Third Shift: Pact

by Hugh Howey

Page 13

 

  Anna stared at him blankly, her mind in a fog. He could see it in the twitch of her eyes, the way her dry lips remained parted, the processing delay he well knew from the times they did this to him, from the times they had woken him.

  “Yes. ” She nodded ever so slightly. “Father was never going to wake us. The deep freeze—” Her voice was a whisper. “I’m glad you came. I knew you would. ”

  A hand escaped from the blanket and gripped the edge of the pod as if to pull herself out. Donald placed a hand on her shoulder. She was in a weakened state. He turned and grabbed the thermos from the wheelchair. Peeling her hand from the lip of the pod, he pressed the drink into her palm. She wiggled her other arm free and held the thermos against her knees.

  “I want to know why,” he said. “Why did you bring me here. To this place. ” He looked around at the pods, these unnatural graves that kept death at bay.

  Anna gazed at him. She studied the thermos and the straw. Donald let go of her arm and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the cell phone. Anna shifted her attention to that.

  “What did you do that day?” he asked. “You kept me from her, didn’t you? And the night we met to finalize the plans—all the times Mick missed a meeting—that was you as well. ”

  A shadow slid across Anna’s face. Something deep and dark registered. Donald had expected a harsh defiance, a steel resolve, denials. Anna looked sad, instead. It was as though the conversation had taken a turn she didn’t expect.

  “So long ago,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Donny, but it was so long ago. ” Her eyes flitted beyond him toward the door as if she were expecting danger. Donald glanced back over his shoulder and saw nothing. “We have to get out of here,” she croaked, her voice feeble and distant. “Donny, my father, they made a pact—”

  “I want to know what you did,” he said. “Tell me. ”

  She shook her head. “I need to tell you something else. ” Her voice was small and quiet. She licked her lips and glanced at the straw, but Donald kept a hand on her arm. “Dad woke me for another shift. ” She lifted her head and fixed her eyes on him. Her teeth chattered together while she collected her thoughts. “And I found something—”

  “Stop,” Donald said. “No more stories. No lies. Just the truth. ”

  Anna looked away. A spasm surged through her body, a great shiver. Steam rose from her hair, and condensation raced down the skin of the pod in sudden bursts of speed.

  “It was meant to be this way,” she said. The admission was in the way she said it, her refusal to look at him. “It was meant to be. You and me together. We built this. ”

  Donald seethed with renewed rage. Confirmation was like a second discovery of an awful truth. His hands trembled more than hers.

  Anna leaned forward. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you dying over there, alone. ”

  “I wouldn’t have been alone,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “And you don’t get to decide such things. ” He gripped the edge of the pod with both hands and squeezed until his knuckles turned white.

  Anna nodded. It was hard to tell if she agreed with him or if she meant to say, “It’s always up to people like me. ”

  “You need to hear what I have to say,” she said.

  Donald waited. What explanation or apology was there? She had taken from him what little Thurman had left behind. Her father had destroyed the world. Anna had destroyed Donald’s. He waited to hear what she had to say.

  “My father made a pact,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “We were never to be woken. We need to get out of here—”

  This again. She didn’t care that she had destroyed him. Donald felt his rage subside. It dissipated throughout his body, a part of him, a powerful surge that came and went like an ocean wave, not strong enough to hold itself up, crashing down with a hiss and a sigh.

  “Drink,” he told her, lifting her arm gently. “Then you can tell me. You can tell me whatever you like. ”

  Anna blinked. Donald reached for the straw and steered it toward her lips. Such dangerous lips. They would tell him anything, keep him confused, use him so that she might feel less hollow, less alone. He had heard enough of her lies, her brand of poison. To give her an ear was to give her a vein.

  Anna’s lips closed around the straw, and her cheeks dented as she sucked. A column of foul green surged up the straw.

  “So bitter,” she whispered after her first swallow.

  “Shhh,” Donald told her. “Drink. You need this. ”

  She did, and Donald held the thermos for her. Anna paused between sips to tell him they needed to get out of there, that it wasn’t safe. He agreed and guided the straw back to her lips. The danger was her.

  There was still some of the drink left when she gazed up at him, confused. “Why am I … feeling sleepy?” she asked. Anna blinked slowly, fighting to keep her eyes open.

  “You shouldn’t have brought me here,” Donald said. “We weren’t meant to live like this. ”

  Anna lifted an arm, reached out, and seized Donald’s shoulder. Awareness seemed to grip her. Donald sat on the edge of the pod and put an arm around her. As she slumped against him, he flashed back to the night of their first kiss. Back in college, her with too much to drink, falling asleep on his frat house sofa, her head on his shoulder. And Donald had stayed like that for the rest of the night, his arm trapped and growing numb while a party thrummed and finally faded. They had woken the next morning, Anna stirring before he did. She had smiled and thanked him, called him her guardian angel, and gave him a kiss.

  That seemed several ages ago. Eons. Lives weren’t supposed to drag on so long. But Donald remembered like it was yesterday the sound of Anna breathing that night. He remembered from their last shift, sharing a cot, her head on his chest as she slept. And then he heard her, right then in that moment as she took in one last sudden, trembling lungful. A gasp. Her body stiffened for a moment, and then cold and trembling fingernails sank into his shoulder. And Donald held her as that grip slowly relaxed, as Anna Thurman breathed her very last.

  Silo 17

  Year Seven

  23

  Something bad was happening with the cans. Jimmy couldn’t be sure at first. He had noticed little brown spots on a can of beets months ago and hadn’t thought anything of it. Now, there were more and more cans getting like that. And some of the contents tasted a little different, too. That part may’ve been his imagination, but he was for sure getting sick to his stomach more often, which was making the server room smell awful. He didn’t like getting anywhere near the poop corner—the flies were getting bad over there—which meant going number two farther and farther out. Eventually he would be going everywhere, and the flies didn’t carry his poop as fast as he made it. Especially not once he discovered that hidden cache of beef stew in the back of the soup shelves.

  And so it was decided that he needed to go out. He hadn’t heard any activity in the halls of late, no one trying the door. But what had once felt like a prison now felt like the only safe place to be. And the idea of leaving, once desirable, now turned his insides to water. The sameness, the routines, were all he knew. Doing something different seemed insane.

  He put it off for two days by making a Project out of preparing. He took his favorite rifle apart and oiled all the pieces before putting it back together. There was a box of lucky ammo where very few had failed or jammed during games of Kick the Can, so he emptied two clips and filled them with only these magic bullets. A spare set of coveralls was turned into a backpack by knotting the arms to the legs for loops and cinching up the neck. The zipper down the front made for a nice enclosure. He filled this with two cans of sausage, two of pineapple, and two of tomato juice. He didn’t think he’d be gone that long, but one never knew.

  Patting his chest, he made sure he had his key around his neck. It never came off, but he habitually patted his chest anyway to
make sure it was there. A purple bruise on his sternum hinted that he did this too often. A fork and a rusty screwdriver went in his breast pocket, the latter for jabbing open the cans. Jimmy really needed to find a can opener. That and batteries for his flashlight were the highest of priorities. The power had only gone out twice over the years, but both times had left him terrified of the dark. And checking to make sure his flashlight worked all the time tended to wear down the batteries.

  Scratching his beard, he thought of what else. He didn’t have much water left in the cistern, but maybe he’d find some out there, so he threw in two empty bottles from years prior. These took some digging. He had to rummage behind the hill of empty cans in one corner of the storeroom, the flies pestering him and yelling at him to leave them alone.

  “I see you, I see you,” he told them. “Buzz off. ”

  Jimmy laughed at his own joke.

  In the kitchen, he grabbed the large knife, the one he hadn’t broken the tip off of. He put that in his pack as well. By the time he worked up his nerve to leave on the second day, he decided it was too late to get started. So he took his gun apart and oiled it up one more time and promised himself that he would leave in the morning.

  Jimmy didn’t sleep well that night. He left the radio on in case there was any chatter, and the hissing made him dream of the air from the outside leaking in through the great steel door. The air hissed and hissed and filled his home with poison. He woke up more than once gasping for a breath and found it difficult to get back to sleep.

  In the morning, he checked the cameras, but they were still broken. He wished he had the one of the hallway. All it showed was black. He told himself there was no one there. But soon, he would be. He was about to go outside. Outside. Was it okay to think that?

  “It’s okay,” he told himself. He grabbed his rifle, which reeked of oil, and lifted his homemade pack, which he thought suddenly he could wear as clothes in a pinch, if he had to. He laughed some more and headed for the ladder.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” he said, urging himself as he climbed up. He tried to whistle, was normally a very good whistler, but his mouth was too dry. He hummed, instead.

  The pack and the gun were heavy. Dangling from the crook of his elbow, they made it difficult to unlock the hatch at the top of the ladder. But he finally managed. He stuck his head out and he paused to admire the gentle hum of the machines. Some of them made little clicking sounds as if their innards were busy. He’d taken most of the backs off over the years to peer inside and see if any contained secrets, but they all looked like the guts of the computers his dad used to build.

  The stench of his own waste greeted him as he moved between the tall towers. That wasn’t how you were supposed to greet someone, he thought. His poop was rude. And the black boxes radiated an awful heat, which only made the smell worse.

  He stood in front of the great steel door and hesitated. Jimmy’s world had been shrinking every day. It had been these two levels, the room with the black machines and the labyrinth beneath. And then he’d only been comfortable below. And then even the dark passageway and the tall ladder had frightened him. And soon it was the back room with all the beds and the storerooms with their funny smells, until the only place he felt safe was on his makeshift cot by the computer desk, the sound of the empty radio crackling in the background.

  And now he stood before that door his father had dragged him through, the place where he’d killed a man, and he thought about his world expanding.

  His palms were damp as he reached for the keypad. A part of him feared the air outside would be toxic, but he was probably breathing the same air, and people had lived for years out there, talking now and then on the radio. He keyed in the first two digits, level 12, his home. Jimmy thought about going home to get some different clothes, to go to the bathroom in a toilet. He pictured his mother sitting on his parents’ bed, waiting for him. He saw her lying on her back, arms crossed, nothing but bones.

  He messed up the next two digits, hitting the 4 instead of the 1, and wiped his hands on his thighs. “There’s no one on the other side,” he told himself. “No one. I’m alone. I’m alone. ”

  Somehow, this comforted him.

  He entered the two digits again, and then the digits of his school.

  The keypad beeped. The door began to make noises. And Jimmy Parker took a step back. He thought of school and his friends, wondered if any of them were still alive. If anyone was still alive. He hooked his finger under the strap of his rifle and pulled it over his head, tucked it against his shoulder. The door clanked free. All he had to do was pull.

  24

  There were signs of life and death waiting for him in the hall. A charred ring on the tile and a scatter of ash marked the corpse of an old fire. The outside of the steel door was lined with scratches and marked with dings. The latter reminded him of his misses during Kick the Can, the ineffectual kiss of bullet against solid steel. Right by his feet, Jimmy noticed a stain on the floor—a patch of dappled brown—that touched some small broken bone deep within his brain. He remembered a man dying there with his father’s face. Jimmy looked away from these signs of the living and the dying and stepped into the hall.

  As he began to pull the door shut, something made him hesitate, some worry in the fiber of his muscles, some constriction of blood vessels. Jimmy wondered if perhaps his code wouldn’t work from the outside. What if the door locked and he could never get back in? He checked the keypad and saw the gouges around its steel plate where someone had tried to pry it off the wall. He was reminded how desperately so many others had wanted in over the years. Remembering this made him feel crazy for wanting out. He was wanting in the wrong direction.