by Hugh Howey
Page 20
“Must not have taken the first time,” he explained, glancing at the button.
“Mmm. ”
The silence lasted one or two floors.
“How much longer you got?” the reactor mechanic asked.
“Me? Just another couple of weeks. How about you?”
“I just got on a week ago. But this is my second shift. ”
“Oh?”
The lights counted downward in floors but upward in number. Troy didn’t like this; he felt like the lowest level should be level 1. They should count up. He wasn’t sure why this annoyed him.
“Is the second shift easier?” he asked. The question came out unbidden. It was as though the part of him dying to know was more awake than the part of him praying for silence.
The mechanic considered this.
“I wouldn’t say it’s easier. How about. . . less uncomfortable?” He laughed quietly. Troy felt their arrival in his knees, gravity tugging on him. The door beeped open.
“Have a good one,” the mechanic said. They hadn’t shared their names. “In case I don’t see you again. ”
Troy raised his palm. “Next time,” he said. The man stepped out, and the doors winked shut on the halls to the power plant. With a hum, the elevator continued its descent.
Troy’s stomach was in a knot. It wasn’t hunger. It was something else. Something stronger than worry.
The doors dinged on the medical level. Troy stepped out. He felt the hallways calling someone else’s name. That was his imagination, but there were also real voices down the corridor, two men chatting. He stepped quietly across the tile. He remembered picking out tile like this once. Somehow, he knew the name of the pale green paint on the upper half of the walls. Sea foam. The lower half was something else—he couldn’t recall.
A female voice. It wasn’t a conversation; it was an old movie. Troy peeked into the main office and saw a man lounging on a gurney, his back turned, a TV set up in the corner. Troy tiptoed past so as not to disturb him. He supposed that there were positions here—like the reactor mechanics—that were much more important than his own, jobs that required constant care. No one stayed up all night in his office, that was for sure.
The hallway split before him. He imagined the layout, could picture the pie-shaped storerooms, the rows of deep-freeze coffins, the tubes and pipes that led from the walls to the bases, from the bases into the people inside.
He stopped at one of the heavy doors and tried his code. The light changed from red to green. He dropped his hand, didn’t need to enter this room, didn’t feel the urge, just wanted to see if it would work.
He meandered down the hall past a few more doors. Wasn’t he just here? Had he ever left? Hours of darkness lay between him and some event. His arm throbbed. He rolled back his sleeve and saw a spot of blood, a circle of redness around a pinprick scab.
If something bad had happened, he couldn’t remember. That part of him had been choked off.
Adjusting his sleeve, he tried his code on this other pad, this other door, and waited for the light to turn green. Something was calling him. This time, he pushed the button that opened the door. He didn’t know what it was, but there was something inside that he needed to see.
21
2052 • The Hills Above Silo 1
Light rains on the morning of the Convention left the man-made hills soggy, the new grass slick, but did little to erode the general festivities. Parking lots had been emptied of construction vehicles and mud-caked pickups. Now they held hundreds of idling buses and a handful of sleek black limos, the latter splattered ignobly with mud.
The lot where temporary trailers had served as offices and living quarters for construction crews had been handed over to the staffers, volunteers, delegates, and dignitaries who had labored for weeks to bring the day to fruition. The area was dotted with welcoming tents that served as the headquarters for the event coordinators. Throngs of new arrivals filed from the buses and made their way through the CAD-FAC’s security station. Massive fences bristled with coils of razor wire and seemed outsized and ridiculous for the convention but made sense for the storing of nuclear material. These barriers and gates held at bay an odd union of protestors: those on the Right who disagreed with the facility’s current purpose and those on the Left who feared its future one.
There had never been a National Convention with such energy, such crowds. Downtown Atlanta loomed far beyond the treetops, but the city that had ages ago hosted a Summer Olympics seemed far removed from the sudden bustle in lower Fulton County. The location allowed use of its airport but did very little for hotel owners and restaurateurs, not like those business owners had come to expect and appreciate from the four-year gathering of each political party.
Donald shivered beneath his umbrella at the top of a knoll and thought of the hundred thousand screaming fans who used to descend on Athens for home football games. He hated those weekends. The noise and traffic, the drunks and their music. As an undergrad at Georgia, he had kept a schedule of the home games on his fridge so he’d know when to prepare. He would hit the grocery store like it was the end of the world and lock himself in his dorm room for the duration, not coming out until the noise had subsided and the planet felt safe again.
For some reason, he didn’t mind these crowds. They were people like him. He gazed out over the sea of people gathering across the hills, heading toward whichever stage flew their state’s flag, umbrellas bobbing and jostling like water bugs.
Somewhere, a marching band blared a practice tune and stomped another hill into mud. There was a sense in the air that the world was about to change—a woman was about to win the Democratic nomination for president, only the second such nomination in Donald’s lifetime. And if the pollsters could be believed, this one had more than a chance. Unless the war in Iran took a sudden turn, a milestone would be reached, a final glass ceiling shattered. And it would happen right there in those grand divots in the earth, this landmark project that would see an end to energy dependence and a brave new future for the beleaguered art of splitting atoms.
As more buses churned through the lot and disgorged their passengers, Donald pulled out his phone and checked the time. He still had an error icon, the network choked to death from the demand. He was surprised, with so much other careful planning, that the committee hadn’t accounted for this and erected a temporary tower or two.
“Congressman Keene?”
Donald startled and turned to find Anna walking along the ridgeline toward him. He glanced down toward the Georgia stage but didn’t see her ride. He was surprised she would just walk up. And yet, it was like her to do things the difficult way.
“I couldn’t tell if that was you,” she said, smiling. “Everyone has the same umbrella. ”
“Yeah, it’s me. ” He took a deep breath, found his chest still felt constricted with nerves whenever he saw her, as though any conversation could get him into trouble.
Anna stepped close as if she expected him to share his umbrella. He moved it to his other hand to give her more space, the drizzle peppering his exposed arm. He scanned the bus lot and searched impossibly for any sign of Helen. She should have been there by now.
“This is gonna be a mess,” Anna said.
“It’s supposed to clear up. ”
Someone on the North Carolina stage checked her microphone with a squawk of feedback.
“We’ll see. ”
Anna wrapped her coat tighter against the early morning breeze. “Isn’t Helen coming?”
“Yeah. Senator Thurman insisted. She’s not gonna be happy when she sees how many people are here. She hates crowds. She won’t be happy about the mud, either. ”
Anna laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about the conditions of the grounds after this. ”
Donald thought about all the loads of radioactive waste that would be trucked in. “Yeah. ” He thought he saw her point.
Turning away from the parking lot for a moment, he peered down the hill toward the Georgia stage. It would also be the site of the first national gathering of delegates later that day, all the most important people under one tent. Behind the stage and among the smoking food tents, the only sign of the underground containment facility was a small concrete tower rising up from the ground, a bristle of antennas sprouting from the top. Donald thought of how much work it would take to haul away all the flags and soaked buntings before the first of the spent fuel rods could finally be brought in.
“It’s weird to think of a few thousand people from the state of Tennessee stomping around on top of something we designed,” Anna said. Her arm brushed against Donald’s. He stood perfectly still, wondering if it had been an accident. “I wish you’d seen more of the place. ”
Donald shivered, more from fighting to remain still than from the cold and moist morning air. He hadn’t told anyone about Mick’s tour the day before. It felt too sacred. He would probably tell Helen about it and no one else. “It’s crazy how much time went into something nobody will ever use,” he said.
Anna murmured her agreement. Her arm was still touching his. There was no sign of Helen making her way through the security complex. Donald felt irrationally that he would somehow spot her among the crowds. He usually could. He remembered the high balcony of a place they’d stayed in during their honeymoon in Hawaii. Even from up there, he could spot her taking her early morning walks along the foam line, looking for seashells. There might be a few hundred strollers out on the beach, and his eyes would be immediately drawn to her form, her singular gait.
“It’s weird how much pressure was on us to get everything right, don’t you think?”
“Mmm,” Anna said.
“I guess the only way they were going to build any of this was if we gave them the right kind of insurance. ” Donald repeated what the Senator had told him, but it still didn’t feel right.
“People want to feel safe,” Anna said. “They want to know, if the worst thing possible happens, they’ll have someone—something—to fall back on. ”
There was pressure against his arm. Definitely not an accident, not a breeze or gust of wind pushing her into him. Donald felt himself withdraw and knew she would sense it, too.
“I was really hoping to tour one of the other bunkers,” he said, changing the subject. “It’d be cool to see what the other teams came up with. Apparently, though, I don’t have the clearance. ”
Anna laughed. “I tried the same thing. I’m dying to see our competition. But I can understand them being sensitive. There’s a lot of eyes on this joint. ” She leaned into him again, ignoring the space he’d made.
“Don’t you feel that?” she asked, glancing up at the bottom of the umbrella. “Like there’s some huge bull’s-eye over this place? I mean, even with the fences and walls down there, you can bet the whole world is gonna be keeping an eye on what happens here. ”
Donald nodded. He knew she wasn’t talking about the convention but about what the place would be used for afterward.
“Hey, it looks like I’ve got to get back down there. ”
He turned to follow her gaze, saw Senator Thurman climbing the hill on foot, a massive black golf umbrella shedding the rain around him. The man seemed impervious to the mud and grime in a way no one else was, the same way he seemed oblivious to the passing decades.
Anna reached over and squeezed Donald’s arm. “Congrats again. It was fun working together on this. ”
“Same,” he said. “We make a good team. ”
She smiled. He wondered for a moment if she would lean over and kiss his cheek. It would feel natural in that moment, and then that moment irised shut. Anna left his protective cover and headed off toward the Senator.
Thurman lifted his umbrella and smiled at his daughter, and Donald watched as he tried to make her take the umbrella from him, but she refused in a way that he knew quite well. Stubborn and proud. Thurman kissed his daughter’s cheek and watched her descend the hill a ways, then he hiked up to join Donald.
They stood beside each other a pause, their umbrellas overlapping, the rain dripping off the Senator’s and onto Donald’s with a muted patter.
“Sir,” Donald finally said. He felt newly comfortable in the man’s presence. The last two weeks had been like summer camp, where being around the same people almost every hour of the day brought a level of familiarity and intimacy that knowing them casually for years could never match. There was something about forced confinement that really brought people together. Beyond the obvious, physical ways.
“Damn rain” was Thurman’s reply.
“You can’t control everything,” Donald said.
The Senator grunted as if he disagreed. “Helen not here yet?”
“Nossir. ” 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 to not 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 or oddly relaxed. It was strange that Donald couldn’t tell which.
