Dust s-9

by Hugh Howey

  Juliette tried to wriggle free, but he was clawing his way from her ankles to her waist. Flames rose behind him. The blanket had caught. The man screamed unholy rage, had lost his mind. Juliette pushed against his shoulders and squirmed on her ass to pull free. She could barely breathe, could barely see. The man on top of her screamed with renewed fervor, and it was his robes on fire. The flames marched up his back and over them both, and Juliette was back in that airlock, a blanket over her head, burning alive.

  A boot flew across her face and struck the young priest, and she felt the strength leave the arms clinging to her. Someone pulled her from behind. Juliette kicked free, the smoke too thick now to see. She tried to get her bearings, was coughing uncontrollably, wondered where the radio was, knew it was gone. And someone was tugging her down a narrow hall, Raph’s pale face making him little more than a ghost in smoke, urging her up the ladder ahead of him.

  The server room was filling with smoke. The fire down below would spread until it ate up all that burned, leaving just charred metal and melted wires behind. Juliette helped Raph out of the ladderway and grabbed the hatch. She threw it on top and saw that it was useless for keeping out the smoke, was a blasted grate.

  Raph disappeared behind one of the servers. “Quick!” he yelled. Juliette crawled on her hands and knees and found him pressed against the back of the comm hub, one foot against the server beside it, shoving with all of his might.

  Juliette helped him. Aching muscles bulged and burned. They rocked against the unmoving metal, Juliette dimly aware of screws holding the base to the floor, but the weight of the tower helped. Metal groaned. With a heave, screws tore loose and the tall black tower tilted, trembled, and then crashed atop the hole in the ground, covering it.

  Juliette and Raph collapsed, coughing, heaving for air. The room was hazy with smoke, but no more was leaking inside. And the screams far below them eventually died out.

  Silo 1

  56

  There were voices outside the drone lift. Boots. Men walking back and forth, searching for them.

  Donald and Charlotte clung to one another in the darkness of that low-ceilinged space. Charlotte had looked for some way to secure the door, but it was a featureless wall of metal with just a tiny release for the latch. Donald held back a cough, could feel a tickle in his throat grow until it covered every square inch of his flesh. He kept both hands clasped over his mouth and listened to the muted shouts of “clear” and “all clear”.

  Charlotte stopped fumbling with the door, and they simply huddled together and tried not to move, for the floor made popping noises any time they shifted their weight. They had spent all day in the small lift, waiting for the search party to come back to their level. Darcy had left to be on shift when everyone woke up. It had been a long day of fitful non-sleep for Donald and his sister, a day when he knew the search party would expand and grow desperate. Now they had a killer on the loose and an escaped prisoner from Deep Freeze, too. He could imagine the consternation this was causing Thurman. He could imagine the beating he would get when they were discovered. He just prayed these boots would go away. But they didn’t. They grew nearer.

  There was a bang on the metal hangar door, the pounding of an angry fist. Donald could feel Charlotte tense her arm across his back, crushing his cracked ribs. The door moved. Donald tried to push against it to hold it in place, but there was no leverage. The steel squeaked against his sweaty palms. This was it. Charlotte tried to help, but someone was cracking open their hiding spot. A flashlight blinded them both — it shined right in their eyes.

  “Clear!” came the yell, close enough that Donald could smell the coffee on Darcy’s breath. The door was slammed shut, a palm slapping it twice. Charlotte collapsed. Donald dared to clear his throat.

  It was after dinner by the time they finally emerged, tired and starving. It was quiet and dark in the armory. Darcy had said he would try to come back when his shift started, but he had been worried the night shift wouldn’t be as quiet as usual, not so suited to slinking away.

  Donald and Charlotte hurried down the barracks hall and into separate bathrooms. Donald could hear the pipes rattle as his sister flushed. He ran the sink and coughed up blood, spat and watched the crimson threads spiral down the drain, drank from the tap, spat again, and finally used the bathroom himself.

  Charlotte already had the radio uncovered and powered up by the time he got to the end of the hall. She hailed anyone who might hear. Donald stood behind her and watched her switch from channel eighteen to seventeen, repeating the call. No one answered. She left it on seventeen and listened to static.

  “How did you raise them the last time?” Donald asked.

  “Just like this.” She stared at the radio for a moment before turning in her seat to face him, her brow furrowed with worry. Donald expected a thousand questions: How long before they were taken? What were they going to do next? How could they get someplace safe? A thousand questions, but not the one she asked, her voice a sad whisper: “When did you go outside?”

  Donald took a step back. He wasn’t sure how to answer. “What do you mean?” he asked, but he knew what she meant.

  “I heard what Darcy said about you nearly getting over a hill. When was this? Are you still going out? Is that where you go when you leave me? Is that why you’re sick?”

  Donald slumped against one of the drone control stations. “No,” he said. He watched the radio, hoping for some voice to break through the static and save him. But his sister waited. “I only went once. I went… thinking I’d never come back.”

  “You went out there to die.”

  He nodded. And she didn’t get angry with him. She didn’t yell or scream like he feared she might, which was why he had never told her before. She simply stood and rushed to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. And Donald cried.

  “Why are they doing this to us?” Charlotte asked.

  “I don’t know. I want to make it stop.”

  “But not like that.” His sister stepped back and wiped her eyes. “Donny, you have to promise me. Not like that.”

  He didn’t reply. His ribs ached from where she’d embraced him. “I wanted to see Helen,” he finally said. “I wanted to see where she’d lived and died. It was… a bad time. With Anna. Trapped down here.” He remembered how he had felt about Anna then, how he felt about her now. So many mistakes. He had made mistakes at every turn. It made it difficult to make anymore decisions, to act.

  “There has to be something we can do,” Charlotte said. Her eyes lit up. “We could lighten a drone enough to carry us from here. The bunker busters must weigh sixty kilos. If we lighten another drone up, it could carry you.”

  “And fly it how?”

  “I’ll stay here and fly it.” She saw the look on his face and frowned. “Better that one of us gets out,” she said. “You know I’m right. We could launch before daylight, just send you as far as you can go. At least live a day away from this place.”

  Donald tried to imagine a flight on the back of one of those birds, the wind pelting his helmet, tumbling off in a rough landing, lying in the grass and staring up at the stars. He pulled his rag out and filled it with blood, shook his head as he put it away. “I’m dying,” he told her. “Thurman said I have another day or two. He told me that a day or two ago.”

  Charlotte was silent.

  “Maybe we could wake another pilot,” he suggested. “I could hold a gun to his head. We could get you and Darcy both out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” his sister said.

  “But you would have me go out there alone?”

  She shrugged. “I’m a hypocrite.”

  Donald laughed. “Must be why they recruited you.”

  They listened to the radio.

  “What do you think is going on in all those other silos right now?” Charlotte asked. “You dealt with them. Is it as bad there as it is here?”

  Donald considered this. “I don’t know. Some of them
are happy enough, I suppose. They get married and have kids. They have jobs. They don’t know anything beyond their walls, so I guess they don’t have some of the stress about what’s out there that you and I feel. But I think they have something else that we don’t have, this deep feeling that something is wrong with how they’re living. Buried, you know. And we understand that, and it chokes us, but they just have this chronic anxiety, I think. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’ve seen men happy enough here to get through their shifts. I’ve watched others go mad. I used to… I used to play solitaire for hours on my computer upstairs, and that’s when my brain was truly off and I wasn’t miserable. But then, I wasn’t really alive, either.”

  Charlotte reached out and squeezed his hand.

  “I think some of the silos that went dark have it best—”

  “Don’t say that,” Charlotte whispered.

  Donald looked up at her. “No, not that. I don’t think they’re dead, not all of them. I think some of them withdrew and are living how they want quietly enough that no one will come after them. They just want to be left alone, not controlled, free to choose how they live and die. I think it’s what Anna wanted them to have. Living down here on this level for a year, trying to find some life without being able to go outside, I think it changed how she viewed all this.”

  “Or maybe it was being out of that box for a little while,” Charlotte said. “Maybe she didn’t like what it felt like to be put away.”

  “Or that,” Donald agreed. Again, he thought how things would’ve been different had he woken her with some trust, had heard her out. If Anna was there to help, everything would be better. It pained him, but he missed her as much as he missed Helen. Anna had saved him, had tried to save others, and Donald had misunderstood and had hated her for both actions.

  Charlotte let go of his hand to adjust the radio. She tried hailing someone on both channels, ran her fingers through her hair and listened to static.

  “There was a while there when I thought this was a good thing,” Donald said. “What they did, trying to save the world. They had me convinced that a mass extinction was inevitable, that a war was about to break out and claim everyone. But you know what I think? I think they knew that if a war broke out between all these invisible machines, that some pockets of people would survive here and there. So they built this. They made sure the destruction was complete so they could control it.”

  “They wanted to make sure the only pockets of people who survived were in their pockets,” Charlotte said.

  “Exactly. They weren’t trying to save the world — they were trying to save themselves. Even if we’d gone extinct, the world would’ve gone right on along without us. Nature finds a way.”

  “People find a way,” Charlotte said. “Look at the two of us.” She laughed. “We’re like weeds, aren’t we, the two of us? Nature sneaking out along the edge. We’re like those silos that wouldn’t behave. How did they think they would ever contain all this? That something like this wouldn’t happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Donald said. “Maybe the kinds of people who try to shape the world feel like they’re smarter than chaos itself.”

  Charlotte switched the channels back and forth in case someone was answering on one or the other. She seemed exasperated. “They should just let us be,” she said. “Just stop and let us grow however we must.”

  Donald lurched out of his chair and stood up straight.

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked. She reached for the radio. “Did you hear something?”

  “That’s it,” Donald told her. “Leave us be.” He fumbled for his rag and coughed. Charlotte stopped playing with the radio. “C’mon,” he said. He waved at the desk. “Bring your tools.”

  “For the drone?” she asked.

  “No. We need to put together another suit.”

  “Another suit?”

  “For going outside. And you said those bunker busters weigh sixty kilos. Exactly how much is a kilo?”

  57

  “This is not a good plan,” Charlotte said. She tightened the breathing apparatus attached to the helmet and grabbed one of the large bottles of air, began fastening the hose to it. “What’re we going to do out there?”

  “Die,” Donald told her. And he saw the look she gave him. “But maybe a week from now. And not here.” He had an array of supplies laid out. Satisfied, he began stuffing them into one of the small military backpacks. MREs, water, a first-aid kit, a flashlight, a pistol and two clips, extra ammo, a flint, and a knife.

  “How long do you think this air will last?” Charlotte asked.

  “Those bottles are for sending troops overground to other silos, so they must have enough to reach the furthest one. We just need to go a little further than that, and we won’t be as loaded down.” He cinched up the pack and placed it next to the other one.

  “It’s like we’re lightening up a drone.”

  “Exactly.” Picking up a roll of tape, he pulled a folded map out of his pocket and began affixing it to the sleeve of one of the suits.

  “Isn’t that my suit?”

  Donald nodded. “You’re a better navigator. I’m going to follow you.”

  There was a ding on the other side of the shelves from the direction of the lifts. Donald dropped what he was doing and hissed for Charlotte to hurry. They made for the drone lift, but Darcy called out to let them know it was just him. He emerged from the tall shelves with a load in his arms, fresh coveralls and a tray heaped with food.

  “Sorry,” he said, seeing the panic he’d caused. “It’s not like I can warn you.” He held out the trays apologetically. “Leftovers from dinner.”

  He set the trays down, and Charlotte gave him a hug. Donald saw how quickly connections were made in desperate times. Here was a prisoner embracing a guard for not beating her, for showing an ounce of compassion. Donald was glad for the second suit. It was a good plan.

  Darcy peered down at the scattering of tools and supplies. “What’re you doing?” he asked.

  Charlotte checked with her brother. Donald shook his head.

  “Look,” Darcy said, “I’m sympathetic to your situation. I am. I don’t like what’s going on around here, either. And the more that comes back — the more I remember about who I was — the more I think I’d be fighting this alongside you. But I’m not all-in with you guys. And this—” He pointed to the suits. “This doesn’t look good to me. This doesn’t look smart.”

  Charlotte passed a plate and a fork to Donald. She sat on one of the plastic storage bins and dug into what looked like a canned roast, beets, and potatoes. Donald sat beside her and slid his fork through the slick roast, chopping it up into bites. “Do you remember what you did before all this?” Donald asked. “Is it coming back to you?”

  Darcy nodded. “Some. I’ve stopped taking my meds—”

  Donald laughed.

  “What? Why’s that funny?”

  “I’m sorry.” Donald apologized and waved his hand. “It’s just that… it’s nothing. It’s a good thing. Were you in the army?”

  “Yeah, but not for long. I think I was in the Secret Service.” Darcy watched them eat for a moment. “What about you two?”

  “Air Force,” Charlotte said. She jabbed her fork at Donald, whose mouth was full. “Congressman.”

  “No shit?”

  Donald nodded. “More of an architect, really.” He gestured at the room around them. “This is what I went to school for.”

  “Building stuff like this?” Darcy asked.

  “Building this,” Donald said. He took another bite.

  “No shit.”

  Donald nodded and took a swig of water.

  “Who did this to us, then? The Chinese?”

  Donald and Charlotte turned to one another.

  “What?” Darcy asked.

  “We did this,” Donald said. “This place wasn’t built for a just-in-case. This is what it was designed for.”

  Darcy looked from one of them to the
other, his mouth open.

  “I thought you knew. It’s all in my notes.” Once you know what to look for, Donald thought. Otherwise, it was too obvious and audacious to see.

  “No. I thought this was like that mountain bunker, where the government goes to survive—”

  “It is,” Charlotte said. “But this way they get the timing down just right.”

  Darcy stared down at his boots while Donald and his sister ate. For a last meal, it wasn’t all that bad. Donald looked down at the sleeve of the coveralls he’d borrowed from Charlotte and saw the bullet hole in them for the first time. Maybe that was why she had acted as if he was crazy for putting them on. Across from him, Darcy began to slowly nod his head. “Yeah,” he said. “God, yeah. They did this.” He looked up at Donald. “I put a guy in Deep Freeze a couple shifts ago. He was yelling all this crazy stuff. A guy from accounting.”

  Donald set his tray aside. He finished his water.

  “He wasn’t crazy, was he?” Darcy asked. “That was a good man.”

  “Probably,” Donald said. “He was getting better, at least.”

  Darcy ran his fingers over his short hair. His attention went back to the scattering of supplies. “The suits,” he said. “You’re thinking of leaving? Because you know I can’t help you do that.”

  Donald ignored the question. He went to the end of the aisle and retrieved the hand truck. He and Charlotte had already loaded the bunker buster on it. There was a plastic tag dangling from the nose cone that she said he would need to pull before it was armed. She had already removed the altimeter controls and safety overrides. She had called it a “dumb bomb” when she was done. Donald pushed the cart toward the elevator.