by Hugh Howey
“The man I spoke to, he said we were it. Just the fifty silos—”
“Forty-seven,” Bernard said. “And we are it, as far as we know. It’s difficult to imagine anyone else being so well prepared. But there’s always a chance. It’s only been a few hundred years.”
“A few hundred?” Lukas leaned back against the counter. He lifted his tea, but the mint was losing its power to reach him. “So hundreds of years ago, we decided—”
“They.” Bernard filled his mug with the still-steaming water. “They decided. Don’t include yourself. Certainly don’t include me.”
“Okay, they decided to destroy the world. Wipe everything out. Why?”
Bernard set his mug down on the stove to let it steep. He pulled off his glasses, wiped the steam off them, then pointed them toward the study, toward the wall with the massive shelves of books. “Because of the worst parts of our Legacy, that’s why. At least, that’s what I think they would say if they were still alive.” He lowered his voice and muttered: “Which they aren’t, thank God.”
Lukas shuddered. He still didn’t believe anyone would make that decision, no matter what the conditions were like. He thought of the billions of people who supposedly lived beneath the stars all those hundreds of years ago. Nobody could kill so many. How could anyone take that much life for granted?
“And now we work for them,” Lukas spat. He crossed to the sink and pulled the basket out of his mug, set it on the stainless steel to drain. He cautioned a sip, slurping lest it burn him. “You tell me not to include us, but we’re a part of this now.”
“No.” Bernard walked away from the stove and stood in front of the small map of the world hanging above the dinette. “We weren’t any part of what those crazy fucks did. If I had those guys, the men who did this, if I had them in a room with me, I’d kill every last goddamned one of them.” Bernard smacked the map with his palm. “I’d kill them with my bare hands.”
Lukas didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.
“They didn’t give us a chance. That’s not what this is.” He waved at the room around him. “These are prisons. Cages, not homes. Not meant to protect us, but meant to force us, by pain of death, to bring about their vision.”
“Their vision for what?”
“For a world where we’re too much the same, where we’re too tightly invested in each other to waste our time fighting, to waste our resources guarding those same limited resources.” He lifted his mug and took a noisy sip. “That’s my theory, at least. From decades of reading. The people who did this, they were in charge of a powerful country that was beginning to crumble. They could see the end, their end, and it scared them suicidal. As the time began to run out—over decades keep in mind—they figured they had one chance to preserve themselves, to preserve what they saw as their way of life. And so, before they lost the only opportunity they might ever have, they put a plan into motion.”
“Without anybody knowing? How?”
Bernard took another sip. He smacked his lips and wiped his mustache. “Who knows? Maybe nobody could believe it anyway. Maybe the reward for secrecy was inclusion. They built other things in factories bigger than you can imagine that nobody knew about. They built bombs in factories like these that I suspect played a part in all this. All without anyone knowing. And there are stories in the Legacy about men from a long time ago in a land with great kings, like mayors but with many more people to rule. When these men died, elaborate chambers were built below the earth and filled with treasure. It required the work of hundreds of men. Do you know how they kept the locations of these chambers a secret?”
Lukas lifted his shoulders. “They paid the workers a ton of chits?”
Bernard laughed. He pinched a stray tea leaf off his tongue. “They didn’t have chits. And no, they made perfectly sure these men would keep quiet. They killed them.”
“Their own men?” Lukas glanced toward the room with the books, wondering which tin this story was in.
“It is not beyond us to kill to keep secrets.” Bernard’s face hardened as he said this. “It’ll be a part of your job one day, when you take over.”
Lukas felt a sharp pain in his gut as the truth of this hit. He caught the first glimmer of what he’d truly signed on for. It made shooting people with rifles seem an honest affair.
“We are not the people who made this world, Lukas, but it’s up to us to survive it. You need to understand that.”
“We can’t control where we are right now,” he mumbled, “just what we do going forward.”
“Wise words.” Bernard took another sip of tea.
“Yeah. I’m just beginning to appreciate them.”
Bernard set his cup in the sink and tucked a hand in the round belly of his coveralls. He stared at Lukas a moment, then looked again to the small map of the world.
“Evil men did this, but they’re gone. Forget them. Just know this: They locked up their brood as a fucked-up form of their own survival. They put us in this game, a game where breaking the rules means we all die, every single one of us. But living by those rules, obeying them, means we all suffer.”
He adjusted his glasses and walked over to Lukas, patted him on the shoulder as he went past. “I’m proud of you, son. You’re absorbing this much better than I ever did. Now get some rest. Make some room in your head and heart. Tomorrow, more studies.” He headed toward the study, the corridor, the distant ladder.
Lukas nodded and remained silent. He waited until Bernard was gone, the muted clang of distant metal telling him that the grate was back in place, before walking through to the study to gaze up at the big schematic, the one with the silos crossed out. He peered at the roof of silo 1, wondering just who in the hell was in charge of all this and whether they too could rationalize their actions as having been foisted upon them, as not really being culpable but just going along with something they’d inherited, a crooked game with ratshit rules and most everyone kept ignorant and locked up.
Who the fuck were these people? Could he see himself being one of them?
How did Bernard not see that he was one of them?
19
• Silo 18 •
The door to the generator room slammed shut behind her, dulling the patter of gunfire to a distant hammering. Shirly ran toward the control room on sore legs, ignoring her friends and coworkers asking her what was going on outside. They cowered along the walls and behind the railing from the loud blast and the sporadic gunfire. Just before she reached the control room, she noticed some workers from second shift on top of the main generator toying with the rumbling machine’s massive exhaust system.
“I got it,” Shirly wheezed, slamming the control room door shut behind her. Courtnee and Walker looked up from the floor. The wide eyes and slack jaw on Courtnee’s face told Shirly she’d missed something.
“What?” she asked. She handed the two transmitters to Walker. “Did you hear? Walk, does she know?”
“How is this possible?” Courtnee asked. “How did she survive? And what happened to your face?”
Shirly touched her lip, her sore chin. Her fingers came away wet with blood. She used the sleeve of her undershirt to dab at her mouth.
“If this works,” Walker grumbled, fiddling with one of the transmitters, “we can ask Jules herself.”
Shirly turned and peered through the control room’s observation window. She lowered her sleeve away from her face. “What’s Karl and them doing with the exhaust feed?” she asked.
“They’ve got some plan to reroute it,” Courtnee said. She got up from the floor while Walker started soldering something, the smell reminding her of his workshop. He grumbled about his eyesight while Courtnee joined her by the glass.
“Reroute it where?”
“IT. That’s what Heline said, anyway. The cooling feed for their server room runs through the ceiling here before shooting up the mechanical shaft. Someone spotted the proximity on a schematic, thought of a way to fight back from here.”
>
“So, we choke them out with our fumes?” Shirly felt uneasy with the plan. She wondered what Knox would say if he were still alive, still in charge. Surely all the men and women riding desks up there weren’t the problem. “Walk, how long before we can talk? Before we can try and contact her?”
“Almost there. Blasted magnifiers—”
Courtnee rested her hand on Shirly’s arm. “Are you okay? How’re you holding up?”
“Me?” Shirly laughed and shook her head. She checked the bloodstains on her sleeve, felt the sweat trickling down her chest. “I’m walking around in shock. I have no idea what the hell’s going on anymore. My ears are still ringing from whatever they did to the stairwell. I think I screwed up my ankle. And I’m starving. Oh, and did I mention my friend isn’t as dead as I thought she was?”
She took a deep breath.
Courtnee continued to stare at her worryingly. Shirly knew none of this was what her friend was asking her about.
“And yeah, I miss Marck,” she said quietly.
Courtnee put her arm around her friend and pulled her close. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”
Shirly waved her off. The two of them stood quietly and watched through the window as a small crew from second shift worked on the generator, trying to reroute the outpouring of noxious fumes from the apartment-sized machine to the floors of the thirties high above.
“You know what, though? There are times when I’m glad he’s not here. Times when I know I won’t be around much longer either, not once they get to us, and I’m glad he’s not here to stress about it, to worry about what they’ll do to us. To me. And I’m glad I haven’t had to watch him do all this fighting, living on rations, this sort of craziness.” She dipped her chin at the crew outside. She knew Marck would either be up there leading that terrible work or outside with a gun pressed to his cheek.
“Hello. Testing. Hello, hello.”
The two women turned around to see Walker clicking the red detonate switch, the microphone from the headset held beneath his chin, furrows of concentration across his brow.
“Juliette?” he asked. “Can you hear me? Hello?”
Shirly moved to Walker’s side, squatted down, rested a hand on his shoulder. The three of them stared at the headphones, waiting for a reply.
“Hello?”
A quiet voice leaked out of the tiny speakers. Shirly clapped a hand to her chest, her breath stolen from the miracle of a reply. It was a fraction of a second later, after this surge of desperate hope, that she realized this wasn’t Juliette. The voice was different.
“That’s not her,” Courtnee whispered, dejected. Walker waved his hand to silence her. The red switch clicked noisily as he prepared to transmit.
“Hello. My name is Walker. We received a transmission from a friend. Is there anyone else there?”
“Ask them where they are,” Courtnee hissed.
“Where exactly are you?” Walker added, before releasing the switch.
The tiny speakers popped.
“We are nowhere. You’ll never find us. Stay away.”
There was a pause, a hiss of static.
“And your friend is dead. We killed him.”
20
• Silo 17 •
The water inside the suit was freezing, the air cold, the combination lethal. Juliette’s teeth chattered noisily while she worked the knife. She slid the blade into the soggy skin of the suit, the feeling of having been here before, having done all this once, unmistakable.
The gloves came off first, the suit destroyed, water pouring out of every cut. Juliette rubbed her hands together, could barely feel them. She hacked away at the material over her chest, her eyes falling to Solo, who had gone deathly still. His large wrench was missing, she saw. Their supply bag was gone as well. The compressor was on its side, the hose kinked beneath it, fuel leaking from the loose filling cap.
Juliette was freezing. She could hardly breathe. Once the chest of the suit was cut open, she wiggled her knees and feet through the hole, spun the material around in front of herself, then tried to pry the velcro apart.
Her fingers were too senseless to do even this. She ran the knife down the joint instead, sawing the velcro apart until she could find the zipper.
Finally, squeezing her fingers until they were white, she pulled the small tab until it was free of the collar. The collar off, she threw the suit away from herself. The thing weighed double with all the water in it. She was left in two layers of black undersuit, still soaking wet and shivering, a knife in her trembling hand, the body of a good man lying beside her, a man who had survived everything this nasty world could throw at him except for her arrival.
Juliette moved to Solo’s side and reached for his neck. Her hands were icy; she couldn’t feel a pulse, wasn’t sure if she would be able to. She could barely feel his neck with her frozen fingers.
She struggled to her feet, nearly collapsed, hugged the landing’s railing. She teetered toward the compressor, knowing she needed to warm up. She felt the powerful urge to go to sleep but knew she’d never wake up if she did.
The gas can was still full. She tried to work the cap, but her hands were useless. They were numb and vibrating from the cold. Her breath fogged in front of her, a chilly reminder of the heat she was losing, what little heat she had left.
She grabbed the knife. Holding it in both hands, she pressed the tip into the cap. The flat handle was easier to grasp than the plastic cap; she spun the knife and cracked the lid on the jug of gas. Once the cap was loose, she pulled the blade out and did the rest with her palms, the knife resting in her lap.
She tilted the can over the compressor, soaking the large rubber wheels, the carriage, the entire motor. She would never want to use it again anyway, never rely on it or anything else for her air. She put the can down, still half full, and slid it away from the compressor with her foot. Gas dripped through the metal grating and made musical impacts in the water below, drips that echoed off the concrete walls of the stairwell, that added to the flood’s toxic and colorful slick.
Wielding the knife with the blade down, the dull side away from her, she smacked it against the metal fins of the heat exchanger. She yanked her arm back with each strike, expecting the whoosh of an immediate flame. But there was no spark. She hit it harder, hating to abuse her precious tool, her only defense. Solo’s stillness nearby was a reminder that she might need it if she were able to survive the deadly cold—
The knife struck with a snick, there was a pop, heat traveling up her arm, a wash of it against her face.
Juliette dropped the knife and waved her hand, but it wasn’t on fire. The compressor was. Part of the grating, too.
As it began to die down, she grabbed the can and sloshed some more, large balls of orange flame rewarding her, leaping up in the air with a hiss. The wheels crackled as they burned. Juliette collapsed close to the fire, felt the heat from the dancing flame as it burned all across the metal machine. She began to strip, her eyes returning now and then to Solo, promising herself that she wouldn’t leave his body there, that she would come back for him.
Feeling slowly returned to her extremities. Gradually, but then with a tingling pain. Naked, she curled into a ball next to the small and feeble fire and rubbed her hands together, breathing her warm and visible breath into her palms. Twice, she had to feed the hungry and stingy fire. Only the wheels burned reliably, but they kept her from needing another spark. The glorious heat traveled somewhat through the landing’s grated decking, warming her bare skin where it touched the metal.
Her teeth chattered violently. Juliette eyed the stairs, this new fear coursing through her that boots could rumble down at any moment, that she was trapped between these other survivors and the freezing water. She retrieved her knife, held it in front of her with both hands, tried to will herself to not shiver so violently.
Glimpses of her face in the blade caused her to worry more. She looked as pale as a ghost. Lips purp
le, eyes ringed dark and seeming hollow. She nearly laughed at the sight of her lips vibrating, the clacking blur of her teeth. She scooted closer to the fire. The orange light danced on the blade. The unburnt fuel dripped and formed silvery splashes of color below.
As the last of the gas burned and the flames dwindled, Juliette decided to move. She was still shaking, but it was cold in the depths of the shaft so far from the electricity of IT. She patted the black underlinings she’d stripped off. One of them had been left balled up and was still soaked. The other she’d been lucky to have dropped flat, hadn’t been thinking clearly or she would’ve hung it up. It was damp, but better to wear it and heat it up than allow the cold air to wick her body temperature away. She worked her legs in, struggled to get her arms through the sleeves, zipped up the front.
