Shadows

by Peter Cawdron

  “Just a little,” Susan confessed. “What can we do?”

  “We need to put a stop to this madness,” Lisa replied. “People will listen to you. You've got to convince them to lay down their arms. Hammond's got far more than pitchforks and axes, if he comes out fighting, hundreds will die.”

  “I don't know if I—”

  “You must. I've seen this before. If the silo goes bad, everyone's going to lose someone.”

  The stairs leading down to level sixteen had been mangled by falling debris during the quake. Guide ropes had been established, making the wreckage passable, but a group of men were working to build a barricade on the upper side of the damaged stairs. The flash of an arc-welder reflected off the concrete walls of the silo, pasting them in a ghostly blue.

  “What is going on?” Lisa said, coming up to the men.

  “We're fortifying our position,” one of the men said. “If they storm the stairs, we can hold them here.”

  “Listen to yourselves,” Lisa said, appealing to the older men as the younger shadows kept working, erecting scraps of sheet metal as a shield. “You lived through the riots. You know what happened. You know the futility, the stupidity of rising up against IT.”

  “It has to be done,” the older man said, rubbing his bald head. “We have to protect our families.”

  Lisa tapped the metal barricade. The sheet metal was thin.

  “You won't stop them,” she said. “Their bullets will pass through this like a hot knife through butter, killing anyone hiding behind your barrier.”

  “We'll cut the guide ropes,” another man replied.

  “They'll use grappling hooks,” Lisa countered, “and span the gap with ladders.”

  “We hold the high ground, we'll throw boulders at them.”

  “They'll slaughter you,” Lisa said coldly. “Listen to me. A silo cannot be divided. They know that. They'll bridge the gap. They'll find out who the ringleaders are, and you'll all be sent to clean.”

  “Don't do this,” Susan implored the men. “My caster's right. Violence isn't going to solve this.”

  “You,” the bald man said. “You're the girl that stood up to Hammond.”

  Susan nodded. She couldn't say, yes. In her mind, she'd done little more than cower before the ferocious man. With fire in his eyes and spittle on his beard, he'd vanquished Charlie's invention. He'd framed Charlie for murder and rigged the outcome of his trial. Truth was, Susan was intimidated by Hammond. She felt her heart race merely at the thought of a confrontation with him. She wasn't brave. She was scared, only now she was scared for her friends, her parents. Susan had no doubt about Lisa's conviction, she knew that if Hammond was pushed, he would unleash hell on them.

  “This isn't what Charlie would want,” she said, being truthful. “He'd want to see the silo rebuilt, not destroyed.”

  Her mouth ran dry, and she struggled to say what she was thinking, but she had to get it out. They had to understand.

  “He died to protect me. He died so no one else would have to die.”

  Her lips quivered. A tear formed in her eye. As much as she tried to will it back, she couldn't help but feel that single drop run down her cheek.

  “I don't like this,” the older, bald man said.

  “I don't either,” Lisa replied. “But if there's to be change, it has to come from within. If we fight, hundreds will die, perhaps thousands. Please, tell your people to stand down.”

  The older man didn't say anything. He had his hands in his coveralls, looking at his feet.

  “I know it's hard,” Lisa added. “Please, think of your families. Think of what will happen to them without you.”

  The stranger pursed his lips, nodding his head. The other men stopped their work, taking their cue from him.

  “Please,” Susan said. “You've got to tell the others. If they go through with this, they'll lose. There has to be a better way. We should not have to pay for our future in blood.”

  “Pull it down,” the older man said reluctantly.

  “Thank you,” Lisa said, turning to Susan and indicating that she should follow. Carefully, the two of them negotiated the rope spanning the crushed remains of the stairs. The rope wasn't essential, acting mere as a guide to steady someone if they lost their balance. Several sections of the mangled stairs were wide enough to walk down without the need for the rope at all.

  They continued on.

  “Where are we going?” Susan asked.

  “The Mids,” Lisa replied as they passed hydroponics.

  The wreckage Susan had scampered across to save James from the Great Fall had been reattached to the wall, forming a landing of sorts for that level. Numerous ropes stretched up to the landing above, supporting the twisted steel platform. The landing swayed as they crossed it nervously.

  “Why the Mids?”

  “Down Deep won't trust the Uppers, but they trust the Mids. Although Supply is in the Deep, it's manned by those from the Mids, so the mechanics trust them. If there's a revolution, that's where it will start, that's where it always starts.”

  “We have to cross IT,” Susan said, stating the obvious, feeling she needed to point that out to her caster.

  “Yes,” Lisa replied with certainty. “Yes, we do.”

  Neither of them said much for the next fifteen levels, but they slowed as they approached IT on the 34th level. Coming around the spiral staircase, it was immediately apparent that Hammond was ready for a fight. The security station had been sealed with plate steel, not the thin sheet metal the farmers had been using. These plates were easily a quarter of an inch thick. Tiny slots had been cut into the plate steel at eye level. Susan had no doubt their approach was being watched. What threat could two unarmed women pose? She hoped they were thinking rationally, although given what she'd seen so far, she doubted they were.

  One of the turnstiles had been covered with several sheets of metal welded together, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, reducing the access to the floor to a single lane.

  “What's the plan?” Susan asked.

  “To play it cool and ignore their paranoia.”

  As the two women stepped onto the landing, a voice called out, saying, “State your purpose!”

  Since when did someone need a purpose to be on the stairs? Susan wondered what Hammond had told his team to whip them into such a frenzy.

  “We have no purpose here,” Lisa replied. “Just passing through.”

  There was no response.

  They walked across the landing and were about to continue down to the Mids when Susan snapped. She couldn't believe she was doing this, but she turned away from Lisa and walked back to the entrance to IT. To her, hiding in fear was cowardly. She couldn't ignore what was happening, how her home was being torn apart by something more vicious than the quake.

  “What are you doing?” Lisa cried, but Susan ignored her, marching back the hastily erected barricades, knowing there would be someone to hear her plea beyond the cold steel.

  “Please,” she began, stumbling through that first word, not sure what she would say but feeling she couldn’t ignore the insanity unfolding within the silo. “Listen to me. This unrest need not end in violence. We're talking to the Mids, urging patience, asking for understanding, seeking peace.

  “If there's anyone that should be seeking revenge, it's me, but I'm not. And do you know why? Because hundreds of innocent people on both sides will die needlessly. That's not what I want. That's not what Charlie would want.

  “Look at our home. Look at what's left of our silo. It's been ravaged by the quake. Now, more than ever, we need cool heads to prevail. We need to rebuild, not destroy. We need to reach out to each other, not cower in fear. We need to trust each other or this silo will become a graveyard. We all need each other, you have to see that.”

  Lisa took Susan gently by the arm, pulling her away. Susan didn't resist. She'd said her piece. There were whispers from behind the barricade.

  They continued down the sta
irs, past locked doors and barricaded turnstiles. Each step felt as though it were a step Susan would never pass again. A foreboding sense of ill swept over her, and for the first time, she felt as though she were descending into the bowels of the earth never to return again.

  Normally, by the forties, Susan would feel a burn in her upper thighs. Although going down was easier than climbing the stairs, her leg muscles still had to work. The muscle groups involved in descent were technically the same as for a climb, but the descent worked different parts of the muscle and in a different manner, retarding progress, controlling each foot fall instead of driving upwards. She should have felt a burn, but she felt numb, as though her body, like the silo, was shutting down. Lisa was quiet, but Susan suspected she too felt the enormity of the challenge before them, the hopelessness of their attempt to prevent war from breaking out. In some ways, it was as though they were already grieving the loss of those that were yet to die.

  There was considerable activity on the stairs as they approached level fifty five.

  “This is it,” Lisa said as they passed several porters carrying various items between floors. It didn't take much to figure out they were fortifying a set of four or five floors above them, preparing for the onslaught to come.

  “Hey, it's her,” someone called out as they rounded the curve and walked down toward the landing. A group of men and an aging woman walked out onto the landing. The elderly lady smiled at Lisa and held her arms out.

  “I knew you would come,” she cried.

  “You know why I came,” Lisa replied curtly, stepping on to the landing.

  “You think this is a mistake,” the older woman said, brushing back her grey hair and glancing at Susan. “But this time, things will be different.”

  “This time,” Lisa replied. “They will hunt down every last one of you.”

  “Ha ha. Oh, my dear Lisa. You have not changed in the slightest.”

  “Mother,” Lisa began, “this is Sue. Sue, this is my mother. Leader of the revolution.”

  Susan shook the old lady's hand, feeling the firm grip of her steely fingers. She was unsure how to greet Lisa's mother. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have felt privileged to meet her mother, but knowing this woman would lead hundreds to their deaths sent a chill down her spine.

  “Do not be worried by my daughter,” the woman began. “She thinks I’m mad.”

  Susan didn't want to say it, but Lisa wasn't the only one. How could so many people rally around this woman? What silver-tongued charisma did she possess? And in that moment, Susan understood this wasn't about Charlie. The unrest she had witnessed must have been festering away for decades. Charlie was a lit match falling on dry tinder wood.

  “Ma'am,” Susan began, noting that the men that had gathered around were listening intently. “We have come to appeal to reason. We've seen the fortifications on thirty-four. To storm that bastion is to condemn hundreds to die with no guarantee of winning, and if hundreds die, we lose. Regardless of whether you overthrow Hammond, to see so many lives wasted like rotten fruit is to lose sight of all you're fighting for.”

  “And what would you have us do?” the old lady replied, resting her hands on her oversized hips. “Would you have us surrender to that mad man?”

  “Oh, I agree he's mad,” Susan replied. “And there is no one that wants justice more than I, but the cost is too great. Even if you were to win this war, the toll it would exact on the silo would be a loss far greater than anything Hammond has ever done or could ever do.”

  “You haven't answered my question,” the woman replied curtly. Lisa, Susan noted, was conspicuously silent. Susan was on her own, and probably with good reason. Susan could see why Lisa brought her down here, because this was one argument she could never win.

  “What would I have you do?” she replied, thinking aloud. “I would have you win hearts, not levels. I want change, and that's what Charlie wanted. But change cannot come from the blade of a knife or the barrel of a gun, change must come from within. Think about Hammond. Think about the power he welds. It is not the man you need to defeat, it is his position, his authority in the mind of others. The key to defeating Hammond is in destroying the one thing that no weapon can touch, his stature, his reputation. Attacking anything else is folly.”

  Heads nodded around her.

  “You'd have us stand down?” the woman asked.

  “In standing down, you're taking the high ground. You're proving him wrong. He's staking his reputation on you proving him right and storming through those doors on thirty-four. Attack, and you're playing right into his hands. Return to the work of restoration and you'll win the hearts and minds of those in IT, you'll erode his power base.”

  The old woman nodded her head thoughtfully, turning to Lisa and saying, “You were right about her. She should cast, not shadow.”

  Lisa smiled.

  Susan was silent. To keep talking would have weakened her position. She'd made her point, now it was their call.

  “You've given us much to think about,” the woman said. “We need to talk among ourselves and with the other factions. I give you my word, we will debate your position and send notice to you before we act one way or the other.”

  “Thank you,” Susan said.

  Lisa nodded to her mother, bowing slightly and showing her a sense of respect that reached beyond parentage, surprising Susan. Susan took her cue from Lisa and nodded as well.

  The two women turned and started the long, arduous climb back up through the silo. Neither said much, but the tension of the descent had passed, making the climb more rudimentary.

  Passing through IT on thirty-four, Susan noted that there was no verbal challenge as there had been on the way down. She wondered about the men and women on that floor, knowing they were as scared and confused as anyone else. She understood that they felt threatened, that they too wanted to do what was right for the silo. Well, she was confident about all of them bar one, Hammond. She had no illusions about his treachery, but they were merely pawns in his game.

  By the time she reached her level, she was exhausted.

  Lisa hugged her and kissed her on the cheek as she bid her goodnight, which surprised Susan as it was a level of affection she'd never shown before. When Susan finally staggered inside her parents apartment it was a little after ten at night, but it felt like two or three in the morning. Her parents were asleep. She couldn't be bother changing into her pajamas. She simply pulled off her boots, slipped out of her coveralls and collapsed into bed, wrapping the sheets around her. She was asleep in seconds.

  Chapter 13: Message

  It was still dark when someone thumped on the door.

  Susan rolled over, peering out from beneath her blankets as her father got out of bed and limped to the door. He opened the door and light spilled into the cramped apartment, blinding her. There was no one there. He muttered something and bent down, picking up a scrap of paper that had been shoved under the door.

  Susan turned toward the wall, wanting to go back to sleep. The door closed and darkness descended again.

  A hand shook her gently.

  Her dad said, “It's for you.”

  Susan sat up, wrapping herself in a sheet as he turned on a bedside light. Her bleary eyes struggled to focus on the words scrawled on the twenty-chit scrap of recycled paper.

  Susan, meet me up top.

  “Who is it from?” her father asked.

  “I don't know,” she replied, running one hand through her hair. She didn't recognize the writing. “Sheriff Cann, I think, or maybe Lisa.”

  “Most people call you Sue,” her father noted. “Who calls you Susan?”

  “Everyone. Anyone. No one,” she replied wearily, climbing out of bed with the sheet around her.

  “Well,” he replied. “Tell them, next time, wait for dawn.”

  Susan nodded, heading for the bathroom as her father staggered back to bed. His legs were healing, but he really shouldn't have gotten up. She should have
gotten the door, she figured, berating herself for being so tired.

  The bathroom light was blinding, causing her to blink in the harsh glare. Deep rings circled her eyes. She splashed cold water on her face, feeling the brisk chill shock her awake.

  Susan turned off the light and slipped back out into the apartment, feeling for her clothes from the day before. She got dressed in the dark, trying not to disturb her parents.

  As she slipped out through the door of the apartment she glanced back, using the increased ambient light to look at the clock and see the time: 4:45 AM. Her Dad was right, Lisa could have waited till dawn. Susan figured it was Lisa, perhaps with news from her mother. Why not just wait in the hallway for her to come out of her apartment? And why make her traipse up seven levels when they could have chatted on the landing?

  Walking up the stairs in the half-light, Susan felt as though she'd never walked those stairs before. Perhaps it was the quake, perhaps it was all that had happened with Charlie, perhaps it was that she was still half-asleep, but a surreal sense of distance swept over her, as though she were in a dream.

  The cafeteria was dark. There were no lights on in the kitchen or in the sheriff's office. The only light came from the massive wall-screen stretching fifteen feet high and almost forty feet across. Outside, stars fought to break through the patchy black clouds. The sepia tones of the day had been replaced with a ghostly hue of night. The dead bodies of cleaners past littered the ground, their suits like gravestones. Smoke continued to billow from the fractured remains of the other silo.

  Susan sat on Charlie's bench, facing the screen the way Charlie once had, but she couldn't see what he would have seen. For her, this was a vision of hell, of unquenchable fire, of dark ash and death. What could she learn from this? What could anyone see other than senseless waste and mindless destruction? There was nothing out there, nothing but sorrow.

  Footsteps approached from behind. Boots stepped softly on the polished marble floor, being considerate rather than brash. She was aware of them, but she was so lost she couldn't turn away from the screen.