The toolshed! I can make the tool shed! Clarissa turned away from her house and the full brunt of the sandstorm slammed into her back, tearing the jacket, spraying around her body in silhouette. For a fleeting instant, she was able to suck clean air into her lungs. Then the sand closed around her again. She ran downwind, following the MPS overlay, and tripped over a tree-stump – all that remained of the maple her wife had heat-lanced a week ago. Clarissa fell and rolled, her face briefly showered in needle-spray, and then she was on her feet again, running, weeping, not looking back. In three bounds she was at the shed. She grabbed the door handle and pulled. It was locked. The shed was slotted to Maureen’s biometrics. Clarissa pounded the door furiously. There was only one chance left. She felt along the shed walls and reached the back as a muddy, bloody figure. With the last reserves of wild strength, she battered herself against the window. The glasstic was shatter-proof, but it popped from its molding and she fell atop its reflective surface, safe and shivering in the shed. Musty air filled her lungs. Maureen’s tools hung like hunting trophies on the walls. Clarissa weakly felt for the box of algae flares, pried the lid up, and struck it against the glass sheet beneath her. The shed blazed in bright emera[...]
