Donald appeared sad. “We can be more compassionate than them,” he said.
Charlotte fought the urge to argue. She wanted to point out that he cared about this silo because of the personal contact. If he knew the people behind any of the other silos – if he knew their stories – would he root for them? It would be cruel to suggest this, however true.
Donald coughed into his rag. He caught Charlotte staring at him, glanced at the bloodstained cloth, put it away.
“I’m scared,” she told him.
Donald shook his head. “I’m not. I’m not afraid of this. I’m not afraid of dying.”
“I know you’re not. That’s obvious, or you would see someone. But you have to be afraid of something.”
“I am. Plenty. I’m afraid of being buried alive. I’m afraid of doing the wrong thing.”
“Then do nothing,” she insisted. She nearly begged him right then to put a stop to this madness, to their isolation. They could go back to sleep and leave this to the machines and to the God-awful plans of others. “Let’s not do anything,” she pleaded.
Her brother rose from his seat, squeezed her arm, and turned to leave. “That might be the worst thing,” he quietly said.
12
That night, Charlotte awoke from a nightmare of flying. She sat up in her cot, springs crying out like a nest of birds, and could still feel herself swooping down through the clouds, the wind on her face.
Always dreams of flying. Dreams of falling. Wingless dreams where she couldn’t steer, couldn’t pull up. A plummeting bomb zeroing in on a man with his family, a man turning at the last minute to shield his eyes against the noonday sun, a glimpse of Charlotte’s father and mother and brother and herself before impact and loss of signal—
The nest of birds beneath her fell quiet. Charlotte untangled her fists from the sheets, which were damp with all that dreams wrung from terrified flesh. The room hung heavy and somber around her. She could feel the empty bunks all around, that sense that her fellow pilots had been summoned away in the night, leaving her alone. She rose and padded across the hall to the bathroom, feeling her way and sliding the switches up just a fraction to keep the lights dim. She understood sometimes why her brother had lived in the conference room at the other end of the warehouse. Shadows of un-people stalked those halls. She could feel herself pass through the ghosts of the sleeping.
She flushed and washed her hands. There was no going back to her bunk, no chance of returning to sleep, not after that dream. Charlotte tugged on a pair of the red coveralls Donny had brought her, one of three colors, a little variety for her locked-up life. She couldn’t remember what the blue or gold ones were for, but she remembered reactor red. The red coveralls had pouches and slots for tools. She wore them while working, and so they were rarely the cleanest. Loaded up, the coveralls weighed near on twenty pounds, and they rattled as she walked. She zipped up the front and made her way down the hallway.
Curiously, the lights in the warehouse were already on. It had to be in the middle of the night. She was good about turning them off, and nobody else had access to that level. Her mouth suddenly dry, she crept towards the nearby drones under their tarps, the sound of whispers leaking from the shadows.
Beyond the drones – near the tall shelves with boxes of spares and tools and emergency rations – a man knelt over the still form of another. The figure turned at the sound of her jangling tools.
“Donny?”
“Yeah?”
A flush of relief. The sprawling body beneath her brother wasn’t a body at all. It was a puffy suit laid out with its arms and legs spread, an empty and lifeless form.
“What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
“Late,” he said. He dabbed his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Or early, depending. Did I wake you?”
Charlotte watched as he shifted his body to block her view of the suit. Flopping one leg up, he began to fold the outfit in on itself. A pair of shears and a roll of silvery tape sat by his knees, a helmet, gloves, and a bottle like a dive tank nearby. A pair of boots as well. The fabric whispered as it moved; it was this that she had mistaken for voices.
“Hm? No, you didn’t wake me. I got up to go to the bathroom. Thought I heard something.”
It was a lie. She had come out to work on a drone in the middle of the night, anything to stay awake, to stay grounded. Donald nodded and pulled a rag from his breast pocket. He coughed into this before stuffing it away.
“What’re you doing up?” she asked.