Shift (silo)

by Hugh Howey

  ‘Damn rain,’ was Thurman’s reply.

  ‘You can’t control everything,’ Donald said.

  The Senator grunted as if he disagreed. ‘Helen not here yet?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Donald fished in his pocket and felt for his phone. ‘I’ll message her again in a bit. Not sure if my texts are getting through or not — the networks are absolutely crushed. I’m pretty sure this many people descending on this corner of the county is unprecedented.’

  ‘Well, this will be an unprecedented day,’ Thurman said. ‘Nothing like it ever before.’

  ‘It was mostly your doing, sir. I mean, not just building this place, but choosing not to run. This country could’ve been yours for the taking this year.’

  The Senator laughed. ‘That’s true most years, Donny. But I’ve learned to set my sights higher than that.’

  Donald shivered again. He couldn’t remember the last time the Senator had called him that. Maybe that first meeting in his office, more than two years ago? The old man seemed unusually tense.

  ‘When Helen gets here, I want you to come down to the state tent and see me, okay?’

  Donald pulled out his phone and checked the time. ‘You know I’m supposed to be at the Tennessee tent in an hour, right?’

  ‘There’s been a change of plans. I want you to stay close to home. Mick is going to cover for you over there, which means I need you with me.’

  ‘Are you sure? I was supposed to meet with—’

  ‘I know. This is a good thing, trust me. I want you and Helen near the Georgia stage with me. And look—’

  The Senator turned to face him. Donald peeled his eyes away from the last of the unloading buses. The rain had picked up a little.

  ‘You’ve contributed more to this day than you know,’ Thurman said.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The world is going to change today, Donny.’

  Donald wondered if the Senator had been skipping his nanobath treatments. His eyes seemed dilated and focused on something in the distance. He appeared older somehow.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand—’

  ‘You will. Oh, and a surprise visitor is coming. She should be here any moment.’ He smiled. ‘The national anthem starts at noon. There’ll be a flyover from the 141st after that. I want you nearby when that happens.’

  Donald nodded. He had learned when to stop asking questions and just do what the Senator expected of him.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, shivering against the cold.

  Senator Thurman left. Turning his back to the stage, Donald scanned the last of the buses and wondered where in the world Helen was.

  22

  2110

  • Silo 1 •

  TROY WALKED DOWN the line of cryopods as if he knew where he was going. It was just like the way his hand had drifted to the button that had brought him to that floor. There were made-up names on each of the panels. He knew this somehow. He remembered coming up with his name. It had something to do with his wife, some way to honour her, or some kind of secret and forbidden link so that he might one day remember.

  That all lay in the past, deep in the mist, a dream forgotten. Before his shift there had been an orientation. There were familiar books to read and reread. That’s when he had chosen his name.

  A bitter explosion on his tongue brought him to a halt. It was the taste of a pill dissolving. Troy stuck out his tongue and scraped it with his fingers, but there was nothing there. He could feel the ulcers on his gums against his teeth but couldn’t recall how they’d formed.

  He walked on. Something wasn’t right. These memories weren’t supposed to return. He pictured himself on a gurney, screaming, someone strapping him down, stabbing him with needles. That wasn’t him. He was holding that man’s boots.

  Troy stopped at one of the pods and checked the name. Helen. His gut lurched and groped for its medicine. He didn’t want to remember. That was a secret ingredient: the not wanting to remember. Those were the parts that slipped away, the parts the drugs wrapped their tentacles around and pulled beneath the surface. But now, there was some small part of him that was dying to know. It was a nagging doubt, a feeling of having left some important piece of himself behind. It was willing to drown the rest of him for the answers.

  The frost on the glass wiped away with a squeak. He didn’t recognise the person inside and moved on to the next pod, a scene from before orientation coming back to him.

  Troy recalled halls packed with people crying, grown men sobbing, pills that dried their eyes. Fearsome clouds rose on a video screen. Women were put away for safety. Like a lifeboat, women and children first.

  Troy remembered. It wasn’t an accident. He remembered a talk in another pod, a bigger pod with another man there, a talk about the coming end of the world, about making room, about ending it all before it ended on its own.

  A controlled explosion. Bombs were sometimes used to put out fires.

  He wiped another frost-covered sheet of glass. The sleeping form in the next chamber had eyelashes that glittered with ice. She was a stranger. He moved on, but it was coming back to him. His arm throbbed. The shakes were gone.

  Troy remembered a calamity, but it was all for show. The real threat was in the air, invisible. The bombs were to get people to move, to make them afraid, to get them crying and forgetting. People had spilled like marbles down a bowl. Not a bowl — a funnel. Someone explained why they were spared. He remembered a white fog, walking through a white fog. The death was already in them. Troy remembered a taste on his tongue, metallic.

  The ice on the next pane was already disturbed, had been wiped away by someone recently. Beads of condensation stood like tiny lenses warping the light. He rubbed the glass and knew what had happened. He saw the woman inside with the auburn hair that she sometimes kept in a bun. This was not his wife. This was someone who wanted that, wanted him like that.

  ‘Hello?’

  Troy turned towards the voice. The night-shift doctor was heading his way, weaving between the pods, coming for him. Troy clasped his hand over the soreness on his arm. He didn’t want to be taken again. They couldn’t make him forget.

  ‘Sir, you shouldn’t be in here.’

  Troy didn’t answer. The doctor stopped at the foot of the pod. Inside, a woman who wasn’t his wife lay in slumber. Wasn’t his wife, but had wanted to be.

  ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘I’d like to stay,’ Troy said. He felt a bizarre calmness. All the pain had been ripped away. This was more forceful than forgetting. He remembered everything. His soul had been cut free.

  ‘I can’t have you in here, sir. Come with me. You’ll freeze in here.’

  Troy glanced down. He had forgotten to put on shoes. He curled his toes away from the floor… then allowed them to settle.

  ‘Sir? Please.’ The young doctor gestured down the aisle. Troy let go of his arm and saw that things were handled as needed. No kicking meant no straps. No shivering meant no needles.

  He heard the squeak of hurrying boots out in the hallway. A large man from Security appeared by the open vault door, visibly winded. Troy caught a glimpse of the doctor waving the man down. They were trying not to scare him. They didn’t know that he couldn’t be scared any more.

  ‘You’ll put me away for good,’ Troy said. It was something between a statement and a question. It was a realisation. He wondered if he was like Hal — like Carlton — if the pills would never take again. He glanced towards the far end of the room, knew the empties were kept there. This was where he would be buried.

  ‘Nice and easy,’ the doctor said.

  He led Troy to the exit; he would embalm him with that bright blue sky. The pods slid by as the two of them walked in silence.

  The man from Security took deep breaths as he filled the doorway, his great chest heaving against his overalls. There was a squeak from more boots as he was joined by another. Troy saw that his shift was over. Two weeks to go. He’d nearly made i
t.

  The doctor waved the large men out of the way, seemed to hope they wouldn’t be needed. They took up positions to either side, seemed to think otherwise. Troy was led down the hallway, hope guiding him and fear flanking him.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ Troy asked the doctor, turning to study him. ‘You remember everything.’

  The doctor didn’t turn to face him. He simply nodded.

  This felt like a betrayal. It wasn’t fair.

  ‘Why are you allowed to remember?’ Troy asked. He wanted to know why those dispensing the medicine didn’t have to take some of their own.

  The doctor waved him into his office. His assistant was there, wearing a sleepshirt and hanging an IV bag bulging with blue liquid.

  ‘Some of us remember,’ the doctor said, ‘because we know this isn’t a bad thing we’ve done.’ He frowned as he helped Troy onto the gurney. He seemed truly sad about Troy’s condition. ‘We’re doing good work here,’ he said. ‘We’re saving the world, not ending it. And the medicine only touches our regrets.’ He glanced up. ‘Some of us don’t have any.’

  The doorway was stuffed with security. It overflowed. The assistant unbuckled Troy’s overalls. Troy watched numbly.

  ‘It would take a different kind of drug to touch what we know,’ the doctor said. He pulled a clipboard from the wall. A sheet of paper was fed into its jaws. There was a pause, and then a pen was pressed into Troy’s palm.

  Troy laughed as he signed off on himself.

  ‘Then why me?’ he asked. ‘Why am I here?’ He had always wanted to ask this of someone who might know. These were the prayers of youth, but now with a chance of some reply.

  The doctor smiled and took the clipboard. He was probably in his late twenties, had come on shift just a few weeks ago. Troy was a few years shy of forty. And yet this man had all the wisdom, all the answers.

  ‘It’s good to have people like you in charge,’ the doctor said, and he seemed to genuinely mean it. The clipboard was returned to its peg. One of the security men yawned and covered his mouth. Troy watched as his overalls were unsnapped and flopped to his waist. A fingernail makes a distinctive click when it taps against a needle.

  ‘I’d like to think about this,’ Troy said. He felt a sudden panic wash over him. He knew this needed to happen, but wanted just a few more minutes alone with his thoughts, to savour this brief bout of comprehension. He wanted to sleep, certainly, but not quite yet.

  The men in the doorway stirred as they sensed Troy’s doubts, could see the fear in his eyes.

  ‘I wish there was some other way,’ the doctor said sadly. He rested a hand on Troy’s shoulder, guided him back against the table. The men from Security stepped closer.

  There was a prick on his arm, a deep bite without warning. He looked down and saw the silver barb slide into his vein, the bright blue liquid pumped inside.

  ‘I don’t want—’ he said.

  There were hands on his shins, his knees, weight on his shoulders. The heaviness against his chest was from something else.

  A burning rush flowed through his body, chased immediately by numbness. They weren’t putting him to sleep. They were killing him. Troy knew this as suddenly and swiftly as he knew that his wife was dead, that some other person had tried to take her place. He would go into a coffin for good this time. And all the dirt piled over his head would finally serve some purpose.

  Darkness squeezed in around his vision. He closed his eyes, tried to yell for it to stop, but nothing came out. He wanted to kick and fight it, but more than mere hands had a hold of him now. He was sinking.

  His last thoughts were of his beautiful wife, but the thoughts made little sense — they were the dream world invading.

  She’s in Tennessee, he thought. He didn’t know why or how he knew this. But she was there — and waiting. She was already dead and had a spot hollowed out by her side just for him.

  Troy had just one more question, one name he hoped to grope for and seize before he went under, some part of himself to take with him to those depths. It was on the tip of his tongue like a bitter pill, so close that he could taste it—

  But then he forgot.

  23

  2052

  Fulton County, Georgia

  THE RAIN FINALLY let up just as warring announcements and battling tunes filled the air above the teeming hills. While the main stage was prepped for the evening’s gala, it sounded to Donald as though the real action was taking place at all the other states. Opening bands ripped into their sets as the buzz of ATVs subsided to a trickle.

  It felt vaguely claustrophobic to be down in the bottom of the bowl by the Georgia stage. Donald sensed an unquenchable urge for height, to be up on the ridge where he could see what was going on. It left him imagining the sight of thousands of guests arrayed across each of the hills, picturing the political fervour in the air everywhere, the gelling of like-minded families celebrating the promise of something new.

  As much as Donald wanted to celebrate new beginnings with them, he was mostly looking forward to the end. He couldn’t wait for the convention to wrap up. The weeks had worn on him. He was looking forward to a real bed, to some privacy, his computer, reliable phone service, dinners out and, most of all: time alone with his wife.

  Fishing his phone out of his pocket, he checked his messages for the umpteenth time. They were minutes away from the anthem, and then the flyover from the 141st. He had also heard someone mention fireworks to start the convention off with a bang.

  His phone showed that the last half-dozen messages still hadn’t gone through. The network was clogged, an error message popping up that he’d never seen before. At least some of the earlier ones looked as if they’d been sent. He scanned the wet banks for her, hoping to see her making her way down, a smile he could spot from any distance.

  Someone stepped up beside him. Donald looked away from the hills to see that Anna had joined him by the stage.

  ‘Here we go,’ she said quietly, scanning the crowd.

  She looked and sounded nervous. Maybe it was for her father, who had done so much to arrange the main stage and make sure everyone was in the right place. Glancing back, he saw that people were taking their seats, chairs wiped down from the morning drizzle, not nearly as many people as it seemed before. They must be either working in the tents or off to the other stages. This was the quiet brewing before the—

  ‘There she is.’

  Anna waved her arms. Donald felt his heart swell up into his neck as he turned and followed Anna’s gaze. His relief was mixed with the panic of Helen seeing him there with her, the two of them waiting side by side.

  Shuffling down the hill was certainly someone familiar. A young woman in a pressed blue uniform, a hat tucked under one arm, a dark head of hair wrapped up in a crisp bun.

  ‘Charlotte?’ Donald shielded his eyes from the glare of the noonday sun filtering through wispy clouds. He gaped in disbelief. All other events and concerns melted away as his sister spotted them and waved back.

  ‘She sure as hell cut this close,’ Anna muttered.

  Donald hurried over to his four-wheeler and turned the key. He hit the ignition, gave the handle some gas, and raced across the wet grass to meet her.

  Charlotte beamed as he hit the brakes at the base of the hill. He killed the engine.

  ‘Hey, Donny.’

  His sister leaned in to him before he could dismount. She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed.

  He returned her embrace, worried about denting the creases of her neat uniform. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked.

  She let go and took a step back, smoothed the front of her shirt. The air-force dress hat disappeared back under her arm, every motion like an ingrained and precise habit.

  ‘Are you surprised?’ she asked. ‘I thought the Senator would’ve let it slip by now.’

  ‘Hell, no. Well, he said something about a visitor but not who. I thought you were in Iran. Did he swing this?’


  She nodded, and Donald felt his cheeks cramping from smiling so hard. Every time he saw her, there came a relief from discovering that she was still the same person. The sharp chin and splash of freckles across her nose, the shine in her eyes that had not yet dulled from the horrible things she’d seen. She had just turned thirty, had been half a world away with no family on her birthday, but she was frozen in his mind as the young teen who had enlisted.

  ‘I think I’m supposed to be on the stage for this thing tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’ Donald smiled. ‘I’m sure they’ll want you on camera. You know, to show support for the troops.’

  Charlotte frowned. ‘Oh, God, I’m one of those people, aren’t I?’

  He laughed. ‘I’m sure they’ll have someone from the army, navy and marines there with you.’

  ‘Oh, God. And I’m the girl.’

  They laughed together, and one of the bands beyond the hills finished their set. Donald scooted forward and told his sister to hop on, his chest suddenly less constricted. There had been a shift in the weather, these breaking clouds, the quietening stages, and now the arrival of family.

  He cranked the engine and raced through the least muddy path on the way back to the stage, his sister holding on tight behind him. They pulled up beside Anna, his sister hopping off and into her arms. While they chatted, Donald killed the ignition and checked his phone for messages. Finally, one had gotten through.

  Helen: In Tennessee. where r u?

  There was a jarring moment as his brain tried to make sense of the message. It was from Helen. What the hell was she doing in Tennessee?

  Another stage fell silent. It took only a heartbeat or two for Donald to realise that she wasn’t hundreds of miles away. She was just over the hill. None of his messages about meeting at the Georgia stage had gone through.

  ‘Hey, I’ll be right back.’