22
• Silo 17 •
Juliette shivered from the cold as she helped Solo to his feet. He wobbled and steadied himself, both hands on the railing.
“Do you think you can walk?” she asked. She kept an eye on the empty stairs spiraling down toward them, wary of whoever else was out there, whoever had attacked him and nearly gotten her killed.
“I think so,” he said. He dabbed at his forehead with his palm, studied the smear of blood he came away with. “Don’t know how far.”
She guided him toward the stairs, the smell of melted rubber and gasoline stinging her nose. The black undersuit was still damp against her skin; her breath billowed out before her; and whenever she stopped talking, her teeth chattered uncontrollably. She bent to retrieve her knife while Solo clutched the curved outer railing. Looking up, she considered the task before them. A straight run to IT seemed impossible. Her lungs were exhausted from the swim, her muscles cramped from the shivering and cold. And Solo looked even worse. His mouth was slack, his eyes drifting to and fro. He seemed barely cognizant of where he was.
“Can you make it to the deputy station?” she asked. Juliette had spent nights there on supply runs. The holding cell made for an oddly comfortable place to sleep. The keys were still in the box—maybe they could rest easy if they locked themselves inside and kept the key with them.
“That’s how many levels?” Solo asked.
He didn’t know the down deep of his own silo as well as Jules. He rarely risked venturing so far.
“A dozen or so. Can you make it?”
He lifted his boot to the first step, leaned into it. “I can try.”
They set off with only a knife between them, which Juliette was lucky to have at all. How it had survived her dark pull through Mechanical was a mystery. She held it tightly, the handle cold, her hand colder. The simple cooking utensil had become her security totem, had replaced her watch as a necessary thing she must always have with her. As they made their way up the stairs, its handle clinked against the inner railing each time she reached over to steady herself. She kept her other arm around Solo, who struggled up each step with grunts and groans.
“How many of them do you think there are?” she asked, watching his footing and then glancing nervously up the stairway.
Solo grunted. “Shouldn’t be any.” He wobbled a little, but Juliette steadied him. “All dead. Everyone.”
They stopped to rest at the next landing. “You made it,” she pointed out. “All these years, and you survived.”
He frowned, wiped his beard with the back of his hand. He was breathing hard. “But I’m Solo,” he said. He shook his head sadly. “They were all gone. All of them.”
Juliette peered up the shaft, up the gap between the stairs and the concrete. The dim green straw of the stairwell rose into a tight darkness. She pinned her teeth together to keep them from chattering while she listened for a sound, for any sign of life. Solo staggered ahead for the next flight of stairs. Juliette hurried beside him.
“How well did you see him? What do you remember?”
“I remember— I remember thinking he was just like me.”
Juliette thought she heard him sob, but maybe it was the exertion from tackling more of the steps. She looked back at the door they were passing, the interior dark, no power being leached from IT. Were they passing Solo’s assailant? Were they leaving some living ghost behind?
She powerfully hoped so. They had so much further to go, even to the deputy station, much less to anyplace she might call home.
They trudged in silence for a level and a half, Juliette shivering and Solo grunting and wincing. She rubbed her arms now and then, could feel the sweat from the climb and from helping to steady Solo. It was nearly enough to warm her but for the damp undersuit, and she was so hungry by the time they cleared three levels that she thought her body was going to simply give out. It needed fuel, something to burn and keep itself warm.
“One more level and I’m going to need to stop,” she told Solo. He grumbled his agreement. It felt good to have the reward of a rest to climb toward—the steps went easier knowing they were countable, finite. At the landing of one-thirty-two, Solo used the railing to lower himself to the ground, hand over hand like the bars of a ladder. When his butt hit the decking, he laid out supine and folded his hands over his face.
Juliette hoped it was nothing more than a concussion. She’d seen her fair share of them working around men who were too tough to wear helmets—but not so tough when a tool or a steel beam caught them on the head. There was nothing for Solo but to rest.
The problem with resting was that it made her colder. Juliette stomped her feet to keep the blood circulating. The slight sweat she’d worked up from the hike was working against her. She could feel a draft cycling through the stairwell, cold air from below passing over the chilled waters like a natural air conditioning unit. Her shoulders shook, the knife vibrating in her hand until her reflection became a silvery blur. Moving was difficult—staying in one place would kill her. And she still didn’t know where this attacker was, could only hope he was below them.
“We should get going,” she told Solo. She looked to the doors beyond him, the windows dark. What would she do if someone burst out at that very moment and attacked them? What kind of fight could she hope to put up?
Solo lifted his arm and waved it at her. “Go,” he said. “I’ll stay.”
“No, you’re coming with me.” She rubbed her hands together, blew on them, summoned the strength to continue. She went to Solo and tried to grab his hand, but he withdrew it.
“More rest,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”
“I’ll be damned if I’m—” Her teeth clacked uncontrollably. She shivered and turned the involuntary spasm into an excuse to shake her arms, waggling them and forcing the blood to her extremities. “—damned if I’m leaving you alone,” she finished.
“So thirsty,” he told her.
Despite seeing quite enough water for a lifetime, Juliette was as well. She glanced up. “One more level and we’re at the lower farms. C’mon. That’ll be far enough for today. Food and water, find me something dry. C’mon Solo, up. I don’t care if it takes us a week to get home, we aren’t giving up right here.”
She grabbed his wrist. This time he didn’t pull away.
The next flight took forever to climb. Solo stopped several times to lean on the railing and gaze senselessly at the next step. There was fresh blood trickling down his neck. Juliette stomped her frozen feet some more and cursed to herself. This was all stupid. She’d been so damned stupid.
A few steps from the next landing, she left Solo behind and went to check the doors to the farms. The jury-rigged power cables descending from IT and snaking their way inside were a legacy from decades ago, a time when the survivors, like Solo, were cobbling together what they could to stave off their demise. Juliette peeked inside and saw that the grow lights were off.
“Solo? I’m gonna go hit the timers. You rest here.”
He didn’t answer. Juliette held the door open and tried to slot her knife into the metal grating by her feet, leaving the handle to prop it open. Her arm shook so violently, it took her considerable effort just to aim it into a gap. Her undersuit, she noticed, smelled like burning rubber, like the smoke from the fire.
“Here,” Solo said. He held the door open and slumped down against it, pinning it to the railing.
Juliette clutched the knife against her chest. “Thanks.”
He nodded and waved his hand. His eyes drooped shut. “Water,” he said, licking his lips.
She patted his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
• • • •
The farm’s entrance hall gobbled up the emergency lights from the stairway, the dim green quickly fading to pitch black. A circulating pump whirred in the distance, the same noise that had greeted her in the upper farms so many weeks ago. But now she knew what the sound was, knew there would be water available. Water and food, perhaps a change of clothes. She just needed to get the lights on so she could see. She cursed herself for not bringing a spare flashlight, for the loss of her pack and their gear.
The darkness accepted her as she climbed over the security gate. She knew her way. These farms had been nourishing Solo and her for weeks while they worked on the pathetic hydroponics pump and all that plumbing. Juliette thought of the new pump she’d wired; the mechanic in her was curious about the connection, wondered whether the thing would work, if she should’ve thrown the switch on the landing before they left. It was a crazy thought, but even if she didn’t live to see it, some part of her wanted that silo dry, that flood removed. Her ordeal in its depths already seemed so oddly distant, like something she had seen in a dream but hadn’t really gone through, and yet she wanted it to have mattered for something. She wanted Solo’s wounds to have mattered for something.
Her undersuit swished noisily while she walked, her legs rubbing together, her damp feet squeaking as she lifted them from the floor. She kept one hand on the wall, her knife comforting her in the other. Already, she could feel the residual warmth in the air from the last burn of the grow lights. She was thankful to be out of that frigid stairwell. In fact, she felt
better. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. She would get some food, some water, find them a safe place to sleep. Tomorrow, they would aim for the mids deputy station. They could arm themselves, gather their strength. Solo would be stronger by then. She would need him to be.
At the end of the hall, Juliette groped for the doorway to the control room. Her hand habitually went to the switch inside, but it was already up. It hadn’t worked in over three decades.
She fumbled blindly through the room, arms out in front of her, expecting to hit the wall long before she did. The tip of the knife scraped one of the control boxes. Juliette reached up to find the wire hanging from the ceiling, tacked up by someone long ago. She traced the wire to the timer it had been rigged to, felt for the programmable knob and slowly turned it until it clicked.
A series of loud pops from the relays outside rattled down the growing halls. A dim glow appeared. It would take a few minutes for them to warm all the way up.
Juliette left the control room and headed down one of the overgrown walkways railed off between the long plots of dirt. The nearest plots were picked clean. She pushed through the greenery, plants from either side of the hall shaking hands in the middle, and made her way to the circulation pump.
Water for Solo, warmth for herself. She repeated this mantra, begging the lights to heat up faster. The air around her remained dim and hazy like the view of an outside morning beneath the heavy clouds.
She made her way through the pea plants, long neglected. Popping a few pods off their vines, she gave her stomach something to do besides ache. The pump whirred louder as it worked to push water through the drip pipes. Juliette chewed a pea, swallowed, slipped through the railing and made her way to the small clearing around the pump.
The soil beneath the pump was dark and packed flat from weeks of her and Solo drinking there and refilling their containers. A few cups were scattered on the ground. Juliette knelt beside the pump and chose a tall glass. The lights above her were slowly brightening. She already imagined she could feel their warmth.
With a bit of effort, she managed to loosen the drain plug at the bottom of the pump a few turns. The water was under pressure and jetted out in a fine spray. She held the cup tightly against the pump to minimize the spillage. The cup hissed as it was filled.
She drank out of one cup while filling another, some loose dirt crunching between her teeth.
Once both were full, she screwed them into the wet dirt so they wouldn’t tip over, and then twisted the plug until the spray stopped. Juliette tucked the knife under her arm and grabbed the two cups. She went to the railing, passed everything through, then threw her leg over the lowermost bar and scrambled out.
Now she needed warmth. She left the cups where they were and grabbed the knife. There were offices around the corner, a dining room. She remembered her first outfit in silo 17: a tablecloth with a slit in the middle. She laughed to herself as she turned the corner, feeling like she was regressing, like her weeks of working to make things better were taking her back to where she’d started.
The long hallway between the two grow stations was dark. A handful of wires hung from the pipes overhead, drooping between the spots where they’d been hastily attached. They marched in these upside-down leaps toward the hum and glow of the growing plots in the distance.
Juliette checked the offices and found nothing for warmth. No coveralls, no curtains. She moved toward the dining hall, was turning to enter, when she thought she heard something beyond the next plot of plants. A click. A crackle. More relays for the lights? Stuck, perhaps?
She peered down the hall and into the grow station beyond. The lights were brighter there, warming up. Maybe they had come on sooner. She crept down the hallway toward them, drawn like a shivering fly to a flame, her arms bursting with goosebumps at the thought of drying out, of getting truly warm.
At the edge of the station, she heard something else. A squeal, maybe metal on metal, possibly another circulation pump trying to kick over. She and Solo hadn’t checked the other pumps on this level. There was more than two people could eat or drink in the first patches.
Juliette froze and turned around to look behind herself.
Where would she set up camp if she were trying to survive in this place? In IT, for the power? Or here, for the food and water. She imagined another man like Solo squeezing through the cracks in the violence, laying low and surviving the long years. Maybe he’d heard the air compressor earlier, had come down to investigate, got scared, hit Solo over the head and ran. Maybe he grabbed their gear bag just because it was there, or maybe it had been knocked under the railing by accident and had sunk to the pits of Mechanical.
She held the knife out in front of herself and slid down the hallway between the burgeoning plants. The wall of green before her parted with a rustle as she pushed through. Things were more overgrown here. Unwelcoming. Not picked over. This filled her with a mix of emotions. She was probably wrong, was probably hearing things again just as she had for weeks, but part of her wanted to be right. She wanted to find this man who was like Solo. She wanted to make contact. Better that than living in fear of someone in every shadow, behind every corner.
But what if there was more than one of them? Could a group of people have survived this long? How many could there be and go undetected? The silo was a massive place, but she and Solo had spent weeks in the down deep, had been in and out of these farms several times. Two people, an old couple, no more. Solo had said they were his age. They would have to be.
These calculations and more ran through her mind, convincing her that she had nothing to be afraid of. She was shivering, but her adrenaline was pumping. She was armed. The leaves of wild and unkempt plants brushed against her face; Juliette pushed through this dense outer barrier and knew she’d found something on the other side.
The farms here were different. Groomed. Tamed. Recently guided by the hand of man. Juliette felt a wash of fear and relief, those two opposites twisting together like staircase and rail. She didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want this silo to be so desolate and empty, but she didn’t want to be attacked. The first part of her felt an urge to call out, to tell whoever was in there that she meant no harm. The second part tightened its grip on the knife, clenched chattering teeth together, and begged her to turn and run.
At the end of the groomed grow station, the hallway took a dark turn. She peered around the corner into more unexplored territory. A long patch of darkness wrapped toward the other side of the silo, a distant glow of light emanating from what was probably yet another crop station sucking juice from IT.
Someone was here. She knew it. She could feel the same eyes she’d felt for weeks, could sense the whispers on her skin, but this time she wasn’t imagining it; she didn’t have to fight the awareness or think she was going crazy. With her knife at the ready and the welcomed thought that she was between this someone and defenseless Solo, she moved slowly but bravely into the dark hall, passing open offices and tasting rooms to either side, one hand on the wall to guide and steady herself—
Juliette stopped. Something wasn’t right. Had she heard something? A person crying? She backed up to the previous door, could barely see it in front of herself, and realized it was closed. The only one she could see along the hall that was closed.
She stepped away from the door and knelt down. There had been a noise inside. She was sure of it. Almost like a faint wail. Looking up, she saw in the wan light that some of the overhead wires diverted perpendicular to the rest and snaked through the wall above the door.
Juliette moved closer. She crouched down and put her ear to the door. Nothing. She reached up and tried the knob, felt that it was locked. How could it be locked, unless—?
The door flew open—her hand still on the knob—it yanked her into the darkened room. There was a flash of light, and then a man over her, swinging something at her head.
Juliette fell onto her ass. A silver blur moved past her face, the crunch of a heavy wrench slamming into her shoulder, knocking her flat.
There was a high pitched scream from the back of the room. It drowned out Juliette’s cry of pain. She swung the knife out in front of her, felt it hit the man’s leg. The wrench clattered to the ground, more screams, people shouting. Juliette kicked away from the door and stood, clutching her shoulder. She was ready for the man to pounce, but her attacker was backing away, limping on one foot, a boy no more than fourteen, maybe fifteen.
“Stay where you are!” Juliette aimed the knife at him. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear. A group of kids huddled against the back wall on a scattering of mattresses and blankets. They clung to one another, their wide eyes aimed at Juliette.
The confusion was overwhelming. She was seized by the sensation of wrongness. Where were the others? The adults? She could feel people with bad intentions sliding down the dark hallway behind her, ready to pounce. Here were their kids, locked away for safety. Soon, the mother rats would be back to punish her for disturbing their nest.
“Where are the others?” she asked, her hand trembling from the cold, the confusion, the fear. She scanned the room and saw that the boy standing, the one who had attacked her, was the oldest. A girl in her teens sat frozen on the tangle of blankets, two young boys and a young girl clinging to her.
The eldest boy glanced down at his leg. A stain of blood was spreading across his green coveralls.
“How many are there?” She took a step closer. These kids were obviously more afraid of her than she was of them.
“Leave us alone!” the older girl screamed. She clutched something to her chest. The young girl beside her pressed her face into the older girl’s lap, trying to disappear, to not be seen by not seeing. The two young boys glared like cornered dogs, but didn’t move.
“How did you get here?” she asked them. She aimed the knife at the tall boy, but started to feel silly for wielding it. He looked at her in confusion, not comprehending the question, and Juliette knew. Of course. How would there be decades of fighting in this silo without that second human passion?
“You were born down here, weren’t you?”
Nobody answered. The boy’s face screwed up in confusion, as if the question were mad. She peeked back over her shoulder.
“Where are your parents? When will they be back? How long?”
“Never!” the girl screeched, her head straining forward from the effort. “They’re dead!”
Her mouth remained open, her chin trembling. The tendons stood out on her young neck.
The older boy turned and glared at the girl, seemed to want her to remain quiet. Juliette was still trying to comprehend that these were mere kids. She knew they couldn’t be alone. Someone had attacked Solo.
As if to answer, her eyes were drawn to the wrench on the decking. It was Solo’s wrench. The rust stains were distinctive. How was that possible? Solo had said—
And Juliette remembered what he’d said. She realized these kids, this young man, was the same age that he still saw himself. The same age he’d been when he’d been left alone. Had the last survivors of the down deep perished in recent years, but not before leaving something behind?
“What’s your name?” Juliette asked the boy. She lowered her knife and showed him her other palm. “My name’s Juliette,” she said. She wanted to add that she came from another silo, a saner world, but didn’t want to confuse or freak them out.
“Rickson,” the boy snarled. He puffed out his chest. “My father was Rick the Plumber.”
“Rick the Plumber.” Juliette nodded. She saw along one wall, at the end of a tall dune of supplies and scavenges, the gear bag they’d stolen. Her change of clothes spilled out the gaping mouth of the bag. Her towel would be in there. She slid toward the bag, an eye on the kids huddled together on the makeshift bed, the group nest, wary of the older boy.
“Well, Rickson, I want you to gather your things.” Kneeling by her bag, she dug inside and searched for the towel. She found it, pulled it out and rubbed it over her damp hair, an indescribable luxury. There was no way she was leaving them here, these kids. She turned to face the other children, the towel draped across the back of her neck, their eyes all locked on hers.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Get your things together. You’re not going to live like this—”
“Just leave us,” the older girl said. The two boys had moved off the bed, though, and were going through piles of things. They looked to the girl, then to Juliette. Unsure.
“Go back to where you’re from,” Rickson said. The two eldest children seemed to be gaining strength from each other. “Take your noisy machines and go.”
That’s what this was about. Juliette remembered the sight of the compressor on its side, more heavily attacked maybe than Solo had been. She nodded to the two boys, had their ages pegged for ten or eleven. “Go on,” she told them. “You’re gonna help me and my friend get home. We have good food there. Real electricity. Hot water. Get your things—”
The youngest girl cried out at this, a horrible peal, the same cry Juliette had heard from the dark hallway. Rickson paced back and forth, eyeing her and the wrench on the floor. Juliette slid away from him and toward the bed to comfort the young girl, when she realized it wasn’t her squealing.
Something moved in the older girl’s arms.
Juliette froze at the edge of the bed.
“No,” she whispered.
Rickson took a step toward her.
“Stay!” She aimed the point of the knife at him. He glanced down at the wound on his leg, thought better of it. The two boys froze in the act of stuffing their bags. Nothing in the room moved save the baby squealing and fidgeting in the girl’s arms.
“Is that a child?”
The girl turned her shoulders. It was a motherly gesture, but the girl couldn’t be more than fifteen. Juliette didn’t know that was possible. She wondered if that was why the implants went in so early. Her hand slid toward her hip almost as if to touch the place, to rub the bump beneath her skin.
“Just go,” the teenager whimpered. “We’ve been fine without you.”
Juliette put down the knife. It felt strange to relinquish it but more wrong to have it in her hand as she approached the bed. “I can help you,” she said. She turned and made sure the boy heard her. “I used to work in a place that cared for newborns. Let me—” She reached out her hands. The girl turned more toward the wall, shielding the child from her.
“Okay.” Juliette held up her hands, showed her palms. “But you’re not going to live like this anymore.” She nodded to the young boys, turned to Rickson, who hadn’t moved. “None of you are. This isn’t how anyone should have to live their days, not even their last ones.”
She nodded to herself, her mind made up. “Rickson? Get your things together. Only the necessities. We’ll come back for anything else.” She dipped her chin at the younger boys, saw how their coveralls had been chopped at the knees, their legs covered in grime from the farms. They took it as permission to return to packing. These two seemed eager to have someone else in charge, maybe anybody other than their brother, if that’s what he was.
“Tell me your name.” Juliette sat down on the bed with the two girls while the others rummaged through their things. She fought to remain calm, to not succumb to the nausea of kids having kids.
The baby let out a hungry cry.
“I’m here to help you,” Juliette told the girl. “Can I see? Is it a girl or a boy?”
The young mother relaxed her arms. A blanket was folded away, revealing the squinting eyes and pursed red lips of a baby no more than a few months old. A tiny arm waved at its mother.
“Girl,” she said softly.
The younger girl clinging to her side peeked around the mother’s ribs at Juliette.
“Have you given her a name?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
Rickson said something behind her to the two boys, trying to get them not to fight over something—
“My name’s Elise,” the younger girl said, her head emerging from behind the other girl’s side. Elise pointed at her mouth. “I have a loose tooth.”
Juliette laughed. “I can help you with that if you like.” She took a chance and reached out to squeeze the young girl’s arm. Flashes of her childhood in her father’s nursery flooded back, the memories of worried parents, of precious children, of all the hopes and dreams created and dashed around that lottery. Juliette’s thoughts swerved to her brother, the one who was not meant to be, and she felt the tears well up in her eyes. What had these kids been through? Solo at least had normal experiences from before. He knew what it meant to live in a world where one could be safe. What had these five kids, six, grown up in? Seen? She felt such intense pity that there was this sick, wrong, sad desire for none of them to have ever been born—
This was just as soon washed over with a wave of guilt for even considering it.
“We’re going to get you out of here,” she told the two girls. “Gather your things.”
One of the young boys came over and dropped her bag nearby. He was putting things back into it, apologizing to her, when Juliette heard another strange squeak.
What now?
She dabbed her mouth on the towel, watching as the girls reluctantly did an adult’s bidding, finding their things and eyeing one another to make sure this was okay. Juliette heard a rustling in her gear bag. She used the handle to separate the zippered mouth, wary of what could be living in the rat’s nest these kids had created, when she heard a tiny voice.
Calling her name.
She dropped the towel and clawed through the bag, past tools and bottles of water, under her spare coveralls and loose socks, until she found the radio. She wondered how Solo could possibly be calling her. The other set had been ruined in her suit—
“—please say something,” the radio hissed. “Juliette, are you there? It’s Walker. Please, for God’s sake, answer me—”