by Hugh Howey
Page 56
And then he saw the third file. This was his George. Her George. Lukas knew it. Doing the math, Lukas saw he would be thirty eight if he were still alive. He had died just over three years earlier, had worked in Mechanical, had never married.
He ran the ID search, and the picture confirmed his fears. He was a handsome man, a square jaw, a wide nose, dark eyes. He was smiling at the camera, calm, relaxed. It was hard to hate the man. Difficult, especially, since he was dead.
Lukas checked the cause and saw that it was investigated and then listed as an industrial accident. Investigated. He remembered hearing something about Jules when the up-top got its new sheriff. Her qualifications had been a source of debate and tension, a wind of whispers. Especially around IT. But there had been chatter that she’d helped out on a case a long time ago, that this was why she’d been chosen.
This was the case. Was she in love with him before he died? Or did she fall for the memory of the man after? He decided it had to be the former. Lukas searched the desk for a charcoal, found one, and jotted down the man’s ID and case number. Here was something to occupy his time, some way of getting to know her better. It would distract him, at least, until she finally got around to calling him back. He relaxed, pulled the keyboard into his lap, and started digging.
22
• Silo 17 •
Juliette shivered from the cold as she helped Solo to his feet. He wobbled and steadied himself, both hands on the railing.
“Do you think you can walk?” she asked. She kept an eye on the empty stairs spiraling down toward them, wary of whoever else was out there, whoever had attacked him and nearly gotten her killed.
“I think so,” he said. He dabbed at his forehead with his palm, studied the smear of blood he came away with. “Don’t know how far. ”
She guided him toward the stairs, the smell of melted rubber and gasoline stinging her nose. The black undersuit was still damp against her skin; her breath billowed out before her; and whenever she stopped talking, her teeth chattered uncontrollably. She bent to retrieve her knife while Solo clutched the curved outer railing. Looking up, she considered the task before them. A straight run to IT seemed impossible. Her lungs were exhausted from the swim, her muscles cramped from the shivering and cold. And Solo looked even worse. His mouth was slack, his eyes drifting to and fro. He seemed barely cognizant of where he was.
“Can you make it to the deputy station?” she asked. Juliette had spent nights there on supply runs. The holding cell made for an oddly comfortable place to sleep. The keys were still in the box—maybe they could rest easy if they locked themselves inside and kept the key with them.
“That’s how many levels?” Solo asked.
He didn’t know the down deep of his own silo as well as Jules. He rarely risked venturing so far.
“A dozen or so. Can you make it?”
He lifted his boot to the first step, leaned into it. “I can try. ”
They set off with only a knife between them, which Juliette was lucky to have at all. How it had survived her dark pull through Mechanical was a mystery. She held it tightly, the handle cold, her hand colder. The simple cooking utensil had become her security totem, had replaced her watch as a necessary thing she must always have with her. As they made their way up the stairs, its handle clinked against the inner railing each time she reached over to steady herself. She kept her other arm around Solo, who struggled up each step with grunts and groans.
“How many of them do you think there are?” she asked, watching his footing and then glancing nervously up the stairway.
Solo grunted. “Shouldn’t be any. ” He wobbled a little, but Juliette steadied him. “All dead. Everyone. ”
They stopped to rest at the next landing. “You made it,” she pointed out. “All these years, and you survived. ”
He frowned, wiped his beard with the back of his hand. He was breathing hard. “But I’m Solo,” he said. He shook his head sadly. “They were all gone. All of them. ”
Juliette peered up the shaft, up the gap between the stairs and the concrete. The dim green straw of the stairwell rose into a tight darkness. She pinned her teeth together to keep them from chattering while she listened for a sound, for any sign of life. Solo staggered ahead for the next flight of stairs. Juliette hurried beside him.
“How well did you see him? What do you remember?”
“I remember— I remember thinking he was just like me. ”
Juliette thought she heard him sob, but maybe it was the exertion from tackling more of the steps. She looked back at the door they were passing, the interior dark, no power being leached from IT. Were they passing Solo’s assailant? Were they leaving some living ghost behind?
She powerfully hoped so. They had so much further to go, even to the deputy station, much less to anyplace she might call home.
They trudged in silence for a level and a half, Juliette shivering and Solo grunting and wincing. She rubbed her arms now and then, could feel the sweat from the climb and from helping to steady Solo. It was nearly enough to warm her but for the damp undersuit, and she was so hungry by the time they cleared three levels that she thought her body was going to simply give out. It needed fuel, something to burn and keep itself warm.
“One more level and I’m going to need to stop,” she told Solo. He grumbled his agreement. It felt good to have the reward of a rest to climb toward—the steps went easier knowing they were countable, finite. At the landing of one-thirty-two, Solo used the railing to lower himself to the ground, hand over hand like the bars of a ladder. When his butt hit the decking, he laid out supine and folded his hands over his face.
Juliette hoped it was nothing more than a concussion. She’d seen her fair share of them working around men who were too tough to wear helmets—but not so tough when a tool or a steel beam caught them on the head. There was nothing for Solo but to rest.
The problem with resting was that it made her colder. Juliette stomped her feet to keep the blood circulating. The slight sweat she’d worked up from the hike was working against her. She could feel a draft cycling through the stairwell, cold air from below passing over the chilled waters like a natural air conditioning unit. Her shoulders shook, the knife vibrating in her hand until her reflection became a silvery blur. Moving was difficult—staying in one place would kill her. And she still didn’t know where this attacker was, could only hope he was below them.
“We should get going,” she told Solo. She looked to the doors beyond him, the windows dark. What would she do if someone burst out at that very moment and attacked them? What kind of fight could she hope to put up?
Solo lifted his arm and waved it at her. “Go,” he said. “I’ll stay. ”
“No, you’re coming with me. ” She rubbed her hands together, blew on them, summoned the strength to continue. She went to Solo and tried to grab his hand, but he withdrew it.
“More rest,” he said. “I’ll catch up. ”
“I’ll be damned if I’m—” Her teeth clacked uncontrollably. She shivered and turned the involuntary spasm into an excuse to shake her arms, waggling them and forcing the blood to her extremities. “—damned if I’m leaving you alone,” she finished.
“So thirsty,” he told her.
Despite seeing quite enough water for a lifetime, Juliette was as well. She glanced up. “One more level and we’re at the lower farms. C’mon. That’ll be far enough for today. Food and water, find me something dry. C’mon Solo, up. I don’t care if it takes us a week to get home, we aren’t giving up right here. ”
She grabbed his wrist. This time he didn’t pull away.
The next flight took forever to climb. Solo stopped several times to lean on the railing and gaze senselessly at the next step. There was fresh blood trickling down his neck. Juliette stomped her frozen feet some more and cursed to herself. This was all stupid. She’d been so damned stupid.
; A few steps from the next landing, she left Solo behind and went to check the doors to the farms. The jury-rigged power cables descending from IT and snaking their way inside were a legacy from decades ago, a time when the survivors, like Solo, were cobbling together what they could to stave off their demise. Juliette peeked inside and saw that the grow lights were off.
“Solo? I’m gonna go hit the timers. You rest here. ”
He didn’t answer. Juliette held the door open and tried to slot her knife into the metal grating by her feet, leaving the handle to prop it open. Her arm shook so violently, it took her considerable effort just to aim it into a gap. Her undersuit, she noticed, smelled like burning rubber, like the smoke from the fire.
“Here,” Solo said. He held the door open and slumped down against it, pinning it to the railing.
Juliette clutched the knife against her chest. “Thanks. ”
He nodded and waved his hand. His eyes drooped shut. “Water,” he said, licking his lips.
She patted his shoulder. “I’ll be right back. ”
• • • •
The farm’s entrance hall gobbled up the emergency lights from the stairway, the dim green quickly fading to pitch black. A circulating pump whirred in the distance, the same noise that had greeted her in the upper farms so many weeks ago. But now she knew what the sound was, knew there would be water available. Water and food, perhaps a change of clothes. She just needed to get the lights on so she could see. She cursed herself for not bringing a spare flashlight, for the loss of her pack and their gear.
The darkness accepted her as she climbed over the security gate. She knew her way. These farms had been nourishing Solo and her for weeks while they worked on the pathetic hydroponics pump and all that plumbing. Juliette thought of the new pump she’d wired; the mechanic in her was curious about the connection, wondered whether the thing would work, if she should’ve thrown the switch on the landing before they left. It was a crazy thought, but even if she didn’t live to see it, some part of her wanted that silo dry, that flood removed. Her ordeal in its depths already seemed so oddly distant, like something she had seen in a dream but hadn’t really gone through, and yet she wanted it to have mattered for something. She wanted Solo’s wounds to have mattered for something.
Her undersuit swished noisily while she walked, her legs rubbing together, her damp feet squeaking as she lifted them from the floor. She kept one hand on the wall, her knife comforting her in the other. Already, she could feel the residual warmth in the air from the last burn of the grow lights. She was thankful to be out of that frigid stairwell. In fact, she felt
better. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. She would get some food, some water, find them a safe place to sleep. Tomorrow, they would aim for the mids deputy station. They could arm themselves, gather their strength. Solo would be stronger by then. She would need him to be.
At the end of the hall, Juliette groped for the doorway to the control room. Her hand habitually went to the switch inside, but it was already up. It hadn’t worked in over three decades.
She fumbled blindly through the room, arms out in front of her, expecting to hit the wall long before she did. The tip of the knife scraped one of the control boxes. Juliette reached up to find the wire hanging from the ceiling, tacked up by someone long ago. She traced the wire to the timer it had been rigged to, felt for the programmable knob and slowly turned it until it clicked.
A series of loud pops from the relays outside rattled down the growing halls. A dim glow appeared. It would take a few minutes for them to warm all the way up.
Juliette left the control room and headed down one of the overgrown walkways railed off between the long plots of dirt. The nearest plots were picked clean. She pushed through the greenery, plants from either side of the hall shaking hands in the middle, and made her way to the circulation pump.
Water for Solo, warmth for herself. She repeated this mantra, begging the lights to heat up faster. The air around her remained dim and hazy like the view of an outside morning beneath the heavy clouds.
She made her way through the pea plants, long neglected. Popping a few pods off their vines, she gave her stomach something to do besides ache. The pump whirred louder as it worked to push water through the drip pipes. Juliette chewed a pea, swallowed, slipped through the railing and made her way to the small clearing around the pump.
The soil beneath the pump was dark and packed flat from weeks of her and Solo drinking there and refilling their containers. A few cups were scattered on the ground. Juliette knelt beside the pump and chose a tall glass. The lights above her were slowly brightening. She already imagined she could feel their warmth.
With a bit of effort, she managed to loosen the drain plug at the bottom of the pump a few turns. The water was under pressure and jetted out in a fine spray. She held the cup tightly against the pump to minimize the spillage. The cup hissed as it was filled.
She drank out of one cup while filling another, some loose dirt crunching between her teeth.
Once both were full, she screwed them into the wet dirt so they wouldn’t tip over, and then twisted the plug until the spray stopped. Juliette tucked the knife under her arm and grabbed the two cups. She went to the railing, passed everything through, then threw her leg over the lowermost bar and scrambled out.
Now she needed warmth. She left the cups where they were and grabbed the knife. There were offices around the corner, a dining room. She remembered her first outfit in silo 17: a tablecloth with a slit in the middle. She laughed to herself as she turned the corner, feeling like she was regressing, like her weeks of working to make things better were taking her back to where she’d started.
The long hallway between the two grow stations was dark. A handful of wires hung from the pipes overhead, drooping between the spots where they’d been hastily attached. They marched in these upside-down leaps toward the hum and glow of the growing plots in the distance.