Second Shift - Order(58)

Mission rubbed his scalp and thought about that. “Maybe I should,” he said. “I could be up there before the dim-time.” He watched as Lyn disappeared into one of the bunk rooms down the hall. She emerged almost immediately with her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.

“What is it?” Mission asked, pushing up from a crouch and joining her.

She threw her arms around him and held him away from the door, buried her face into his shoulder. Joel risked a look.

“No,” he whispered.

Mission pulled away from Lyn and joined his fellow porter by the door.

The bunks were full. Some lay sprawled on the floor, but it was obvious by the tangle of their limbs—the way arms hung useless from bunks or were twisted beneath them—that these porters weren’t sleeping.

They discovered Katelyn among them. None of them could abide seeing her like that, which cemented Mission’s plan to dash up on his own. Lyn shook with silent sobs as he and Joel retrieved Katelyn’s body and loaded her into the bag. Mission felt a pang of guilt to think that it was nice how small Katelyn was. Awful porter thoughts.

They were securing the straps and zipping her up when the power in the hallway went out, leaving them in the pitch black. They groped for one another, even the light spilling through the doors leading out onto the landing suddenly gone.

“What the hell?” Joel hissed.

A moment later, the lights returned but flickered as though an unsteady flame burned in each bulb. Mission wiped the sweat from his forehead and wished he still had his ’chief.

“If you can’t make it all the way tonight,” he said to the others, “stop and stay at the waystation and check on Robbie.”

“We’ll be fine,” Joel assured him.

Lyn squeezed his arm before he went. “Watch your steps,” she said.

“And you,” Mission told them.

He hurried toward the landing and the great stairway beyond. Overhead, the lights flickered like little flames. A sign that something, somewhere, perhaps was burning.





•32•




He hurried upward amid a fog of smoke and rumor, and Mission’s throat burned from the one, his mind from the other. An explosion in Mechanical was whispered to have been the reason for the blackout. Talk swirled of a bent or broken shaft and that the silo was on backup power. He heard such things from half a spiral away as he took the steps two and sometimes three at a time. It felt good to be out and moving, good to have his muscles aching rather than sitting still, to be his own burden.

And he noticed that when anyone saw him, they either fell silent or scattered beyond their landings, even those he knew. At first, he feared it was from recognition. But it was the Security white he wore. Young men just like him thundered up and down the stairwell terrorizing everyone. They were yesterday’s farmers, welders, and pumpmen—and they brought order with their strange and dark weapons.

More than once, a group of them stopped Mission and asked where he was going, where his rifle was. He told them that he had been a part of the fighting below and was reporting back. It was something he’d heard another claim. Many of them seemed to know as little as he did, and so they would let him pass. As ever, the color you wore said everything. People could know you at a glance.

The activity grew thicker near IT. A group of new recruits passed, and Mission watched over the railing as they kicked in the doors to the level below and stormed inside. People screamed. There was a sharp bang like a heavy steel rod falling to the steel decking. A dozen of these bangs, and then less screaming. Fear was in everyone’s eyes, no less those in white who seemed to know as little of what they were doing as Mission. Just chaos like a switch had been thrown. A steady pulse of light one day, and now the faltering of a dying flame.

He passed IT, the doors closed, and thought for a moment about barging in and trying to talk his way past the guards. But not alone. Tomorrow, with his friends.

His legs were sore, a stitch in his side, as he approached the farms. He caught sight of Winters and a few others out on the landing with shovels and rakes. Someone yelled something as he passed. Mission quickened his pace, thinking of his father and brother, seeing the wisdom for once in his old man’s unwillingness to leave that patch of dirt.

A bag of berries on the stairwell looked at first like a blood stain. They had been stepped on and crushed, but Mission picked up the bag anyway. He scooped the mush out with his fingers as he hurried on, grateful for the find. He left the empty bag on the next landing, remembering days when such plastic was filled with paint and dropped on others. Those no longer seemed like the good times.

After a lifetime of racing up with the smoke as his company, of rising with the drifting ash, he reached the quiet of the Nest. The little chicks were gone. Most people were probably holed up in their apartments, families cowering together, hoping this madness would pass like others had. Inside, several lockers stood open. A child’s backpack lay in the middle of the hall. Mission staggered forward on numb legs toward the sound of a familiar singing voice and the screech of something awful.