Shadows (24 page)

Lisa took Susan gently by
the arm, pulling her away. Susan didn't resist. She'd said her
piece. There were whispers from behind the barricade.

They continued down the
stairs, past locked doors and barricaded turnstiles. Each step felt
as though it were a step Susan would never pass again. A foreboding
sense of ill swept over her, and for the first time, she felt as
though she were descending into the bowels of the earth never to
return again.

Normally, by the forties,
Susan would feel a burn in her upper thighs. Although going down
was easier than climbing the stairs, her leg muscles still had to
work. The muscle groups involved in descent were technically the
same as for a climb, but the descent worked different parts of the
muscle and in a different manner, retarding progress, controlling
each foot fall instead of driving upwards. She should have felt a
burn, but she felt numb, as though her body, like the silo, was
shutting down. Lisa was quiet, but Susan suspected she too felt the
enormity of the challenge before them, the hopelessness of their
attempt to prevent war from breaking out. In some ways, it was as
though they were already grieving the loss of those that were yet
to die.

There was considerable
activity on the stairs as they approached level fifty
five.

“
This is
it,
”
Lisa said as they passed several porters carrying
various items between floors. It didn't take much to figure out
they were fortifying a set of four or five floors above them,
preparing for the onslaught to come.

“
Hey, it's
her,
”
someone called out as they rounded the curve and
walked down toward the landing. A group of men and an aging woman
walked out onto the landing. The elderly lady smiled at Lisa and
held her arms out.

“
I knew you
would come,
”
she cried.

“
You know why
I came,
”
Lisa replied curtly, stepping on to the
landing.

“
You think
this is a mistake,
”
the older woman said, brushing back
her grey hair and glancing at Susan.
“
But this time,
things will be different.
”

“
This
time,
”
Lisa replied.
“
They will hunt down
every last one of you.
”

“
Ha ha. Oh,
my dear Lisa. You have not changed in the
slightest.
”

“
Mother,
”
Lisa began,
“
this is Sue.
Sue, this is my mother. Leader of the
revolution.
”

Susan shook the old lady's
hand, feeling the firm grip of her steely fingers. She was unsure
how to greet Lisa's mother. Under ordinary circumstances, she would
have felt privileged to meet her mother, but knowing this woman
would lead hundreds to their deaths sent a chill down her
spine.

“
Do not be
worried by my daughter,
”
the woman
began.
“
She thinks I
’
m
mad.
”

Susan didn't want to say
it, but Lisa wasn't the only one. How could so many people rally
around this woman? What silver-tongued charisma did she possess?
And in that moment, Susan understood this wasn't about Charlie. The
unrest she had witnessed must have been festering away for decades.
Charlie was a lit match falling on dry tinder wood.

“
Ma'am,
”
Susan began, noting that the men
that had gathered around were listening intently.
“
We have come to appeal to reason. We've seen the
fortifications on thirty-four. To storm that bastion is to condemn
hundreds to die with no guarantee of winning, and if hundreds die,
we lose. Regardless of whether you overthrow Hammond, to see so
many lives wasted like rotten fruit is to lose sight of all you're
fighting for.
”

“
And what
would you have us do?
”
the old lady replied, resting her
hands on her oversized hips.
“
Would you have us
surrender to that mad man?
”

“
Oh, I agree
he's mad,
”
Susan replied.
“
And there is no one
that wants justice more than I, but the cost is too great. Even if
you were to win this war, the toll it would exact on the silo would
be a loss far greater than anything Hammond has ever done or could
ever do.
”

“
You haven't
answered my question,
”
the woman replied curtly. Lisa,
Susan noted, was conspicuously silent. Susan was on her own, and
probably with good reason. Susan could see why Lisa brought her
down here, because this was one argument she could never
win.

“
What would I
have you do?
”
she replied, thinking aloud.
“
I would have you win hearts, not levels. I want change, and
that's what Charlie wanted. But change cannot come from the blade
of a knife or the barrel of a gun, change must come from within.
Think about Hammond. Think about the power he welds. It is not the
man you need to defeat, it is his position, his authority in the
mind of others. The key to defeating Hammond is in destroying the
one thing that no weapon can touch, his stature, his reputation.
Attacking anything else is folly.
”

Heads nodded around
her.

“
You'd have
us stand down?
”
the woman asked.

“
In standing
down, you're taking the high ground. You're proving him wrong. He's
staking his reputation on you proving him right and storming
through those doors on thirty-four. Attack, and you're playing
right into his hands. Return to the work of restoration and you'll
win the hearts and minds of those in IT, you'll erode his power
base.
”

The old woman
nodded her head thoughtfully, turning to Lisa and saying,
“
You were right about her. She should cast, not
shadow.
”

Lisa smiled.

Susan was silent. To keep
talking would have weakened her position. She'd made her point, now
it was their call.

“
You've given
us much to think about,
”
the woman
said.
“
We need to talk among ourselves and with the
other factions. I give you my word, we will debate your position
and send notice to you before we act one way or the
other.
”

“
Thank
you,
”
Susan said.

Lisa nodded to her mother,
bowing slightly and showing her a sense of respect that reached
beyond parentage, surprising Susan. Susan took her cue from Lisa
and nodded as well.

The two women turned and
started the long, arduous climb back up through the silo. Neither
said much, but the tension of the descent had passed, making the
climb more rudimentary.

Passing through IT on
thirty-four, Susan noted that there was no verbal challenge as
there had been on the way down. She wondered about the men and
women on that floor, knowing they were as scared and confused as
anyone else. She understood that they felt threatened, that they
too wanted to do what was right for the silo. Well, she was
confident about all of them bar one, Hammond. She had no illusions
about his treachery, but they were merely pawns in his
game.

By the time she reached her
level, she was exhausted.

Lisa hugged her and kissed
her on the cheek as she bid her goodnight, which surprised Susan as
it was a level of affection she'd never shown before. When Susan
finally staggered inside her parents apartment it was a little
after ten at night, but it felt like two or three in the morning.
Her parents were asleep. She couldn't be bother changing into her
pajamas. She simply pulled off her boots, slipped out of her
coveralls and collapsed into bed, wrapping the sheets around her.
She was asleep in seconds.

Chapter 13: Message

It was still dark when
someone thumped on the door.

Susan rolled over, peering
out from beneath her blankets as her father got out of bed and
limped to the door. He opened the door and light spilled into the
cramped apartment, blinding her. There was no one there. He
muttered something and bent down, picking up a scrap of paper that
had been shoved under the door.

Susan turned toward the
wall, wanting to go back to sleep. The door closed and darkness
descended again.

A hand shook her
gently.

Her dad
said,
“
It's for you.
”

Susan sat up, wrapping
herself in a sheet as he turned on a bedside light. Her bleary eyes
struggled to focus on the words scrawled on the twenty-chit scrap
of recycled paper.

Susan, meet me up
top.

“
Who is it
from?
”
her father asked.

“
I don't
know,
”
she replied, running one hand through her hair.
She didn't recognize the writing.
“
Sheriff Cann, I
think, or maybe Lisa.
”

“
Most people
call you Sue,
”
her father noted.
“
Who calls you Susan?
”

“
Everyone.
Anyone. No one,
”
she replied wearily, climbing out of
bed with the sheet around her.

“
Well,
”
he replied.
“
Tell them, next
time, wait for dawn.
”

Susan nodded, heading for
the bathroom as her father staggered back to bed. His legs were
healing, but he really shouldn't have gotten up. She should have
gotten the door, she figured, berating herself for being so
tired.

The bathroom light was
blinding, causing her to blink in the harsh glare. Deep rings
circled her eyes. She splashed cold water on her face, feeling the
brisk chill shock her awake.

Susan turned off the light
and slipped back out into the apartment, feeling for her clothes
from the day before. She got dressed in the dark, trying not to
disturb her parents.

As she slipped out through
the door of the apartment she glanced back, using the increased
ambient light to look at the clock and see the time: 4:45 AM. Her
Dad was right, Lisa could have waited till dawn. Susan figured it
was Lisa, perhaps with news from her mother. Why not just wait in
the hallway for her to come out of her apartment? And why make her
traipse up seven levels when they could have chatted on the
landing?

Walking up the stairs in
the half-light, Susan felt as though she'd never walked those
stairs before. Perhaps it was the quake, perhaps it was all that
had happened with Charlie, perhaps it was that she was still
half-asleep, but a surreal sense of distance swept over her, as
though she were in a dream.

The cafeteria was dark.
There were no lights on in the kitchen or in the sheriff's office.
The only light came from the massive wall-screen stretching fifteen
feet high and almost forty feet across. Outside, stars fought to
break through the patchy black clouds. The sepia tones of the day
had been replaced with a ghostly hue of night. The dead bodies of
cleaners past littered the ground, their suits like gravestones.
Smoke continued to billow from the fractured remains of the other
silo.

Susan sat on Charlie's
bench, facing the screen the way Charlie once had, but she couldn't
see what he would have seen. For her, this was a vision of hell, of
unquenchable fire, of dark ash and death. What could she learn from
this? What could anyone see other than senseless waste and mindless
destruction? There was nothing out there, nothing but
sorrow.

Footsteps approached from
behind. Boots stepped softly on the polished marble floor, being
considerate rather than brash. She was aware of them, but she was
so lost she couldn't turn away from the screen.

“
Didn't
expect to see you up here,
”
a familiar voice
said as the sheriff sat down beside her.

“
Morning,
sheriff,
”
she said, finally turning to look at him. She
wasn't sure what expression he saw on her face, but he seemed
heartbroken to see her ragged features. The old man reached around
and hugged her, pulling her shoulder in toward him. She rested her
head on his chest.

“
He was a
good man,
”
Sheriff Cann said.

Susan
didn
’
t replied. Her hurt was too raw.

“
Damn, it was
good to see him make the top of that ridge.
”

The sheriff laughed at the
thought. Looking up at him, Susan could see the reflection of the
wall-screen in his glassy eyes.