Shift (silo)

by Hugh Howey

  One of the doors on level one-thirty-seven moved back and forth with the waves his splashing had caused. The water was two feet or more above the level of the landing. It was that high inside the door as well. The entire silo was filling up with water, he thought. It had taken years for it to get this high. Would it go on for ever? How long before it filled his home up on thirty-four? How long before it reached the top?

  Thinking of slowly drowning elicited a strange sound from Solo’s mouth, a noise like a sad whimper. His clothes dripped water back to where it had come from, and then Solo heard the whimpering sound again. It wasn’t coming from him at all.

  He crouched down and peered into the flooded level, listening. There. The sound of someone crying. It was coming from inside the flooded levels. It sounded like an infant.

  Solo peered down at the water. He would have to wade through it. The dim green lights overhead lent the world a ghostly pallor. The air was cold, and the water colder.

  He retreated up the steps and left his heavy pack on one of the dry treads. The cuffs of his overalls were soaked. He rolled them up over his calves, then began unknotting the laces of his boots.

  He listened for the cry again. It did not come. He wondered if he would be braving the wet and cold for something he’d imagined, for another ghost who would disappear as soon as he paid it any mind. He dumped the water out of his boots before setting them aside. He pulled off his socks — his big toe poked through a hole in one of them. He squeezed and twisted these, then draped them across the railing to dry.

  He left his bag four steps above the waterline and thought he heard the baby cry again. He was enough years old to have a baby, he thought. He did the maths. He rarely did this maths. Was he twenty-six? Twenty-seven? Another birthday had come and gone with no one to remind him.

  He stepped into the water and waded towards the door, his feet shocked half numb from the cold. The colourful film on the surface swirled and mixed and flowed around the stanchions that held up the landing rail. Solo paused and peered beyond the landing. It seemed strange to be so high off the bottom of the silo and see this fluid stretching out to the concrete walls. If he were to fall over, would the water slow his plummet to the bottom? Or would he bob on the surface like that bit of trash over there? He thought he would sink, so he shuffled his feet cautiously. Something silver flashed beneath the grating, but he thought it was just his reflection or the dance of the metallic sheen on the surface.

  ‘You better be worth this,’ he told the ghost of some baby down the hall.

  He listened for the ghost to call back, but it was no longer crying. The light beyond the doors fell away to blackness, so he pulled his flashlight out of his chest pocket and turned it on. The layer of rippling water caught the beam and magnified it. Waves of light danced across the ceiling.

  ‘Hello?’ he called out.

  His voice echoed back to him. He played the light down the hall, which branched off in three directions. Two of the paths curved around as if to meet on the other side of the stairwell. It was one of the hub-and-spoke levels. Solo laughed. Bi for ‘bicycles’. He thought of that entry and realised where the words hub and spoke came from.

  There was a cry. For certain, this time, or he truly was losing his senses. Solo spun around and waited. Silence. The whisper of ripples as they crashed into the hallway wall. He picked his way in the direction he’d heard the noise, throwing up new waves with the push of his shins. He floated like a ghost. He couldn’t feel his feet.

  It was an apartment level. But why would anyone live down here with the waters seeping in? He paused outside a community rec room and dispelled pockets of darkness with his flashlight. There was a tennis table in the middle of the room. Rust reached up the steel legs as if the water had chased it there. The paddles were still on the warped surface of the rotting green table. Green for grass, Solo thought. The Legacy books made his own world look different to him.

  Something bumped into his shin and Solo started. He aimed his light down and saw a foam cushion floating by his feet. He pushed it away and waded to the next door.

  A community kitchen. He recognised the layout of wide tables and all the chairs. Most of the chairs lay on their sides, partly submerged. A few legs stuck up where chairs had been overturned. There were two stoves in the corner and a wall of cabinets. The room was dark; almost none of the light from the stairwell trickled back this far. Solo imagined that if his batteries died, he would have to grope to find his way out. He should’ve brought the new flashlight, not his old one.

  A cry. Louder this time. Near. Somewhere in the room.

  Solo waved his flashlight about but couldn’t see every corner at once. Cabinets and countertops. A spot of movement, he thought. He trained his light back a little, and something moved on one of the counters. It leapt straight up, the sound of claws scratching as it caught itself on an open cabinet above the counter, then the whisking of a bushy tail before a black shadow disappeared into the darkness.

  87

  2323 – Year Twelve

  • Silo 17 •

  A CAT! A living thing. A living thing he need not fear, that could do him no harm. Solo trudged into the room, calling, ‘Kitty, kitty, kitty.’ He recalled neighbours trying to corral that tailless animal that lived down the hall from his old apartment.

  Something rummaged around in the cabinets. One of the closed doors rattled open and banged shut again. He could only see a spot at a time, wherever he aimed the flashlight. His shins brushed against something. He aimed the beam down to see trash and debris floating in the water. There was a squeak and a splash. Searching with the flashlight, he saw a V of ripples behind what he took for a swimming rat. Solo no longer wanted to be in that room. He shivered and rubbed his arm with his free hand. The cat made a racket inside the cabinet.

  ‘Here, kitty,’ he said with less gusto. Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out one of his ration bars and tore the packaging off with his teeth. Taking a stale bite for himself, he chewed and held the rest out in front of him. The silo had been dead for twelve years. He wondered how long cats lived, how this one had made it so long. And eating what? Or were old cats having new cats? Was this a new cat?

  His bare feet brushed through something beneath the water. The reflection of the light made it difficult to see, and then a white bone broke the surface before sinking again. There was a loose jumble of someone’s remains around his ankles.

  Solo pretended it was just trash. He reached the cabinet that was making all the noise, grabbed a handle and pulled it open. There was a hiss from the shadows. Cans and rotting boxes shifted about as the cat retreated further. Solo broke off a piece of stale bar and set it on the shelf. He waited. There was another squeak from the corner of the room, the sound of water lapping at furniture, a stillness inside the cabinet. He kept the flashlight down so as not to spook the animal.

  Two eyes approached like bobbing lights. They fixed themselves on Solo for a small eternity. He began to seriously wonder if his feet might fall off from the cold. The eyes drew closer and diverted downward. It was a black cat, the colour of wet shadow, slick as oil. The piece of ration bar crunched as the cat chewed.

  ‘Good kitty,’ he whispered, ignoring the scattered bones beneath his feet. He broke off another small piece of the bar and held it out. The cat withdrew a pace. Solo set the food on the edge and watched as the animal came forward more quickly this time. The next piece, the cat took from his palm. He offered the last piece, and as the cat came to accept it, Solo tried to pick it up with both hands. And this thing, this company he hoped would do him no harm, latched on to one of his arms and sank its claws into his flesh.

  Solo screamed and threw up his hands. The flashlight tumbled end over end in the air. There was a splash as the cat disappeared. A shriek and a hiss, a violent noise, Solo fumbling beneath the water for the dull glow of the light, which flickered once, twice, then left him in darkness.

  He groped blindly, seized a solid cyli
nder and felt the knobby ends where the leg sockets went into the hip. He dropped the bone in disgust. Two more bones before he found the flashlight, which was toast. He retrieved it anyway as the sound of frantic splashing approached. His arms were on fire; he had seen blood on them in the last of the spinning light. And then something was against his leg, up his shin, claws stinging his thighs, the damn cat climbing him as if he were the leg of a table.

  Solo reached for the poor animal to get its claws out of his flesh. The cat was soaked and hardly felt bigger around than his flashlight. It trembled in his arms and rubbed itself against a dry patch of his overalls, mewing in complaint. It began to sniff at his breast pocket.

  Solo held the animal with one forearm across his chest, making a perch, and reached inside his pocket for the other ration bar. It was perfectly dark in the room, so dark it made his ears ache. He ripped the package free and held the bar steady. Tiny paws wrapped around his hand, and there was a crunching sound.

  Jimmy smiled. He worked his way towards where he thought the door might be, bumping through furniture and old bones as he went, Solo no more.

  88

  2345

  • Silo 1 •

  DONALD’S APARTMENT had transformed into a cave, a cave where notes lay strewn like bleached bones, where the carcasses of folders decorated his walls, and where boxes of more notes were ordered up from archives like fresh kill. Weeks had passed. The stomping in the halls had dwindled. Donald lived alone with ghosts and slowly pieced together the purpose of what he’d helped to build. He was beginning to see it, the entire picture, zooming out of the schematic until the whole was laid bare.

  He coughed into a pink rag and resumed examination of his latest find. It was a map he’d come across once before in the armoury, a map of all the silos with a line coming out of each and converging at a single point. Here was one of many mysteries left. The document was labelled Seed, but he could find nothing else about it.

  Donald could hear Anna whispering to him. She had been trying to tell him something. The note in Thurman’s account, she was trying to say, had been left for him. So obvious now. She could never be woken, not a woman. She needed him, needed his help. Donald imagined her piecing all of this together on some recent shift, alone and terrified, scared of her own father, no one left to turn to. So she had taken her father out of power, had entrusted Donald, had switched him with another man for the second time and had left him a note to wake her. And what did Donald do instead?

  There was a knock on his door.

  ‘Who is it?’ Donald asked, his voice not sounding like his own.

  The door opened a crack. ‘It’s Eren, sir. We’ve got a call from eighteen. The shadow is ready.’

  ‘Just a second.’

  Donald coughed into his handkerchief. He rose slowly and moved to the bathroom, stepping over two trays of old dishes. He emptied his bladder, flushed and studied himself in the mirror. Gripping the edge of the counter, he grimaced at his reflection, this man with scraggly hair and the start of a beard. He looked half crazed, and yet people still trusted him. That made them crazier than he was. Donald smiled a yellowing smile and thought of the long history of madmen who remained in charge simply because no one would challenge them.

  Hinges squealed as Eren poked his head in the door.

  ‘I’m coming,’ Donald said. He stomped across the reports, leaving a trail of footprints behind, and a bloody palm print on the edge of the counter.

  ‘They’re calling the shadow now, sir,’ Eren said to him in the hall. ‘You want to freshen up?’

  ‘No,’ Donald said. ‘I’m good.’ He stood in the doorway, struggling to remember what this meeting was about. A Rite of Initiation. He remembered those, thought it was something Gable would handle. ‘Why am I needed again?’ he asked. ‘Shouldn’t our head be conducting this?’ Donald remembered being the one to conduct such a Rite on his first shift.

  Eren popped something into his mouth and chewed. He shook his head. ‘You know, with all that reading you’re doing in there, you could bone up on the Order a bit. It sounds like it’s changed since the last time you read it. The ranking officer on shift completes the Rite. That would normally be me—’

  ‘But since I’m up, it’s me.’ Donald pulled his door shut. The two of them started down the hall.

  ‘That’s right. The heads here do less and less every shift. There have been… problems. I’ll sit in with you though, help you get through the script. Oh, and you wanted to know when the pilots were heading off shift. The last one is going under right now. They’re just straightening up down there.’

  Donald perked up at this. Finally. What he’d been waiting for. ‘So the armoury’s empty?’ he asked, unable to hide his delight.

  ‘Yessir. No more flight requisitions. I know you didn’t like chancing them to begin with.’

  ‘Right, right.’ Donald waved his hand as they turned the corner. ‘Restrict access to the armoury once they’re done. Nobody should be able to get in there but me.’

  Eren slowed his pace. ‘Just you, sir?’

  ‘For as long as I’m on shift,’ Donald said.

  They passed Gable in the hall, who had three cups of coffee nestled in a web of fingers. Gable smiled and nodded. Donald remembered fetching coffee for people when he was head of the silo. Now, that was near enough all the head did. Donald couldn’t help but think his first shift was partly to blame.

  Eren lowered his voice. ‘You know the story behind him, right?’ He took another bite of something and chewed.

  Donald glanced over his shoulder. ‘Who, Gable?’

  ‘Yeah. He was in Ops until a few shifts back. Broke down. Tried to get himself into deep freeze. The duty doc at the time talked him into a demotion. We were losing too many people, and the shifts were starting to get some overlap.’ Eren paused and took another bite. There was a familiar scent. Eren caught him watching and held out something. ‘Bagel?’ he asked. ‘They’re fresh baked.’

  Donald could smell it. Eren tore off a piece. It was still warm. ‘I didn’t know they could make these,’ he said, popping the morsel into his mouth.

  ‘New chef just came on shift. He’s been experimenting with all kinds of stuff. He—’

  Donald didn’t hear the rest. He chewed on memories. A cool day in DC, Helen up to visit, had the dog with her, drove all the way from Savannah. They walked around the Lincoln Memorial a week too early for the cherry blossoms, but there were still spots of colour dotted here and there. They had stopped for fresh bagels, still warm, the smell of coffee—

  ‘Put an end to this,’ Donald said, indicating the rest of Eren’s bagel.

  ‘Sir?’

  They were nearly at the bend in the hall that led to the comm room. ‘I don’t want this chef experimenting any more. Have him stick to the usual.’

  Eren seemed confused. After some hesitation, he nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Nothing good can come of this,’ Donald explained. And while Eren agreed more strenuously this time, Donald realised he had begun to think like the people he loathed. A veil of disappointment fell over Eren’s face, and Donald felt a sudden urge to take it back, to grab the man by the shoulders and ask him what the hell they thought they were doing, all this misery and heartache. They should eat memory foods, of course, and talk about the days they’d left behind.

  Instead, he said nothing, and they continued down the hall in quiet and discomfort.

  ‘Quite a few of our silo heads came from Ops,’ Eren said after a while, steering the conversation back to Gable. ‘I was a comm officer for my first two shifts, you know. The guy I took over for, the Ops head from the last shift, was from Medical.’

  ‘So you’re not a shrink?’ Donald asked.

  Eren laughed, and Donald thought of Victor, blowing his brains out. This wasn’t going to last, this place. There were cracked tiles in the centre of the hall. Tiles that had no replacement. The ones at the edge were in much better shape. He stopped outside the co
mm room and surveyed the wear on this centuries-old place. There were scuff marks low on the walls, hand-high, shoulder-high, fewer anywhere else. The traffic patterns on the floors throughout the facility showed where people walked. The wear on that place, like on its people, was not evenly distributed.

  ‘I believe they’re waiting on us, sir.’

  Donald looked away from the scuff marks to Eren, this young man with bright eyes and bagel on his breath, his hair full of colour, an upturn at the corners of his mouth, a wan smile like a scar of hope.

  ‘Right,’ Donald said. He waved Eren inside the comm room before following behind, stepping dead centre like everyone else.

  89

  2345

  • Silo 1 •

  DONALD FAMILIARISED HIMSELF with the script while Eren plopped into the chair beside him and pulled a headset on. The software would mask their voices, make them featureless and the same. The silo heads need not know when one man went off shift and another replaced him. It was always the same voice, the same person, as far as they were concerned.

  The shift operator lifted a mug and took a sip. Donald could see something written on the mug with a marker. It said: We’re #1. Donald wondered if whoever wrote it meant the silo. The operator set the mug down and twirled his finger for Donald to begin.

  Donald covered his mic and cleared his throat. He could hear someone talking on the other end of the line as a distant headset was pulled on. There was a script to follow for the first half. Donald remembered most of it. Eren turned to the side and polished off the bagel guiltily. When the operator gave them the thumbs-up, Eren gestured to Donald to do the honours, and all Donald could think about was getting this over with and getting down to that empty armoury.