by Hugh Howey
Shirly set her teeth and jerked her head at the door, which was two-deep with yellow coveralls. “Don’t think we’re wanted,” she said, her voice raised so he could hear. “I’ve got to clean this wound. I think some of the bomb is in you.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “I’ve just been looking for you. I’ve been worried sick.”
He saw that his wife was crying, unbroken tear tracks standing out amid the beads of sweat.
“I thought you were gone,” she said. He had to read her lips to make it out. “I thought they had—that you were—”
She bit her lip and stared at him with uncharacteristic fear. Marck had never seen his wife phased, not by a sprung casement leak, not by a cave-in deep in the mine that trapped several of their close friends, not even when Juliette was sent to cleaning. But heaps of dread were locked up in her expression now. And that scared him in a way the bombs and bullets couldn’t.
“Let’s hurry after the others,” he said, taking her hand. He could feel the exposed nerves on the landing, the gazes begging them to be off.
When shouts rang down from above once more and the members of Supply retreated to the safety of their doorway, Marck knew this brief moment of respite was over. But it was okay. He’d found his wife. She was unharmed. There was little anyone could do to him now.
••••
When they reached one-thirty-nine together, Marck knew they’d made it. His legs had somehow held out. His blood loss hadn’t stopped him. With his wife helping him along, they passed the last landing before Mechanical, and all he could think about was holding the line against those bastards who were taking shots at them from above. Inside Mechanical, they would have power, safety in numbers, the advantage of home turf. More importantly, they would be able to bandage wounds and get some rest. That’s what he sorely needed: Rest.
He nearly tripped and fell down the last few steps, his legs not used to an end to the descent, a flat piece of ground rather than one more tread to sink to. As his knees buckled, and Shirly caught him, he finally noticed the jam of people at the security station leading into Mechanical.
The crew that had stayed behind while the rest marched up to fight had been busy. Steel plates had been welded solid across the wide security entrance. The diamond-studded sheeting stood from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Sparks hissed along one edge as someone worked to complete the job from the inside. The sudden flurry of refugees and wounded amassed in a crowd desperate to get in. Mechanics shoved and jostled against the barrier. They screamed and beat on the steel plates, mad with fear.
“What the hell?” Marck cried. He followed Shirly as she pressed into the back of the crowd. At the front, someone was crawling on the floor, wiggling on their belly through the tightest of gaps, a rectangle left open below the security turnstile wide enough to slide through, easy enough to defend.
“Easy! Wait your turn,” someone ahead of them shouted.
Yellow coveralls were mixed in with the others. Some were mechanics who had donned disguises—some seemed to be from Supply, helping the wounded, mixed up in the wrong crowd or not trusting their own level for safety.
As Marck attempted to usher Shirly toward the front, a shot rang out, the thwack and clatter of a hot ball of lead striking nearby. He changed directions and pulled her back toward the stairs. The crush around the impossibly small entrance grew frantic. There was a lot of yelling back and forth through the hole, people on this side shouting that they were being shot at, those on the other side yelling “One at a time!”
Several were on their bellies, scrambling for the tiny hole. One got his arms inside and was pulled through, sliding across the steel grating and disappearing into the dark space. Two others tried to be next, jostling for position. They were all exposed to the open stairwell above. Another shot rang out, and someone fell, clutching a shoulder and screaming “I’m hit!” The throng dispersed. Several ran back to the stairs where the overhang of the treads protected them from the gunfire. The rest were in chaos, all trying to fit through a space expressly designed to allow no more than one at a time.
Shirly screamed and squeezed Marck’s arm as another person was shot. A mechanic fell to the ground and doubled over in pain. She yelled at her husband, asking him what they should do.
Marck dropped his rucksack, kissed her cheek, and ran with his rifle back up the stairs. He tried to take them two at a time, but his legs were too sore. Another shot rang out, the ricochet of a miss. His body felt incredibly heavy, slow like in a bad dream. He approached the landing of one-thirty-nine with his gun level, but the shooters were further up, peppering the crowd from higher above.
He checked that he had a fresh round in the homebuilt gun, cocked it, and edged out onto the landing. Several men in the silver of security were leaning out over the railing above, barrels trained down toward the ground floor of Mechanical. One of the men tapped his neighbor and pointed toward Marck. Marck watched all this down the length of his own barrel.
He fired a shot, and a black rifle tumbled toward him from above, the arms of its wielder slumping over the railing before sagging down and disappearing.
Gunfire erupted, but he was already diving back toward the stairs. The shouting grew furious both above and below him. Marck went to the other side of the stairs, away from where he’d last been seen, and peered down. The crowd was thinning by the security barrier. More and more people were being pulled through. He could see Shirly looking up, shielding her eyes against the stairway lights above.
Boots rang out behind him. Marck reloaded, turned, and aimed at the highest step he could see along the upward spiral. He waited for whatever was heading down toward him.
When the first boot appeared, he steadied himself, allowed more of the man to sink before his barrel, and then he pulled the trigger.
Another black rifle clattered against the steps and bounced through the railing; another man sagged to his knees.
Marck turned and ran. He lost his grip on his own gun, felt it bang against his shins as it skittered away from him, and he didn’t stop to retrieve it. He slid down the steps, lost his footing, landed on his ass and bounced back up. He tried taking the steps two at a time, was running as if in a dream, not fast enough, legs like rusted steel—
There was a bang, a muffled roar behind him, and somehow, someone had caught up, had punched him in the back, had hit him.
Marck sprawled forward and bounced down the steps, his chin striking the steel treads. Blood was in his mouth. He tried to crawl, got his feet beneath him, and stumbled forward.
Another roar, another punch to the back, the feeling that he’d been bit and kicked at the same time.
This is what it feels like to be shot, he thought numbly. He spilled down the last few steps, lost sensation in his legs, crashed to the grating.
The bottom floor was nearly empty. One person stood beside the tiny hole. Another was half in and half out, boots kicking.
Marck saw that it was Shirly, on her belly, looking back at him. They were both lying on the floor. So comfortable on the floor. The steel was cool against his cheek. There were no more steps to run down, no bullets to load, nothing to shoot.
Shirly was screaming, not as happy as he was to be lying there.
One of her arms extended back out of that small black rectangle, reached for him past the rough cuts in the steel plates. Her body slid forward, pulled by some force beyond, pushed by this nice person in yellow still standing by the strange wall of steel where the entrance to his home used to be.
“Go,” Marck told her, wishing she wouldn’t scream. Blood flecked the floor before him, marking his words. “I love you—”
And as if by command, her feet slid into the darkness, her screams swallowed by that rectangular, shadowy maw.
And the person in yellow turned. The nice man’s eyes grew wide, his mouth fell open, and then his body jerked from the violence of gunfire.
It was the last thing Marck saw, this man’s deathly dance.<
br />
And he only distantly felt, but for a tremble of time, the end of him that came next.
3
Three weeks later
• Silo 18 •
Walker remained in his cot and listened to the sounds of distant violence. Shouts echoed down his hallway, emanating from the entrance to Mechanical. The familiar patter of gunfire came next, the pop pop pop of the good guys followed by the ratatatat of the bad.
There was an incredible bang, the roar of blasting powder against steel, and the back and forth crackle ended for a moment. More shouting. Boots clomping down his hallway, past his door. The boots were the constant beat to the music of this new world, music Walker could hear from his cot. He could hear everything from his cot, even with the blankets drawn over his head, even with his pillow on top, even as he begged, out loud, over and over, for it to please stop.
The boots in the hallway carried with them more shouting. Walker curled up into a tight ball, knees against his chest, wondering what time it was, dreading that it was morning, time to get up.
A brief respite of silence formed, that quiet of tending to the wounded, their groans too faint to penetrate his sealed door.
Walker tried to fall asleep before the music was turned back up. But as always: the quiet was worse. During the quiet, he grew anxious as he waited for the next patter to erupt. His impatience for sleep often frightened that very sleep away. And he would grow terrified that the resistance was finally over, that the bad guys had won and were coming for him—
Someone banged on his door—a small and angry fist unmistakable to his expert ears. Four harsh knocks, and then she was gone.
Shirly. She would have left his breakfast rations in the usual place and taken away last night’s picked-over and mostly uneaten dinner. Walker grunted and rolled his old bones over to the other side. Boots clomped. Always rushing, always anxious, forever warring. And his once quiet hallway, so far from the machines and pumps that really needed tending to, was now a busy thoroughfare. It was the entrance hall that mattered now, the funnel into which all the hate was poured. Screw the silo, the people above and the machines below, just fight over this worthless patch of ground, pile the bodies on either side until one gives, do it because it was yesterday’s cause, and because nobody wanted to remember back any further than yesterday.
But Walker did. He remembered—
The door to his workshop burst open. Through a gap in his filthy cocoon, Walker could see Jenkins, a boy in his twenties but with a beard that made him appear older, a boy who had inherited this mess the moment Knox died. The lad stormed through the maze of workbenches and scattered parts, aiming straight for Walker’s cot.
“I’m up,” Walker groaned, hoping Jenkins would go away.
“No you’re not.” Jenkins reached the cot and prodded Walker in the ribs with the barrel of his gun. “C’mon, old man, up!”
Walker tensed away from him. He wiggled an arm loose to wave the boy away.
Jenkins peered down gravely, a frown buried in his beard, his young eyes wrinkled with worry. “We need that radio fixed, Walk. We’re getting battered out there. And if I can’t listen in, I don’t think I can defend this place.”
Walker tried to push himself upright. Jenkins grabbed the strap of his coveralls and gave him some rough assistance.
“I was up all night on it,” Walker told him. He rubbed his face. His breath was awful.
“Is it fixed? We need that radio, Walk. You do know Hank risked his life to get that thing to us, right?”
“Well, he should’ve risked a bit more and sent a manual,” Walker complained. He pressed his hands to his knees, and with much complaint from his joints, he stood and staggered toward the workbench, his blankets spilling to the floor in a heap. His legs were still half asleep, his hands tingling with the weak sensation of not being able to form a proper fist.
“I got the battery sorted,” he told Jenkins. “Turns out that wasn’t the problem.” Walker glanced toward his open door and saw Harper, a refinery worker turned soldier, standing in the hallway. Harper had become Jenk’s number two when Pieter was killed. Now he was peering down at Walker’s breakfast, practically salivating into it.
“Help yourself,” Walker called out. He waved dismissively at the steaming bowl.
Harper glanced up, eyes wide, but that was as long as he hesitated. He leaned his rifle against the wall and sat down in the workshop doorway, shoveling food into his mouth.
Jenkins grunted disapprovingly but didn’t say anything.
“So, see here?” Walker showed him the arrangement on the workbench where various pieces of the small radio unit had been separated and were now wired together so everything was accessible. “I’ve got constant power.” He patted the transformer he had built to bypass the battery. “And the speakers work.” He keyed the transmit button, and there was a pop and hiss of static from his bench speakers. “But nothing comes through. They aren’t saying anything.” He turned to Jenkins. “I’ve had it on all night, and I’m not a deep sleeper.”
Jenkins studied him.
“I would’ve heard,” he insisted. “They aren’t talking.”
Jenkins rubbed his face, made a fist. He kept his eyes closed, his forehead resting in one palm, a weariness in his voice. “You think maybe something broke when you tore it apart?”
“Disassembled,” Walker said with a sigh. “I didn’t tear it apart.”
Jenkins gazed up at the ceiling and relaxed his fist. “So you think they aren’t using them anymore, is that it? Do you reckon they know we have one? I swear, I think this damn priest they sent is a spy. Shit’s been fallin’ apart since we let him in here to give last rites.”
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” Walker admitted. “I think they’re still using the radios, they’ve just excluded this one somehow. Look, I made another antenna, a stronger one.”
He showed him the wires snaking up from the workbench and spiraling around the steel beam rafters overhead.
Jenkins followed his finger, then snapped his head toward the door. There was more shouting down the hallway. Harper stopped eating for a moment and listened. But only for a moment. He dug his spoon back into the cornmush.
“I just need to know when I’ll be able to listen in again.” Jenkins tapped the workbench with his finger, then picked his rifle back up. “I don’t need to know about all this—” He waved a hand at Walker’s work. “—all this wizardry.”
Walker plopped down on his favorite stool and peered at the myriad circuits that once had been jammed into the radio’s cramped innards. “It’s not wizardry,” he said. “It’s electrics.” He pointed at two of the boards, connected by wires he had lengthened and re-soldered so he could analyze all the bits more closely. “I know what most of these do, but you’ve gotta remember that nothing about these devices are known, not outside of IT, anyway. I’m havin’ to theorize while I tinker.”
Jenkins rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Just let me know when you’ve got something. All your other work orders can wait. This is the only thing that matters. Got that?”
Walker nodded. Jenkins turned and barked at Harper to get the hell off the floor.
They left Walker on his stool, their boots picking up the beat of the music again.
Alone, he stared down at the machine strung out across his workbench, its little green lights on its mysterious boards lit up and taunting him. His hand drifted to his magnifiers as if by their own accord, as if by decades of habit, when all Walker really wanted was to crawl back into his cot, to wrap his cocoon around himself, to disappear.
He needed help, he thought. He looked around at all that required doing and as ever, his thoughts turned to Scottie, his little shadow. There had been a slice of time, somewhere sliding away from him now and fading into the slippery past, where Walker had been a happy man. Where his life should’ve ended to keep him from enduring any of the suffering beyond. But he had made it through that brief bliss and now could hardly r
ecall it. He couldn’t imagine what it felt like to rise with anticipation in the morning, to fall asleep with contentment at the end of every day.
It was only fear and dread anymore. And between: regret.
He had started all of this, all the noise and violence. Walker was convinced of that. Every life lost was on his wrinkled hands. Every tear shed was by his actions. Nobody said it, but he could feel them thinking it. One little message to Supply, one favor for Juliette, just a chance at dignity, an opportunity to test her wild and horrible theory, to bury herself out of sight—and now look at the cascade of events, the eruption of anger, the senseless violence.
It wasn’t worth it, he decided. This was how the math always added up: not worth it. Nothing seemed worth it anymore.