Shadows (25 page)

“
If anyone
could do it, I knew Charlie would,
”
he
continued.
“
You know, I
shouldn't be telling you this, but ... Did you notice the color of
his oxygen tank?
”

Susan sat bolt upright. She
turned and looked at the screen, even though Charlie wasn't there,
he'd made it over the hill before dying. The other cleaners,
though, lay motionless with their silver oxygen bottles still
strapped to their backs.

“
Black,
”
she said, remembering but not
understanding.

“
I may not be
the sheriff anymore,
”
the old man said.
“
But thirty years in this job gets you some connections. I
called in a few debts, pulled a few strings and got Supply to
switch cylinders. Normally, cleaners only get five minutes, but
Charlie ... Oh, I so wanted to see him make it over that damn
ridge. Charlie got a scuba tank, the ones they use to repair the
pumps during a flood.
”

“
Hah,
”
Susan cried, unable to suppress her
surprise.

The sheriff
smiled, adding,
“
You should have seen
the look on old Hammond's face when he saw Charlie out there with a
black cylinder. He knew what that meant.
”

Susan slapped the sheriff's
thigh playfully as though she were scolding him.

“
Yeah, the
old geezer knew. Gave me the evil eye. Oh, Sue, I'm sorry I
couldn't have done more, but at least I could make sure he'd get
over that damn ridge.
”

“
How much air
did he have?
”
she asked, astonished by the
sheriff's admission.

“
Dunno. An
hour, maybe an hour and a half.
”

Susan sighed.

“
What do you
think he saw from up there?
”
the sheriff
asked.

Susan thought
about it for a second before answering,
“
Freedom.
”

The sheriff never took his
eyes off the wall-screen, he simply nodded slowly in
agreement.

Behind them, there were
more footsteps, only these steps were lighter and the footfalls
were quicker, closer together. Neither Susan nor the sheriff felt
compelled to turn around.

“
This had
better be good, Herman,
”
a woman's voice
snapped.

They turned to see the
mayor standing there with a scrap of paper in her hand. Susan
reached into her pocket and pulled out the recycled paper that had
been shoved under her door.

“
Well, I'll
be,
”
the sheriff said, pulling out a similar piece of paper
as he addressed Susan.
“
I thought you'd
slipped this under my door.
”

“
Me?
”
Susan said, holding her scrap of
paper up in defense.

“
What is
going on, sheriff?
”
the mayor demanded.

Shadows moved in the
kitchen.

Someone
walked out of the darkness, saying,
“
Perhaps I can
explain.
”

“
CHARLIE!
”
Susan screamed, jumping up from the
bench seat and sprinting over to him. She threw her arms around his
neck and almost knocked him off his feet, causing him to stagger
backwards. The rush of adrenalin she felt translated into what must
have amounted to a crushing hug, but she didn't care. To feel him
beneath her arms and pressed against her chest gave her an
overwhelming sense of joy.

“
Hey,
”
he said, gently resting one arm
around her back.
“
It
’
s good to see you too, Susan.
”

“
Oh,
Charlie,
”
she cried, madly kissing him on the lips and
cheeks.
“
Is it you? Is it really you?
”

Charlie just smiled. He was
wearing the white coveralls of an IT worker, but the pristine
coveralls had patches of blood smeared on them, seeping through
from beneath.

Susan
couldn't let go of him. She had to touch him, if only to convince
herself he was real, that she wasn't trapped in some cruel dream.
Her fingers brushed against the thick bandages on his arm and he
winced with pain, which horrified her. Sweeping her hair behind her
ears, she pulled back, saying,
“
Are you
OK?
”

“
I'm a little
sore,
”
he confessed, and Susan struggled to imagine
what must have happened to him and what horrible injuries lay
beneath his bandages. Blood seeped from around the bandage reaching
down to his wrist, while his left hand had been wrapped in a ball
so that none of the fingers protruded.

“
Come with
me,
”
he said.
“
There's a lot we
need to talk about.
”

They walked over to the
table where the sheriff and the mayor were seated. Charlie had a
slight limp and must have been in considerable pain.

He sat on the opposite side
of the table facing the sheriff and the mayor, with his back to the
wall-screen. In the pale light, Susan could see bandages wrapped
around his neck and up over his head, covering one of his ears. In
her rush to greet him, she'd missed how badly injured he was. She'd
only seen what she wanted to see.

“
What
happened?
”
she asked, sitting beside him, straddling the
seat so she faced him as he spoke.

Charlie
raised his bandaged arms and hands, saying,
“
I was right
about the seals. Even with extra rubber, they don't last long. I
lost most of the skin off my arms, burned off by that poisonous
air.
”

The mayor was conspicuously
silent. She looked pale.

“
I don't
understand,
”
the sheriff said.
“
How did you survive?
”

Charlie smiled. It was good
to see him smile, thought Susan, and she couldn't help herself, she
had to keep touching him. She reached out and rested her hands
gently on his thigh as he explained.

“
I didn't
know what to expect when I got to the top of the ridge, but it
certainly wasn't what I saw. Standing there, I looked out over a
field of silos reaching as far as I could see through the smoke and
haze. They were staggered, slightly offset from each other so that
the rows between them curled and curved around the various sunken
concrete bunkers. Each silo was identical, sitting at the bottom of
a broad dustbowl with the bodies of cleaners scattered across the
hillside.
”

He paused.

Looking in his eyes, Susan
could see he was reliving the moment, describing precisely what he
could see.

“
I staggered
on, following the ridge line, shocked by the realization there were
so many other silos. The wind came in gusts, howling like a ghost.
The only other sound was the gentle hiss of oxygen inside my
suit.

“
I thought I
was going to die out there, on the rim of some other silo, just a
stranger staggering into view, but then I saw footprints. Someone
else had made it out of the dustbowls. By this time, the poison was
seeping in around my gloves, eating away at my hands, and I felt
myself becoming delirious. My breathing became labored.

“
I followed
the footprints. There were so many of them. Hundreds of cleaners
had walked this way. I thought I was dreaming. I couldn't
understand how there could be so many of them, and the footsteps
had to be fresh as there were spots where the wind had blown them
away, but they'd appear again, just a few feet further along the
dusty ridge line.
”

Sheriff Cann
leaned forward on his elbows with his chin resting on his clenched
hands. The mayor didn
’
t move. Susan didn't
see her so much as blink.

“
As I
staggered on, the haze slowly faded. The dust gave way to rocks.
The rocks gave way to grass. At first, I didn't believe it, but the
grass wasn't green, it wasn't like the counterfeit images fed to
the cleaners.
”

The sheriff looked
surprised. He turned to the mayor, looking for some kind of
acknowledgement or explanation, but she simply dropped her head in
shame, tacitly verifying Charlie's claim.

“
The grass
was yellow and sickly, but it was alive. I looked up and the sky
was no longer yellow. Patches of clear blue broke through the dust
as I stumbled on. At some point, I collapsed. I don't know if I was
out of oxygen or weakened by the poison, but I felt like I was
going to die, only the leaks that allowed the poison to burn my
arms now allowed fresh air to seep through the gaps. I'm not sure
how long I laid there, but I woke to the smell of flowers. There
was a meadow covered in more flowers than I had ever seen in my
life. Someone was carrying me over their shoulder, carrying me away
from the dust storm.
”

“
There are
others?
”
Susan cried, her heart racing at the
thought.

Charlie
turned to her, smiling as he said.
“
Hundreds of
them.
”

“
I,
”
the sheriff began.
“
I don't know what to say.
”

“
What proof
do we have?
”
the mayor asked.

“
What more
proof do you need?
”
Charlie replied, holding his arms
apart and gesturing to himself.

“
So you're
saying, all this is over?
”
she asked.
“
The Great Dying has finished?
”

“
I'm saying
it's confined. We don't see the whole world. We see just a fragment
of it. Out beyond the dust, there's life.
”

The mayor
turned to Sheriff Cann who, without hesitation said,
“
I believe him.
”

“
There's one
thing I don't understand,
”
the mayor
said.
“
How did you get back? You said you were out of
oxygen. You said your suit was leaking. How did you get back in
here without using the airlock?
”

Charlie
turned toward the darkened kitchen and called out,
“
Jules.
”

The lights in the kitchen
flickered. Four dark figures stood by the wall as the lights came
up to strength. Two men and two women had been waiting there for
Charlie's signal.

“
Get the
stairs,
”
one of the women said, and the two men ran over
to the stairwell and headed down the steps. Susan couldn't imagine
what they would do to anyone climbing the stairs to open the
kitchen or reach the sheriff's office, but she had no doubt from
the conviction with which the men moved that no one would be
disturbing their conversation by the wall-screen.

The two women walked over.
One of them was dressed in the dark blue coveralls of a mechanic
while the other was wearing a drab, olive green pair of coveralls
unlike anything Susan had ever seen before.

“
This is
Juliette and Charlotte,
”
Charlie said,
gesturing toward the women.

“
Just
Jules,
”
the woman in the blue coveralls insisted,
walking over with a friendly smile on her face.

“
I ... I've
never seen you before,
”
the mayor said as the realization
sank in that this was someone from outside their silo.

“
Nope, you
certainly haven't,
”
Jules replied, coming around and
sitting on the other side of Charlie. Charlotte stood at the end of
the table with a long cylinder tucked under her arm. Her formality
surprised Susan, there was something different about Charlotte,
something beyond her strange coveralls, something that spoke of
life beyond the silo.

Jules reached out across
the table, offering a friendly hand first to the mayor and then the
sheriff. The mayor responded timidly, weakly, while the sheriff
raised himself, partially standing up as he shook Jules' hand
vigorously.

“
I'm the
mayor of what was once Silo Eighteen,
”
Jules began.
“
Charlotte is from Silo One.
”

Charlie spoke
to Mayor Johns, saying,
“
I know this is
difficult. I know this is a lot to accept all at once, but we
didn't know how else to break this to you. We figured the quiet of
the morning would be best, when there was no one else
around.
”