by Hugh Howey
Page 33
“Seed,” Juliette said.
“Yeah. These lines look like flight lines, which never made sense. But I think they lead to a better place. I think the digger you found wasn’t meant to go between silos. I think—”
There was a noise behind her. Charlotte had a difficult time processing it, even though she had expected it for hours, for days. She was so used to being alone, despite the fear that they were coming for her, the perfect knowledge that they were coming for her.
“You think what?” Juliette asked.
Turning, Charlotte watched the door to the drone control room fly open. A man dressed like those who had held her brother down stood in the hallway. He came at her, all alone, shouting for her to hold still, shouting for her to raise her hands. He trained a gun on her.
Juliette’s voice spilled from the radio. She asked Charlotte to go on, to tell her what the diggers were for, to answer. But Charlotte was too busy complying with this man, holding one hand over her head and the other as high as the pain would allow. And she knew it was all over.
Silo 17
47
The genset grumbled to life. There was a rattle deep in the belly of the great digger, and then a string of lights flickered on in Silo 17’s pump room, in the generator room, and down the main hall. There were whoops and applause from exhausted mechanics, and Juliette realized how important these small victories were. Light shone where once there was dark flood.
For her, every breath was a small victory. Lukas’s death was a weight on her chest, as were the losses of Peter and Marsha and Nelson. Everyone in IT she had come to know and forgive was gone. The cafeteria staff. Practically anyone above Supply, all those who hadn’t made a run for it. Weights on her chest, every one. She took another deep breath and marveled that breathing was still possible.
Courtnee had taken charge of the mechanics, stepping into the vacuum Shirly had left. She and her team were the ones stringing lights and wires and getting the pumps rigged and automated. Juliette moved about like a ghost. Only a handful seemed to see her. Just her father and a few of her closest friends, loyal to a fault.
She found Walker in the back of the digger, where the tight confines and reliable power made him feel closer to home. He looked over her radio and pronounced it both operational and out of juice. “I could rig up a charger in a few hours,” he told her apologetically.
Juliette surveyed the conveyor belt, which had been swept free of dirt and rubble and now served as a workbench for both Walker and the dig team. Walker had several projects underway for Courtnee: pumps to respool and what looked like disassembled mining detonators. Juliette thanked him but told him she was heading up soon; there were chargers in the deputy stations as well as in IT on thirty-four.
Further down the conveyor belt, she noticed members of the dig team poring over a schematic. Juliette gathered the radio and her flashlight from Walker’s station, patted him on the back, and joined them.
Erik, the old mine foreman, had a pair of dividers and was marking out distances on the schematic. Juliette squeezed in to get a closer look. It was the silo layout she’d brought down from IT all those weeks ago. It showed a grid of circles, a few of them crossed out. There were markings between two silos to show the route the digger had taken. The schematic had been used by the mining team to chart their way, buttressed by Juliette’s best guess on which direction she had walked and how far.
“We could make it to number sixteen in two weeks,” Erik calculated.
Bobby grunted. “C’mon. It took longer than that to get here. ”
“I’m relying on your extra incentive to get out of this place,” Erik said.
Someone laughed.
“What if it ain’t safe over there?” Fitz asked.
“It probably isn’t,” Juliette said.
Grime-covered faces turned to acknowledge her.
“You got friends in all of these?” Fitz asked. He practically sneered at her. Juliette could feel the tension among the group. Most of them had gotten their families through, their loved ones and kids and brothers and sisters. But not all.
Juliette squeezed between Bobby and Hyla and tapped one of the circles on the map. “I’ve got friends right here,” she said.
Shadows swayed drunkenly across the map as the bulb overhead swung on its cord. Erik read the label on the circle Juliette had indicated. “Silo 1,” he said. He traced the three rows of silos between this location and where they currently stood. “That would take a lot longer. ”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m going alone. ”
Eyes went from the map to her. The only sound was the rumbling of the genset at the other end of the digger.
“I’ll be going overland. And I know you need all the blast charges you can lay hands on, but I saw you had a few cases left over from the dig. I’d love to take enough to pop a hole in the top of this silo. ”
“What are you talking about?” Bobby asked.
Juliette leaned over the map and traced a path with her finger. “I’m going overland in a modified suit. I’m going to strap as many sticks of blast charge as I can to the door of this silo, and then I’m going to open that motherfucker like a soup can. ”
Fitz smiled a toothless smile. “What kind of friends you say you got over there?”
“The dead kind,” Juliette said. “The people who did this to us live right there. They’re the ones who make the world outside unlivable. I think it’s time they live in it. ”
No one spoke for a beat. Until Bobby asked, “How thick are the airlock doors? I mean, you’ve seen ’em. ”
“Three, four inches. ”
Erik scratched his beard. Juliette realized half the men around that table were doing some kind of figuring. Not a one of them was going to talk her out of this.
“It would take twenty to thirty sticks,” someone said.
Juliette searched out the voice and saw a man she didn’t recognize. Someone from the Mids who had made it down, maybe. But he was wearing a mechanic’s coveralls.
“You all had one-inch plate welded up at the base of the stairwell. We used eight sticks to punch through it. I’d say plan on three to four times that. ”
“You’re a transfer?” Juliette asked.
“Yes, ma’am. ” He nodded. And looking past the grime to his cropped hair and bright smile, Juliette thought she could see the Up-Topper in there. One of the men sent from IT to bolster the shifts in Mechanical. Someone who had blown open the barrier her friends had erected during the uprising. He knew what he was talking about.
Juliette looked to the others. “Before I go, I’ll reach out to a few of these silos, see if any will harbor you. But I’ve got to warn you, the heads of these joints all work for these people. They’d as likely kill you when you come crashing through their walls as feed you. I don’t know what’s salvageable here, but you might be better off staying put. Imagine what we would’ve thought if a few hundred strangers cut their way inside our home and asked to be put up. ”
“We would’ve let them,” Bobby said.
Fitz sneered. “Easy for you to say, you’ve got your two kids. What about those of us in the lottery?”
This got several people talking all at once. Erik slapped the conveyor belt with his hand to silence them. “That’s enough,” he said. He glared at those gathered. “She’s right. We need to know where we’re headed first. In the meantime, we can start staging. We’re gonna want all the supports in the mines of this place, which means a lot of water to pump out and exploring to do. ”
“How exactly are we going to aim this thing?” Bobby asked. “She was a bitch to steer here. These things aren’t fond of turning. ”
Erik nodded. “Already thought of that. We’ll dig around it and give her room enough to spin in place. Court says it’s possible to run a set of tracks at a time, a little forward on one side, a little back on the other. She
’ll creep around as long as there’s no earth in the way. ”
Raph appeared at Juliette’s side. He had been hanging back during the discussion. “I’m coming with you,” he said.
Juliette realized it wasn’t a question. She nodded.
When Erik was done explaining what they needed to do next, workers began to scatter. Juliette caught Erik’s attention and showed him her radio. “I’m going to go see Courtnee and my dad before I leave, and I’ve got some friends that headed off to the farms. I’ll have someone bring you down a radio as soon as I find another. And a charger. If I make contact with a silo that’ll have you, I’ll let you know. ”
Erik nodded. He started to say something, scanned the faces of those still milling about, then waved her to the side. Juliette handed her radio to Raph and followed.
A few paces away, Erik glanced around and waved her further along. And then further. Until they were at the far end of the tailings facility where the very last bulb swayed and flickered.
“I’ve heard what some of them are sayin’,” Erik said. “I just want you to know it’s ratshit, okay?”
Juliette scrunched up her face in confusion. Erik took a deep breath, eyed his workers in the distance. “My wife was working in the one-twenties when this went down. Everyone around her was running up, and as much as she felt the urge to join them, she headed straight down here to our kids. Was the only one on her level to make it. She fought a helluva crowd to get here. People were acting crazy. ”
Juliette squeezed his arm. “I’m glad she made it. ” She watched the dangling lights shine in Erik’s eyes.
“Goddammit, Jules, listen to what I’m telling you. This morning, I woke up on a rusted sheet of plate steel, a crick in my neck I may live with for the rest of my life, two damn kids sleeping on me like a mattress, and my ass dead numb from the cold—”
Juliette laughed.
“—but Lesley is laying there watching me. Like she’s been watching me a long while. And my wife looks around us at this rusted hellhole, and she says thank God we had this place to come to. ”
Juliette turned away and wiped at her eyes. Erik grabbed her arm and made her face him. He wasn’t going to let her retreat like that.
“She hated this dig. Hated it. Hated me taking on a second shift, hated it because of my bitchin’ and moanin’ over the struts you made me pull, what we did to number six. Hated it because I hated it. You understand?”
Juliette nodded.
“Now, I know the fix we’re in as well as most. I don’t reckon we’ll get anywhere with this next dig, but it’ll give us something to do until our time comes. Until then, I’m going to wake up sore next to the woman I love, and if I’m lucky I’ll do the same thing the next morning, and every one of those is a gift. This ain’t hell. This is what comes before. And you gave us that. ”
Juliette wiped the tears from her cheeks. Some part of her hated herself for crying in front of him. Another part wanted to throw her arms around his neck and sob. She missed Lukas more powerfully in that moment than she thought herself capable.
“I don’t know about this fool’s errand you’re setting off on, but you take whatever of mine you need. If that means more digging with my bare hands, so be it. You get those fuckers. I want to see them in hell by the time I get there. ”
48
Juliette found her father in the makeshift clinic he had set up in a cleared-out and rusted storeroom. Raylee, a second-shift electrician nine months pregnant, rested on a bedroll, her husband at her side, both of them with their hands on her belly. Juliette acknowledged the couple and realized their child would be the first – maybe ever – to be born in a different silo from its parents. That child would never know the gleaming Mechanical in which they worked and lived, would never travel up to the bazaar and hear music or see a play, may never gaze at a functioning wallscreen to know the outside world. And if it was a girl, she would face the danger of having children of her own like Hannah had, with no one to tell her otherwise.
“You setting off?” Juliette’s father asked.
She nodded. “Just came to tell you goodbye. ”
“You say that like I’ll never see you again. I’ll be up to check on the kids once I get things sorted down here. Once we have our new arrival. ” He smiled at Raylee and her husband.
“Just goodbye for now,” Juliette said. She had made the others swear not to tell anyone, especially Court and her father, about what she had planned. As she gave her father a final squeeze, she tried not to let her arms betray her.
“And just so you know,” she told him, letting go, “those kids are the nearest thing I’ll ever have to children of my own. So whenever I’m not there to look after them, if you can lend Solo a hand … Sometimes I think he’s the biggest kid of the lot. ”
“I will. And I know. And I’m sorry about Marcus. I blame myself. ”
“Don’t, Dad. Please don’t. Just … look after them when I’m too busy to. You know how I can get into some fool project. ”
He nodded.
“I love you,” she said. And then she turned to go before she betrayed herself and her plans any further. In the hallway, Raph shouldered a heavy bag. Juliette grabbed the other. The two of them walked beyond the current string of lights and into the near-darkness, neither of them employing their flashlights, the halls familiar enough, their eyes soon adjusting.
They passed through an unmanned security station. Juliette spotted the breathing hose doubling back on itself, remembered swimming through that very spot. Ahead, the stairwell glowed a dull green from resilient emergency lights, and she and Raph began the long slog up. Juliette had a list in her head of who she needed to see and what she needed to grab on the way. The kids would be in the lower farms, back at their old home. Solo as well. She wanted to see them, and then head up and grab a charger and hopefully another radio at the deputy station. If they were lucky and made good time, she’d be in her old home in the cleaning lab later that night, assembling one last suit.
