Shift (silo)

by Hugh Howey

  Thoughts such as these made Mission’s neck itch. He held the hauling strap with one hand and adjusted the ’chief around his neck with the other. It was a nervous habit, hiding his neck when he thought about the end of things.

  ‘You doing okay up there?’ Cam asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Mission called back, realising he’d slowed. He gripped his strap with both hands and concentrated on his pace, on the job. There was a metronome in his head from his shadowing days, a tick-tock, tick-tock for tandem hauls. Two porters with good timing could fall into a rhythm and wind their way up a dozen flights, never feeling a heavy load. Mission and Cam weren’t there yet. Now and then one of them would have to shuffle his feet or adjust his pace to match the other. Otherwise, their load might sway dangerously.

  Their load. It was easier to think of it that way. Better not to think of it as a body — a dead man.

  Mission thought of his grandfather, whom he’d never known. He had died in the uprising of ’78, had left behind a son to take over the farm and a daughter to become a chipper. Mission’s aunt had quit that job a few years back; she no longer banged out spots of rust and primed and painted raw steel. Nobody did. Nobody bothered. But his father was still farming that same plot of soil, that same plot generations of Jones boys had farmed, forever insisting that things would never change.

  ‘That word means something else, you know,’ his father had told him once, when Mission had spoken of revolution. ‘It also means to go around and around. To revolve. One revolution, and you get right back to where you started.’

  This was the sort of thing Mission’s father liked to say when the priests came to bury a man beneath his corn. His dad would pack the dirt with a shovel, say that’s how things go, and plant a seed in the neat depression his thumb made.

  Mission had told his friends this other meaning of revolution. He had pretended to come up with it himself. It was just the sort of pseudo-intellectual nonsense they regaled each other with late at night on dark landings while they inhaled potato glue out of plastic bags.

  His best friend Rodny had been the only one unimpressed. ‘Nothing changes until we make it change,’ he had said with a serious look in his eye.

  Mission wondered what his best friend was doing now. He hadn’t seen Rodny in months. Whatever he was shadowing for in IT kept him from getting out much.

  He thought back to better days, growing up in the Nest with friends tight as a fist. He remembered thinking they would all stay together and grow old in the up top. They would live along the same hallways, watch their eventual kids play the way they had.

  But they had all gone their separate ways. It was hard to remember who had done it first, who had shaken off the expectations of their parents to follow in their footsteps, but eventually most of them had. Each of them had left home to choose a new fate. Sons of plumbers took up farming. Daughters of the cafeteria learned to sew. Sons of farmers became porters.

  Mission remembered being angry when he left home. He remembered a fight with his father, throwing down his shovel, promising he’d never dig a trench again. He’d learned in the Nest that he could be anything he wanted, that he was in charge of his own fate. And so when he grew miserable, he assumed it was the farms that made him feel that way; he assumed it was his family.

  He and Cam had flipped a dime back in Dispatch, heads for heads, and Mission had wound up with a dead man’s shoulders pressed against his own. When he lifted his gaze to survey the steps ahead, the back of his skull touched a corpse’s crown through a plastic bag — birthdays and deathdays pressed tight, two halves of a single coin. Mission carried them both, this load meant for two. He took the stairs a pair at a time, a brutal pace, up towards the farm of his youth.

  26

  • Silo 18 •

  THE CORONER’S OFFICE was on thirty-two, just below the dirt farm, tucked away at the end of those dark and damp halls that wound their way beneath the roots. The ceiling was low in that half-level. Pipes hung visible from above and rattled angrily as pumps kicked on and moved nutrients to distant and thirsty roots. Water dripped from dozens of small leaks into buckets and pots. A recently emptied pot banged metallic with each strike. Another overflowed. The floors were slick, the walls damp like sweaty skin.

  Inside the coroner’s office, the boys lifted the body onto a slab of dented metal, and the coroner signed Mission’s work log. She tipped them for the speedy delivery, and when Cam saw the extra chits, his grumpiness over the pace dissolved. Back in the hallway, he bid Mission good day and splashed towards the exit.

  Mission watched him go, feeling much more than a year older than his friend. Cam hadn’t been told of the evening’s plans, the midnight rendezvous of porters. It made him envy the lad for what he didn’t know.

  Not wanting to arrive at the farms deadheading and have his father lecture him on laziness, Mission stopped by the maintenance room down the hall to see if anything needed carrying up. Winters was on duty, a dark man with a white beard and a knack with pumps. He regarded Mission suspiciously and claimed he hadn’t the budget for portering. Mission explained he was going up anyway and that he was glad to take whatever he had.

  ‘In that case…’ Winters said. He hoisted a huge water pump onto his workbench.

  ‘Just the thing,’ Mission told him, smiling.

  Winters narrowed his eyes as if Mission had worked a bolt loose.

  The pump wouldn’t fit inside his porter’s pack, but the haul straps on the outside of the pack looped nicely across the jutting pipes and sharp fittings. Winters helped him get his arms through the straps and the pump secured to his back. He thanked the old man, which drew another worried frown, and set off and up the half-level. Back at the stairwell, the odour of mildew from the wet halls faded, replaced by the smell of loam and freshly tilled soil, scents of home that pulled Mission back in time.

  The landing on thirty-one was crowded as a jam of people attempted to squeeze inside the farms for the day’s food. Standing apart from them was a mother in farmer green cradling a wailing child. She had the stains on her knees of a picker and the agitated look of one sent out of the grow plots to soothe her noisy brood. As Mission crowded past, he heard the mother sing the words of a familiar nursery rhyme. She rocked the child frightfully close to the railing, the infant’s eyes wide with what looked to Mission like unadulterated fear.

  He worked his way through the crowd, and the cries from the infant receded amid the general din. It occurred to Mission how few kids he saw any more. It wasn’t like when he was young. There had been an explosion of newborns after the violence the last generation had wrought, but these days it was just the trickle of natural deaths and the handful of lottery winners. It meant fewer babies crying and fewer parents rejoicing.

  He eventually made it through the doors and into the main hall. Using his ’chief, Mission wiped the sweat from his lips. He’d forgotten to top up his canteen a level below, and his mouth was dry. The reasons for pushing so swift a pace felt silly now. It was as if his looming birthday were some deadline to beat, and so the sooner he visited his father and departed, the better. But now, in the wash of sights and sounds from his childhood, his dark and angry thoughts melted away. It was home, and Mission hated how good it felt to be there.

  There were a few hellos and waves as he worked his way towards the gates. Some porters he knew were loading sacks of fruits and vegetables to haul up to the cafeteria. He saw his aunt working one of the vending stalls outside the security gate. After giving up chipping, she now performed the questionably legal act of vending, something she’d never shadowed for and had no right to do. Mission did his best not to catch her eye; he didn’t want to get sucked into a lecture or have his hair mussed and his ’chief straightened.

  Beyond the stalls, a handful of younger kids clustered in the far corner where it was dark, probably dealing seeds, not looking nearly as inconspicuous as they likely thought. The entire scene in the entrance hall was one of a second bazaar, of fa
rmers selling direct, of people crowding in from distant levels to get food they feared would never make it to their shops and stores. It was fear begetting fear, crowds becoming throngs, and it was easy to see how mobs came next.

  Working the main security gate was Frankie, a tall, lanky kid Mission had grown up with. Mission wiped his forehead with the front of his undershirt, which was already cool and damp with sweat. ‘Hey, Frankie,’ he called out.

  ‘Mission.’ A nod and a smile. No hard feelings from another kid who’d jumped shadows long ago. Frankie’s father worked in security, down in IT. Frankie had wanted to become a farmer, which Mission never understood. Their teacher, Mrs Crowe, had been delighted and had encouraged Frankie to follow his dreams. And now Mission found it ironic that Frankie had ended up working security for the farms. It was as if he couldn’t escape what he’d been born to do.

  Mission smiled and nodded at Frankie’s shoulder-length hair. ‘Did someone splash you with grow quick?’

  Frankie tucked his hair behind his ear self-consciously. ‘I know, right? My mother threatens to come up here and knife it in my sleep.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll hold you down while she does it,’ Mission said, laughing. ‘Buzz me through?’

  There was a wide gate to the side for wheelbarrows and trolleys. Mission didn’t feel like squeezing through the turnstiles with the massive pump strapped to his back. Frankie hit a button, and the gate buzzed. Mission pushed his way through.

  ‘Whatcha haulin’?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Water pump from Winters. How’ve you been?’

  Frankie scanned the crowds beyond the gate. ‘Hold on a sec,’ he said, looking for someone. Two farmers swiped their work badges and marched through the turnstiles, jabbering away. Frankie waved over someone in green and asked if they could cover for him.

  ‘C’mon,’ Frankie told Mission. ‘Walk me.’

  The two old friends headed down the main hall towards the bright aura of distant grow lights. The smells were intoxicating and familiar. Mission wondered what those same smells meant to Frankie, who had grown up near the fetid stink of the water plant. Perhaps this reeked to him the way the plant did to Mission. Perhaps the water plant brought back fond memories for Frankie, instead.

  ‘Things are going nuts around here,’ Frankie whispered once they were away from the gates.

  Mission nodded. ‘Yeah, I saw a few more stalls had sprouted up. More of them every day, huh?’

  Frankie held Mission’s arm and slowed their pace so they’d have more time to talk. There was the smell of fresh bread from one of the offices. It was too far from the bakery on seven for warm bread, but such was the new way of things. The flour was probably ground somewhere deep in the farms.

  ‘You’ve seen what they’re doing up in the cafeteria, right?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘I took a load up that way a few weeks ago,’ Mission said. He tucked his thumbs under his shoulder straps and wiggled the heavy pump higher onto his hips. ‘I saw they were building something by the wall screens. Didn’t see what.’

  ‘They’re starting to grow sprouts up there,’ Frankie said. ‘Corn too, supposedly.’

  ‘I guess that’ll mean fewer runs for us between here and there,’ Mission said, thinking like a porter. He tapped the wall with the toe of his boot. ‘Roker’ll be pissed when he hears.’

  Frankie bit his lip and narrowed his eyes. ‘Yeah, but wasn’t Roker the one who started growin’ his own beans down in Dispatch?’

  Mission wiggled his shoulders. His arms were going numb. He wasn’t used to standing still with a load — he was used to moving. ‘That’s different,’ he argued. ‘That’s food for climbing.’

  Frankie shook his head. ‘Yeah, but ain’t that hypercritical of him?’

  ‘You mean hypocritical?’

  ‘Whatever, man. All I’m saying is everyone has an excuse. “We’re doing it because they’re doing it and someone else started it. So what if we’re doing it a little more than they are?” That’s the attitude, man. But then we get in a twist when the next group does it a little more. It’s like a ratchet, the way these things work.’

  Mission glanced down the hall towards the glow of distant lights. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘The mayor seems to be letting things slide lately.’

  Frankie laughed. ‘You really think the mayor’s in charge? The mayor’s scared, man. Scared and old.’ Frankie glanced back down the hall to make sure nobody was coming. The nervousness and paranoia had been with him since his youth. It’d been amusing when he was younger; now it was sad and a little worrisome. ‘You remember when we talked about being in charge one day? How things would be different?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Mission said. ‘By the time we’re in charge, we’ll be old like them and won’t care any more. And then our kids can hate us for pulling the same crap.’

  Frankie laughed, and the tension in his wiry frame seemed to subside. ‘I bet you’re right.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I need to go before my arms fall off.’ Mission shrugged the pump higher up his back.

  Frankie slapped his shoulder. ‘Yeah. Good seeing you, man.’

  ‘Same.’ Mission nodded and turned to go.

  ‘Oh, hey, Mish…’

  He stopped and looked back.

  ‘You gonna see the Crow anytime soon?’

  ‘I’ll pass that way tomorrow,’ he said, assuming he’d live through the night.

  Frankie smiled. ‘Tell her I said hey, wouldya?’

  ‘I will,’ Mission promised.

  One more name to add to the list. If only he could charge his friends for all the messages he ran for them, he’d have way more than the three hundred and eighty-four chits already saved up. Half a chit for every hello he passed to the Crow, and he’d have his own apartment by now. He wouldn’t need to stay in the way stations. But messages from friends weighed far less than dark thoughts, so Mission didn’t mind them taking up space. They crowded out the other. And Lord knew, Mission hauled his fair share of the heavier kind.

  27

  • Silo 18 •

  IT WOULD’VE MADE more sense and been kinder on Mission’s back to drop off the pump before visiting his father, but the whole point of hauling it up was so that his old man would see him with the load. And so he headed into the planting halls and towards the same growing station his grandfather had worked and supposedly his great-grandfather too. Past the beans and the blueberry vines, beyond the squash and the potatoes. In a spot of corn that appeared ready for harvest, he found his old man on his hands and knees looking how Mission would always remember him: with a small spade working the soil, his hands picking at weeds like a habit, the way a girl might curl her fingers in her hair over and over without even knowing she was doing it.

  ‘Father.’

  His old man turned his head to the side, sweat glistening on his brow under the heat of the grow lights. There was a flash of a smile before it melted. Mission’s half-brother Riley appeared behind a back row of corn, a little twelve-year-old mimic of his dad, hands covered in dirt. He was quicker to call out a greeting, shouting ‘Mission!’ as he hurried to his feet.

  ‘The corn looks good,’ Mission said. He rested a hand on the railing, the weight of the pump settling against his back, and reached out to bend a leaf with his thumb. Moist. The ears were a few weeks from harvest, and the smell took him right back. He saw a midge running up the stalk and killed the parasite with a deft pinch.

  ‘Wadya bring me?’ his little brother squealed.

  Mission laughed and tussled his brother’s dark hair, a gift from the boy’s mother. ‘Sorry, bro. They loaded me down this time.’ He turned slightly so that Riley — and his father — could see. His brother stepped onto the lowest rail and leaned over for a better look.

  ‘Why dontcha set that down for a while?’ his father asked. He slapped his hands together to keep the precious dirt on the proper side of the fence, then reached out and shook Mission’s hand. ‘You’re looking good.’
>
  ‘You too, Dad.’ Mission would’ve thrust his chest out and stood taller if it hadn’t meant toppling back on his rear from the weight of the pump. ‘So what’s this I hear about the cafeteria starting in their own sprouts?’

  His father grumbled and shook his head. ‘Corn, too, from what I hear. More goddamn up-sourcing.’ He jabbed a finger at Mission’s chest. ‘This affects you lads, you know.’

  His father meant the porters, and there was a tone of having told him so. There was always that tone.

  Riley tugged on Mission’s overalls and asked to hold his knife. Mission slid the blade from its sheath and handed it over while he studied his father, a silence brewing between them. His dad looked older. His skin was the colour of oiled wood, an unhealthy darkness from working too long under the grow lights. It was called a ‘tan’, and you could spot a farmer two landings away because of it.

  An intense heat radiated from the bulbs overhead, and the anger Mission carried when he was away from home melted into a hollow sadness. The space his mother had left empty could be felt. It was a reminder to Mission of what his being born had cost. More was the pity he felt for his old man with his damaged skin and dark spots on his nose from years of abuse. These were the signs of all those in green who worked the soil, toiling among the silo’s dead.

  Mission flashed back to his first solid memory as a boy: wielding a small spade that in those days had seemed to him a giant shovel. He had been playing between the rows of corn, turning over scoops of soil, mimicking his father, when without warning his old man had grabbed his wrist.

  ‘Don’t dig there,’ his father had said with an edge to his voice. This was back before Mission had witnessed his first funeral, before he had seen for himself what was laid beneath the seeds. After that day, he learned to spot the mounds where the soil was darker from having been disturbed.