13
“Death’s pale flag is not advanced there.”
The dirt farm below filled the stairwell with the rich smell of fresh rot. Juliette was still waking up as she descended another level and began noticing the scent. She had no idea how long she’d slept—it had felt like days but could’ve been hours. She had woken with her face pressed to the grating, a pattern of red lines marking her cheek, and had gotten underway immediately. Her stomach was gnawing at her, the odor from the farm hurrying her along. By twenty-eight, the pungency hung in the air so thick it felt like she was swimming
through the scents. It was the smell of death, she decided. Of funerals. Of loamy soil turned over, releasing all those tangy molecules into the air.
She stopped on thirty—the hydroponic farms—and tried the doors. It was dark inside. There was a sound down the hallway, the whir of a fan or a motor. It was a strange encounter, this small noise. For over a day, she had heard nothing but the sounds she made herself. The green glow of the emergency lights were no company; they were like the heat of a dying body, of batteries draining with the leak of photons. But this was something moving, some sound beyond her own breathing and footfalls, and it lurked deep in the dark corridors of the hydroponic farms.
Once again, she left her only tool and defense behind as a doorstop to allow in a trickle of light. She stole inside, the smell of vegetation not as strong as in the stairwell, and padded down the hallway with one hand on the wall. The offices and reception area were dark and lifeless, the air dry. There was no blinking light on the turnstile, and she had no card or chit to feed it. She placed her hands on the supports and vaulted over, this small act of defiance somehow powerful, as though she had come to accept the lawlessness of this dead place, the complete lack of civilization, of rules.
The light spilling from the stairwell barely reached the first of the growing rooms. She waited while her eyes adjusted, thankful for this ability honed by the down deeps of Mechanical and the dark interiors of broken machines. What she saw, barely, when she was finally able, did not inspire her. The hydroponic gardens had rotted away. Thick stalks, like ropes, hung here and there from a network of suspended pipes. It gave her an idea of how long ago these farms had succumbed, if not the silo. It hadn’t been hundreds of years, and it hadn’t been days. Even a window that wide felt like a treasure of information, the first crumb toward an answer to this mysterious place.
She rapped one of the pipes with her knuckles and heard the solid thud of fullness.
No plants, but water! Her mouth seemed to dry out with just the prospect. Juliette leaned over the railing and into the growing room. She pressed her mouth to one of the holes in the top of a pipe where the stalk of a plant should be growing. She created a tight seal and sucked. The fluid that met her tongue was brackish and foul—but wet. And the taste was not of anything chemical or toxic, but stale organics. Dirt. It was only slightly more distasteful than the grease and oil she had practically been drenched in for two decades.
So she drank until she was full. And she realized, now that she had water, that if there were more crumbs to find, more clues, she might just live long enough to gather them.
Before she left, Juliette snapped a section of pipe off the end of a run, keeping the cap intact on one side. It was only a little over an inch in diameter and no more than two feet long, but it would work as a thermos. She gently bent the broken pipe that remained down, allowing water to flow from the remaining loop. While she topped up her pipe, she splashed some water on her hands and arms, still fearful of contamination from the outside.
Once her pipe was full, Juliette stole back toward the lit doorway at the end of the hall. There were three hydroponic farms, all with closed loops that wound through long and twisting corridors. She tried to do a rough calculation in her head, but all she could come up with was enough to drink for a very long time. The aftertaste was awful, and she wouldn’t be surprised if her stomach cramped from the contents, but if she could get a fire going, find enough fabric or leftover paper to burn, even that could be helped with a good boil.
Back in the stairwell, she returned to the rich odors she had left behind. She retrieved her knife and hurried down another thick slice of the silo, almost two times around the stairwell to the next landing, and checked the door.
The smell was definitely coming from the dirt farms. And Juliette could hear that whirring again, louder now. She stopped the door and propped her thermos against the railing and checked inside.
The smell of vegetation was overpowering. Ahead, in the dim green glow, she could see bushy arms reaching over the railings and into the pathway. She vaulted the security gate and explored the edge, one hand on the wall while her eyes adjusted again. There was definitely a pump running somewhere. She could also hear water dripping, either from a leak or a functioning tap. Juliette felt chills from the leaves brushing her arms. The smell of rot was distinguishable now: it was the odor of fruit and vegetables decaying in the soil and withering on the vine. She heard the buzz of flies, the sounds of life.
She reached into a thick stand of green and felt around until her hand hit something smooth. Juliette gave it a tug and held a plump tomato up to the light. Her timeline estimate suddenly shrank. How long could the dirt farms sustain themselves? Did tomatoes require seeding, or did they come back every year like the weeds? She couldn’t remember. She took a bite, the tomato not yet fully ripe, and heard a noise behind her. Another pump clicking on?
She turned just in time to see the door to the stairwell slamming closed, plunging the dirt farm into absolute darkness.
Juliette froze. She waited for the sound of her knife rattling down through the staircase. She tried to imagine that it could’ve slipped and fallen on its own. With the light extinguished, her ears seemed to hijack the unused portion of her brain. Her breathing, even her pulse, seemed audible, the whirring of the pump louder now. Tomato in hand, she crouched down and moved toward the other wall, arms stretched out to feel her way. She slid toward the exit, staying low to avoid the plants, trying to calm herself. There were no ghosts here, nothing to be spooked about. She repeated this to herself as she slowly crept forward.
And then an arm was on her, reaching over her shoulder. Juliette cried out and dropped the tomato. The arm grabbed her shoulder, pinning her down in a crouch as she tried to stand. She slapped at this intruder, tried to pull away from it, the tablecloth bonnet yanked from her head—until finally she felt the hard steel of the turnstile, one of the waist bars jutting out in the hallway, and felt the fool.
“You ‘bout gave me a heart attack,” she told the machine. She reached for its sides and lifted herself over. She would come back for more food once she had light. Leaving the turnstile and heading for the exit, one hand on the wall and another groping ahead of herself, Juliette wondered if she would start talking to objects, now. Start going crazy. As the darkness absorbed her, she realized her mindset was changing by the minute. Resigned to her death the day before, now she was frightened of mere insanity.
It was an improvement.
Her hand finally bumped into the door, and Juliette pushed it open. She cursed the loss of the knife; it was certainly missing from the grating. She wondered how far it might have fallen, if she’d ever find it again or maybe a replacement. She turned to grab her thermos—
And saw that it was missing as well.
Juliette felt her vision narrow, her heart quicken. She wondered if the closing of the door could have toppled her thermos. She wondered how the knife had slipped through a gap in the grating narrower than its handle. And as the pounding in her temples receded, she heard something else:
Footsteps.
Ringing out on the stairwell below her.
Running.