Dust s-9

by Hugh Howey

  “Dad, they were here when I arrived. I crawled over them. I asked Solo about them once, and he said he discovered them years ago.”

  “That simply can’t be—”

  “It’s probably because they weren’t buried. Or the gas outside kept the bugs away. It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “It matters plenty when something isn’t right like this. There’s something not right about this entire silo, I’m telling you.” He stood and headed toward the stairwell where Raph was ladling hauled water into scrounged cups and cans. Her father took one for himself and passed one to Juliette. He was lost in thought, she could tell. “Did you know Elise had a twin sister?” her father asked.

  Juliette nodded. “Hannah told me. Died in childbirth. The mother passed as well. They don’t talk about it much, especially not with her.”

  “And those two boys. Marcus and Miles. Another set of twins. The eldest boy Rickson says he thought he had a brother, but his father wouldn’t talk about it and he never knew his mother to ask her.” Her father took a sip of water and peered into the can. Juliette tried to drown the metallic taste on her tongue while Dawson helped with one of the bags. Dawson coughed and looked as though he were about to gag.

  “It’s a lot of dying,” Juliette agreed, worried where her father’s thoughts were going. She thought of the brother she never knew. She looked for any sign on her father’s face, any indication that this reminded him of his wife and lost son. But he was piecing together some other puzzle.

  “No, it’s a lot of living. Don’t you see? Three sets of twins in six births? And those kids are as fit as fiddles with no care. Your friend Jimmy doesn’t have a hole in his teeth and can’t remember the last time he was sick. None of them can. How do you explain that? How do you explain these bodies piled up like they fell over a few weeks ago?”

  Juliette caught herself staring at her arm. She gulped the last of her water, handed the tin to her father, and began rolling up her sleeve. “Dad, do you remember me asking you about scars, about whether or not they go away?”

  He nodded.

  “A few of my scars have disappeared.” She showed him the crook of her arm as if he would know what was no longer there. “I didn’t believe Lukas when he told me. But I used to have a mark here. And another here. And you said it was a miracle I survived my burns, didn’t you?”

  “You received good attention straight away—”

  “And Fitz didn’t believe me when I told him about the dive I made to fix the pump. He said he’s worked flooded mineshafts and has seen men twice my size get sick from breathing air just ten meters deep, much less thirty or forty. He says I would’ve died if I’d done what I did.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about mining,” her father said.

  “Fitz does, and he thinks I should be dead. And you think these people should be rotted—”

  “They should be bones. I’m telling you.”

  Juliette turned and gazed at the blank wallscreen. She wondered if it was all a dream. This was what happened to the dying soul; it scrambled for some perch, some stairway to cling to, some way not to fall. She had cleaned and died on that hill outside her silo. She had never loved Lukas at all. Never gotten to know him properly. This was a land of ghosts and fiction, events held together with all the vacant solidarity of dreams, all the nonsense of a drunken mind. She was long dead and only just now realizing it—

  “Maybe something in the water,” her father said.

  Juliette turned away from the blank wall. She reached out to him, held his arms in her hands, then stepped closer. He wrapped his arms around her and she wrapped hers around him. His stubble scratched her cheek, and she fought hard not to cry.

  “It’s okay,” her father said. “It’s okay.”

  She wasn’t dead. But things weren’t right.

  “Not in the water,” she said, though she’d swallowed her fair share in that silo. She released her father and watched the first of the bags head to the stairwell. Someone was rigging up spliced electrical cables for rope and running it over the rail to lower a body. Porters be damned, she saw. Even the porters were saying porters be damned.

  “Maybe it’s in the air,” she said. “Maybe this is what happens when you don’t gas a place. I don’t know. But I think you’re right that there’s something wrong with this silo. And I think it’s high time we get out of here.”

  Her father took a last swig of water. “How long before we leave?” he asked. “And are you sure this is a good idea?”

  Juliette nodded. “I’d rather we died out there trying than in here killing each other.” And she realized she sounded like all those who had been sent to clean, all the dangerous dreamers and mad fools, those she had mocked and never understood. She sounded like a person who trusted a machine to work without peeking inside, without first tearing it completely apart.

  Silo 1

  61

  Charlotte slapped the elevator door with her palm. She had jabbed the call button right as her brother disappeared, but it was too late. She hopped on one foot to keep her balance, her suit only half on. Down the aisle behind her, Darcy was struggling into his suit. “Will he do it?” Darcy called out.

  Charlotte nodded. He would. He had pulled the other suit out for Darcy. This was his plan all along. Charlotte slapped the door again and cursed her brother.

  “You need to get dressed,” Darcy said.

  She turned and sank to the ground, hugged her shins. She didn’t want to move. She watched Darcy wriggle into his suit and get the collar over his head. He stood and tried to reach around for the zipper, finally gave up. “Was I supposed to put this backpack on first?” He grabbed one of the bundles her brother had packed and opened it up. He pulled out a can, put it back. Brought out a gun, kept this out. He worked his head and arms back out of the suit. “Charlotte, we’ve got half an hour. How’re we getting out of here?”

  Charlotte wiped her cheeks and struggled to her feet. Darcy didn’t have the first clue about how to get suited up. She worked her legs into her suit and left the sleeves and collar off, hurried down the aisle toward him. There was a ding behind her. She stopped and turned, thinking Donald had come back, had changed his mind, forgetting that she had pressed the call button.

  Two men in light blue coveralls gaped at her from inside the express lift. One of them peered at the buttons in confusion, looked back to Charlotte — this woman with a silver suit half on and half off — and then the doors slowly closed.

  “Shit,” Darcy said. “We really need to go.”

  A panic stirred in Charlotte, an internal countdown. She thought of the way her brother had looked at her from inside the lift, the way he had kissed her goodbye. Her chest felt as though it might implode, but she hurried to Darcy and helped him get his arms out and his pack on. Once he was in fully, she zipped up the back. He helped her do the same, then followed her to the end of the aisle. Charlotte pointed to the low hangar and handed him both helmets. The bin her brother had left was right where he’d said it would be. “Open that door up and jam the bin halfway inside. I’ll go start the lift.”

  She threw open the barracks door and ran down the hall in an awkward waddle, the thick suit crowding her knees. Through the next door. The radio was still on and hissing. She thought of the waste that thing had been, all the time putting it together, collecting the parts, and now she was abandoning it. At the lift control station, she ripped the plastic off and flipped the main controls into the up position. She felt sure she’d given Darcy plenty of time to get it jammed. Another awkward waddle down the hall, past the barracks that’d been her home for these agonizing weeks, out into her armory hell, the last of her birds sulking beneath their tarps, a single chirp ringing out from somewhere. From the elevator. The sound of boots storming their way, Darcy yelling at her to get inside the drone lift.

  ••••

  Donald rode the elevator toward the sixty-second floor. When he passed sixty-one, he hit the emergency st
op button. The elevator jerked to a stop and began buzzing. He steadied the bomb and pulled out the hammer, went ahead and removed the tag. He wasn’t sure how much damage it would cause if he detonated it inside the lift, but he would if anyone came for him. He wanted to give his sister enough time, but he was willing to risk everything to put an end to that place. He watched the clock on the lift panel and waited. It gave him plenty of time to think. Fifteen minutes passed without him needing to cough or clear his throat once. He laughed at this and wondered if he was getting better. Then he remembered how his grandfather and his aunt had both gotten better the day before they died. It was probably something like that.

  The hammer grew heavy. It was incredible to stand beside something so destructive as that bomb, to lay a hand on a device that could kill so many, change so much. Another five minutes went by. He should go. It was too long. It would take him some time to get to the reactor. He waited another minute, some rational part of his brain aware of what the rest of him was about to do, some buried part that screamed for him to think about this, to be reasonable.

  Donald slammed the hold switch before he lost his nerve. The elevator lurched. He hoped his sister and Darcy were well on their way.

  ••••

  Charlotte threw herself into the drone lift, her helmet banging on the ceiling, the bottle of air on her back causing her to tip over onto her side. Darcy threw his helmet inside the lift and began crawling in after her. Someone shouted from the armory. Charlotte began to shove at the plastic bin, which was the only thing keeping the lift from closing and heading up. Darcy pushed as well, but it was pinned tight. Another shout from beyond. Darcy fumbled for the pistol he’d taken from the pack. He turned on his side and fired out of the lift, deafening roars from inside that metal can. Charlotte saw men in silver coveralls duck and take cover behind the drones. Another shot rang out, a loud thwack inside the lift, the men out there returning fire. Charlotte turned to kick the bin with her feet, but the lid had buckled down where the door had pinched it. It had formed a wedge, wanted to come in with her, not go out. She tried to pull, but there was nothing to cling to.

  Darcy yelled for her to stay put. He crawled on his elbows out the door, his gun firing pop pop pop, men taking cover, Charlotte cringing. He left the lift and began pushing the bin in from the other side. Charlotte yelled for him to stop, to get back inside. The door would slam shut with him out there. Another shot rang out, the zing of a miss. Darcy kicked the bin with his boot, and it moved several inches.

  “Wait!” Charlotte yelled. She scampered to the door, didn’t want to go on by herself. “Wait!”

  Darcy kicked the bin again. The lift lurched. It was almost free, just a few more inches. Another shot from beyond the drones and no sound of a miss. Just a grunt from Darcy, who fell to his knees, turned and fired wildly behind himself.

  Charlotte reached out and tugged on his arm. “Come on!” she yelled.

  Darcy reached down and pushed her hands inside the lift. He leaned his shoulder against the bin and smiled at her. And before he shoved the bin inside, he said, “It’s okay. I remember who I am, now.”

  ••••

  The elevator slowed on the reactor level, the doors opened, and Donald pressed a boot to the hand truck and tilted it back. He steered the bomb toward the security gates. The guard there watched him approach, eyebrows up with mild curiosity. Here was everything wrong with everything, Donald thought. Here was a guard not recognizing a murderer because he toted a bomb. Here was a man swiping an ID with Darcy’s name on it, a green light, and the ennui of an interminable job as he was waved through the gates. Here was everyone seeing what was coming and ushering hell right along anyway.

  “Thank you,” Donald said, daring the man to recognize him.

  “Good luck with that.”

  Donald had never seen the reactors before. They were closed off behind large doors and spanned three levels. On any one shift, there were nearly as many men in red as half the others combined. Here was the heart of a soulless machine, which made it the only organ of consequence.

  He followed a curving hall lined with thick pipes and heavy cables. He passed two others in reactor red, neither of them noting the holes in the shoulder of his coveralls, or that the bloodstains had begun to brown. Just nods and quick glances at his burden, even quicker glances away lest they be asked to help. One of the hand truck’s tires squeaked as if complaining about Donald’s plan, unhappy with that terrible load.

  Donald stopped outside of the main reactor room. Far enough. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the hammer. He weighed this thing he was about to do. He thought of Helen, who had died the way people were supposed to die. This was how it worked. You lived. You did your best. You got out of the way. You let those who come after you choose. You let them decide for themselves, live their own lives. This was the way.

  He raised the hammer with both hands, and a shot rang out. A shot, and a fire in his chest. Donald spun in a lazy circle, the hammer clattering to the ground, and then his legs went out. He clutched for the bomb, hoping to take it with him, to pull it down. His fingers found the cone, slipped off, caught the hand truck’s handle, and they both tumbled. Donald ended up on his back, the bomb slamming flat to the ground with a powerful clang felt through his back, and then rolling lazily and harmlessly toward the wall, out of reach.

  ••••

  The drone lift opened automatically at the end of its long and dark climb. Charlotte hesitated. She looked for some way to lower the lift, to go back down. But the controls were a mile beneath her. The large tank of air on her back knocked against the roof of the lift as she crawled out. Darcy was gone. Her brother was gone. This was not what she wanted.

  Overhead, black clouds swirled. She crawled up a sloping ramp, all of it familiar. She had been here before, if not in person. It was the view from her drones, the sight she’d been rewarded with on four flights. With the push of a throttle, she would be up there in those clouds, banking hard and flying free.

  But this time, it was with weary muscles that she crawled up the ramp. She reached the top and had to lower herself down to a concrete ledge below. A grounded bird, a flightless traveller, she shinnied down this ledge and dropped to the dirt, a chick plummeting from its nest.

  She wasn’t sure at first which way to go. And she was thirsty, but her food and water were in a pack and trapped with her inside her suit. She turned and fought for her bearings, checked the map her brother had taped to her arm, and was angry at him for that. Angry and thankful. This was his plan all along.

  She studied the map, was used to a digital display, a higher vantage, a flight plan, but the ramp leading down into the earth helped her establish north. Red lines on the map pointed the way. She plodded toward the hills and a better view.

  And she remembered this place, remembered being here after a rain when the grass was slick and twin tracks of mud made a brown lacework of that gradual rise. Charlotte remembered being late from the airport. She had topped that very hill, and her brother had raced out to meet her. It was a time when the world was whole. You might look up and see vapor trails from passenger jets inching across the sky. You could drive to fast food. Call a loved one. A settled world existed here.

  She passed through the spot where she’d hugged her brother, and any plan of escape wilted. She had little desire to carry on. Her brother was gone. The world was gone. Even if she lived to see green grass and eat one more MRE, cut her lip on one more can of water… why?

  She trudged up the hill, taking a step only because her other foot had taken a step, tears streaming down her face, wondering why.

  ••••

  Donald’s chest was on fire. Warm blood pooled around his neck. He lifted his head and saw Thurman at the end of the hall, marching toward him. Two men from Security were on either side, guns drawn. Donald fumbled in his pocket for his pistol, but it was too late. Too late. Tears welled up, and they were for the people who would live unde
r this system, the hundreds of thousands who would come and go and suffer. He managed to free the pistol but could only raise it a few inches off the ground. These men were coming for him. They would hunt down Charlotte and Darcy out there on the surface. They would swoop down on his sister with their drones. They would take down silo after silo until only one was left, this capricious judgment of souls, of lives run by pitiless servers and soulless code.

  Their guns were trained on him, waiting for him to make a move, ready to end his life. Donald put every ounce of his strength into lifting that pistol. He watched Thurman come at him, this man he had shot and killed once before, and he lifted his gun, struggled to raise it, could lift it no more than six inches off the ground.

  But it was enough.

  Donald steered his arm wide, aimed at the cone of that great bomb designed to bring down monsters such as these, and pulled the trigger. He heard a bang, but he could not tell what from.

  ••••

  The earth lurched and Charlotte fell forward on her hands and knees. There was a thwump like a grenade tossed into a deep lake. The hillside shuddered.

  Charlotte turned on her side and glanced down the hill. A crack opened along the flat earth. Another. The concrete tower at the center listed to one side, and then the earth yawned open. A crater formed, and then the center of the scooped-out earth between those hills sank and tugged at the land further out, clawed and grabbed at the soil and pulled it down as if it were a giant sinkhole, plumes of white powdered concrete jetting up through the cracks.

  The hill rumbled. Sand and tiny rocks slid downward, racing each other toward the bottom as the land became something that moved. Charlotte scrambled backwards, up the hill and away from the widening pit, her heart racing and her mind awed.

  She turned and rose to her feet and climbed as fast as she could, a hand on the earth in front of her, crouched over, the land slowly becoming solid again. She climbed until she reached the crest, her sobs swallowed by the shock of witnessing this scene of such powerful destruction, the wind strong against her, the suit cold and bulky.