Wool-Omnibus Edition

3
Three weeks later
? Silo 18 ?
Walker remained in his cot and listened to the sounds of distant violence. Shouts echoed down his hallway, emanating from the entrance to Mechanical. The familiar patter of gunfire came next, the pop pop pop of the good guys followed by the ratatatat of the bad.
There was an incredible bang, the roar of blasting powder against steel, and the back and forth crackle ended for a moment. More shouting. Boots clomping down his hallway, past his door. The boots were the constant beat to the music of this new world, music Walker could hear from his cot. He could hear everything from his cot, even with the blankets drawn over his head, even with his pillow on top, even as he begged, out loud, over and over, for it to please stop.
The boots in the hallway carried with them more shouting. Walker curled up into a tight ball, knees against his chest, wondering what time it was, dreading that it was morning, time to get up.
A brief respite of silence formed, that quiet of tending to the wounded, their groans too faint to penetrate his sealed door.
Walker tried to fall asleep before the music was turned back up. But as always: the quiet was worse. During the quiet, he grew anxious as he waited for the next patter to erupt. His impatience for sleep often frightened that very sleep away. And he would grow terrified that the resistance was finally over, that the bad guys had won and were coming for him—
Someone banged on his door—a small and angry fist unmistakable to his expert ears. Four harsh knocks, and then she was gone.
Shirly. She would have left his breakfast rations in the usual place and taken away last night’s picked-over and mostly uneaten dinner. Walker grunted and rolled his old bones over to the other side. Boots clomped. Always rushing, always anxious, forever warring. And his once quiet hallway, so far from the machines and pumps that really needed tending to, was now a busy thoroughfare. It was the entrance hall that mattered now, the funnel into which all the hate was poured. Screw the silo, the people above and the machines below, just fight over this worthless patch of ground, pile the bodies on either side until one gives, do it because it was yesterday’s cause, and because nobody wanted to remember back any further than yesterday.
But Walker did. He remembered—
The door to his workshop burst open. Through a gap in his filthy cocoon, Walker could see Jenkins, a boy in his twenties but with a beard that made him appear older, a boy who had inherited this mess the moment Knox died. The lad stormed through the maze of workbenches and scattered parts, aiming straight for Walker’s cot.
“I’m up,” Walker groaned, hoping Jenkins would go away.
“No you’re not.” Jenkins reached the cot and prodded Walker in the ribs with the barrel of his gun. “C’mon, old man, up!”
Walker tensed away from him. He wiggled an arm loose to wave the boy away.
Jenkins peered down gravely, a frown buried in his beard, his young eyes wrinkled with worry. “We need that radio fixed, Walk. We’re getting battered out there. And if I can’t listen in, I don’t think I can defend this place.”
Walker tried to push himself upright. Jenkins grabbed the strap of his coveralls and gave him some rough assistance.
“I was up all night on it,” Walker told him. He rubbed his face. His breath was awful.
“Is it fixed? We need that radio, Walk. You do know Hank risked his life to get that thing to us, right?”
“Well, he should’ve risked a bit more and sent a manual,” Walker complained. He pressed his hands to his knees, and with much complaint from his joints, he stood and staggered toward the workbench, his blankets spilling to the floor in a heap. His legs were still half asleep, his hands tingling with the weak sensation of not being able to form a proper fist.
“I got the battery sorted,” he told Jenkins. “Turns out that wasn’t the problem.” Walker glanced toward his open door and saw Harper, a refinery worker turned soldier, standing in the hallway. Harper had become Jenk’s number two when Pieter was killed. Now he was peering down at Walker’s breakfast, practically salivating into it.
“Help yourself,” Walker called out. He waved dismissively at the steaming bowl.
Harper glanced up, eyes wide, but that was as long as he hesitated. He leaned his rifle against the wall and sat down in the workshop doorway, shoveling food into his mouth.
Jenkins grunted disapprovingly but didn’t say anything.
“So, see here?” Walker showed him the arrangement on the workbench where various pieces of the small radio unit had been separated and were now wired together so everything was accessible. “I’ve got constant power.” He patted the transformer he had built to bypass the battery. “And the speakers work.” He keyed the transmit button, and there was a pop and hiss of static from his bench speakers. “But nothing comes through. They aren’t saying anything.” He turned to Jenkins. “I’ve had it on all night, and I’m not a deep sleeper.”
Jenkins studied him.
“I would’ve heard,” he insisted. “They aren’t talking.”
Jenkins rubbed his face, made a fist. He kept his eyes closed, his forehead resting in one palm, a weariness in his voice. “You think maybe something broke when you tore it apart?”
“Disassembled,” Walker said with a sigh. “I didn’t tear it apart.”
Jenkins gazed up at the ceiling and relaxed his fist. “So you think they aren’t using them anymore, is that it? Do you reckon they know we have one? I swear, I think this damn priest they sent is a spy. Shit’s been fallin’ apart since we let him in here to give last rites.”
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” Walker admitted. “I think they’re still using the radios, they’ve just excluded this one somehow. Look, I made another antenna, a stronger one.”
He showed him the wires snaking up from the workbench and spiraling around the steel beam rafters overhead.
Jenkins followed his finger, then snapped his head toward the door. There was more shouting down the hallway. Harper stopped eating for a moment and listened. But only for a moment. He dug his spoon back into the cornmush.
“I just need to know when I’ll be able to listen in again.” Jenkins tapped the workbench with his finger, then picked his rifle back up. “I don’t need to know about all this—” He waved a hand at Walker’s work. “—all this wizardry.”
Walker plopped down on his favorite stool and peered at the myriad circuits that once had been jammed into the radio’s cramped innards. “It’s not wizardry,” he said. “It’s electrics.” He pointed at two of the boards, connected by wires he had lengthened and re-soldered so he could analyze all the bits more closely. “I know what most of these do, but you’ve gotta remember that nothing about these devices are known, not outside of IT, anyway. I’m havin’ to theorize while I tinker.”
Jenkins rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Just let me know when you’ve got something. All your other work orders can wait. This is the only thing that matters. Got that?”
Walker nodded. Jenkins turned and barked at Harper to get the hell off the floor.
They left Walker on his stool, their boots picking up the beat of the music again.
Alone, he stared down at the machine strung out across his workbench, its little green lights on its mysterious boards lit up and taunting him. His hand drifted to his magnifiers as if by their own accord, as if by decades of habit, when all Walker really wanted was to crawl back into his cot, to wrap his cocoon around himself, to disappear.
He needed help, he thought. He looked around at all that required doing and as ever, his thoughts turned to Scottie, his little shadow. There had been a slice of time, somewhere sliding away from him now and fading into the slippery past, where Walker had been a happy man. Where his life should’ve ended to keep him from enduring any of the suffering beyond. But he had made it through that brief bliss and now could hardly recall it. He couldn’t imagine what it felt like to rise with anticipation in the morning, to fall asleep with contentment at the end of every day.
It was only fear and dread anymore. And between: regret.
He had started all of this, all the noise and violence. Walker was convinced of that. Every life lost was on his wrinkled hands. Every tear shed was by his actions. Nobody said it, but he could feel them thinking it. One little message to Supply, one favor for Juliette, just a chance at dignity, an opportunity to test her wild and horrible theory, to bury herself out of sight—and now look at the cascade of events, the eruption of anger, the senseless violence.
It wasn’t worth it, he decided. This was how the math always added up: not worth it. Nothing seemed worth it anymore.
He bent over his workbench and set his old hands to tinkering. This was what he did, what he had always done. There was no escaping it now, no stopping those fingers with their papery skin, those palms with their deep lines that seemed to never end, not when they should. He followed those lines down to his bony wrists where weak little veins ran like buried wire with blue insulation.
One snip, and off he goes to see Scottie, to see Juliette.
It was tempting.
Especially since Walker figured, wherever they were, whether the priests were onto something or simply ratshit mad, he figured both of his old friends were in far better places than he . . .

4
? Silo 17 ?
A tiny strand of copper wire stood at right angles to the rest. It was like a silo landing shooting off the great stairway, a bit of flat amid the twisted spiral. As Juliette wrapped the pads of her fingers around the wire and worked the splice into place, this jutting barb sank into her finger, stinging her like some angry insect.
Juliette cursed and shook her hand. She very nearly dropped the other end of the wire, which would’ve sent it tumbling several levels down.
She wiped the welling spot of blood onto her gray coveralls, then finished the splice and secured the wires to the railing to keep the strain off. She still didn’t see how they had come loose, but everything in this cursed and dilapidated silo seemed to be coming apart. Her senses were the least of it.
She leaned far out over the railing and placed her hand on the hodgepodge of pipes and tubing fastened to the concrete wall of the stairwell. She tried to discern, with hands chilled by the cool air of the deep, any vibration from water gurgling through the pipe.
“Anything?” she called down to Solo. There seemed to be the slightest tremor in the plastic tubing, but it could’ve been her pulse rather than its.
“I think so!”
Solo’s thin voice echoed from far below.
Juliette frowned and peered down the dimly lit shaft, down that gap between steel step and thick concrete. She would have to go see for herself.
Leaving her small tool bag on the steps—no danger of anyone coming along to trip over it—she took the treads two at a time and spiraled her way deeper into the silo. The electrical wiring and the long snake of pipes spun into view with each rotation, drips of purple adhesive marking every laborious joint she’d cut and fastened by hand.
Other wiring ran alongside hers, electrical cables snaking from IT far above to power the grow lights of the lower farms. Juliette wondered who had rigged this stuff up. It hadn’t been Solo; this wiring had been strung during the early days of silo 17’s downfall. Solo had simply become the lucky beneficiary of someone else’s hard and desperate work. Grow lights now obeyed their timers, the greenery obeyed the urge to blossom, and beyond the stale stench of oil and gas, of floods and unmoving air, the ripe tinge of plants growing out of control could be nosed from several landings away.
Juliette stopped at the landing of one-thirty-six, the last dry landing before the flood. Solo had tried to warn her, had tried to tell her even as she lusted over the image of the massive diggers on the wall-sized schematic. Hell, she should’ve known about the flood without being told. Groundwater was forever seeping into her own silo, a hazard of living below the water table. Without power to the pumps, the water would naturally make its way in and rise.
Out on the landing, she leaned on the steel railing and caught her breath. A dozen steps below, Solo stood on the single dry tread their efforts had exposed. Nearly three weeks of wiring and plumbing, of scrapping a good section of the lower hydroponics farm, of finding a pump and routing the overflow to the water treatment facility tanks, and they had uncovered a single step.
Solo turned and smiled up at her. “It’s working, right?” He scratched his head, his wild hair jutting at all angles, his beard flecked with gray that his youthful jubilance denied. The hopeful question hung in the air, a cloud visible from the cold of the down deep.
“It’s not working enough,” Juliette told him, annoyed with the progress. She peered over the railing, past the jutting toes of borrowed boots and to the colorful slick of water below. The mirrored surface of oil and gas stood perfectly still. Beneath this coat of slime, the emergency lights of the stairwell glowed eerily green, lending the depths a haunting look that matched the rest of the empty silo.
In that silence, Juliette heard a faint gurgle in the pipe beside her. She even thought she could hear the distant buzz of the submerged pump a dozen or so feet below the oil and gas. She tried to will the water up that tube, up twenty levels and hundreds of joints to the vast and empty treatment tanks above.
Solo coughed into his fist. “What if we install another—?”
Juliette raised her hand to quiet him. She was doing the math.
The volume of the eight levels of Mechanical were difficult to figure, so many corridors and rooms that may or may not be flooded, but she could guess the height of the cylindrical shaft from Solo’s feet to the security station. The lone pump had moved the level of the flood a little less than a foot in two weeks. Eighty or ninety feet to go. With another pump, say a year to get to the entrance of Mechanical. Depending on how watertight the intervening levels were, it could be much more. Mechanical itself could take three or four times as long to clear.
“What about another pump?” Solo insisted.
Juliette felt nauseous. Even with three more of the small pumps from the hydroponic farms, and with three more runs of pipe and wiring to go with them, she was looking at a year, possibly two, before the silo was perfectly dry. She wasn’t sure if she had a year. Just a few weeks of being in that abandoned place, alone with a half-sane man, and she was already starting to hear whispers, to forget where she was leaving things, finding lights on she swore she’d turned off. Either she was going crazy, or Solo found humor in making her feel that way. Two years of this life, of her home so close but so impossibly far away—
She leaned over the railing, feeling like she really might be sick. As she gazed down at the water and through her reflection cast in that film of oil, she suddenly considered risks even crazier than two years of near-solitude.
“Two years,” she told Solo. It felt like voicing a death sentence. “Two years. That’s how long this’ll take if we add three more pumps. Six months at least on the stairwell, but the rest will go slower.”
“Two years!” Solo sung. “Two years two years!” He tapped his boot twice against the water on the step below, sending her reflection into sickening waves of distortion. He spun in place, peering up at her. “That’s no time!”
Juliette fought to control her frustration. Two years would feel like forever. And what would they find down there, anyway? What condition would the main generator be in? Or the diggers? A machine submerged under fresh water might be preserved as long as air didn’t get to it, but as soon as any of it was exposed by the pumps, the corrosion would begin. It was the nastiness of oxygen working on wet metal that spelled doom for anything useful down there. Machines and tools would need to be dried immediately and then oiled. And with only two of them—
Juliette watched, horrified, as Solo bent down, waved away the film of grease at his feet, and scooped up two palms of the brackish filth below. He slurped noisily and happily.
—okay, with only one of them working diligently at salvaging the machines, it wouldn’t be enough.
Maybe she’d be able to salvage the backup generator. It would require less work and still provide plenty of power.
“What to do for two years?” Solo asked, wiping his beard with the back of his hand and looking up at her.
Juliette shook her head. “We’re not waiting two years,” she told him. The last three weeks in silo 17 had been too much. This, she didn’t say.
“Okay,” he said, shrugging. He clomped up the stairwell in his too-big boots. His gray coveralls were also baggy, like he was still trying to wear clothing tailored for his father. He joined Juliette on the landing, smiled at her through his glistening beard. “You look like you have more projects,” he said happily.
She nodded silently. Anything the two of them worked on, whether it was fixing the sloppy wiring of the long-ago dead, or improving the farms, or repairing a light fixture’s ballast, Solo referred to as a “project.” And he professed to love projects. She decided it was something from his youth, some sort of survival mechanism he’d concocted over the years that allowed him to tackle whatever needed doing with a smile instead of horror or loneliness.
“Oh, we’ve got quite a project ahead of us,” Juliette told him, already dreading the job. She started making a mental list of all the tools and spares they’d need to scrounge on their way back up.
Solo laughed and clapped his hands. “Good,” he said. “Back to the workshop!” He twirled his finger over his head, pointing up at the long climb ahead of them.
“Not yet,” she said. “First, some lunch at the farms. Then we need to stop by Supply for some more things. And then I need some time alone in the server room.” Juliette turned away from the railing and that deep shaft of silver-green water below. “Before we get started in the workshop,” she said, “I’d like to make a call—”
“A call!” Solo pouted. “Not a call. You spend all your time on that stupid thing—”
Juliette ignored him and hit the stairs. She began the long slog up, her fifth in three weeks. And she knew Solo was right: she was spending too much time making calls, too much time with those headphones pulled down over her ears, listening to them beep. She knew it was crazy, that she was going slowly mad in that place, but sitting at the back of that empty server with her microphone close to her lips and the world made quiet by the cups over her ears—just having that wire linking her from a dead world to one that harbored life—it was the closest she could get in silo 17 to making herself feel sane.

5
? Silo 18 ?
“—was the year the Civil War consumed the thirty-three states. More American lives were lost in this conflict than in all the subsequent ones combined, for any death was a death among kin. For four years, the land was ravaged, smoke clearing over battlefields of ruin to reveal brother heaped upon brother. More than half a million lives were lost. Some estimates range to almost twice that. Disease, hunger, and heartbreak ruled the life of man—”
The pages of the book flashed crimson just as Lukas was getting to the descriptions of the battlefields. He stopped reading and glanced up at the overhead lights. Their steady white had been replaced with the throbbing red, which meant someone was in the server room above him. He retrieved the loose silver thread curled up on the knee of his coveralls and laid it carefully into the spine of the book. Closing the old tome, he returned it to its tin case with care, then slid it into the gap on the bookshelf, completing the vast wall of silvery spines. Padding silently across the room, he bent down in front of the computer and shook the mouse to wake the screen.
A window popped up with live views of the servers, only distorted from such wide angles. It was another secret in a room overflowing with them, this ability to see distant places. Lukas searched through the cameras, wondering if it was Sammi or another tech coming to make a repair. His grumbling stomach, meanwhile, hoped it was someone bringing him lunch.
In camera four, he finally spotted his visitor: A short figure in gray coveralls sporting a mustache and glasses. He was slightly stooped, a tray in his hands dancing with silverware, a sloshing glass of water, and a covered plate, all of it partly supported by his protruding belly. Bernard glanced up at the camera as he walked by, his eyes piercing Lukas from a level away, a tight smile curling below his mustache.
Lukas left the computer and hurried down the hallway to get the hatch for him, his bare feet slapping softly on the cool steel grating. He scrambled up the ladder with practiced ease and slid the worn red locking handle to the side. Just as he lifted the grate, Bernard’s shadow threw the ladderway into darkness. The tray came to a clattering rest as Lukas shifted the section of flooring out of the way.
“I’m spoiling you today,” Bernard said. He sniffed and uncovered the plate. A fog of trapped steam billowed out of the metal hood—two stacks of pork ribs revealing themselves underneath.
“Wow.” Lukas felt his stomach rumble at the sight of the meat. He lifted himself out of the hatch and sat on the floor, feet dangling down by the ladder. He pulled the tray into his lap and picked up the silverware. “I thought we had the silo on strict rations, at least until the resistance was over.”
He cut a piece of tender meat free and popped it in his mouth. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you.” He chewed and savored the rush of proteins, reminded himself to be thankful for the animal’s sacrifice.
“The rations haven’t been lifted,” Bernard said. He crouched down and waved at the plate. “We had a pocket of resistance flare up in the bazaar, and this poor guy found himself in the crossfire. I wasn’t about to let him go to waste. Most of the meat, of course, went to the wives and husbands of those we’ve lost—”
“Mmm?” Lukas swallowed. “How many?”
“Five, plus the three from that first attack.”
Lukas shook his head.
“It’s not bad, considering.” Bernard brushed his mustache with his hand and watched Lukas eat. Lukas gestured with his fork while he chewed, offering him some, but Bernard waved him away. The older man leaned back on the empty server that housed the uplink and the locking handle for the ladderway. Lukas tried not to react.
“So how long will I need to stay in here?” He tried to sound calm, like any answer would do. “It’s been three weeks, right?” He cut off another bite, ignoring the vegetables. “You think a few more days?”
Bernard rubbed his cheeks and ran his fingers up through his thinning hair. “I hope, but I don’t know. I’ve left it up to Sims, who’s convinced the threat isn’t over. Mechanical has themselves barricaded pretty good down there. They’ve threatened to cut the power, but I don’t think they will. I think they finally get that they don’t control the juice up here on our levels. They probably tried to cut it before they stormed in, and then were surprised to see us all lit up.”
“You don’t think they’ll cut the power to the farms, do you?” He was thinking of the rations, his fear of the silo being starved.
Bernard frowned. “Eventually. Maybe. If they get desperate enough. But that’ll just erode whatever support those greasers have up here. Don’t worry, they’ll get hungry enough and give in. It’s all going by the book.”
Lukas nodded and took a sip of water. The pork was the best he thought he’d ever had.
“Speaking of the book,” Bernard asked, “are you catching up with your studies?”
“Yeah,” Lukas lied. He nodded. In truth, he had hardly touched the book of Order. The more interesting details were found elsewhere.
“Good. When this annoyance is over, we’ll schedule you some extra shifts in the server room. You can spend that time shadowing. Once we reschedule the election, and I don’t think anyone else will run, especially not after all this, I’ll be up-top a lot more. IT will be yours to run.”
Lukas set down the glass and picked up the cloth napkin. He wiped his mouth and thought about this. “Well, I hope you’re not talking weeks from now. I feel like I’ve got years of—”
A buzzing noise cut him off. Lukas froze, the napkin falling out of his hand and flopping to the tray.
Bernard startled away from the server like it had physically shocked him, or as if its black metallic skin had grown suddenly warm.
“Goddammit!” he said, banging the server with his fist. He fumbled inside his coveralls for his master key.
Lukas forced himself to take a bite of food, to act normal. Bernard had grown more and more agitated by the constant ringing of the server. It made him irrational. It was like living with his father again, back before the tub-gin finally bore him a hole beneath the potatoes.
“I f*cking swear,” Bernard grumbled, working the series of locks in sequence. He glanced over at Lukas, who slowly chewed a piece of meat, unable suddenly to even taste it.
“I’ve got a project for you,” he said, wiggling the last lock free—which Lukas knew could stick a bit. “I want you to add a panel on the back here, just a simple LED array. Figure out some code so we can see who’s calling us. I wanna know if it’s important or if we can safely ignore it.”
He yanked the back panel off the server and set it noisily against the front of server forty, behind him. Lukas took another sip of water while Bernard peered into the machine’s dark and cavernous interior, studying the blinking lights above the little communication jacks. The black guts of the server tower and its frantic buzzing drowned out Bernard’s whispered curses.
He pulled his head out, which was bright red with anger, and turned to Lukas, who set his cup on his tray. “In fact, what I want right here is two lights.” Bernard pointed to the side of the tower. “A red light if it’s silo 17 calling. Green if it’s anyone else. You got that?”
Lukas nodded. He looked down at his tray and started cutting a potato in half, thinking suddenly of his father. Bernard turned and grabbed the server’s rear panel.
“I can pop that back on.” Lukas mumbled this around a hot mouthful of potatoes; he breathed out steam to keep his tongue from burning, swallowed, and chased it with water.
Bernard left the panel where it was. He turned and glared angrily into the pit of the machine, which continued to buzz and buzz, the overhead lights winking in alarm. “Good idea,” he said. “Maybe you can knock this project out first thing.”
Finally, the server quit its frantic calls, and the room fell silent save for the clinking of Lukas’s fork on his plate. This was like the moments of rye-stench quiet from his youth. Soon—just like his father passing out on the kitchen floor or in the bathroom—Bernard would leave.
As if on cue, his caster and boss stood, the head of IT again throwing Lukas into darkness as he blocked the overhead lights.
“Enjoy your dinner,” he said. “I’ll have Peter come by later for the dishes.”
Lukas jabbed a row of beans with his fork. “Seriously? I thought this was lunch.” He popped them into his mouth.
“It’s after eight,” Bernard said. He adjusted his coveralls. “Oh, and I spoke with your mother today.”
Lukas set his fork down. “Yeah?”
“I reminded her that you were doing important work for the silo, but she really wants to see you. I’ve talked with Sims about allowing her in here—”
“Into the server room?”
“Just inside. So she can see that you’re okay. I’d set it up elsewhere, but Sims thinks it’s a bad idea. He’s not so sure how strong the allegiance is among the techs. He’s still trying to ferret out any source of leaks—”
Lukas scoffed. “Sims is paranoid. None of our techs are gonna side with those greasers. They’re not going to betray the silo, much less you.” He picked up a bone and picked the remaining meat with his teeth.
“Still, he has me convinced to keep you as safe as possible. I’ll let you know if I can set something up so you can see her.”
Bernard leaned forward and squeezed Lukas’s shoulder. “Thanks for being patient. I’m glad to have someone under me who understands how important this job is.”
“Oh, I understand completely,” Lukas said. “Anything for the silo.”
“Good.” Another squeeze of his hand, and Bernard stood. “Keep reading the Order. Especially the sections on insurrections and uprisings. I want you to learn from this one just in case, God forbid, it ever happens on your watch.”
“I will,” Lukas said. He set down the clean bone and wiped his fingers on the napkin. Bernard turned to go.
“Oh—” Bernard stopped and turned back to him. “I know you don’t need me to remind you, but under no circumstances are you to answer this server.” He jabbed his finger at the front of the machine. If his hand had been a gun like Peter Billings carried, Lukas could imagine him emptying it into the thing. “I haven’t cleared you with the other IT heads yet, so your position could be in . . . well, grave danger if you were to speak with any of them before the induction.”
“Are you kidding?” Lukas shook his head. “Like I want to talk with anyone who makes you nervous. No frickin’ thanks.”
Bernard smiled and wiped at his forehead. “You’re a good man, Lukas. I’m glad I’ve got you.”
“And I’m glad to serve,” Lukas said. He reached for another rib and smiled up at his caster while Bernard beamed down at him. Finally, the older man turned to go, his boots ringing across the steel grates and fading toward that massive door that held Lukas prisoner among the machines and all their secrets.
Lukas ate and listened as Bernard’s new code was keyed into the lock, a cadence of familiar but unknown beeps—a code Lukas no longer possessed.
For your own good, Bernard had told him. He chewed a piece of fat as the heavy door clanged shut, the red lights below his feet and down the ladderway blinking off.
Lukas dropped the bone onto his plate. He pushed the potatoes aside, fighting the urge to gag at the sight of them. Setting the tray on the grating, he pulled his feet out of the ladderway and moved to the back of the open and quiet server.
The headphones slid easily out of their pouch. He pulled them down over his ears, his palms brushing the three-week growth of beard on his face. Grabbing the cord, he slotted it into the jack labeled “17.”
There was a series of beeps as the call was placed. He imagined the buzzing on the other side, the flashing lights.
Lukas waited, unable to breathe.
“Hello?”
The voice sang in his earphones. Lukas smiled.
“Hey,” he said.
He sat down, leaned back against server 40, and got more comfortable.
“How’s everything going over there?”


6
? Silo 18 ?
Walker waved his arms over his head as he attempted to explain his new theory for how the radio probably worked.
“So the sound, these transmissions, they’re like ripples in the air, you see?” He chased the invisible voices with his fingers. Above him, the third large antenna he’d built in two days hung suspended from the rafters. “These ripples run up and down the wire, up and down—” He gesticulated the length of antenna. “—which is why longer is better. It snags more of them out of the air.”
But if these ripples are everywhere, then why aren’t we catching any?
Walker bobbed his head and wagged his finger in appreciation. It was a good question. A damn good question. “We’ll catch them this time,” he said. “We’re getting close.” He adjusted the new amplifier he’d built, one much more powerful than the tiny thing in Hank’s old hip radio. “Listen,” he said.
A crackling hiss filled the room, like someone twisting fistfuls of plastic sheeting.
I don’t hear it.
“That’s because you aren’t being quiet. Listen.”
There. It was faint, but a crunch of transmitted noise emerged from the hiss.
I heard it!
Walker nodded with pride. Less from the thing he was building and more for his bright understudy. He glanced at the door, made sure it was still closed. He only spoke with Scottie when it was closed.
“What I don’t get is why I can’t make it clearer.” He scratched his chin. “Unless it’s because we’re too deep in the earth—”
We’ve always been this deep, Scottie pointed out. That sheriff we met years ago, he was always talking on his radio just fine.
Walker scratched the stubble on his cheek. His little shadow, as usual, had a good point.
“Well, there is this one little circuit board I can’t figure out. I think it’s supposed to clean up the signal. Everything seems to pass through it.” Walker spun around on his stool to face the workbench, which had become dominated by all the green boards and colorful tangles of wires needed for this most singular project. He lowered his magnifier and peered at the board in question. He imagined Scottie leaning in for a closer inspection.
What’s this sticker?
Scottie pointed to the tiny dot of a white sticker with the number “18” printed on it. Walker was the one who had taught Scottie that it’s always okay to admit when you didn’t know something. If you couldn’t do this, you would never truly know anything.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But you see how this little board slotted into the radio with ribbon cables?”
Scottie nodded.
“It’s like it was meant to be swapped out. Like maybe it burns up easy. I’m thinking this is the part that’s holding us up, like a blown fuse.”
Can we bypass it?
“Bypass it?” Walker wasn’t sure what he meant.
Go around it. In case it’s burned out. Short it.
“We might blow something else. I mean, it wouldn’t be in here if it weren’t truly needed.” Walker thought for a minute. He wanted to add that the same could be said of Scottie, of the boy’s calming voice. But then, he never was good at telling his shadow how he felt. Only what he knew.
Well, that’s what I would try—
There was a knock at the door followed by the squeal of hinges left purposefully loud. Scottie melted into the shadows beneath the workbench, his voice trailing off in the hiss of static from the speakers.
“Walk, what the hell’s going on here?”
He swiveled around on his stool, the lovely voice and harsh words soldered together as only Shirly could fuse them. She came into his workshop with a covered tray, a thin-lipped frown of disappointment on her face.
Walker lowered the volume on the static. “I’m trying to fix the—”
“No, what’s this nonsense I hear about you not eating?” She set the tray in front of him and pulled off the cover, releasing the steam off a plate of corn. “Did you eat your breakfast this morning, or did you give it to someone else?”
“That’s too much,” he said, looking down at three or four rations of food.
“Not when you’ve been giving yours away it isn’t.” She slapped a fork into his hand. “Eat. You’re about to fall out of your coveralls.”
Walker stared at the corn. He stirred the food with his fork, but his stomach was cramped beyond hunger. He felt like he’d gone long enough that he’d never be hungry again. The cramp would just tighten and tighten into a little fist and then he’d be just fine forever—
“Eat, dammit.”
He blew on a bite of the stuff, had no desire to consume it, but put some in his mouth to make Shirly happy.
“And I don’t want to hear that any of my men are hanging around your door sweet-talking you, okay? You are not to give them your rations. Got that? Take another bite.”
Walker swallowed. He had to admit, the burn of the food felt good going down. He gathered up another small bite. “I’ll be sick if I eat all this,” he said.
“And I’ll murder you if you don’t.”
He glanced over at her, expecting to see her smiling. But Shirly didn’t smile anymore. Nobody did.
“What the hell is that noise?” She turned and surveyed the workshop, hunting for the source of it.
Walker set down his fork and adjusted the volume. The knob was soldered onto a series of resistors; the knob itself was called a potentiometer. He had a sudden impulse to explain all of this, anything to keep from eating. He could explain how he had figured out the amplifier, how the potentiometer was really just an adjustable resistor, how each little twist of the dial could hone the volume to whatever he—
Walker stopped. He picked up his fork and stirred his corn. He could hear Scottie whispering from the shadows.
“That’s better,” Shirly said, referring to the reduced hiss. “That’s a worse sound than the old generator used to make. Hell, if you can turn that down, why ever have it up so loud?”
Walker took a bite. While he chewed, he set down his fork and grabbed his soldering iron from its stand. He rummaged in a small parts bin for another scrap potentiometer.
“Hold these,” he told Shirly around his food. He showed her the wires hanging off the potentiometer and lined them up with the sharp silver prods from his multimeter.
“If it means you’ll keep eating.” She pinched the wires and the prods together between her fingers and thumbs.
Walker scooped up another bite, forgetting to blow on it. The corn burned his tongue. He swallowed without chewing, the fire melting its way through his chest. Shirly told him to slow down, to take it easy. He ignored her and twisted the knob of the potentiometer. The needle on his multimeter danced, letting him know the part was good.
“Why don’t you take a break from this stuff and eat while I’m here to watch?” Shirly slid a stool away from the workbench and plopped down on it.
“Because it’s too hot,” he said, waving his hand at his mouth. He grabbed a spool of solder and touched it to the tip of the hot soldering iron, coating it with bright silver. “I need you to hold the black wire to this.” He lightly touched the iron to the tiny leg of a resistor on the board labeled “18.” Shirly leaned over the bench and squinted at the one he was indicating.
“And then you’ll finish your dinner?”
“Swear.”
She narrowed her eyes at him as if to say that she took this promise seriously, then did as he had shown her.
Her hands weren’t as steady as Scottie’s, but he lowered his magnifier and made quick work of the connection. He showed her where the red wire went and tacked that one on as well. Even if none of this worked, he could always remove it and tinker with something else.
“Now don’t let it get cold,” Shirly told him. “I know you won’t eat it if it cools, and I’m not going back to the mess hall to warm it up for you.”
Walker stared at the little board with the numbered sticker on it. He grudgingly took up the fork and scooped a sizable bite.
“How’re things out there?” he asked, blowing on the corn.
“Things are shit,” Shirly said. “Jenkins and Harper are arguing over whether or not they should kill the power to the entire silo. But then some of the guys who were there, you know, when Knox and—”
She looked away, left the sentence unfinished.
Walker nodded and chewed his food.
“Some of them say the power in IT was on to the max that morning, even though we had it shut down from here.”
“Maybe it was rerouted,” Walker said. “Or battery backups. They have those, you know.” He took another bite, but was dying to spin the potentiometer. He was pretty sure the static had changed when he’d made the second connection.
“I keep telling them it’ll do us more harm than good to screw with the silo like that. It’ll just turn the rest of them against us.”
“Yeah. Hey, can you adjust this? You know, while I eat?”
He turned the volume up on the static, needing two hands to work the loose knob as it dangled from its bright wires. Shirly seemed to shrink from the noise crackling out of his homebuilt speakers. She reached for the volume knob as if to turn it down—
“No, I want you to spin the one we just installed.”
“What the hell, Walk? Just eat your damn food already.”
He took another bite. And for all her cussing and protests, Shirly began adjusting the knob.
“Slowly,” he said around his food.
And sure enough, the static from the speakers modulated. It was as if the crunching plastic had begun to move and bounce around the room.
“What am I even doing?”
“Helping an old man—”
“—yeah, I might need you up here on this one—”
Walker dropped his fork and held out his hand for her to stop. She had gone past it though, into the static once more. Shirly seemed to intuit this. She bit her lip and wiggled the knob the other way until the voices returned.
“Sounds good. It’s quiet down here anyway. You need me to bring my kit?”
“You did it,” Shirly whispered to Walker, as if these people could hear her if she spoke too loudly. “You fixed—”
Walker held up his hand. The chatter continued.
“Negative. You can leave the kit. Deputy Roberts is already here with hers. She’s sweeping for clues as I speak—”
“What I’m doing is working while he does nothing!” a faint voice called out in the background.
Walker turned to Shirly while laughter rolled through the radio, more than one person enjoying the joke. It had been a long time since he’d heard anyone laugh. But he wasn’t laughing. Walker felt his brows furrow in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” Shirly asked. “We did it! We fixed it!” She got off her stool and turned as if to run and tell Jenkins.
“Wait!” Walker wiped his beard with his palm and jabbed his fork toward the strewn collection of radio parts. Shirly stood a pace away, looking back at him, smiling.
“Deputy Roberts?” Walker asked. “Who in all the levels is that?”