Dust

by Hugh Howey

Page 12

 

  “Can he talk?” Brevard asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Dr. Whitmore said. He scratched his gray beard. “We had quite the scene up here when he came to. The patient is much stronger than he appears. ”

  “And not quite as dead,” Stevens said.

  Nobody laughed.

  “He was very animated,” Dr. Whitmore said. “He insisted his name wasn’t Troy. This was before I ran the tests. ” He nodded at the piece of paper Brevard was now carrying.

  Brevard looked to Darcy for confirmation.

  “I was using the john,” Darcy admitted sheepishly. “I wasn’t here when he woke up. ”

  “We gave him a sedative. And I took a blood sample in order to ID him. ”

  “What did you come up with?” Brevard asked.

  Dr. Whitmore shook his head. “His records have been expunged. Or so I thought. ” Taking a plastic cup from one of the cabinets, he ran some water from the sink and took a swig. “They were coming up partials because I don’t have access to them. Just rank and cryo level. I remembered seeing this before on my very first shift. It was another guy from the executive wing, and then I remembered where you found this gentleman. ”

  “The executive wing,” Brevard said. “But this wasn’t his pod, right?” He remembered what Darcy had told him. “The blood on the lid matches the pod, but the man inside is someone else. Wouldn’t that suggest someone used their own pod in order to stash a body?”

  “If my hunch is correct, it’s worse than that. ” Dr. Whitmore took another sip of water and ran his fingers through his hair. “The name on the executive pod, Troy, matches the swab I took from the lid, but that man should be in Deep Freeze right now. He was put under over a century ago and hasn’t been woken up since. ”

  “But that was his blood on the lid,” Stevens said.

  “Which means he has been woken up since,” Darcy pointed out.

  Brevard glanced at his night-shift officer and realized he’d misjudged the young man. That was the blasted thing about working these shifts with different people every time. You couldn’t really get to know anyone, couldn’t gauge their worth.

  “So the first thing I did was look in the medical records for any strange activity in the Deep Freeze. I wanted to see if anyone had ever been disturbed from there. ”

  Brevard felt uneasy. The doctor was doing all of his work for him. “Did you find anything?” he asked.

  Dr. Whitmore nodded. He waved toward the terminal on the waiting room desk. “There has been activity in the Deep Freeze initiated by this office. Not on my shift, mind you. But twice now, people have been woken up from coordinates that place them there. One of them was in the middle of the old Deep Freeze, that storehouse from before orientation. ”

  The doctor paused to allow this to sink in.

  It took Brevard a moment. His sleep-deprived night guard proved a hair quicker.

  “A woman?” Darcy asked.

  Dr. Whitmore frowned. “It’s hard to say, but that’s my suspicion. I don’t have access to this person’s records for some reason. I sent Michael down to check, to get a visual on who’s in there. ”

  “We could be dealing with a murder of passion,” Stevens said.

  Brevard grunted in agreement. He was already thinking the same thing. “Say there’s a man who can’t handle the loneliness. He’s been waking up his wife in secret, would probably have to be an administrator to have access. Someone finds out, a non-executive, and so he has to kill the man. But … he gets killed instead—” Brevard shook his head. It was getting too complicated. He was too decaffeinated for this.

  “Here’s the kicker,” Dr. Whitmore said.

  Brevard groaned in anticipation. He regretted having dumped out his cold coffee. He waved for the news.

  “There’s been one other case of someone pulled from Deep Freeze, and this guy, I do have access to his records. ” Dr. Whitmore scanned the three security officers. “Anyone wanna guess the guy’s name?”

  “His name is Troy,” Darcy said.

  The doctor snapped his fingers, his eyes wide with surprise. “Bingo. ”

  Brevard turned to his night guard. “And how the hell did you come up with that?”

  Darcy shrugged. “Everyone loves a match. ”

  “So let me get this straight,” Brevard said. “We’ve got a rogue killer from the Deep Freeze knocking off an administrator, taking his place and likely his codes, and waking up women. ” The chief turned to Stevens. “Okay, I think you’re right. It’s time to get Shepherd involved. This just hit his pay grade. ”

  Stevens nodded and turned toward the door. But there was a slap of hurrying boots out in the hall before he could leave. Michael, one of the medical assistants who had helped remove the body from the pod, flew around the corner in a lather and out of air. Resting his hands on his knees, he took several deep breaths, his eyes on his boss.

  “I said be quick,” Dr. Whitmore said. “I didn’t mean for you to race. ”

  “Yessir—” Michael took a series of deep breaths. “Sirs, we’ve got a problem. ” The medical assistant looked to the men from Security and grimaced.

  “What is it?” Brevard asked.

  “It was a woman,” Michael said, nodding. “Sure enough. But the readout on her pod was flashing, so I ran a quick check. ” He scanned their faces, his eyes wild, and Brevard knew. He knew, but someone else beat him to it.

  “She’s dead,” Darcy said.

  The assistant nodded vigorously, his hands on his knees. “Anna,” he muttered. “The name on the pod was Anna. ”

  ••••

  The man in the OR with no name tested his restraints, his old and sinewy arms bulging. Dr. Whitmore begged the gentleman to hold still. Captain Brevard stood on the other side of the gurney. He could smell the odor of a man newly awakened, a man left for dead. Wild eyes sought him out among those gathered. The man who had been shot seemed to recognize Brevard as the one in charge.

  “Unloose me,” the old man said.

  “Not until we know what happened,” Brevard told him. “Not until you’re better. ”

  The leather cuffs around the old man’s wrists squeaked as he tested them. “I’ll be better when I’m off this damn table. ”

  “You’ve been shot,” Dr. Whitmore said. He rested a hand on his patient’s shoulder to calm him.

  The old man lowered his head to his pillow, his eyes travelling from doctor to security officer and back again. “I know,” he said.

  “Do you remember who did it?” Brevard asked.

  The man nodded. “His name’s Donald. ” His jaw clenched and unclenched.

  “Not Troy?” Brevard asked.

  “That’s what I meant. Same guy. ” Brevard watched the old man’s hands squeeze into twin fists and then relax. “Look, I’m one of the Heads of this silo. I demand to be released. Check my records—”

  “We’ll get this sorted out—” Brevard started to say.

  The restraints creaked. “Check the damn records,” the old man said again.

  “They’ve been tampered with,” Brevard told him. “Can you tell us your name?”

  The man lay still for a moment, muscles relaxing. He stared up at the ceiling. “Which one?” he asked. “My name is Paul. Most people call me by my last name, Thurman. I used to go by Senator—”

  “Shepherd,” Captain Brevard said. “Paul Thurman is the name of the man they call Shepherd. ”

  The old man narrowed his eyes. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve been called a number of things in my time, but never that. ”

  Silo 17

  18

  The earth growled. Beyond the walls of the silo, the earth grumbled and the noise steadily grew.

  It had begun as a distant thrum a few days ago, had sounded like a hydroponics pump kicking on at the end of a long run of pipe, a vibration that could be felt between th
e pads of one’s feet and the slick metal floor. And then yesterday it had morphed into a steady quake that travelled up Jimmy’s knees and bones and into his clenched teeth. Above him, drops of water shivered from pipes, a light drizzle splashing into puddles that had not yet fully dried from the vanishing floods.

  Elise squealed and patted the top of her head as she was struck with a drop. She glanced up with a gapped smile and watched for more of the bombardment.

  “That’s an awful racket,” Rickson said. He played his flashlight across the far wall of the old generator room where the noise seemed to originate.

  Hannah clapped her hands together and told the twins to get away from the wall. Miles – at least Jimmy thought it was Miles; he could hardly tell the twins apart – had his ear pressed to the concrete, his eyes closed, his mouth agape in concentration. His brother Marcus tugged him back toward the others, face lit up with excitement.

  “Get behind me,” Jimmy said. His feet tingled from the vibrations. He could feel the noise in his chest as some unseen machine chewed through solid rock.

  “How much longer?” Elise asked.

  Jimmy tousled her hair and enjoyed the embrace of her worried arms around his waist. “Soon,” he told her. The truth was, he didn’t know. They’d spent the past two weeks keeping the pump running and Mechanical dry. That morning, they had woken up to find the noise of the digging intolerable. The racket had gotten worse throughout the day, and still the blank wall stood solid before them, still the light rain from wet and shivering pipes continued. The twins splashed in puddles, growing impatient. The baby, inexplicably, slept peacefully in Hannah's arms. They’d been there for hours, listening to the grumbles grow, waiting for something to happen.

  The end of the long wait was presaged by mechanical sounds interspersed amid the racket of crushing rock. A squeal of metal joints, the clang of fearsome teeth, the size and breadth of the din becoming confusing as it came from everywhere all at once, from the floor and ceiling and the walls on all sides. Puddles were thrown into chaos. Water flew up from the ground as well as falling from above. Jimmy nearly lost his footing.

  “Step back,” he yelled over the clamor. He shuffled away from the wall with Elise attached to his hip, the others obeying, wide-eyed and arms out for balance.

  A section of concrete fell away, a flat sheet the size of a man. It sloughed off and fell straight down, crumbling into rubble as it hit. Dust filled the air – it seemed to emanate from within the wall itself, concrete releasing powder like a great exhalation.

  Jimmy took a few more steps back, and the kids followed, worry replacing excitement. It no longer sounded like an approaching machine – it sounded like hundreds of them. They were everywhere. They were in their chests.

  The din reached a furious peak, more concrete falling away, metal screaming as if beaten, great clangs and shots of sparks, and then the great digger broke through, a crack and then a gash appearing in a circular arc like a shadow racing across the wall.

  The size of the cut put the noise into perspective. Cutting teeth burst through from the ceiling, spun down beneath the floor, then rose back up on the other side. Iron rods jutted out where they’d been severed. There was the smell of burning metal and chalk. The digger was coming through the wall of level one-forty-two and chewing up a good bit of the concrete above and below. It was boring a hole bigger than a silo level was tall.

  The twins whooped and hollered. Elise squeezed Jimmy’s ribs so hard he had to work to breathe. The baby stirred in Hannah’s arms, but its cries could barely be heard over the tumult. Another great spin from the teeth, another lap from ceiling to floor, and they broke through more fully and revealed themselves to be more like wheels, dozens of discs spinning within a larger disc. A boulder fell from the ceiling and tumbled across the floor toward the larger of the two generators. Jimmy expected the silo itself to come raining down around them.

  A light bulb overhead shattered from the vibrations, a glitter of glass amid the drizzle of trapped flood water. “Back!” Jimmy yelled. They were clear across the wide generator room from the digger, but everywhere felt too close. The ground shook, making it difficult to stand. Jimmy felt suddenly afraid. This thing would keep coming, would bore straight through the silo and carry on; it was out of control—

  The chewing disc entered the room, sharpened wheels spinning and screaming in the air, rock thrown up on one side and crumbling down from the other. The violence lessened. The squealing of dry metal joints grew less deafening. Hannah cooed to her child, rocking her arms back and forth, eyes wide and fixed on this intrusion into their home.

  Somewhere, shouts emerged. They leaked through the falling rock. The rotating disc slowed to a halt, while some of the smaller wheels spun a while longer. Their edges revealed themselves as shiny and new where their battle through the earth had worn them bare. A length of rebar was wrapped around one like a knotted bootlace.

  A respite of silence grew. The child fell still once more. A distant clatter and hum – the digger’s rumbling belly perhaps – was the only sound.

  “Hello?”

  A shout from around the digger.

  “Yeah, we’re through,” another voice called. A woman’s voice.

  Jimmy swept up Elise, who hugged his neck and locked her ankles around his waist. He ran toward the wall of studded steel before him.

  “Hey!” Rickson called as he hurried after.

  The twins raced along as well.

  Jimmy couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t Elise squeezing him this time – it was the idea of visitors. Of people not to be afraid of. Someone he could run to rather than from.