Dust (12 page)

“Unloose me,” the old man said.

“Not until we know what happened,” Brevard told him. “Not until you’re better.”

The leather cuffs around the old man’s wrists squeaked as he tested them. “I’ll be better when I’m off this damn table.”

“You’ve been shot,” Dr. Whitmore said. He rested a hand on his patient’s shoulder to calm him.

The old man lowered his head to his pillow, his eyes travelling from doctor to security officer and back again. “I know,” he said.

“Do you remember who did it?” Brevard asked.

The man nodded. “His name’s Donald.” His jaw clenched and unclenched.

“Not Troy?” Brevard asked.

“That’s what I meant. Same guy.” Brevard watched the old man’s hands squeeze into twin fists and then relax. “Look, I’m one of the Heads of this silo. I demand to be released. Check my records—”

“We’ll get this sorted out—” Brevard started to say.

The restraints creaked. “Check the damn records,” the old man said again.

“They’ve been tampered with,” Brevard told him. “Can you tell us your name?”

The man lay still for a moment, muscles relaxing. He stared up at the ceiling. “Which one?” he asked. “My name is Paul. Most people call me by my last name, Thurman. I used to go by Senator—”

“Shepherd,” Captain Brevard said. “Paul Thurman is the name of the man they call Shepherd.”

The old man narrowed his eyes. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve been called a number of things in my time, but never that.”

Silo 17

18

The earth growled. Beyond the walls of the silo, the earth grumbled and the noise steadily grew.

It had begun as a distant thrum a few days ago, had sounded like a hydroponics pump kicking on at the end of a long run of pipe, a vibration that could be felt between the pads of one’s feet and the slick metal floor. And then yesterday it had morphed into a steady quake that travelled up Jimmy’s knees and bones and into his clenched teeth. Above him, drops of water shivered from pipes, a light drizzle splashing into puddles that had not yet fully dried from the vanishing floods.

Elise squealed and patted the top of her head as she was struck with a drop. She glanced up with a gapped smile and watched for more of the bombardment.

“That’s an awful racket,” Rickson said. He played his flashlight across the far wall of the old generator room where the noise seemed to originate.

Hannah clapped her hands together and told the twins to get away from the wall. Miles – at least Jimmy thought it was Miles; he could hardly tell the twins apart – had his ear pressed to the concrete, his eyes closed, his mouth agape in concentration. His brother Marcus tugged him back toward the others, face lit up with excitement.

“Get behind me,” Jimmy said. His feet tingled from the vibrations. He could feel the noise in his chest as some unseen machine chewed through solid rock.

“How much longer?” Elise asked.

Jimmy tousled her hair and enjoyed the embrace of her worried arms around his waist. “Soon,” he told her. The truth was, he didn’t know. They’d spent the past two weeks keeping the pump running and Mechanical dry. That morning, they had woken up to find the noise of the digging intolerable. The racket had gotten worse throughout the day, and still the blank wall stood solid before them, still the light rain from wet and shivering pipes continued. The twins splashed in puddles, growing impatient. The baby, inexplicably, slept peacefully in Hannah's arms. They’d been there for hours, listening to the grumbles grow, waiting for something to happen.

The end of the long wait was presaged by mechanical sounds interspersed amid the racket of crushing rock. A squeal of metal joints, the clang of fearsome teeth, the size and breadth of the din becoming confusing as it came from everywhere all at once, from the floor and ceiling and the walls on all sides. Puddles were thrown into chaos. Water flew up from the ground as well as falling from above. Jimmy nearly lost his footing.

“Step back,” he yelled over the clamor. He shuffled away from the wall with Elise attached to his hip, the others obeying, wide-eyed and arms out for balance.

A section of concrete fell away, a flat sheet the size of a man. It sloughed off and fell straight down, crumbling into rubble as it hit. Dust filled the air – it seemed to emanate from within the wall itself, concrete releasing powder like a great exhalation.

Jimmy took a few more steps back, and the kids followed, worry replacing excitement. It no longer sounded like an approaching machine – it sounded like hundreds of them. They were everywhere. They were in their chests.

The din reached a furious peak, more concrete falling away, metal screaming as if beaten, great clangs and shots of sparks, and then the great digger broke through, a crack and then a gash appearing in a circular arc like a shadow racing across the wall.

The size of the cut put the noise into perspective. Cutting teeth burst through from the ceiling, spun down beneath the floor, then rose back up on the other side. Iron rods jutted out where they’d been severed. There was the smell of burning metal and chalk. The digger was coming through the wall of level one-forty-two and chewing up a good bit of the concrete above and below. It was boring a hole bigger than a silo level was tall.

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.