Silo 49: Going Dark (11 page)

Once he felt calm he forwarded one specific request, this time for possible technical assist from IT for a busted control panel, to Grace. It was the perfect cover email and in his forward he used the coded phrase they had worked up. He included the time they were to meet as a time he would be available if she had questions. All his wires were considered important and she said that the dimming team would wake her if one came from him during that period. He hoped that was happening and she would be at their agreed upon place well before the time of their need. She had just twenty or so levels to climb, though that was plenty when you were in a hurry and moving on legs that were growing a little older.

He and Wallis, on the other hand, needed to get down almost seventy levels and they had to do it within the day. And to pile on more, they had to be fit enough to do what needed doing when they got there. Graham had an idea about that but getting Wallis to agree to it would be another matter.

He finished off his tea in one big swallow, got dressed in some relatively clean coveralls and stuffed his backpack with his radio, food and three canteens of water before heading out of his compartment. Into his pocket he slipped the three diagrams they would need for parsing out the correct wires.

He looked back before he closed the door behind him and his gaze fell on the charcoal portrait of his wife on the wall. Drawn when they were young and had the whole future of their lives ahead of them, she was smiling. In a few bold and spare strokes, the essence of her was captured in black and grey lines on that rough pulpy paper. He blew her a kiss and left, wondering if it would be the last time he would see it and hoping that it wasn't.

Wallis didn't need to be told anything once he opened his door and saw Graham standing there, backpack strapped on and hair combed. It wasn’t Graham’s habit to come knocking on his door before the lights came on to signal the start of a new day. Just woken and in his undershorts, Wallis merely grinned and waved him inside. With the door safely closed he asked, "Now? Tell me it's now."

Graham grinned back at him, his own nervousness fading in the presence of Wallis' excitement. He said, "Yep. We have about ten hours to get down to 72."

"Yikes! Crap."

Wallis proceeded to tear about his compartment, first looking for a decent pair of coveralls and finally settling for some that were very wrinkled and faded, but didn't stink too badly. Then he searched for his pack, which Graham eventually found stuffed under a cushion in Wallis' chair. The only thing he didn't have trouble finding were the radios he had liberated from the sheriff's office.

Though it only took a few minutes, it was an extremely disorganized search and Graham was a little concerned with how hard Wallis was breathing by the time he had packed up his supplies and started to shrug into his pack. That huffing breath decided the matter for Graham.

"Wallis, umm, what do you think about...umm...using the lifts for some of the trip down?"

His friend stopped short, arms akimbo and backpack straps askew, "You mean, as in actually get inside the lifts?"

Graham nodded.

"No way. No! That is fine for fruit but that isn't natural for humans. Are you kidding?"

"Wallis, think about it. We have to get down there and we need to be in good shape to do it. What's the difference in me lowering you five levels or a few bags of apples? You weigh less than the food. Then you can use the same pulley to lower me. It can work!" Graham said earnestly, trying to convince his friend and himself too.

Wallis surprised him them. He finished adjusting his pack and said simply, "Fuck it. Let's do it."

Ghosts in the Wall

They drew attention the whole way down and Graham reconsidered his idea as soon as he saw the first whispering and pointing groups on a landing. The silo may be losing population at a rapid rate, but people still needed to get around as they lived their lives. It was early, the dimming time just ending. The sharp clacks of lights switching from red to white sounded throughout the central column of the silo stairs and people were moving about as shifts changed.

Plenty of small groups saw them as they lowered each other past the landings. Worse, there were cameras everywhere on the landings. If anyone was watching from Silo One, this would be a certain cause for alarm and could get them all blasted to ruin before he could make it right. Graham took his hat out of his pack and squashed the misshapen thing onto his head, pulling it low to shield his face from the view of any cameras above him.

Most of the silo was still recovering from the dosed water and even though Graham could see that particular dullness in their eyes and that certain something in their posture, they perked up, smiled and waved as they caught sight of the pair. It made the people look more alive than they had since he had turned on the dosing system. He couldn't wait to see them again when it had cleared from their systems. Without the hat and without having to hide a single thing from any of them, he relished the idea of speaking to people truthfully, face to face.

People were more than curious as to why the two men were using the lifts on themselves. It was forbidden and declared unsafe by the very men who were now being seen using them. Wallis found an effortless solution to their obvious dilemma when he announced, enthusiastically, to the first crowd and to every one thereafter, that he was bringing happy news of a new mother in the down deep. Scattered applause met his announcement but also a few sad cries. The diversion worked though, and they passed each level with ease, often gaining assistance on the rope from people who happened to be nearby.

Not every level included a lift ride, which Graham found surprisingly fun to do. Lifts that only went a floor or two weren't worth the effort two entire trips in the cloth bucket would require. For those they walked the stairs. Those lifts that went three or more floors provided a surprising amount of rest for the two journeyers. Even though they worked with their arms on the ropes and pulleys, one person could lift hundreds of pounds with relative ease so the comparatively meager weight of one old man in a bucket was almost too easy.

Another benefit to the lifts was that they provided a bit of distraction and made the placement of the tiny repeaters under the ledges of the landings much easier to accomplish. Every five landings the repeaters, part of the radio modification instructions Silo 40 had passed along, had to be stuck where they could do their work yet remain undisturbed.

The sticky paste he smeared on each one held it tight within the shelf of metal on the underside of the chosen landings, but it was an awkward business to get them securely fit. He would have had to lie down and reach around the edge to place them had he walked the stairs, but inside a lift bucket, he just reached up and slammed it home as he passed his target landing. The movement was utterly unnoticed as one needed to place a hand on landings as they passed to be sure not to swing into it by accident anyway.

The descent wasn’t perfect, however, and they experienced a few hair raising moments. On the first leg of his ride, Wallis had leaned over the rigid edge of his bucket so that he could wave to people calling to him from a lower landing. It was just enough movement to unbalance the load and send the bucket swinging. He screeched and laughed as he bumped into another bucket, luckily an empty one, and then looked falsely chagrined when Graham yelled down at him to be still, for silo's sake.

That had sent waves of laughter rolling through the small crowd on the landing Wallis was passing. He was heard to say that this was a test of the system and should not be used by anyone else until they worked out all the obvious kinks. That had earned another surge of laughter from the little crowd. Wallis was in his element, of that Graham was sure.

It took just hours for them to reach the landing on Level 72. Graham was amazed at how little time it took two old men to do the trip. A young porter on fresh strong legs might be able to do that, but old men? With more than forty feet for each level, most of that taken up by the thick concrete between levels, it was not a short distance.

He thought it was amazing and he said so. Wallis agreed with him that these lifts were something they should seriously look into once they could do so. He wiggled his eyebrows when he said it and Graham almost burst out laughing again at the sight of such an unsubtle signal.

They collected themselves and had a bite to eat and a drink of water as cover for their stop. It would be logical for them to take a rest, perhaps even stay the night, before moving on. There were no people looking at their folly on this level, and the few people remaining above them at the next level wandered away after a few more waves and jokes.

Once they felt relatively unobserved, they walked away as casually as two honest people in the midst of wrongdoing could manage and secreted themselves into the tiny space they were to meet Grace in. Dank, empty and smelling a bit like a dirty urinal, Graham really didn't want to see anything he might be touching in this unused room and they leaned on the walls instead of sitting.

The only real duty Graham had while they waited was to check the radio and ensure the repeaters did their job. He checked in with Nella and got a strong voice in response, which eased one fear of failure at least. After that he had nothing more to do save dwell on all the other things that could go wrong.

Graham had never been a naturally nervous person, otherwise he would have never been selected for his job, but over the past seven-day he had almost grown used to the constant surges of panic and the feeling that his stomach was trying to climb up and escape through his nostrils.

After a wait long enough that the men opened the door to let in a sliver of light and search for things to sit on, Grace peeked in and wrinkled her nose at the smell. Graham had no clock but he did have a timer on the radio and he had set it, more or less accurately, before he left his rooms. He took a quick glance at it in the light of the open door and saw they had plenty of time to get into place and prepared. He tugged on Grace's sleeve to pull her into the space and shut the door before speaking.

Graham whispered into the dark where he last saw Grace, "I'm so glad you're here. I was a little worried you might not get my message."

"I'm good. When are we doing this? Now? Why are you whispering?" Grace asked, peppering him with questions and not waiting for answers. Her voice sounded strong and not at all like a dying woman who just climbed a bunch of levels. And now he felt like an idiot because he was whispering on top of sounding out of breath from just sitting around.

"We've got a little while yet but, yes, it is today. Did you bring the tools?" Graham asked at a more normal volume.

It didn’t feel right to speak loudly and he had to resist the urge to come back down to a whisper again. He was getting more nervous and worried that something would go wrong as each moment of inaction passed. He was sure he could actually feel his hair going even grayer and his skin tightening up on his bones from the stress.

"Everything you'll need is right here. I made a bag for each of us," she replied. She sounded so calm that it made Graham want to grind his teeth or maybe just be envious.

A rustling sound came from her general direction and Graham flinched and squinted as light flared from a flashlight in Grace's hand. She shoved the light toward him and when he took it, she untied the top of her own sack and withdrew three of the small green work bags seen everywhere in the silo. These three were worn and patched and stained from long years of use. The smell of grease and other chemicals, softened by ages of use, wafted up from the bags. Muffled clanks issued from within as she shifted them, one after the other, from her bag.

She handed Graham his and he was surprised at the weight of it. He wondered where she got the stamina to climb all those stairs with three of these strapped to her back, along with whatever else she might have brought. She was almost the same age as they were and sick on top of that, but there was much more to her than he had seen before. Her gaunt face and the lopsided swelling at her throat that signaled her particular affliction had pared her down until all that remained was this determined core. He wished he would have known her better before and he appreciated her unique strength now.

"What?" she asked Graham. He realized he had been staring at her and looked away.

"Nothing. I'm sorry. I just, well, I'm just amazed at you. At your strength, if you want to know the truth," Graham answered and was glad the light from the flashlight was pointed toward a wall. He was pretty sure he was blushing if the heat in his cheeks and ears was any indicator.

In reply, both Wallis and Grace let out snorts at almost the exact same instant and then laughed at having done so. It was a strange thing to be plotting in a dark room that stank of old pee with two other elderly people. It brought out the weird in them, he guessed. He coughed politely and pointed the flashlight at Wallis so he could pull out his contributions.

Wallis opened his own pack, brought out the radios and then carefully made sure that each was set to a channel not normally used in the silo. There were not enough deputies or administrative personnel to monitor multiple channels anymore and the radios themselves only monitored the band they were set to in order to conserve battery power unless specifically set to do otherwise. They would be safe to use on this off channel, Wallis had assured them.

They tested the radios there in the dark room, each pressing an ear to the speaker to be sure the test was coming from their radio and not someone else's. Grace took the time to go over the tools and what they would do. She made a point of showing them how to grip the cutters only on the coated handles while cutting wires to avoid a shock if it was electrified.

He didn’t need the instructions, given his life’s profession, but Wallis did and it calmed them both to listen to anything helpful said with such certainty and confidence. Graham felt his cheek twitch with nerves and he hoped very much that Wallis didn't get electrocuted doing this.