by Hugh Howey
He cleaned the fish the way the Legacy showed, a slice behind the gills, and then a swipe along the bone toward the tail. Two runs of the knife like this, and he had two pieces of meat. He left the scales on, since Shadow never touched that part. Both fillets went onto a chipped plate near the stairwell.
Shadow spun in circles a few times, his belly making that thrumming noise, then began tearing at the flesh with his teeth.
Jimmy retired to the other end of the railing. He had a towel there. He wiped his hands of the foul slickness and sat down, his back against the closed doors of level one-thirty-one, and watched the cat eat. Silvery shapes darted below. The landing and all else seemed calm in the pale green glow of the emergency stairwell lights.
Before long, there wouldn’t be any fish left. Another year at this rate, and Jimmy figured he’d catch them all.
“But not the last one,” he told himself as he watched Shadow eat. Jimmy hadn’t tasted a fish yet and didn’t think he ever would. The catching of them was too much work, little of it fun, much of it disgusting. But he thought, when he came down one day with his rod and his jar of dirt and worms and saw only one fish remained, that he would leave it alone. Just the one, he thought, as he watched Shadow eat. It would be scared enough down there. No need to go yanking it out into the frightful air. Just let the poor thing be.
Silo 1
•38•
Donald set his alarm for three in the morning, but there was little chance of him falling asleep. He’d waited weeks for this. A chance to give a life rather than take one. A chance at redemption and a chance for the truth, a chance to satisfy his growing suspicions.
He stared at the ceiling and considered what he was about to do. It wasn’t what Erskine or Victor had hoped he would do if someone like him was ever in charge, but those men had gotten a lot wrong, least of all who he was. This wasn’t the end of the end of the world. This was the beginning of something else. An end to the not knowing what was out there.
He studied his hand in the dim light spilling from the bathroom and thought of the outside. At two-thirty, he decided he’d waited long enough. He got up, showered and shaved, put on a fresh pair of coveralls, tugged on his boots. He grabbed his badge and clipped it to his collar. He had a mind to sneak out, to slink down the hallway, but that was the wrong way. He left his apartment with his head up and shoulders back, instead. Long strides took him down a hall with a few lights still on and the distant clatter of a keyboard, someone working late. The door to Eren’s office was closed. Donald called for the elevator and waited.
Before heading all the way down, he checked to see if it would be all for naught by scanning his badge and pressing the shiny button marked fifty-four. The light flashed, and the lift lurched into motion. So far, so good. The elevator didn’t stop until it reached the armory. The doors opened on a familiar darkness studded with tall shadows—black cliffs of shelves and bins. Donald held his hand on the edge of the door to keep it from shutting and stepped out into the room. The vastness of the space could somehow be felt, like the echoes of his racing pulse were being swallowed by the distance. He waited for a light to flick on at the far end, for Anna to walk out brushing her hair or with a bottle of scotch in her hand. But nothing in that room moved. Everything was quiet and still. The pilots and the temporary activity were gone.
He returned to the lift and pressed another button. The elevator sank. It drifted past more storage levels, past the reactor. The doors cracked on the medical wing. Donald could feel the tens of thousands of bodies arranged all around him, all facing the ceiling, eyelids closed. Some of them were well and truly dead, he thought. One was about to be woken.
He went straight to the doctor’s office and knocked on the jamb. The assistant on duty lifted his head from behind the monitor. He wiped his eyes behind his glasses, adjusted them on his nose, and blinked at Donald.
“How’s it going?” Donald asked.
“Hmm? Good. Good.” The young man shook his wrist and checked his watch, an ancient thing. “We got someone going into deep freeze? I didn’t get a call. Is Wilson up?”
“No, no. I just couldn’t sleep.” Donald pointed at the ceiling. “I went to see if anyone was up at the cafeteria, then figured since I was restless, I might as well come down here and see if you wanted me to finish out your shift. I can sit and watch a film as well as anyone.”
The assistant glanced at his monitor and laughed guiltily. “Yeah.” He checked his watch again, had somehow already forgotten what it just told him. “Two hours left. I wouldn’t mind slagging off. You’ll wake me if anything pops up?” He stood and stretched, covered his yawn with his hand.
“Of course.”
The medical assistant staggered out from behind the desk. Donald stepped around and pulled the seat away, sat down and propped up his feet as though he wouldn’t be going anywhere for hours.
“I owe you one,” the young man said, collecting his coat from the back of the door.
“Oh, we’re even,” Donald said under his breath as soon as the man was gone.
He waited for the elevator to chime before launching into action. There was a plastic drink container on the drying rack by the sink. He grabbed this and filled it with water, the musical pitch of the vessel filling like a rising anxiety.
The lid came off the powder. Two scoops. He stirred with one of the long plastic tongue depressors and twisted the lid on, put the powder back in the fridge. The wheelchair wouldn’t budge at first. He saw that the brakes were on, the little metal arms pressing into the soft rubber. He freed these, grabbed one of the blankets from the tall cabinet and a paper gown, tossed them onto the seat. Just like before. But he’d do it right this time. He collected the medical kit, made sure there was a fresh set of gloves.
The wheelchair rattled out the door and down the hall, and Donald’s palms felt sweaty against the handles. To keep the front wheels silent, he rocked the chair back on its large rubber tires. The small wheels spun lazily in the air as he hurried.
He entered his code into the keypad and waited for a red light, for some impediment, some blockade. The light winked green. Donald pulled the door open and swerved between the pods toward the one that held his sister.
There was a mix of anticipation and guilt. This was as bold a step as his run up that hill in a suit. The stakes were higher for involving family, for waking someone into this harsh world, for subjecting her to the same brutality Anna had foisted upon him, that Thurman had foisted upon her, on and on, a never ending misery of shifts.
He left the wheelchair in place and knelt by the control pad. Hesitant, he lurched to his feet and peered through the glass porthole, just to make sure.
She looked so serene in there, probably wasn’t plagued by nightmares like he was. Donald’s doubts grew. And then he imagined her waking up on her own; he imagined her conscious and beating on the glass, demanding to be let out. He saw her feisty spirit, heard her demand not to be lied to, and he knew that if she were standing there with him, she would ask him to do it. She would rather know and suffer than be left asleep in ignorance.
This is what Donald told himself, anyway. He crouched by the keypad and entered his code. The keypad beeped cheerfully as he pressed the red button. There was a click from within the pod, like a valve opening. He turned the dial and watched the temperature gauge, waited for it to start climbing.
Donald rose and stood by the pod, and time slowed to a crawl. He expected someone to come find him before the process was complete. But there was another clack and a hiss from the lid. He laid out the gauze and the tape. He separated the two rubber gloves and began pulling them on, a cloud of chalk misting the air as he snapped the elastic.
He opened the lid the rest of the way.
His sister lay on her back, her arms by her side. She had not yet moved. Donald seemed to remember having moved by the time the lid opened, but he couldn’t remember. A panic seized him as he went over the procedure again. Had he forgotten something? D
ear god, had he killed her?
Charlotte coughed. Water trailed down her cheeks as the frost on her lids melted. And then her eyes fluttered open weakly before returning to thin slits against the light.
“Hold still,” Donald told her. He pressed a square of gauze to her arm and removed the needle. He could feel the steel slide beneath the pad and his fingers as he extracted it from her arm. Holding the gauze in place, he took a length of tape hanging from the wheelchair and applied it across the gauze. The last was the catheter. He covered her with the towel, applied pressure, and slowly removed the tube. And then she was free of the machine, crossing her arms and shivering. He helped her into the paper gown, left the back open.
“I’m lifting you out,” he said.
Her teeth clattered in response.
Donald shifted her feet toward her butt to tent her knees. Reaching down beneath her armpits—her flesh cool to the touch—and another arm under her legs, he lifted her easily. It felt like she weighed so little. He could smell the cast-stink on her flesh.
Charlotte mumbled something as he placed her in the wheelchair. The blanket was draped across so that she sat on the fabric rather than the cold seat. As soon as she was settled, he wrapped the blanket around her. She chose to remain in a ball with her arms wrapped around her shins rather than place her feet on the stirrups.
“Where am I?” she asked, her voice a sheet of crackling ice.
“Take it easy,” Donald told her. He closed the lid on the pod, tried to remember if there was anything else, looked for anything he’d left behind. “You’re with me,” he said as he pushed her toward the exit. That was where both of them were: with each other. There was no home, no place on the Earth to welcome one to anymore, just a hellish nightmare in which to drag another for sad company.
•39•
The hardest part was making her wait to eat. Donald knew what it felt like to be that hungry. He put her through the same routine he’d endured a number of times: made her drink the bitter concoction, made her use the bathroom to flush her system, had her sit on the edge of the tub and take a warm but not hot shower, then put her in a fresh set of clothes and a new blanket.
He watched as she finished the last of the drink. Her lips gradually faded to pink from pale blue. Her skin was so white. Donald couldn’t remember if it’d been white like that before orientation. Maybe it’d happened overseas, sitting in those dark trailers with only the light of a monitor to bathe in.
“I need to go make an appearance,” he told her. “Everyone else will be getting up. I’ll bring you breakfast on my way back down.”
Charlotte sat quietly in one of the leather chairs around the old war planning table, her feet tucked up under her. She tugged at the collar of the coveralls as if they itched her skin. “Mom and Dad are gone,” she said, repeating what he’d told her earlier. Donald wasn’t sure what she would and wouldn’t remember. She hadn’t been on her stress medications as long or as recently as him. But it didn’t matter. He could tell her the truth. Tell her and hate himself for doing it.
“I’ll be back in a little bit. Just stay here and try to get some rest. Don’t leave this room, okay?”
The words echoed hollow as he hurried through the warehouse and toward the elevator. He remembered hearing from others as soon as they woke him that he should get some rest. He was usually on the other side of that advice, thinking those dispensing it were out of their minds. Charlotte had been asleep for three centuries. As he scanned his badge and waited for the elevator, Donald thought on how much time had passed and how little had changed. The world was still the ruin they’d left it. Or if it wasn’t, they were about to find out.
He rode up to the operations level. The express was anything but. It stopped twice to pick up four others with sleep in their eyes and a shuffle in their step. They rode in silence, all in coveralls of various hues, like men in a factory from the olden days heading to another Monday morning. Always Mondays in that place. Six months of Mondays. No weekends to look forward to.
The lift spilled them into the hall. Donald felt a chill from the thought that his sister was down below, awake and alone. He felt an impatience like bugs beneath his skin, urging him forward faster than he could go.
He checked with Eren, knocked on his doorframe. The Ops Head was already at his desk, surrounded by files, one hand tangled in his hair, his elbow on piles of paperwork. There was no steam from his mug of coffee. He’d been at his desk a while.
“Thurman,” he said, glancing up.
Donald startled and glanced down the hall, looking for someone else.
“Any progress with 18?”
“I, uh …” Donald tried to remember. “Last I heard, they’d breached the barrier in the lowest levels. The Head over there thinks the fighting will be over in a day or two.”
“Good. Glad the shadow is working out. Scary time not to have one. There was this one time on my third shift I think it was when we lost a Head while he was between shadows. Helluva time finding a recruit.” Eren leaned back in his chair. “The mayor wasn’t an option; the head of Security was as bright as a lump of coal; so we had to—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Donald said, pointing down the hall. “I need to get back to—”
“Oh, of course.” Eren waved his hand, seemed embarrassed. “Right. Me too.”
“—just a lot to do this morning. Grabbing breakfast and then I’ll be in my room.” He jerked his head toward the empty office across the hall. “Tell Gable I took care of myself, okay? I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Sure, sure.” Eren shooed him with his hand.
Donald spun back to the elevator. Up to the cafeteria. His stomach rumbled its agreement. He’d been up all night without eating. He’d been up and empty for far too long.
•40•
He was pushing the time limit by letting her eat an hour early, but it was hard to say no. Donald encouraged her to take small bites, to slow down. And while Charlotte chewed, he caught her up. She knew about the silos from orientation. He told her about the wallscreens, about the cleaners, that he was woken because someone had disappeared. Charlotte had a hard time grasping these things. It took saying them several times until they became strange even to his ears.
“They let them see outside, these people in the other silos?” She chewed on a small bite of biscuit.
“Yeah. I asked Thurman once why we put them there. You know what he told me?”
Charlotte shrugged and took a sip of water.
“They’re there to keep them from wanting to leave. We have to show them death to keep them in. Otherwise, they’ll always want to see what’s over the rise. Thurman said it’s human nature.”
“But some of them go anyway.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin, picked up her fork, her hand trembling, and pulled Donald’s half-eaten breakfast toward her.
“Yeah, some of them go anyway,” Donald said. “And you need to take it easy.” He watched her dig into his eggs and thought about his own trip up the drone lift. He was one of those people who had gone anyway. It wasn’t something she needed to know.
“We have one of those screens,” Charlotte said. “I remember watching the clouds boil.” She looked up at Donald. “Why do we have one?”
Donald reached quickly for his handkerchief and coughed into its folds. “Because we’re human,” he answered, tucking the cloth away. “If we think there’s no way to see what’s out there—that we’ll die if we go—we’ll stay here and do what we’re told. But I know of another way to see what’s out there.”
“Yeah—?” Charlotte scraped the last of his eggs onto her fork and lifted them to her mouth. She waited.
“And I’m going to need your help to get there.”
* * *
They pulled the tarp off one of the drones. Charlotte ran her hand down its wing and walked around the machine like a jockey circling a horse before a race. Grabbing the flap on the back of a wing, she worked it up and down. Did the same
for the tail. The drone had a black dome and nose that gave it something like a face. It sat silently, unmoving, while Charlotte inspected it. Donald noticed that three of the other drones were missing—the floor was glossy where their tarps used to drape. And the neat pyramid of bombs in the munitions rack was missing its top cheerleader. Signs of the armory’s use these past weeks. Donald went to the hangar door and worked it open.
“No hardware?” Charlotte asked. She peered under one of the wings where bad things could be attached.
“No,” Donald said. “Not for this.” He ran back and helped her push. They steered the drone toward the open maw of the lift. The wings just barely fit.
“There should be a strap or a linkage,” she said. She crawled behind the drone and wiggled in beneath the wing.
“There’s something in the floor,” Donald said, remembering the nub that moved along the track. “I’ll get a light.”
He retrieved a flashlight from one of the bins, made sure it had a charge, and brought it back to her. Charlotte hooked the drone into the launch mechanism and squirmed her way out. She seemed slow to stand. He gave his sister a hand, remembering when they were young.
“And you’re sure this lift’ll work?” She brushed hair, still wet from the shower, off her face.
“Very sure,” Donald said. He led her down the hall, past the barracks and bathrooms.
Charlotte stiffened when he led her into the piloting room and pulled back the plastic sheets. He flipped the switch on the lift controls. She stared blankly at one of the stations with its joysticks, readouts, and screens.
“You can operate this, right?” he asked.