Dust s-9

by Hugh Howey

  The twins whooped and hollered. Elise squeezed Jimmy’s ribs so hard he had to work to breathe. The baby stirred in Hannah’s arms, but its cries could barely be heard over the tumult. Another great spin from the teeth, another lap from ceiling to floor, and they broke through more fully and revealed themselves to be more like wheels, dozens of discs spinning within a larger disc. A boulder fell from the ceiling and tumbled across the floor toward the larger of the two generators. Jimmy expected the silo itself to come raining down around them.

  A light bulb overhead shattered from the vibrations, a glitter of glass amid the drizzle of trapped flood water. “Back!” Jimmy yelled. They were clear across the wide generator room from the digger, but everywhere felt too close. The ground shook, making it difficult to stand. Jimmy felt suddenly afraid. This thing would keep coming, would bore straight through the silo and carry on; it was out of control—

  The chewing disc entered the room, sharpened wheels spinning and screaming in the air, rock thrown up on one side and crumbling down from the other. The violence lessened. The squealing of dry metal joints grew less deafening. Hannah cooed to her child, rocking her arms back and forth, eyes wide and fixed on this intrusion into their home.

  Somewhere, shouts emerged. They leaked through the falling rock. The rotating disc slowed to a halt, while some of the smaller wheels spun a while longer. Their edges revealed themselves as shiny and new where their battle through the earth had worn them bare. A length of rebar was wrapped around one like a knotted bootlace.

  A respite of silence grew. The child fell still once more. A distant clatter and hum — the digger’s rumbling belly perhaps — was the only sound.

  “Hello?”

  A shout from around the digger.

  “Yeah, we’re through,” another voice called. A woman’s voice.

  Jimmy swept up Elise, who hugged his neck and locked her ankles around his waist. He ran toward the wall of studded steel before him.

  “Hey!” Rickson called as he hurried after.

  The twins raced along as well.

  Jimmy couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t Elise squeezing him this time — it was the idea of visitors. Of people not to be afraid of. Someone he could run to rather than from.

  Everyone felt it. They raced, grinning, toward the digger’s maw.

  Between the gap in the wall and the silent disc, an arm emerged, a shoulder, a woman climbing up from the cut tunnel that dipped below the floor.

  She pushed herself to her knees, stood up straight, and brushed her hair from her face.

  Jimmy pulled up. The group stopped a dozen paces away. A woman. A stranger. She stood in their silo, smiling, covered in dust and grime.

  “Solo?” she asked.

  Her teeth flashed. She was pretty, even covered in dirt. She walked toward the group and tugged off a pair of thick gloves while someone else crawled out from behind the digger’s teeth. An outstretched hand. The baby crying. Jimmy shook the woman’s hand, mesmerized by her smile.

  “I’m Courtnee,” the woman said. She swept her gaze over the children, her smile widening. “You must be Elise.” She squeezed the young girl’s shoulder, which caused the grip around Jimmy’s neck to tighten.

  A man emerged from behind the digger, pale as fresh paper with hair just as white, and turned to survey the wall of cutting teeth.

  “Where’s Juliette?” Jimmy asked, hiking Elise higher on his hip.

  Courtnee frowned. “Didn’t she tell you? She went outside.”

  Part II ~ Outside

  Silo 18

  19

  Juliette stood in the airlock while gas was pumped in around her. The cleaning suit crinkled against her skin. She felt none of the fear from the last time she was sent out, but none of the deluded hope that drove many to exile. Somewhere between pointless dreams and hopeless dread was a desire to know the world. And, if possible, make it better.

  The pressure in the airlock grew, and the folds of her suit found every raised scar across her body, wrinkles pressing where wrinkles had once burned. It was a million pricks from a million gentle needles, every sensitive part of her touched all at once, as if this airlock remembered, as if it knew her. A lover’s apology.

  Clear plastic sheets had been hung over the walls. These began to ripple as they were forced tight around pipes, around the bench where she’d been dressed. Not long now. If anything, she felt excitement. Relief. A long project coming to an end.

  She pulled one of the sample containers off her chest and cracked the lid, gathering some of the inert argon for a reference. Screwing the lid back on, she heard a dull and familiar thud within the recesses of the great outer door. The silo opened, and a wisp of fog appeared as pressurized gas pushed its way through, preventing the outside from getting in.

  The fog swelled and swirled around her. It pushed at her back, urging her along. Juliette lifted a boot, stepped through the thick outer doors of Silo 18 and was outside once again.

  The ramp was just as she remembered it: a concrete plane rising up through the last level of her buried home and toward the surface of the earth. Trapped dirt made slopes of hard corners, and streaks and splatters of mud stained the walls. The heavy doors thumped together behind her, and a dispersing fog rose up toward the clouds. Juliette began her march up the gentle rise.

  “You okay?”

  Lukas’s soft voice filled her helmet. Juliette smiled. It was good to have him with her. She pinched her thumb and finger together, which keyed the microphone in her helmet.

  “No one has ever died on the ramp, Lukas. I’m doing just fine.”

  He whispered an apology, and Juliette’s smile widened. It was a different thing altogether to venture out with this support behind her. Much different than being exiled while shamed backs were turned, no one daring to watch.

  She reached the top of the ramp, and a feeling of rightness overtook her. Without the fear or the digital lies of an electronic visor, she felt what she suspected humans were meant to feel: a heady rush of disappearing walls, of raw land spread out in every direction, of miles and miles of open air and tumbling clouds. Her flesh tingled from the thrill of exploration. She had been here twice before, but this was something new. This had purpose.

  “Taking my first sample,” she said, pinching her glove.

  She pulled another of the small containers from her suit. Everything was numbered just like a cleaning, but the steps had changed. Weeks of planning and building had gone into this, a flurry of activity up top while her friends tunneled through the earth. She cracked the lid of the container, held it aloft for a count of ten, and then screwed the cap back on. The top of the vessel was clear. A pair of gaskets rattled inside, and twin strips of heat tape were affixed to the bottom. Juliette pressed waxy sealant around the lip of the lid, making it airtight. The numbered sample went into a flapped pouch on her thigh, joining the one from the airlock.

  Lukas’s voice crackled through the radio: “We’ve got a full burn in the airlock. Nelson is letting it cool down before he goes in.”

  Juliette turned and faced the sensor tower. She fought the urge to lift her hand, to acknowledge the dozens of men and women who were watching on the cafeteria’s wallscreen. She looked down at her chest and tried to clear her mind, to remember what she was supposed to do next.

  Soil sample. She shuffled away from the ramp and the tower toward a patch of dirt that maybe hadn’t seen footsteps in centuries. Kneeling down — the undersuit pinching the back of her knee — she scooped dirt using the shallow container. The soil was packed hard and difficult to dig up, so she brushed more of the surface soil onto the top, filling the dish.

  “Surface sample complete,” she said, pinching her glove. She screwed the lid on carefully and pressed the ring of wax before sliding it into a pouch on her other thigh.

  “Good going,” Lukas said. He was probably aiming for encouragement. All she could hear was his intense worry.

  “Taking the deep sample next.”

>   She grabbed the tool with both hands. She had built the large T on the top while wearing bulky suit gloves to make sure the grip would be right. With the corkscrew end pressed against the earth, she twisted the handle around and around, leaning her weight into her arms to force the blades through the dense soil.

  Sweat formed on her brow. A drop of perspiration smacked her visor and trembled into a little puddle as her arms jerked with effort. A caustic and stiff breeze buffeted her suit, pushing her to the side. When the tool penetrated all the way to the tape mark on the handle, she stood and pulled the T-bar, using her legs.

  The plug came free, an avalanche of deep soil spilling off and crumbling into the dry hole. She slid the case over the plug and locked it into place. Everything had the fit and polish of Supply’s best. She stowed the tool back in its pouch, slung it around onto her back, and took a deep breath.

  “Good?” Lukas asked.

  She waved at the tower. “I’m good. Two more samples left. How far along is the airlock?”

  “Lemme check.”

  While Lukas saw how the preparations for her return were going, Juliette trudged toward the nearest hill. Her old footsteps had been worn away by a light rain, but she remembered the path well. The crease in the hill stood like an inviting stairway, a ramp on which two forms still nestled.

  She stopped at the base of the hill and pulled out another container with gaskets and heat tape inside. The cap came off easily. She held it up to the wind, allowing whatever blew inside to become trapped. For all they knew, these were the first tests made of the outside air. Reams and reams of bogus reports from previous cleanings had been nothing but numbers used to uphold and justify fears. It was a charade of progress, of efforts being made to right the world, when all they ever cared about was selling the story of how wrong it was.

  The only thing more impressive to Juliette than the depths of the conspiracy had been the speed and relief with which its mechanisms had crumbled within IT. The men and women of level thirty-four reminded her of the children of Silo 17, frightened and wide-eyed and desperate for some adult they could cling to and trust. This foray of hers to test the outside air was looked upon with suspicion and fear elsewhere in the silo, but in IT, where they had pretended to do this work for generations, the chance to truly investigate had been seized by many with wild abandon.

  Damn!

  Juliette slapped the cover on the container. Her mind had wandered; she had forgotten to count to ten, had probably gone twice that.

  “Hey, Jules?”

  She squeezed her fingers together. “Yeah?” Releasing the mic, she locked the lid tight, made sure it said “2” on the top, and sealed the edges. She put it away with the other container, cursing her inattention.

  “The airlock burn is complete. Nelson went in afterward to get things ready for you, but they’re saying it’s gonna be a while to charge the argon again. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  She took a moment to survey herself and give an honest answer. A few deep breaths. Wiggled her joints. Looked up at the dark clouds to make sure her vision and balance were normal.

  “Yeah. I feel fine.”

  “Okay. And they are going to go with the flames when you come back. It looks like they really might’ve been necessary. We were getting some strange readings in the airlock before you left. As a precaution, Nelson is getting a scrub-down in the inner lock right now. We’ll have everything prepped for you as fast as we can.”

  Juliette didn’t like the sound of any of that. Her passage through the Silo 17 airlock had been terrifying, but with no lasting consequences. Dumping soup on herself had been enough to survive. The theory they had been working under was that conditions outside weren’t as bad as they’d been led to believe, and that the flames were more a deterrent against not leaving the airlock than an actual necessity for cleansing the air. The challenge with this mission of hers was getting back inside without enduring another burn or another stint in the hospital. But she couldn’t put the silo at risk, either.

  She squeezed her fingers together, thinking suddenly of all that was at stake. “Is there still a crowd up there watching?” she asked Lukas.

  “Yeah. There’s a lot of excitement in the air. People can’t believe this is happening.”

  “I want you to clear them out,” she said.

  She let go of her thumb. There was no reply.

  “Lukas? Do you read me? I want you to get everyone down to at least level four. Clear out anyone not working on this, okay?”

  She waited.

  “Yeah,” Lukas said. There was a lot of noise in the background. “We’re doing that right now. Trying to keep everyone calm.”

  “Tell them it’s just a precaution. Because of the readings in the airlock.”

  “Doing that.”

  He sounded winded. Juliette hoped she wasn’t causing a panic for no reason.

  “I’m going to get the last sample,” she said, focusing on the task at hand. They had prepared for the worst. Everything was going to be okay. She was thankful for the crude sensors they’d installed in the airlock. The next time out, she hoped to install a permanent array on the tower. But she couldn’t get too far ahead of herself. She approached one of the cleaners at the base of the hill.

  The body they’d chosen belonged to Jack Brent. It had been nine years since he’d been sent to clean, having gone mad after his wife’s second miscarriage. Juliette knew very little else about him. And that had been her main criterion for the final sample.

  She made her way to what was left of the body. The old suit had long turned a dull gray like the soil. What once was a metallic coating flaked away like old paint. The boots were eaten thin, the visor chipped. Jack lay with his arms folded across his chest, legs straight and parallel, almost as if he had taken a nap and had never gotten up. More like he had lain down to gaze at the clear blue sky in his visor.

  Juliette pulled the last box out, the one marked “3”, and knelt beside the dead cleaner. It spooked her to think that this would’ve been her fate were it not for Scottie and Walker and the people of Supply who had risked so much. She lifted the sharp blade out of the sample box and cut a square patch from the suit. Setting the blade on the cleaner’s chest, she picked up the sample and dropped it into the container. Holding her breath, she grabbed the blade, careful not to nick her own suit, and sliced into the rotted undersuit where it had been exposed across the cleaner’s belly.

  This last sample had to be prised out with the blade. If there was any flesh inside or gathered with it, she couldn’t tell. Everything was thankfully dark beneath the torn and dilapidated suit. But it seemed like nothing but soil in there, blown in amongst the dry bones.

  She put the sample in the container and left the blade by the cleaner, no longer needing it and not wanting to risk handling it any further with the bulky gloves. She stood and turned toward the tower.

  “You okay?”

  Lukas’s voice sounded different. Muffled. Juliette exhaled, felt a little dizzy from holding her breath so long.

  “I’m fine.”

  “We’re almost ready for you. I’d start heading back.”

  She nodded, even though he probably couldn’t see her at that distance, not even with the tall wallscreens magnifying the world.

  “Hey, you know what we forgot?”

  She froze and studied the tower.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Forgot what?” Sweat trickled down her cheek, tickling her skin. She could feel the lace of scars at the back of her neck where her last suit had melted against her.

  “We forgot to send you out with a pad or two,” Lukas said. “There’s already some build-up visible in here. And you know, while you’re out there…”

  Juliette glared at the tower.

  “I’m just saying,” Lukas said. “You maybe could have, you know, given it a bit of a cleaning—”

  20

  Juliette waited at the bottom of the ramp. She remembered the last time
she’d done this, standing in the same place with a blanket of heat tape Solo had made, wondering if she’d run out of air before the doors opened, wondering if she’d survive what awaited her inside. She remembered thinking Lukas was in there, and then struggling with Bernard instead.

  She tried to shake those memories free. Glancing down at her pockets, she made sure the flaps on all the pouches were tightly sealed. Every step of the upcoming decontamination flitted through her mind. She trusted that everything would be in place.

  “Here we go,” Lukas radioed. Again, his voice was hollow and distant.

  On cue, the gears in the airlock door squealed, and a plume of pressurized argon spilled through the gap. Juliette threw herself into the mist, an intense sensation of relief accompanying the move indoors.

  “I’m in. I’m in,” she said.

  The doors thumped shut behind her. Juliette glanced at the inner airlock door, saw a helmet on the other side of the glass porthole, someone peering in, watching. Moving to the ready bench, she opened the airtight box Nelson had installed in her absence. Needed to be quick. The gas chambers and the flames were all automated.

  Ripping the sealed pouches off her thighs, she placed them inside. She unslung the borer with its sample and added that as well, then pushed the lid shut and engaged the locks. The practice run-through had helped. Moving in the suit felt comfortable. She had lain in bed at night thinking through each step until they were habit.

  Shuffling across the small airlock, she gripped the edge of the immense metal tub she’d welded together. It was still warm from the last bout of flames, but the water Nelson had topped it up with had sapped much of the heat. With a deep and pointless breath, she lowered herself over the edge.

  The water flooded against her helmet, and Juliette felt the first real onrush of fear. Her breath quickened. Being outside was nothing like being underwater again. The floods were in her mouth; she could feel herself taking tiny gulps of air, could taste the steel and rust from the steps; she forgot what she was supposed to be doing.