by Hugh Howey
“Good plan,” Kelvin said. “And when we move, let’s head back past the server module. It’s the fastest path to darkness. Once we’re out of the light, we can swing around and go through the fence where Mica and Peter escaped.”
We each nodded. I tried to set my face and seem as calm as the other two.
Part of me wondered if they were doing the same thing.
••••
After what seemed an eternity on the tractor’s landing without a sound—not even a single bombfruit dropping—I led the way down the metal ladder.
As soon as my feet hit the ground, I ducked under the body of the enormous earthmover and hid in the shadow of one of its massive tires. Tarsi came down after, quiet as a sigh, and moved beside me, her hand clutching my arm. Kelvin dropped the last two steps and bent his knees with the fall, landing like a primitive animal poised to strike. As the three of us padded barefoot towards the server module, I admired the lithe movements of the other two and figured of the three of us, I would be the one getting us caught.
The first several hundred feet were the worst. With our surrounds wide open and brightly lit, I felt like our very shadows were trying to turn us in. As we ran away from the low spotlights, the black betrayers grew from our feet, reaching out toward distant modules, threatening to dash up walls and cut across windows. Kelvin waved his hand at us, and we ducked and ran in a crouch, trying to shorten the elongated monsters.
When we reached the server module, I felt like the ordeal must be over. Beyond, lay relative darkness. We could cross to what was left of the fuel depot, circle around to the neglected farms, and then work our way past the dump where the debris from our birthday fires had been shoved. We rested on the back side of the module, catching our breaths and making sure our packs were still on our backs and not leaking survival gear.
With my head against the building’s exterior, I could hear the machines inside thinking. The servers clicked and whirred, the entire building humming with activity. Kelvin whispered our route one more time, but I didn’t hear him. I became lost in the sounds of the servers, the popping of the belts on the recording drives and the buzzing of the fans. It sounded like a machine pulsing and breathing.
Kelvin nodded, seeing if we were ready. He pushed off the wall and began padding his way toward the fuel depot. Tarsi followed, with me right behind.
We were only a dozen feet or so from the module when the klaxons sounded. The noise was so loud and unexpected, I nearly fell to the ground in paralytic fright. Tarsi and I both stopped and looked back toward the server module, as if unsure which way to run. Kelvin hissed at us both and my brain—completely undecided—was won over by the urgency in his voice.
We ran. I swung the tarp pack around to my stomach so I could keep it from swinging wildly and concentrated on pumping my legs. Twice, I looked back over my shoulder but could see no sign of pursuit. I followed Tarsi into the blackness of the scavenged fuel depot, only one of its bunkers remaining to hide us. Kelvin grabbed us before we flew past and pulled us close to the lonely cylinder of gold.
“Same route?” Kelvin asked. “Or do we make a new cut?”
The klaxon was so loud we had to do more than whisper to be heard. It felt bizarre to consider cutting through a fence meant to protect us and to have our efforts loudly betrayed by a horn meant to warn us of danger.
Tarsi voted we stick to the original route. We had brought some tools for the job, but none of us were quite comfortable with our backup plan of cutting through the fence ourselves.
Kelvin took another look back at the collection of modules and cursed. Tarsi and I looked as well and saw figures moving about, their shadows reaching out dozens of feet across the lit ground.
“They’re just being woken up by the horn,” Tarsi said.
She was right. The people were milling about as if confused, not running or acting organized. Still, a sense of urgency welled up inside me that threatened to turn into a full panic.
“Let’s go,” Kelvin said. He pushed off in the direction of the farms. Tarsi and I ran after him, and I began to wonder who had spotted us and sounded the alarm. Why hadn’t they yelled for us to stop, or fired a warning shot?
We were halfway to the farms when I figured it out—or at least thought I had. Oliver would have seen it as a sign from the gods: a bright streak of light fell from the heavens, exploding in a shower of sparks. It was a burning limb from the canopy, more falling debris from the earlier missile firing. I slowed my pace and looked up at the small ring of fire above me. Inside the orange circle of embers loomed a crisp hole of darkest night peppered with bright, winking stars.
And satellites, I thought.
Then it hit me—the timing of the canopy-clearing after someone had escaped. I gazed up at the glimmering pinpricks and continued to jog forward, slamming into Tarsi who had come to a stop to search the exposed heavens, looking for more falling debris.
“So beautiful,” she said.
I pulled her along as I searched the darkness ahead for Kelvin.
Tarsi stumbled, clutching at my shirt. “I can’t stop looking at it,” she said.
“Yeah,” I huffed, trying to catch my breath, “The problem is—I think it’s looking back.”
• 15 • Outside
As we crossed over the fallow fields and approached the dump, the klaxon fell silent. The end of its blaring brought little relief, however. Our hunters could now be heard shouting throughout the base as they organized our capture. I glanced their direction as I ran, expecting shots to be fired. The worklights went out, and for a moment I wondered if the tactic would make us easier to spot. But then, over the shouts and barked orders, I heard the hum of the electrified perimeter become louder. All the precious juice had been routed to the fence—more betrayal from the very things meant to protect us.
And more to come, as I heard the tractors roar to life and realized our own sleep-home was going to be used to hunt us down.
The three of us paused by the dump to catch our breaths. Tarsi clung to me and I could feel her shaking. All of us had physically deteriorated since leaving the vats, slowly wasting away on poor sleep and a poorer diet. Even if we somehow escaped capture, we had begun our sojourn poorly by burning precious calories before we even got beyond the fence and started eking out some sort of life on our own.
One of the tractors revved angrily; the lights from its cab moved out past the modules and toward the break in the fence.
“We need to hurry,” Tarsi said, her breathing labored.
The three of us ran for the spot where Mica and Peter had gone through. To the side, I could see the two tractors rumbling across the clearing, one of them clearly heading to the old break. Kelvin increased his lead, disappearing into the darkness as we neared the inner ditch, the berm beyond, and the tall and buzzing fence.
Tarsi and I shuffled down through the steep rut and scrambled up the berm. Kelvin cursed and fumbled in his pack for something. The fence hummed furiously above us; I crawled up even with Kelvin to see what was taking him so long.
The fence had been patched.
Solid replacement bars were welded across the breach. None of us had heard plans made for the repair that day, nor had anything been put on the timetables for the work. We had brought along insulated cutters and wire in case we needed to make our own hole, but there seemed little time with the klaxon and search party. Looking back toward base, I saw the tractor halfway to the fence already, lumbering along with a menacing roar.
“What do we do?” Tarsi asked.
I started to suggest we follow the ditch, sneak back into camp, blend in with the search party and pretend we were never attempting to flee. Then, figures materialized out of the darkness, coming for us along the ditch. And I realized it was too late.
••••
“Porter? Tarsi?” Jorge scampered up the berm toward us—the fear in his eyes marking him as a fellow escapee, not a warden on the prowl. Several other shapes materialized in t
he ditch, more people converging on yesterday’s exit.
“Make the cuts!” I yelled back to Kelvin, who had already begun doing just that. I ran down the berm and helped several others up, watching the tractor and people on foot make their way toward us. Cones of light splayed out from a few of the walkers as they scanned the ground with flashlights.
The klaxon went off again, hopefully a sign Kelvin had made the first cut, not messing with the wires. Three other people scampered up past me. I looked back and saw a pathetic, trembling crowd huddled by the fence, waiting for a way out. But the tractor and the men were going to get to us before we made it through. The machine’s headlights illuminated the ground just a hundred feet from us, but that distance was steadily decreasing.
My feet made the next decision, rather than my head. They led me out of the ditch and straight toward the headlights—my resolve laboring to catch up. When it did, I found myself running to meet the tractor and the walking, searching silhouettes. Over the buzzing of the fence and the revving of the engine, I heard Tarsi yell out for me, but even that didn’t shake me to my senses.
As soon as I hit the edge of the tractor’s lights, a set of shouts rang out from ahead, our pursuers barking with excitement at having made contact.
I turned to the side and ran parallel to the fence, hoping to draw the light away.
I drew gunfire instead.
A loud pop shot out over the hum of the tractor and something whistled through the air above my head, another reversal of the bombfruit sounds.
Again. Bang and whistle.
I ducked my head reflexively and churned my legs. After the next pop, a fountain of dirt erupted ahead of me. I had to force myself to not slow down, keeping in mind a moving target would be harder to hit. When I neared the edge of the tractor’s cone of light—almost back into darkness—I heard more shouting. Directions were yelled. The light turned, keeping me in its sight, taking us both away from the hole in the fence.
The pops started coming in groups, the buzzing and plumes of dirt surrounding me. I had pressed my luck too far. I veered back toward the perimeter, sprinting hard for the ditch as the tractor’s headlamps illuminated the high fence beyond. Diving for the edge, I tumbled inside, my small pack of supplies flying loose and spilling across the dirt. Like a fool, I clutched for a few of the precious items. I felt my flashlight rolling through the dirt and grabbed it. I groped for other items, then the thumps of running feet jarred me back to the danger behind.
Keeping my head low, I ran back toward the hole in the fence, wondering if I’d given Kelvin half the time he needed. I had almost reached the edge of the tractor’s lights when I heard grunts behind me—enforcers spilling into the ditch. Another pop and the berm erupted with a shower of soil. I had no idea if I was getting lucky, or if they just had horrid aim. I had no idea how difficult it was to operate a handgun while on the move.
With no need to hide any longer, I kept my head up so I could run faster, and I saw over the lip of the ditch that the first tractor was backing up and making a slow turn to follow. The second machine bore down on the breach in the fence; the pursuit was converging on the most logical point of escape—the same bad idea that had brought us all together that night.
After another flurry of pops sounded from behind, I felt something pinch my thigh. I hobbled for a few steps, thinking I’d been shot, but the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Ahead of me, the dark shapes of my fellow escapees came into view, and then the floodlights of the second tractor lit them up like what I imagined raw unfiltered daylight to be like.
More shots, followed by the zing of metal on metal. I noticed the group had grown smaller than when I’d left them and hoped that meant the hole was open. Running as fast as I could, my lungs burning from the effort, I glanced back at the enforcers and saw they weren’t moving much faster. They were just as winded as me.
Up the berm I went, scrambling for the hole as the cluster of bodies at the top seemed to have been whittled down to just a few. I pushed up behind someone, urging them forward as dirt exploded around us. Another shot ricocheted off the fence above us with a loud zing. The legs ahead of me flew out of sight and I fell forward, pressing myself flat against the dirt, throwing my arms through the hole. All around me was the loud buzzing of a quick death. One touch and my body would be cooked, smoking and burning like the falling heads of my nightmares, like all my vat-mates who hadn’t made it—
Several pairs of hands grasped me from outside. I couldn’t even kick my legs to help; they just yanked me through, all of us tumbling down the other side of the berm, where we rolled through the dirt, panting and wheezing.
Before we could take stock or enjoy the weak thrill of freedom, we found ourselves running again, wary of the chance of pursuit from behind, overcome with the odd sensation of a fenceless horizon as we stumbled into darkness and the perilous unknown.
• 16 • Old Friends
Morning came, its feeble rays slanting through the dense canopy overhead, and winding around trees that rose up in great cliffs of wood. Our group lay together in a tight cluster, our heads on various parts of each other. Exhaustion had overtaken a few of us just an hour into our hike through the blackness. Despite protestations, I had been unwilling to hazard the light, for fear of being spotted. Of the three flashlights that had been brought between all the escapees, mine was the only one that had survived our mad push through the fence.
Sitting up, I noticed a few others had awoken before me. Kelvin, Vincent, and Britny—the last a girl I hardly knew—sat together a dozen paces away, whispering and allowing the rest of us to enjoy our sleep. I disentangled myself from Tarsi and tried to stand, only to feel a stabbing pain in the back of my thigh. Hobbling away from the other sleepers, I moved halfway to Kelvin before collapsing.
“Are you okay?” he whispered, coming to my side.
“I think I got shot last night,” I told him. “Forgot all about it. Didn’t hurt much ’til now.”
“Roll over,” he said, trying to keep his voice low, his worry threatening to wake the others.
I lay facedown in the mossy groundcover and saw Vincent and Britny casting me confused looks. I waved—partly from embarrassment—as Kelvin pulled my trousers down to inspect the wound. They both waved back, and something in the normalcy of the gesture amused me. We were failed planetary colonists on the run from our own people, out in the middle of an unexplored planet that supposedly teetered between viability and abort. And there we were, waving at one another with sheepish grins, taking stock of who had made the break, who had been fed up with their lives enough to chance throwing them away.
“Ow,” I hissed, as Kelvin found my wound and probed it with his hand. He brought something up in front of my face.
“A shard of rock,” he said, holding the bloody stone dart up for me to see. “Barely a scratch.”
I rolled over and worked my pants back into place. Kelvin helped me up, and it felt like a lot more than a scratch on the back of my leg. I limped over to the others, who shifted in place to include me.
“Doesn’t feel like a scratch,” I told Kelvin, enjoying the sensation of being half carried and half escorted by him.
“There might be a little bruising as well,” he admitted. “But trust me, your little legs will be fine.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Hello, Porter,” Vincent said as I joined them on the ground.
I smiled and greeted them both. “So, the disenfranchised among us make themselves known,” I said.
“Yeah, and I’m sure there’ll be more,” Britny said, frowning.
I looked to Kelvin. “Speaking of which, we need to find Mica and Peter. I can’t stand the thought of them out here alone.” I looked over my shoulder. “There’s what? Nearly ten of us?”
“Maybe this will be enough to change the way things are running around base,” Vincent said. “This many people gone—using another half dozen for enforcement—the timetables are gonna g
o to shit.”
“Chances are it’ll just make things at camp worse for the rest,” I said.
“How?” Britny asked.
“A dozen ways. They could tighten the perimeter now that the farms have been abandoned and the fuel depot has been picked apart. There’s enough fencing there for two smaller nested circuits if they wanted to do that. Or they could pack everyone into a few modules every night and lock them. And if I can think of these things, I’m sure Hickson can come up with even worse.”
“I don’t know it’s all Hickson,” Vincent said. “I think he’s just Colony’s muscle.”
Kelvin shook his head.
“No way,” he said. “Everything went south when Stevens died.”
“And I’m not convinced Hickson killed Stevens,” Vincent told him.
“We need to start worrying about ourselves,” Britny said. “The next few weeks are gonna make the last few seem like a night in the vats.”
“And Colony was predicting rain for tonight. I heard it from Myra.”
Someone squeezed my shoulder from behind. I turned as Tarsi sat down beside me. She leaned her head against my shoulder and I glanced up in time to see the pained expression on Kelvin’s face, which he quickly wiped away.
“How did you sleep?” I asked her.
“Bad dreams, but otherwise . . . okay. How are you?”
“He’s got a boo-boo on his girly little leg,” Kelvin said, pointing and smiling.
“Are you hurt?”
I shrugged. “It’s nothing.”
“That’s not what you just said,” said Kelvin.
I glared at him. His smile broadened, but he raised his hands in mock surrender.
Britny stood and rested her hands on her hips. “When you boys are done fooling around, we need to make some decisions. How far do we go before we start digging in? Everybody seems to have grabbed a thing or two before they left, so how are we dividing these things up? Or are we?”