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The Hollow Caravan
An unreleased short story from the book: 3I/ATLAS: The Comet That Shouldn’t Exist
The desert was already restless before the comet came.
We had been hearing about it for months—3I/ATLAS, C/2025 N1, an interstellar wanderer they said had been drifting between suns for longer than Earth had existed. Astronomers spoke of it in precise terms: its hyperbolic trajectory, its origin beyond the Oort Cloud, the way it reflected light differently from any comet in recorded history. But for those of us who lived in the red deserts east of Al-Khazir, the news arrived as rumor first, carried by traders whose camels bore the dust of far-off markets. They said its tail was long enough to bridge worlds, its light like the glow of frozen lightning.
The elders remembered other comets, other years of bad omens. But no one remembered wagons that moved without drivers.
It was the third night after the comet passed directly overhead when we saw them.
We had made camp in the lee of the stone cliffs, the sand cool and shifting beneath our mats. My partner, Samir, was checking the straps on our cargo while I coaxed the fire into a steady glow. The wind was low, carrying only the faint rattle of dry brush.
Then we heard the creak.
Wood on wood, slow and uneven, the sound of axles straining. I thought it was another caravan coming from the west—perhaps late travelers caught by the falling night. But when the wagons emerged from the shadow of the ridge, there were no lanterns, no camels, no drivers walking beside them.
They rolled in a perfect line, their wheels cutting deep into the sand without leaving any footprints between.
I stepped closer.
The first wagon was open-sided, its planks bleached pale by years of sun. Inside, beneath a thin drift of windblown grit, was a mound of dust. Not the fine, red powder of the desert, but pale gray, like ash. It had settled in the shape of a curled human body—knees drawn up, head bowed, hands folded as if in restless sleep.
The mound did not shift with the wagon’s motion. It kept its form, as though something unseen held it in place.
We moved to the next wagon. The same.
A third. The same again.
All of them—the entire line—carried a single dust-figure inside. Each a different shape, but all curled, all silent.
The comet’s light turned the sand silver, its tail sweeping a frozen arc across the sky. The air had a taste to it, metallic and cold, though the desert night should have been warm still from the day’s heat.
Samir whispered, “They are bound for somewhere.”
I didn’t answer, because I could see it now too. The wagons weren’t wandering. They moved in a direct line, neither turning nor swaying. Each wheel carved a parallel groove in the sand, and those grooves pointed toward the southern horizon, where the land fell into an expanse we called the Hollow Quarter—a place without wells, without shade, without return.
We followed. Not out of courage, but because it felt impossible not to.
The desert was utterly still except for the creak of the axles and the faint hiss of sand against the wagon wheels. No wind touched us. Our own caravan stayed behind, the animals restless and stamping in their tethers. The fire we’d left seemed smaller and smaller until it vanished entirely.
The further we went, the brighter the comet seemed to grow, until the shadows of the wagons stretched impossibly long across the sand. And then I realized the shadows were wrong—angled as though cast by a second light low on the horizon, one I could not see.
We came to a shallow basin where the sand was smoother, untouched by wind. The wagons stopped without slowing first, halting so suddenly that the dust inside them trembled.
One by one, the mounds began to collapse.
Not all at once—slowly, as though something inside was exhaling. The ash curled upward in pale spirals, twisting into the air before drifting toward the ground. I thought it would scatter on the wind, but it didn’t.
It gathered.
The ash swirled into new shapes—taller, thinner, less human. They had no faces, no eyes, only the suggestion of heads and limbs in the way the dust bent light. The figures stood beside their wagons, still as stones.
Samir took a step back.
They turned.
The movement was silent, but I felt it—like a weight on my chest, a pressure that made the breath stall in my throat. Their faceless heads tilted toward us, and the air between us seemed to ripple, though the sand did not move.
One raised an arm.
The comet’s light flared—brief, sharp, a reflection off nothing—and I saw that its “hand” was nothing more than a denser swirl of dust. But when it pointed, the mound inside the nearest wagon rose again, taking the shape of a man I thought I recognized.
It was Tareq, a trader who had vanished the year before on the southern routes. His form was perfect, down to the curve of his shoulders and the frayed hem of his tunic. But he did not move.
The pointing figure lowered its arm.
The wagons turned, all at once, their wheels cutting a fresh set of parallel grooves into the sand. This time, they moved toward us.
I stumbled back, my heel sinking into soft earth that should have been hard-packed. The basin’s floor was loosening beneath my feet, the sand pulling downward as if some vast hollow had opened beneath us.
The lead wagon rolled closer, its shadow stretching over me until I could taste the ash in my mouth. My tongue felt coated, dry and numb. Samir shouted something—words I couldn’t catch—and pulled me away.
We ran.
When we reached our own camp, the fire had gone cold. The animals were gone. The sand was marked with deep, parallel grooves leading into the dark.
The comet’s light still burned overhead, but it felt dimmer now, its cold sinking into my bones.
Some nights, I wake to hear the creak of axles in the distance.
And when the wind blows from the south, it smells of dust that is not of this desert.
If you enjoyed this short story you will probably like our latest release available now:
3I/ATLAS: The Comet That Shouldn’t Exist
Original price was: $5.99.$3.99Current price is: $3.99.
It came from the darkness between the stars… and it should not be here.
When astronomers first spotted 3I/ATLAS—officially designated C/2025 N1 (ATLAS)—they thought it was just another icy visitor from the edge of our solar system. But within days, the data told a far stranger story. This was no ordinary comet.
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