Shift (silo)

by Hugh Howey

  He cranked the ATV. Anna grabbed his wrist.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  He smiled. ‘Tennessee. Helen just texted me.’

  Anna glanced up at the clouds. His sister was inspecting her hat. On the stage, a young girl was being ushered up to the mic. She was flanked by a colour guard, and the seats facing the stage were filling up, necks stretched with anticipation.

  Before he could react or put the ATV in gear, Anna reached across, twisted the key and pulled it out of the ignition.

  ‘Not now,’ she said.

  Donald felt a flash of rage. He reached for her hands, for the key, but it disappeared behind her back.

  ‘Wait,’ she hissed.

  Charlotte had turned towards the stage. Senator Thurman stood with a microphone in hand, the young girl, maybe sixteen, beside him. The hills had grown deathly quiet. Donald realised what a racket the ATV had been making. The girl was about to sing.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Democrats—’

  There was a pause. Donald got off the four-wheeler, took a last glance at his phone, then tucked it away.

  ‘—and our handful of Independents.’

  Laughter from the crowd. Donald set off at a jog across the flat at the bottom of the bowl. His shoes squished in the wet grass and the thin layer of mud. Senator Thurman’s voice continued to roar through the microphone:

  ‘Today is the dawn of a new era, a new time.’

  Donald was out of shape, his shoes growing heavy with mud.

  ‘As we gather in this place of future independence—’

  By the time the ground sloped upward, he was already winded.

  ‘—I’m reminded of the words from one of our enemies. A Republican.’

  Distant laughter, but Donald paid no heed. He was concentrating on the climb.

  ‘It was Ronald Reagan who once said that freedom must be fought for, that peace must be earned. As we listen to this anthem, written a long time ago as bombs dropped and a new country was forged, let’s consider the price paid for our freedom and ask ourselves if any cost could be too great to ensure that these liberties never slip away.’

  A third of the way up — and Donald had to stop and catch his breath. His calves were going to give out before his lungs did. He regretted puttering around on the ATV the past weeks while some of the others slogged it on foot. He promised himself he’d get in better shape.

  He started back up the hill, and a voice like ringing crystal filled the bowl. It spilled in synchrony over the looming rise. He turned towards the stage below where the national anthem was being sung by the sweetest of young voices—

  And he saw Anna hurrying up the hill after him, a scowl of worry on her face.

  Donald knew he was in trouble. He wondered if he was dishonouring the anthem by scurrying up the hill. Everyone had assigned places for the anthem and he was ignoring his. He turned his back on Anna and set off with renewed resolve.

  ‘—o’er the ramparts we watched—’

  He laughed, out of breath, wondering if these mounds of earth could be considered ramparts. It was easy to see the bowls for what they’d become in the last weeks, individual states full of people, goods and livestock, fifty state fairs bustling at once, all for this shining day, all to be gone once the facility was up and running.

  ‘—and the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air—’

  He reached the top of the hill and sucked in deep lungfuls of crisp, clean air. On the stage below, flags swayed idly in a soft breeze. A large screen showed a video of the girl singing about proof and still being there.

  A hand seized his wrist.

  ‘Come back,’ Anna hissed.

  He was panting. Anna was also out of breath, her knees covered in mud and grass stains. She must’ve slipped on the way up.

  ‘Helen doesn’t know where I am,’ he said.

  ‘—bannerrr yet waaaaave—’

  Applause stirred before the end, a compliment. The jets streaking in from the distance caught his eye even before he heard their rumble. A diamond pattern with wing tips nearly touching.

  ‘Get the fuck back down here,’ Anna yelled. She yanked on his arm.

  Donald twisted his wrist away. He was mesmerised by the sight of the jets approaching.

  ‘—o’er the laaand of the freeeeeee—’

  That sweet and youthful voice lifted up from fifty holes in the earth and crashed into the thunderous roar of the powerful jets, those soaring and graceful angels of death.

  ‘Let go,’ Donald demanded, as Anna grabbed him and scrambled to pull him back down the hill.

  ‘—and the hooome of the… braaaaave…’

  The air shook from the grumble of the perfectly timed fly-by. Afterburners screamed as the jets peeled apart and curved upward into the white clouds.

  Anna was practically wrestling him, arms wrapped around his shoulders. Donald snapped out of a trance induced by the passing jets, the beautiful rendition of the anthem amplified across half a county, the struggle to spot his wife in the bowl below.

  ‘Goddammit, Donny, we’ve got to get down—’

  The first flash came before she could get her hands over his eyes. A bright spot in the corner of his vision in the direction of downtown Atlanta. It was a daytime strike of lightning. Donald turned towards it, expecting thunder. The flash of light had become a blinding glow. Anna’s arms were around his waist, jerking him backward. His sister was there, panting, covering her eyes, screaming, ‘What the fuck?’

  Another flash of light, starbursts in one’s vision. Sirens spilled out of all the speakers. It was the recorded sound of air-raid klaxons.

  Donald felt half blinded. Even when the mushroom clouds rose up from the earth — impossibly large to be so distant — it still took a heartbeat to realise what was happening.

  They pulled him down the hill. Applause had turned to screams audible over the rise and fall of the blaring siren. Donald could hardly see. He stumbled backward and nearly fell as the three of them slipped and slid down the bowl, the wet grass funnelling them towards the stage. The puffy tops of the swelling clouds rose up higher and higher, staying in sight even as the rest of the hills and the trees disappeared from view.

  ‘Wait!’ he yelled.

  There was something he was forgetting. He couldn’t remember what. He had an image of his ATV sitting up on the ridge. He was leaving it behind. How did he get up there? What was happening?

  ‘Go. Go. Go,’ Anna was saying.

  His sister was cussing. She was frightened and confused, just like him. He had never known his sister to be either one.

  ‘The main tent!’

  Donald spun around, his heels slipping in the grass, hands wet with rain and studded with mud and grass. When had he fallen?

  The three of them tumbled down the last of the slope as the sound of distant thunder finally reached them. The clouds overhead seemed to race away from the blasts, pushed aside by an unnatural wind. The undersides of the clouds strobed and flashed as if more strikes of lightning were hitting, more bombs detonating. Down by the stage, people weren’t running to escape the bowl — they were instead running into the tents, guided by volunteers with waving arms, the markets and food stalls clearing out, the rows of wooden chairs now a heaped and upturned tangle, a dog still tied to a post, barking.

  Some people still seemed to be aware, to have their faculties intact. Anna was one of them. Donald saw the Senator by a smaller tent coordinating the flow of traffic. Where was everyone going? Donald felt empty as he was ushered along with the others. It took long moments for his brain to process what he’d seen. Nuclear blasts. The live view of what had for ever been resigned to grainy wartime video. Real bombs going off in the real air. Nearby. He had seen them. Why wasn’t he completely blind? Was that even what happened?

  The raw fear of death overtook him. Donald knew, in some recess of his mind, that they were all dead. The end of all things was coming. There was no outrunning i
t. No hiding. Paragraphs from a book he’d read came to mind, thousands of memorised paragraphs. He patted his pants for his pills, but they weren’t there. Looking over his shoulder, he fought to remember what he’d left behind—

  Anna and his sister pulled him past the Senator, who wore a hard scowl of determination. He frowned at his daughter. The tent flap brushed Donald’s face, the darkness within interspersed with a few hanging lights. The spots in his vision from the blasts made themselves known in the blackness. There was a crush of people, but not as many as there should have been. Where were the crowds? It didn’t make sense until he found himself shuffling downward.

  A concrete ramp, bodies on all sides, shoulders jostling, people wheezing, yelling for one another, hands outstretched as the flowing crush drove loved ones away, husband and wife separated, some people crying, some perfectly poised—

  Husband and wife.

  Helen!

  Donald yelled her name over the crowd. He turned and tried to swim against the flowing torrent of the frightened mob. Anna and his sister pulled on him. People fighting to get below pushed from above. Donald was forced downward, into the depths. He wanted to go under with his wife. He wanted to drown with her.

  ‘Helen!’

  Oh, God, he remembered.

  He remembered what he had left behind.

  Panic subsided and fear took its place. He could see. His vision had cleared. But he could not fight the push of the inevitable.

  Donald remembered a conversation with the Senator about how it would all end. There was an electricity in the air, the taste of dead metal on his tongue, a white mist rising around him. He remembered most of a book. He knew what this was, what was happening.

  His world was gone.

  A new one swallowed him.

  SECOND SHIFT – ORDER

  24

  2212

  • Silo 1 •

  TROY STARTED AWAKE from a series of terrible dreams. The world was on fire, and the people who had been sent to extinguish it were all asleep. Asleep and frozen stiff, smoking matches still in their hands, wisps and grey curls of evil deeds.

  He had been buried, was enveloped in darkness, could feel the tight walls of his small coffin hemming him in.

  Dark shapes moved beyond the frosted glass, the men with their shovels trying to free him.

  Troy’s eyelids seemed to rip and crack as he fought to open them fully. There was crust in the corners of his eyes, melting frost coursing down his cheeks. He tried to lift his arms to wipe it away, but they responded feebly. An IV tugged at his wrist as he managed to raise one hand. He was aware of his catheter. Every inch of his body tingled as he emerged from the numbness and into the cold.

  The lid popped with a hiss of air. There was a crack of light to his side that grew as the shadows folded away.

  A doctor and his assistant reached in to tend to him. Troy tried to speak but could only cough. They helped him up, brought him the bitter drink. Swallowing took effort. His hands were so weak, arms trembling, that they had to help him with the cup. The taste on his tongue was metallic. It tasted like death.

  ‘Easy,’ they said when he tried to drink too fast. Tubes and IVs were carefully removed by expert hands, pressure applied, gauze taped to frigid skin. There was a paper gown.

  ‘What year?’ he asked, his voice a dry rasp.

  ‘It’s early,’ the doctor said, a different doctor. Troy blinked against the harsh lights, didn’t recognise either man tending to him. The sea of coffins around him remained a hazy blur.

  ‘Take your time,’ the assistant said, tilting the cup.

  Troy managed a few sips. He felt worse than last time. It had been longer. The cold was deep within his bones. He remembered that his name wasn’t Troy. He was supposed to be dead. Part of him regretted being disturbed. Another part hoped he had slept through the worst of it.

  ‘Sir, we’re sorry to wake you, but we need your help.’

  ‘Your report—’

  Two men were talking at once.

  ‘Another silo is having problems, sir. Silo eighteen—’

  Pills were produced. Troy waved them away. He no longer wished to take them.

  The doctor hesitated; the two capsules rested in his palm. He turned to consult with someone else, a third man. Troy tried to blink the world into focus. Something was said. Fingers curled around the pills, filling him with relief.

  They helped him up, had a wheelchair waiting. A man stood behind it, his hair as stark white as his overalls, his square jaw and iron frame familiar. Troy recognised him. This was the man who woke the freezing.

  Another sip of water as he leaned against the pod, knees trembling from being weak and cold.

  ‘What about silo eighteen?’ Troy whispered the question as the cup was lowered.

  The doctor frowned and said nothing. The man behind the wheelchair studied him intently.

  ‘I know you,’ Troy said.

  The man in white nodded. The wheelchair was waiting for Troy. Troy felt his stomach twist as dormant parts of him stirred.

  ‘You’re the Thaw Man,’ he said, even though this didn’t sound quite right.

  The paper gown was warm. It rustled as his arms were guided through the sleeves. The men working on him were nervous. They chattered back and forth, one of them saying a silo was falling, the other that they needed his help. Troy cared only about the man in white. They helped him towards the wheelchair.

  ‘Is it over?’ he asked. He watched the colourless man, his vision clearing, his voice growing stronger. He dearly hoped that he had slept through it all.

  The Thaw Man shook his head sadly as Troy was lowered into the chair.

  ‘I’m afraid, son,’ a familiar voice said, ‘that it’s only begun.’

  25

  The year of the Great Uprising

  • Silo 18 •

  DEATHDAYS WERE BIRTHDAYS. That’s what they said to ease their pain, those who were left behind. An old man dies and a lottery is won. Children weep while hopeful parents cry tears of joy. Deathdays were birthdays, and no one knew this better than Mission Jones.

  Tomorrow was his seventeenth. Tomorrow, he would grow a year older. It would also mark seventeen years to the day since his mother had died.

  The cycle of life was everywhere — it wrapped around all things like the great spiral staircase — but nowhere was it more evident, nowhere could it be seen so clearly that a life given was one taken away, than in him. And so Mission approached his birthday without joy, with a heavy load on his young back, thinking on death and celebrating nothing.

  Three steps below him and matching his pace, Mission could hear his friend Cam wheezing from his half of the load. When Dispatch assigned them a tandem, the two boys had flipped a coin — heads for heads, and Cam had lost. That left Mission out in front with a clear view of the stairs. It also gave him rights to set the pace, and his dark thoughts made for an angry one.

  Traffic was light on the stairwell that morning. The children were not yet up and heading to school, those of them who still went any more. A few bleary-eyed shopkeeps staggered to work. There were service workers with grease stains on their bellies and patches sewn into their knees coming off late shifts. One man descended bearing more than a non-porter should, but Mission was in no mood to set down his burden and weigh another’s. It was enough to glare at the gentleman, to let him know that he’d been seen.

  ‘Three more to go,’ he huffed to Cam as they passed the thirty-fifth. His porter’s strap was digging into his shoulders, the load a heavy one. Heavier still was its destination. Mission hadn’t been back to the farms in near on four months, hadn’t seen his father in just as long. His brother, of course, he saw at the Nest now and then, but it’d still been a few weeks. To arrive so near to his birthday would be awkward, but there was no avoiding it. He trusted his father to do as he always had and ignore the occasion altogether, to ignore the fact that he was getting any older.

  Past the thirty-fifth they ent
ered another gap between the levels full of graffiti. The noxious odour of home-mixed paint hung in the air. Recent work dribbled in places, parts of it done the night before. Bold letters wrapped across the curving wall of concrete far beyond the stairway railing that read:

  This is our ’Lo.

  The slang for silo felt dated, even though the paint was not yet dry. Nobody said that any more. Not for years. Further up and much older:

  Clean this, Mother—

  The rest was obscured in a wash of censoring paint. As if anyone could read it and not fill in the blank. It was the first half that was the killing offence, anyway.

  Down with the Up Top!

  Mission laughed at this one. He pointed it out to Cam. Probably painted by some kid born above the mids and full of self-loathing, some kid who couldn’t abide their own good fortune. Mission knew the kind. They were his kind. He studied all this graffiti painted over last year’s graffiti and that from all the many years before. It was here between the levels, where the steel girders stretched out from the stairwell to the cement beyond, that such slogans went back generations.

  The End is Coming…

  Mission marched past this one, unable to argue. The end was coming. He could feel it in his bones. He could hear it in the wheezing rattle of the silo with its loose bolts and its rusty joints, could see it in the way people walked of late with their shoulders up around their ears, their belongings clutched to their chests. The end was coming for them all.

  His father would laugh and disagree, of course. Mission could hear his father’s voice from all the levels away, telling him how people had thought the same thing long before he and his brother were born, that it was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them. His father said it was hope that made people feel this, not dread. People talked of the end coming with barely concealed smiles. Their prayer was that when they went, they wouldn’t go alone. Their hope was that no one would have the good fortune to come after and live a happy life without them.