Shadows (15 page)

The platform swayed, coming
loose from the wall and twisting out into the shaft before falling
forward. Susan pushed off with her legs, trying to get free from
the twisted wreckage as it fell. She drove hard with her thighs,
driving them as hard as she could and springing out as the twisted
strands of steel glanced against the rope, threatening to tangle
them.

One of the platform struts
lower down still held, and the landing fell no more than twenty
feet before slamming back into the wall. Had they still been on the
landing they would have been thrown headlong down the shaft,
catapulted toward the deep. Susan was shaking, realizing that had
the rope become caught, they would have all be dragged into the
abyss, him, her and the men above.

The two of them dangled
against the rough concrete for a few seconds before frantic arms
began pulling them up to the hydroponics level.

“
You're
OK,
”
she said, unable to say anything more as water washed
over them.
“
You're
OK.
”

The boy was straddling her,
with his legs wrapped around her waist and his one good arm
reaching around her back.

Hands reached down from
above, grabbing at their coveralls and lifting them to
safety.

Chapter 08: Aftermath

“
Please
stay,
”
James said as Susan tied a rope around her waist
and prepared to climb out onto the remains of the
staircase.

“
I can't.
I've got to find my Mom and Dad. I need to make sure they're
OK.
”

“
We'll look
after James,
”
one of the men said.
“
He'll be fine.
”

Water no longer cascaded
down through the silo. Someone had sealed the busted water main,
but water still dripped from the stairs above. The men in the
hydroponics section were already thinking about repairs. They
understood how vital the stairs were and how they needed to be
restored. They'd begun looping sections of rope around the twisted
wreckage hanging from the wall of the shaft so it couldn't fall any
further and were beginning to haul the landing back up. Susan
didn't know how they'd secure the platform or if it could be
repaired, but she had no doubt about the tenacity and
resourcefulness of her fellow silo-dwellers. They'd think of
something. They wouldn't be content to see the lifeline between
levels severed.

Susan took a run up,
leaping out across the gap and grabbing hold of the stairs. The
metal frame shook under her sudden weight, but held. She untied the
rope and James pulled it back.

“
You take
care, Susan,
”
he called out.

“
You too,
James.
”

Water dripped on her head
as she worked her way around the spiral staircase moving up top.
James watched until she looped out of sight above him. He was a
good kid. She didn't have the heart to ask him about who the other
boy was that had fallen to his death. They had to have known each
other. She knew that harsh reality would catch up with him
eventually, but for now the focus on survival was a good
distraction. There would be time to mourn later.

As she approached the water
treatment plant on level eighteen she could see work teams moping
up the mess from the burst pipes. Flashes from an arc welder
stuttered through the poorly lit floor like lightning. There was
lots of noise, lots of yelling. Susan went on quietly, unnoticed.
Above eighteen, the stairs were dry, making the going
easier.

The stairs beyond sixteen
had been crushed by the falling slab from the dome. A tangle of
metal lay squished against the concrete wall. Someone had rigged a
rope at waist height across the fifteen foot gap. Susan used the
rope to steady herself as she crept over the tangled remains. She
tried not to look down. The curve of the stairs immediately below
her were at least forty feet away. On the other side of the gap,
the bolts anchoring the stairs to the wall had been severed by the
impact, and that stretch of stairs, though intact, swayed back and
forth with each step. Susan crept gingerly up to a secure section
of the old stairs.

For the first time, she
wondered about Barney and Charlie, surprised she'd thought of them
in that order. She figured they were probably still down around IT
on level thirty-four. She peered over the edge, looking at the
devastation within the shaft, hoping they were OK.

The stairs around her were
deathly quiet. There was plenty of noise down low, but where she
was, the stairs were almost empty. Most people, it seemed, were
keeping to their levels, probably repairing damage from the quake.
She could hear considerable commotion somewhere above. As she
approached level twelve she realized the noise was coming from the
garments section so she quickened her pace.

To her horror, she could
see the turnstile leading onto the level had been crushed by the
floor above. The entire eleventh floor had fallen, cutting the
height of the twelfth floor to just a few feet, barely a crawl
space. There were work crews carting people out onto the landing,
dragging them out of the darkness on blankets. With faces caked in
concrete dust contrasted with scarlet red wounds, the injured
looked like clothing mannequins.

“
Mom,
”
she cried running up the stairs
toward the rescuers.

Sheriff Cann was there,
directing the recovery effort. He saw her and stopped her, holding
out his hand.

“
Sue,
”
he said.
“
I can't let you
go in there. The level is too unstable. The entire floor could
collapse at any moment.
”

“
My
mother,
”
she pleaded, steeling herself to push past him
and rush onto the floor.

Several rescuers crawled
out covered in fine white dust. They were wearing hardhats with
flashlights taped awkwardly on one side.

“
Couldn't see
anyone else,
”
the lead man said.
“
Chalmers and Davies are digging out the crew trapped by the
loom, but there's no other responses to our
calls.
”

“
How
bad?
”
the sheriff asked, and Susan could see he struggled to
form an entire sentence. In all his days, he'd probably never seen
a disaster of this magnitude before.

“
The rear
section of the floor has pancaked. Anyone that's down there is
gone.
”

Susan was
shaking.

Sheriff Cann turned to her.
He was holding a clipboard and pencil.

“
What's your
mother's name?
”

“
Helena
Claver.
”

The sheriff studied his
notes.

“
Claver with
a C,
”
Susan added, peering at the bloodstained sheet of
paper and the hastily written notes.

“
She's
OK,
”
he said.
“
She's one of the
haulers, taking people up to the cafeteria. We're using the open
area as a makeshift hospital.
”

“
Thank
you,
”
she said, leaning in impulsively and kissing him on
the cheek.

“
Your dad
works in the farms, right?
”
he asked.
“
He should be fine. I've not heard any damage reports from
there yet.
”

Yet, was the main word she
noted in his comment. In a time of such chaos, there had to be such
caveats, she understood that, but the uncertainty made the suspense
hard to bear.

Susan
breathed deeply, saying,
“
What happened,
sheriff?
”

“
Don't
rightly know just yet, but all hell's broken loose. We've got fires
in the refinery, flooding on at least four levels and two crushed
levels that I know about. IT lost power. We've got emergency power
on all other levels, but IT is dark. I'm not hearing anything from
them.
”

Susan swallowed the lump in
her throat.

“
But no news
isn't necessarily bad news,
”
he added.
“
It's going to take some time to sort things out. We'll get
through this.
”

Susan told him what little
she knew from the hydroponics level and the water recycling plant
and then headed up to the cafeteria to find her mother. She came
across a young man assisting an elderly woman with a broken leg.
Between them, they took turns supporting her, helping her up the
stairs. She wasn't sure how long it took to climb those last few
levels, but she figured at least eight hours had passed since the
initial incident. When she finally reached the top of the grand
staircase she could see where the dome had cracked, losing at least
half of its structure. Angry bedrock sat behind the broken dome, a
dark scar marred the jagged rock.

There were hundreds of
people in the cafeteria. The wounded were lying on the tables and
benches. There were a handful of doctors and nurses from the clinic
on level five, moving between the injured. She left the boy and the
elderly lady by the serving line which has been transformed into a
triage point.

Susan scanned the crowd,
looking at the downtrodden faces, many of them bloodied, with
homemade bandages wrapped around their arms or legs, their hands or
head. She stepped over those leaning against the wall. Some people
curled up on the marble floor, exhausted from all they'd been
through.

“
Sue!
”

She turned and saw her
mother standing there in blood-soaked coveralls.

“
Mom,
”
Susan cried, stepped across the
wounded to get to her mother and hug her. Her mother's forearm had
been bandaged but other than that she looked OK. The blood must
have been from someone else.
“
Oh, Mom,
it
’
s so good to see you.
”

They sat down against the
wall, ignoring the hard, cold floor.

“
What
happened?
”
Susan asked.

“
We thought
it was just us,
”
her mother began.
“
The roof caved in. Large blocks of concrete fell from the
ceiling. I managed to get under the cutting desk. The lights went
off and people started screaming. I ... I don't even know quite how
I ended up here.
”

Susan looked into her
mother's eyes, they were dilated. She was in shock.

“
You made it,
Mom,
”
she said, hugging her again.
“
It's OK, you
made it.
”

“
Have you
heard from Dad?
”
her mother asked.

“
I ran into
Sheriff Cann, he said the farms are fine. They haven't had any
major problems. Dad's OK, Mom.
”

It wasn't
that simple, and she knew it, but at that point, her mother needed
assurance so Susan provided it, even though she knew there were
doubts. There were always doubts. Susan preferred to think she was
guessing rather than lying. Right now, her mother needed to know
he
’
d be fine. She held her trembling hand, hurt to see
her mother so badly shaken.

They sat there in silence
for a while, looking at the wall screen. The broad hill that
dominated their view of the outside world had collapsed on one
side, crumbling into a hole. Clouds of smoke billowed in to the air
from beyond the rubble, obscuring their view of the distant,
crumbling buildings. The air looked rank, with a sickly yellow
tinge unlike anything she'd seen before.

Sitting there, Susan
remembered Charlie's excitement at seeing a winged aircraft a few
days before. She'd found it hard to believe he'd seen anything at
all, but after seeing the secret sub-level within IT and its books
on the world-before she wasn't so sure of her insular silo
anymore.

The setting sun cast long
shadows through the billowing clouds, making it seem as though the
earth had opened beyond the hill and swallowed some other silo.
Something was causing the smoke, something was burning with
tremendous ferocity. She wondered about the lives that had been
lost. Was it really an entire silo just like theirs? What had
happened? How could a silo be destroyed so suddenly and
violently?

“
What could
have caused this?
”
Susan asked to no one in
particular.

Her mother didn't answer.
Susan realized she and Charlie probably understood more than anyone
else at that point. No one would dare believe there had been
another silo just over that devastated ridge. Susan wondered how
many silos there were. If there were two, there could be three,
four, five, a dozen. She had no reason to settle on any particular
number, but even just the knowledge of two silos was enough to
transform her outlook on life. She didn't know how to describe this
to anyone else. Who would believe her and Charlie? No one. And yet
there were others that knew. Hammond had to know, and possibly
Barney.