Wool (38 page)

“No,” she said sadly, remembering what it felt like to wade through them, to crawl over them. It felt like weeks ago rather than days.

“So you saw them out there? Dead?”

She nodded.

He dipped his chin. “The view didn’t stay on for long. I only snuck up once in the early days. There was still a lot of fighting going on. As time went by, I snuck out more often and further. I found a lot of the mess they made. But I haven’t found a body in”—he thought carefully—“maybe twenty years?”

“So there were others in here for a while?”

He pointed toward the ceiling. “Sometimes they would come in here. With the servers. And fight. They fought everywhere. Got worse as it went along, you know? Fight over food, fight over women, fight over fighting.” He twisted at the waist and pointed back through another door. “These rooms are like a silo in a silo. Made to last ten years. But it lasts longer if you’re solo.” He smiled.

“What do you mean? A silo in a silo?”

He nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Sorry. I’m used to talking with someone who knows everything I know.” He winked at her, and Juliette realized he meant himself. “You don’t know what a silo is.”

“Of course I do,” she said. “I was born and raised in a place just like this. Only, I guess you could say that we’re still having good days and not giving ourselves credit for them.”

Solo smiled. “Then what’s a silo?” he asked, that teenage defiance bubbling to the surface.

“It’s …” Juliette searched for the words. “It’s our home. A building like those over the hill, but underground. The silo is the part of the world you can live in. The
inside,
” she said, realizing it was harder to define than she thought.

Solo laughed.

“That’s what the word means to
you
. But we use words all the time without really understanding them.” He pointed toward the shelf with all the metal canisters. “All the real knowing is in those. Everything that ever happened.” He shot her a look. “You’ve heard the term ‘raging bull’? Or someone being ‘bullheaded’?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“But what’s a bull?” he asked.

“Someone who’s careless. Or mean, like a bully.”

Solo laughed. “So much we don’t know,” he said. He studied his fingernails. “A silo isn’t the world. It’s nothing. The term, this word, comes from a long time ago, back when crops grew in the outside further than you could see”—he waved his hand over the floor like it was some vast terrain”—back when there were more people than you could count, back when everyone had lots of kids.” He glanced up at her. His hands came together and kneaded one another, almost as if embarrassed to bring up the making of kids around a woman.

“They grew so much food,” he continued, “that even for all these people they couldn’t eat it all, not at once. So they stored it away in case times got bad. They took more seeds of grain than you could count and they would pour them into these great silos that stood aboveground—”

“Aboveground,” Juliette said. “Silos.” She felt as though he must be making this up, some delusion he’d concocted over the lonely decades.

“I can show you pictures,” he said petulantly, as if upset by her doubt. He got up and hurried to the shelf with the metal canisters. He read the small white labels on the bottom, running his fingers across them.

“Ah!” He grabbed one—it looked heavy—and brought it to her. The clasp on the side released the lid, revealing a thick object inside.

“Let me,” he said, even though she hadn’t moved a muscle to help. He tilted the box and let the heavy object fall onto his palm, where it balanced expertly. It was the size of a children’s book, but ten or twenty times as thick. Still, it was a book. She could see the edges of miraculously fine-cut paper.

“I’ll find it,” he said. He flipped pages in large chunks, each flap a fortune in pressed paper clapping solidly against more fortunes. Then he whittled his search down more finely, a pinch at a time, before moving to a single page at a time.

“Here.” He pointed.

Juliette moved closer and looked. It was like a drawing, but so exact as to almost seem real. It was like looking at the view of the outside from the cafeteria, or the picture of someone’s face on an ID, but in color. She wondered if this book had batteries in it.

“It’s so real,” she whispered, rubbing it with her fingers.

“It
is
real,” he said. “It’s a picture. A photograph.”

Juliette marveled at the colors, the green field and blue sky reminding her of the lies she had seen in her visor’s false images. She wondered if this was false as well. It looked nothing like the rough and smeared photos she’d ever seen.

“These buildings”—he pointed to what looked like large white cans sitting on the ground—“these are silos. They hold seed for the bad times. For until the times get good again.”

He looked up at her. They were just a few feet apart, Juliette and him. She could see the wrinkles around his eyes, could see how much the beard concealed his age.

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say,” she told him.

He pointed at her. Pointed at his own chest. “We are the seeds,” he said. “This is a silo. They put us here for the bad times.”

“Who? Who put us here? And what bad times?”

He shrugged. “But it won’t work.” He shook his head, then sat back on the floor and peered at the pictures in the massive book. “You can’t leave seeds this long,” he said. “Not in the dark like this. Nope.”

He glanced up from the book and bit his lip, water welling up in his eyes. “Seeds don’t go crazy,” he told her. “They don’t. They have bad days and lots of good ones, but it doesn’t matter. You leave them and leave them, however many you bury, and they do what seeds do when they’re left alone too long …”

He stopped. Closed the book and held it to his chest. Juliette watched as he rocked back and forth, ever so slightly.

“What do seeds do when they’re left too long?” she asked him.

He frowned.

“We rot,” he said. “All of us. We go bad down here, and we rot so deep that we won’t grow anymore.” He blinked and looked up at her. “We’ll never grow again.”

The waiting beyond the stacks of Supply was the worst. Those who could napped. Most engaged in nervous banter. Knox kept checking the time on the wall, picturing all the pieces moving throughout the silo. Now that his people were armed, all he could hope for was a smooth and bloodless transfer of power. He hoped they could get their answers, find out what had been going on in IT—those secretive bastards—and maybe vindicate Jules. But he knew bad things could happen.

He saw it on Marck’s face, the way he kept looking at Shirly. The worry there was evident in the man’s frown, the tilt of his eyebrows, the wrinkles above the bridge of his nose. Knox’s shift leader wasn’t hiding the concern for his wife as well as he probably thought he was.

Knox pulled out his multi-tool and checked the blade. He flashed his teeth in the reflection to see if anything from his last meal was stuck there. As he was putting it away, one of Supply’s shadows emerged from behind the stacks to let them know they had visitors.

“What color visitors?” Shirly asked as the group gathered their guns and lurched to their feet.

The young girl pointed at Knox. “Blue. Same as you.”

Knox rubbed the girl’s head as he slipped between the shelving units. This was a good sign. The rest of his people from Mechanical were running ahead of schedule. He made his way to the counter while Marck gathered the others, waking a few, the extra rifles clattering as they were gathered up.

As Knox rounded the counter, he saw Pieter enter through the front door, the two Supply workers guarding the landing having allowed him past.

Pieter smiled as he and Knox clasped hands. Members of Pieter’s refinery crew filed in behind, their customary black overalls replaced with the more discreet blue.

“How goes it?” Knox asked.

“The stairs sing with traffic,” Pieter said. His chest swelled as he took in and held a deep breath, then blew it out. Knox imagined the pace they’d maintained to shave off so much time.

“Everyone’s under way?” He and Pieter slid to the side while their two groups merged, members of Supply introducing themselves or embracing those they already knew.

“They are.” He nodded. “I’d give the last of them another half hour. Though I fear the whispers on porters’ lips travel even faster than we do.” He looked toward the ceiling. “I’d wager they echo above our heads even now.”

“Suspicions?” Knox asked.

“Oh, aye. We had a run-in by the lower market. People wanted to know the fuss. Georgie gave them lip, and I thought it’d come to blows.”

“God, and not in the mids yet.”

“Aye. Can’t help but think a smaller incursion would’ve had a greater chance of success.”

Knox frowned, but he understood Pieter’s thinking so. The man was used to doing a great deal with only a handful of strong backs. But it was too late for them to argue over plans already in action. “Well, the blackouts have likely begun,” Knox said. “There’s nothing to it but for us to chase them up.”

Pieter nodded gravely. He looked around the room at the men and women arming themselves and repacking their gear for another quick climb. “And I suppose we mean to bludgeon our way up.”

“Our plan is to be heard,” Knox said. “Which means making some noise.”

Pieter patted his boss on the arm. “Well then, we are already winning.”

He left to pick out a gun and top up his canteen. Knox joined Marck and Shirly by the door. Those without guns had armed themselves with fearsome shanks of flattened iron, the edges bright silver from the shrill work of the grinder. It was amazing to Knox that they all knew, instinctively, how to build implements of pain. It was something even shadows knew how to do at a young age, knowledge somehow dredged up from the brutal depths of their imagination, this ability to deal harm to one another.

“Are the others running behind?” Marck asked Knox.

“Not too bad,” Knox said. “More that these guys made good time. The rest’ll catch up. You guys ready?”

Shirly nodded. “Let’s get moving,” she said.

“All right, then. Onward and upward, as they say.” Knox scanned the room and watched his mechanics meld with members of Supply. More than a few faces were turned his way, waiting for some sign, maybe another speech. But Knox didn’t have another one in him. All he had was the fear that he was leading good people to their slaughter, that the taboos were falling in some runaway cascade, and it was all happening much too quickly. Once guns were made, who would unmake them? Barrels rested on shoulders and bristled like pincushions above the crowd. There were things, like spoken ideas, that were almost impossible to take back. And he reckoned his people were about to make many more of them.

“On me,” he growled, and the chatter began to die down. Packs rustled into place, pockets jangling with danger. “On me,” he said again to the quieting room, and his soldiers began to form up in columns. Knox turned to the door, thinking this was certainly all
on him
. He made sure his rifle was covered, tucked it under his arm, and squeezed Shirly’s shoulder as she pulled the door open for him.

Outside, two workers from Supply stood by the railing. They had been turning the sparse traffic away with a made-up power outage. With the doors open, bright light and the noise of Supply’s machinery leaked out into the stairwell, and Knox saw what Pieter meant by whispers traveling swifter than feet. He adjusted his pack of supplies—the tools, candles, and flashlights that made it seem as if he were marching to aid rather than war. Beneath this beguiling layer were secreted more bullets and an extra bomb, bandages and pain salve for just in case. His rifle was wrapped in a strip of cloth and remained tucked under his arm. Knowing what it was, he found the concealment ridiculous. Looking at the others marching with him, some in welding smocks, some holding construction helmets, he saw their intentions were all too obvious.

They left the landing and the light spilling from Supply behind and began their climb. Several of his people from Mechanical had changed into yellow overalls, the better to blend in the mids. They moved noisily up the dimmed nighttime glow of the stairwell, the shiver of traffic from below giving Knox hope that the rest of his people would be catching up soon. He felt sorry for their weary legs but reminded himself that they were traveling light.

He tried his damnedest to picture the coming morning as positively as he could. Perhaps the clash would conclude before any more of his people arrived. Maybe they would end up being nothing more than a wave of supporters coming to join in the celebrations. Knox and McLain would have already entered the forbidden levels of IT, would have yanked the cover off the inscrutable machinery inside, exposing those evil whirring cogs once and for all.

They made good progress while Knox dreamed of a smooth overthrow. They passed one landing where a group of women were hanging laundry over the metal railing to dry. The women spotted Knox and his people in their blue overalls and complained of the power outages. Several of his workers stopped to hand out supplies and to spread lies. It wasn’t until after they had left and had wound their way up to the next level that Knox saw the cloth had come unwrapped from Marck’s barrel. He pointed this out and it was fixed before the next landing.

The climb turned into a silent, grueling ordeal. Knox let others take the lead while he slid back and checked on the status of his people. Even those in Supply, he considered his responsibility. Their lives were hanging in the balance of decisions he’d made. It was just as Walker had said, that crazy fool. This was it. An uprising, just like the fables of their youth. And Knox suddenly felt a dire kinship with those old ghosts, those ancestors of myth and lore. Men and women had done this before—maybe for different reasons, with a less noble anger caught in their throats, but somewhen, on some level, there had been a march like this. Similar boots on the same treads. Maybe some of the same boots, just with new soles. All with the jangle of mean machines in hands not afraid to use them.