Wool

by Hugh Howey

Page 36

 

  “Are they safe to carry?” Shirly asked as Knox stuffed one into his hip pocket.

  “Oh yeah, it takes some force. ”

  Several people reached their arms in and clattered around for one. Knox caught McLain’s eyes as she took one for herself and slotted it into a pocket on her chest. The look on her face was one of cool defiance. She must see how disappointed he was in her coming, and he could tell at a glance that there would be no reasoning with her.

  “All right,” she said, turning her gray-blue eyes toward the men and women gathered around the counter. “Listen up. We’ve got to get back open for business, so if you’re carrying a gun, grab some ammo. There are strips of canvas over there. Wrap these things up as best you can to keep them out of sight. My group is leaving in five minutes, got that? Those of you in the second wave can wait in the back, out of sight. ”

  Knox nodded. He glanced over at Marck and Shirly, both of whom would join him in the second wave; the slower climbers would go first and act casual. The stouter legs would follow and make a strong push, hopefully converging on thirty-four at the same time. Each group would be conspicuous enough—combined, and they might as well sing their intentions while they marched.

  “You okay, Boss?” Shirly rested her rifle on her shoulder and frowned at him. He rubbed his beard and wondered how much of his stress and fear was shining through.

  “Fine,” he grumbled. “Yeah. ”

  Marck grabbed a bomb, stashed it away, and rested a hand on his wife’s shoulder. Knox felt a pang of doubt. He wished the women didn’t have to get involved. At least the wives. He continued to hope that none of this violence would be necessary, but it was getting harder and harder to pretend as eager hands took up arms. They were, all of them, now capable of taking lives, and he reckoned they were angry enough to do so.

  McLain stepped through the opening in the counter and sized him up. “This is it, then. ” She reached out a hand.

  Knox accepted it. He admired the strength in the woman. “We’ll see you on thirty-five and go up the last level together,” he said. “Don’t have all the fun without us. ”

  She smiled. “We won’t. ”

  “And good climbing. ” He looked to the men and women gathering up behind her. “All of you. Good luck and see you soon. ”

  There were stern nods and clenched jaws. The small army in yellow began to file for the door, but Knox held McLain back.

  “Hey,” he said. “No trouble until we catch up, okay?”

  She slapped his shoulder and smiled.

  “And when this does go down,” Knox said, “I expect you at the very back, behind the—”

  McLain stepped closer, a hand gripping Knox’s sleeve. Her wrinkled face had suddenly hardened.

  “And tell me, where will you be, Knox of Mechanical, when the bombs fly? When these men and women who look up to us are facing their gravest test, where will you be?”

  Knox was taken aback by the sudden attack, this quiet hiss that landed with all the force of a shout.

  “You know where I’ll—” he started to answer.

  “Damn straight,” McLain said, releasing his arm. “And you’d better well know that I’ll see you there. ”

  15

  “I dreamt my lady came and found me dead”

  Juliette stood perfectly still and listened to the sound of footsteps retreating down the stairwell. She could feel the vibrations in the railing. Goose bumps rushed up her legs and down her arms. She wanted to call out, to yell for the person to stop, but the sudden rush of adrenaline made her chest feel cold and empty. It was like a chill wind had forced itself deep into her lungs, crowding out her voice. People were alive and in the silo with her. And they were running away.

  She pushed away from the railing and dashed across the landing, hit the curved steps at a dead run and took them as fast as her legs could take her. A flight down, as the adrenaline subsided, she found the lungs to yell, “Stop!,” but the racket of her bare feet on the metal stairs likely drowned out her voice. She could no longer hear the person running, dared not stop and listen for fear they would get too far ahead, but as she passed the doorway on thirty-one, she felt the panic that they might slip inside some level and get away. And if there were only a handful of them hiding in the vast silo, she may never find them. Not if they didn’t want to be found.

  Somehow, this was more terrifying than anything else: that she might live the rest of her days foraging and surviving in a dilapidated silo, talking to inanimate objects, while a group of people did the same and stayed out of sight. It so stressed her that it took a while to consider the opposite: that this might instead be a group who would seek her out, and not have the best intentions.

  They wouldn’t have the best intentions, but they would have her knife.

  She stopped on thirty-two to listen. Holding her breath to keep quiet was almost impossible—her lungs were crying out for deep gulps of air. But she remained still, the pulse in her palms beating against the cool railing, the distinct sound of footsteps still below her and louder now. She was catching up! She took off again, emboldened, taking the steps three at a time, her body sideways as she danced down the stairs as she had in youth, one hand on the curving railing, the other held out in front of her for balance, the balls of her feet just barely touching a tread before she was flying down to the next, concentrating lest she slip. A spill could be deadly at such speeds. Images of casts on arms and legs and stories of the unfortunate elderly with broken hips came to mind. Still, she pushed her limits, positively flying. Thirty-three went by in a blaze. Half a spiral later, over her footfalls, she heard a door slam. She stopped and looked up. She leaned over the railing and peered down. The footfalls were gone, leaving just the sound of her panting for air.

  Juliette hurried down another rotation of the steps and checked the door on thirty-four. It wouldn’t open. It wasn’t locked, though. The handle clicked down and the door moved, but caught on something. Juliette tugged as hard as she could—but to no avail. She yanked again and heard something crack. With a foot braced on the other door, she tried a third time, yanking sharply, snapping her head back, pulling her arms toward her chest and kicking with her foot—

  Something snapped. The door flew open, and she lost her grip on the handle. There was an explosion of light from inside, a bright burst of illumination spilling out the door before it slammed shut again.

  Juliette scrambled across the landing and grabbed the handle. She pulled the door open and struggled to her feet. One broken half of a broom stick lay inside the hallway—the other half hung from the handle of the neighboring door. Both stood out in the blinding light all around her. The overhead lamps inside the room were fully lit, the bright rectangles in the ceiling marching down the hall and out of sight. Juliette listened for footsteps, but heard little more than the buzzing of the bulbs. The turnstile ahead of her winked its red eye over and over, like it knew secrets but wouldn’t tell.

  She got up and approached the machine, looked to the right where a glass wall peeked into a conference room, the lights full-on in there as well. She hopped over the stile, the motion a habit already, and called out another hello. Her voice echoed back, but it sounded different in the lit air, if that were possible. There was life in here, electricity, other ears to hear her voice, which made the echoes somehow fainter.

  She passed offices, peeking in each one to look for signs of life. The place was a mess. Drawers dumped on the floor, metal filing cabinets tipped over, precious paper everywhere. One of the desks faced her, and Juliette could see that the computer was on, the screen full of green text. It felt as though she’d entered a dreamworld. In two days—assuming she’d slept that long—her brain had gradually acclimated to the pale green glow of the emergency lights, had grown used to a life in the wilderness, a life without power. She still had the taste of brackish water on her tongue, and now she strolled through a dish
eveled but otherwise normal workplace. She imagined the next shift—did offices like these have shifts?—returning, laughing, from the stairwell, shuffling papers and righting furniture and getting back to work.

  The thought of work had her wondering what they did here. She had never seen such a layout. She almost forgot about her flight down the stairs as she poked about, as curious about the rooms and power as the footsteps that had brought her there. Around a bend she came to a wide metal door that, unlike the others, wouldn’t open. Juliette heaved on it and felt it barely budge. She pressed her shoulder against the metal door and pushed it, a few inches at a time, until she could squeeze through. She had to step over a tall metal filing cabinet that had been yanked down in front of the heavy door in an attempt to hold it closed.

  The room was massive, at least as big as the generator room and far larger than the cafeteria. It was full of tall pieces of furniture bigger than filing cabinets but with no drawers. Instead, their fronts were covered with blinking lights, red, green, and amber.

  Juliette shuffled through paper that had spilled from the filing cabinet. And she realized, as she did so, that she couldn’t be alone in the room. Someone had pulled the cabinet across the door, and they had to have done this from inside.

  “Hello?”

  She passed through the rows of tall machines, for that’s what she figured they were. They hummed with electricity, and now and then seemed to whir or clack like their innards were busy. She wondered if this were some sort of exotic power plant—providing the lighting perhaps? Or did these have stacks of batteries inside? Seeing all the cords and cables at the backs of the units had her leaning toward batteries. No wonder the lights were blaring. This was like twenty of Mechanical’s battery rooms combined.

  “Is anyone here?” she called out. “I mean you no harm. ”

  She worked her way through the room, listening for any movement, until she came across one of the machines with its door hinged open. Peering inside, she saw not batteries but boards like the kind Walker was forever soldering on. In fact, the guts of this machine looked eerily similar to the inside of the dispatch room’s computer—

  Juliette stepped back, realizing what these were. “The servers,” she whispered. She was in this silo’s IT. Level thirty-four. Of course.

  There was a scraping sound near the far wall, the sound of metal sliding on metal. Juliette ran in that direction, darting between the tall units, wondering who the hell this was running from her, and where they planned to hide.

  She rounded the last row of servers to see a portion of the floor moving, a section of metal grate sliding to cover a hole. Juliette dove for the floor, her tablecloth garb wrapping up her legs, her hands seizing the edge of the cover before it could close. Right in front of her, she saw the knuckles and fingers of a man’s hands gripping the edge of the grate. There was a startled scream, a grunt of effort. Juliette tried to yank back on the grate, but had no leverage. One of the hands disappeared. A knife took its place, snicking against the grate, hunting for her fingers.

  Juliette swung her feet beneath her and sat up for leverage. She yanked on the grate and felt the knife bite into her finger as she did so.

  She screamed. The man below her screamed. He emerged and held the knife between them, his hand shaking, the blade catching and reflecting the overhead lights. Juliette tossed the metal hatch away and clutched her hand, which was dripping blood.

  “Easy!” she said, scooting out of reach.

  The man ducked his head down, then poked it back up. He looked past Juliette as if others were coming up behind her. She fought the urge to check—but decided to trust the silence just in case he was trying to fool her.

  “Who are you?” she asked. She wrapped part of her garment around her hand to bandage it. She noticed the man, his beard thick and unkempt, was wearing gray coveralls. They could’ve been made in her silo, with just slight differences. He stared at her, his dark hair wild and hanging shaggy over his face. He grunted, coughed into his hand, seemed prepared to duck down under the floor and disappear.

  “Stay,” Juliette said. “I mean you no harm. ”

  The man looked at her wounded hand and at the knife. Juliette glanced down to see a thin trace of blood snaking toward her elbow. The wound ached, but she’d had worse in her time as a Mechanic.

  “S-s-sorry,” the man muttered. He licked his mouth and swallowed. The knife was trembling uncontrollably.

  “My name’s Jules,” she said, realizing this man was much more frightened of her than the other way around. “What’s yours?”

  He glanced at the knife blade held sideways between them, almost as if checking a mirror. He shook his head.

  “No name,” he whispered, his voice a dry rasp. “No need. ”

  “Are you alone?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Solo,” he said. “Years. ” He looked up at her. “Where did—” He licked his lips again, cleared his throat. His eyes watered and glinted in the light. “—you come from? What level?”

  “You’ve been by yourself for years?” Juliette said in wonder. She couldn’t imagine. “I didn’t come from any level,” she told him. “I came from another silo. ” She enunciated this last softly and slowly, worried what this news might do to such a seemingly fragile man.

  But Solo nodded as if this made sense. It was not the reaction Juliette had expected.

  “The outside—” Solo looked again at the knife. He reached out of the hole and set it on the grating, slid it away from both of them. “—is it safe?”

  Juliette shook her head. “No,” she said. “I had a suit. It wasn’t a far walk. But still, I shouldn’t be alive. ”