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.”