by Hugh Howey
Mission looked at himself in the mirror with his white coveralls and his porter’s knife strapped to his waist. He was the one they were looking for. He drew his knife and held a handful of his hair. It made a crunching noise, like biting into celery, as he sawed through a clump close to his scalp. Lyn saw what he was doing and helped with her own knife. It hurt in a good way and made his head tingle. Joel grabbed the trashcan from the corner to collect the hair.
It was a rough job, but he looked less like the one they wanted. Before putting his knife away, he cut a few slits in the black bag, right by the zipper. He peeled off his undershirt and wiped the inside of the bag dry before throwing the shirt in the trashcan. It reeked of smoke and sweat, anyway. Crawling back inside, helping with the straps, they zipped him up and carried him back to the stairway to resume their ascent. Mission was powerless to do anything but worry.
He ran over the events of a very long day. Things had happened that morning that felt like they must’ve taken place yesterday. He remembered getting up early to watch the clouds brighten over breakfast. He had visited the Crow and delivered her note, had then lost a friend, and now was heading back to the Nest. The exhaustion of it all caught up to him. Or perhaps it was the lack of sleep from the fight the night before or the gentle swaying of the bag. Whatever the cause, he found himself sliding into unconsciousness.
He didn’t sleep so much as cease to be for a while. Time marched along without him.
When he startled awake, it felt but a moment later. His coveralls were damp, the inside of the bag slick again with condensation. Joel must’ve felt him jerk to consciousness, as he quickly shushed Mission and told him they were coming up on Central.
Mission’s heart pounded as he came to and remembered where he was, what they were doing. It felt difficult to breathe. The slits he had cut were lost in the folds of the plastic. He wanted the zipper cracked, just a slice of light, a whisper of fresh air. His arms were pinned and numb from the straps around his shoulders. His ankles were sore from where Lyn was hoisting him from below.
“Can’t breathe,” he gasped.
The others shushed him. But there was a pause, an end to the swaying. Someone fumbled with the bag over his head, a series of tiny clicks from a zipper lowering a dozen notches.
Mission sucked in cool gasps. The world resumed its swaying, boots striking the stairs in the distance—a commotion somewhere above or below, he couldn’t tell. More fighting. More dying. He saw bodies spinning through the air. He saw Cam leaving the farm sublevels just the day before, a coroner’s bonus in his pocket, no thought of how little time he had left for spending it. No thought from any of them how little time they had left to spend anything.
They rested at Central Dispatch. Mission was let out in the main hallway, which was frighteningly empty. “What the hell happened here?” Lyn asked. She dug her finger into a hole in the wall surrounded by a spiderweb of cracks. There were hundreds of holes like them. Boots rang on the landing and continued past.
“What time is it?” Mission asked, keeping his voice down.
“It’s after dinner,” Joel said. It meant they were making good time.
Down the hall, Lyn studied a dark patch of what looked to be rust. “Is this blood?” she hissed.
“Robbie said he couldn’t reach anyone down here,” Mission said. “Maybe they scattered.”
Joel took a sip from his canteen. “Or were driven off.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“Should we stay here for the night? You two look beat.”
Joel frowned and shook his head. He offered Mission his canteen. “I think we need to get past the thirties. Security is everywhere. Hell, you could probably dash up with what you’ve got on the way they’re running about. Might need to clean up your hair a bit.”
Mission rubbed his scalp and thought about that. “Maybe I should,” he said. “I could be up there before the dim-time.” He watched as Lyn disappeared into one of the bunk rooms down the hall. She emerged almost immediately with her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
“What is it?” Mission asked, pushing up from a crouch and joining her.
She threw her arms around him and held him away from the door, buried her face into his shoulder. Joel risked a look.
“No,” he whispered.
Mission pulled away from Lyn and joined his fellow porter by the door.
The bunks were full. Some lay sprawled on the floor, but it was obvious by the tangle of their limbs—the way arms hung useless from bunks or were twisted beneath them—that these porters weren’t sleeping.
They discovered Katelyn among them. None of them could abide seeing her like that, which cemented Mission’s plan to dash up on his own. Lyn shook with silent sobs as he and Joel retrieved Katelyn’s body and loaded her into the bag. Mission felt a pang of guilt to think that it was nice how small Katelyn was. Awful porter thoughts.
They were securing the straps and zipping her up when the power in the hallway went out, leaving them in the pitch black. They groped for one another, even the light spilling through the doors leading out onto the landing suddenly gone.
“What the hell?” Joel hissed.
A moment later, the lights returned but flickered as though an unsteady flame burned in each bulb. Mission wiped the sweat from his forehead and wished he still had his ’chief.
“If you can’t make it all the way tonight,” he said to the others, “stop and stay at the waystation and check on Robbie.”
“We’ll be fine,” Joel assured him.
Lyn squeezed his arm before he went. “Watch your steps,” she said.
“And you,” Mission told them.
He hurried toward the landing and the great stairway beyond. Overhead, the lights flickered like little flames. A sign that something, somewhere, perhaps was burning.
•32•
He hurried upward amid a fog of smoke and rumor, and Mission’s throat burned from the one, his mind from the other. An explosion in Mechanical was whispered to have been the reason for the blackout. Talk swirled of a bent or broken shaft and that the silo was on backup power. He heard such things from half a spiral away as he took the steps two and sometimes three at a time. It felt good to be out and moving, good to have his muscles aching rather than sitting still, to be his own burden.
And he noticed that when anyone saw him, they either fell silent or scattered beyond their landings, even those he knew. At first, he feared it was from recognition. But it was the Security white he wore. Young men just like him thundered up and down the stairwell terrorizing everyone. They were yesterday’s farmers, welders, and pumpmen—and they brought order with their strange and dark weapons.
More than once, a group of them stopped Mission and asked where he was going, where his rifle was. He told them that he had been a part of the fighting below and was reporting back. It was something he’d heard another claim. Many of them seemed to know as little as he did, and so they would let him pass. As ever, the color you wore said everything. People could know you at a glance.
The activity grew thicker near IT. A group of new recruits passed, and Mission watched over the railing as they kicked in the doors to the level below and stormed inside. People screamed. There was a sharp bang like a heavy steel rod falling to the steel decking. A dozen of these bangs, and then less screaming. Fear was in everyone’s eyes, no less those in white who seemed to know as little of what they were doing as Mission. Just chaos like a switch had been thrown. A steady pulse of light one day, and now the faltering of a dying flame.
He passed IT, the doors closed, and thought for a moment about barging in and trying to talk his way past the guards. But not alone. Tomorrow, with his friends.
His legs were sore, a stitch in his side, as he approached the farms. He caught sight of Winters and a few others out on the landing with shovels and rakes. Someone yelled something as he passed. Mission quickened his pace, thinking of his father and brother, seeing the wisdom for once in his old ma
n’s unwillingness to leave that patch of dirt.
A bag of berries on the stairwell looked at first like a blood stain. They had been stepped on and crushed, but Mission picked up the bag anyway. He scooped the mush out with his fingers as he hurried on, grateful for the find. He left the empty bag on the next landing, remembering days when such plastic was filled with paint and dropped on others. Those no longer seemed like the good times.
After a lifetime of racing up with the smoke as his company, of rising with the drifting ash, he reached the quiet of the Nest. The little chicks were gone. Most people were probably holed up in their apartments, families cowering together, hoping this madness would pass like others had. Inside, several lockers stood open. A child’s backpack lay in the middle of the hall. Mission staggered forward on numb legs toward the sound of a familiar singing voice and the screech of something awful.
At the end of the hall, her door stood as welcome and open as always. The singing was from the Crow, whose voice seemed stronger than usual. Mission saw that he wasn’t the first to arrive, that his wire had gone out. Frankie and Allie were there, both in the green and white of farm security. They were arranging desks while Mrs. Crowe sang. The sheets had been thrown off the stacks of desks kept in storage along one wall. Those desks now filled the classroom the way Mission remembered from his youth. It was as though the Crow was expecting them to be filled at any time.
Allie noticed him first. She rushed over, her coveralls bunched up around her boots, the straps knotted to make them shorter. They must’ve been Frankie’s coveralls. As she threw herself into his arms, he wondered what the two of them had risked to meet him there.
“Mission, my boy.” Mrs. Crowe stopped her singing, smiled, and waved him over. After a moment, Allie reluctantly loosened her grip.
Mission shook Frankie’s hand and thanked him for coming. It took a moment to realize something was different, that his hair had been cut short as well. They both rubbed their scalps and laughed. Humor came easy in humorless times.
“What is this I hear about my Rodny?” the Crow asked him. Her chair twitched back and forth, her hand working the controls, her Thursday dress tucked under her narrow bones. Mission drew a deep breath, smoke lingering in his lungs, and he began to tell them all he had seen on the stairwell, about the bombs and the fires and what he had heard of Mechanical, the Security forces with their barking rifles like the dogs of Supply—but the Crow dispelled his frenzied chatter with a wave of her frail arms.
“Not the fighting,” she said. “The fighting I’ve seen. I could paint a picture of the fighting and hang it from my walls. What of Rodny? What of our boy? Has he got them?” She made a small fist and held it aloft.
“No,” Mission said. “He needs our help.”
The Crow laughed, which took him aback. He tried to explain. “I gave him your note, and he passed me one in return. It begged for help. They have him locked up behind these great steel doors—”
“Not locked up,” the Crow said.
“—like he’d done something wrong—”
“Something right,” she said, correcting him.
Mission fell silent. He could see knowledge shining behind her old eyes, a sunrise on the day after a cleaning.
“Rodny is in no danger,” she said.
Allie squeezed Mission’s arm. “She’s been trying to tell us,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be okay. Come, help with the desks.”
“But the note,” Mission said, wishing he hadn’t turned it to confetti.
“The note you gave him was to give him strength. To let him know it was time to begin.” There was a wildness in the Crow’s eyes, excitement and joy becoming something more combustible than either.
“No,” Mission said. “Rodny was afraid. I know my friend, and he was afraid of something.”
The Crow’s face hardened. She relaxed her fist and smoothed the front of her faded dress. “If that be the case,” she said, her voice trembling. “Then I judged him most wrongly.”
•33•
The dim-time approached while they arranged desks and the Crow resumed her singing. Allie told him a curfew had been announced, and so Mission lost hope that the others would show up that night. They pulled out mats from the cubbies to rest, plan, and give the others until daybreak. There was much Mission wanted to ask the Crow, but she seemed distracted, her thoughts elsewhere, a joyousness that made her giddy.
Frankie felt certain he could get them through security and deeper into IT if only he could reach his father. Mission told them how well he’d been able to move about with the whites on. Maybe he could reach Frankie’s dad in a pinch. Allie produced fresh fruits harvested from her plot and passed them around. The Crow drank one of her dark green concoctions. Mission grew restless.
He wandered out to the landing, torn between waiting for the others and his anxiety to get going. For all he knew, Rodny was being marched up to his death already. Cleanings tended to settle people down, to come after bouts of unrest, but this was unlike any of the spates of violence he had seen before. This was the burning his father spoke of, the embers of distrust and crumbling trade that jumped up all at once. He had seen this coming, but it had approached with the swiftness of a knife plummeting from the Up Top.
Out on the landing, he heard the sounds of a mob echoing from far below. Holding the landing rail, he could feel the hum of many marching boots. He returned to the others and said nothing of it. There was no reason to suspect those boots were marching for them.
Allie looked as though she’d been crying when he got back. Her eyes were moist, her cheeks flushed. The Crow was telling them an Old Time story, her hands painting a scene in the air. Mission asked Allie if everything was all right.
She shook her head like she’d rather not say.
“What is it?” he asked. He held her hand, heard the Crow speaking of Atlantis, another tale of the crumbling and lost city of magic beyond the hills, a bygone day when those ruins shone like a wet dime.
“Tell me,” he said. He wondered if maybe those stories were affecting her the way they sometimes did him, making her sad and not knowing why.
“I didn’t want to say anything until after,” she cried, fresh tears welling up. She wiped them away, and the Crow fell silent, her hands falling to her lap. Frankie sat quietly. Whatever it was, the two of them knew as well.
“Father,” Mission said. It had to do with his father. Allie was close to his father in a way that Mission had never been. And suddenly, he felt a powerful regret for ever having left home. While she wiped her eyes, the words unable to form on her trembling lips, Mission imagined himself on his hands and knees, in the dirt, digging for forgiveness. He thought of growing corn rather than hauling it. Of making something rather than being paid a chit for rumors that ought to be free.
Allie bawled, and the Crow hummed a tune of aboveground days. Mission thought of his father, gone, all he longed to say, and wanted nothing more than to hurl himself at the posters on the walls, to tear them down and rip to shreds their urgings to go and be free.
“It’s Riley,” Allie finally said. “Mish, I’m so sorry.”
The Crow ceased her humming. All three of them watched him.
“No,” Mission whispered.
“You shouldn’t have told him—” Frankie began.
“He ought to know!” Allie demanded. “He’s an only son, now. His father would want him to know.”
Mission gazed at a poster of green hills and blue skies. That world blurred with tears as surely as it might with dust. “What happened?” he whispered.
She told him that there’d been an attack on the farms. Riley had begged to go and help fight, had been told no, and then disappeared. He’d been found with a knife from the kitchen still clutched in his hands.
Mission stood and paced the room, tears splashing from his cheeks. He shouldn’t have gone. Ever. He should’ve been there. He wasn’t there for Cam, either. Death preceded him in all the places he cou
ldn’t be. He had done the same to his mother. And now the end was coming for them all.
There was someone in the hallway. Mission wiped his cheeks. He had given up on any of the others coming and thought it might be Security with their guns, instead. They would ask him where his own gun was before realizing he was an impostor, before shooting them all. He thought about Jenine, had the sickening feeling that his call to arms had placed others in danger. More deathdays.
He pushed the door shut, saw that the Crow had no lock on the thing, and wedged a desk under the handle. Frankie grabbed another desk. Mission didn’t see that they would do any good. He hurried toward Allie, told her to get behind the Crow’s desk. He grabbed the back of the old teacher’s wheelchair—the overhead wire swinging dangerously—but she insisted she could manage herself, that there was nothing to be afraid of.
Mission knew better. This was Security coming for them—Security or some other mob. He’d traveled the stairwell, knew what was out there. This was something bad coming, not his friends. There was no part of him that thought it might be both.
There was a knock on the door. The handle jiggled. The boots outside quieted as they gathered around. Frankie pressed his finger to his lips, his eyes wide. The wire overhead creaked as it swung back and forth.
The door budged. Mission hoped for a moment that they would go away, that they were just making their rounds. He thought about hiding under the sheets used to cover the unneeded desks, but the thought came too late. The door was shoved open, a desk crying as it skittered across the floor, and the first person through was Rodny.
His sudden appearance was as jarring as a bomb. He wore white coveralls, the creases still in them like a great letter H across his stomach and down his chest. His hair had been cut short, his face newly shaved, a nick on his chin.
