Wool Omnibus

“This friend, was he involved with George in any way? How close of a friend was he?”



“No. Not that I know of. Look, if it’s a big deal, don’t worry about—” Lukas wanted to simply ask, to ask why he’d done it. But Bernard seemed intent on telling him with no prompting at all.



“It’s a very big deal,” Bernard said. “George Wilkins was a dangerous man. A man of ideas. The kind we catch in whispers, the kind who poisons the people around him—”



“What? What do you mean?”



“Section thirteen of the Order. Study it. All insurrections would start right there if we let them, start with men like him.”



Bernard’s chin had lowered to his chest, his eyes peering over the rims of his glasses, the truth coming freely without all the deceit Lukas had planned.



Lukas never needed that folder; he had found the travel logs that coincided with George’s death, the dozens of wires asking Holston to wrap things up. But now he saw he never even needed to ask for the folder at all. There was no shame in Bernard. George Wilkins hadn’t died; he’d been murdered. And Bernard was willing to tell him why.



“What did he do?” Lukas asked quietly.



“I’ll tell you what he did. He was a mechanic, a greaser. We started hearing chatter from the porters about these plans circulating, ideas for expanding the mine, doing a lateral dig. As you know, lateral digs are forbidden—”



“Yeah, obviously.” Lukas had a mental image of miners from silo 18 pushing through and meeting miners from silo 19. It would be awkward, to say the least.



“A long chat with the old head of Mechanical put an end to that nonsense, and then George Wilkins came up with the idea of expanding downward. He and some others drew up schematics for a level one-fifty. And then a level one-sixty.”



“Twelve more levels?”



“To begin with. That was the talk, anyway. Just whispers and sketches. But some of these whispers landed in a porter’s ear, and then ours perked up.”



“So you killed him?”



“Someone did, yes. It doesn’t matter who.” Bernard adjusted his glasses with one hand. The other stayed in the belly of his coveralls. “You’ll have to do these things one day, son. You know that, don’t you?”



“Yeah, but—”



“No buts.” Bernard shook his head slowly. “Some men are like a virus. Unless you want to see a plague break out, you inoculate the silo against them. You remove them.”



Lukas remained silent.



“We’ve removed fourteen threats this year, Lukas. Do you have any idea what the average life expectancy would be if we weren’t proactive about these things?”



“But the cleanings—”



“Useful for dealing with the people who want out. Who dream of a better world. This uprising we’re having right now is full of people like that, but it’s just one sort of sickness we deal with. The cleaning is one sort of cure. I’m not sure if someone with a different illness would even clean if we sent them out there. They have to want to see what we show them for it to work.”



This reminded Lukas of what he’d learned of the helmets, the visors. He had assumed this was the only kind of sickness there was. He was beginning to wish he’d read more of the Order and less of the Legacy.



“You’ve heard this latest outbreak on the radio. All of this could have been prevented if we’d caught the sickness earlier. Tell me that wouldn’t have been better.”



Lukas looked down at his boots. The trash can lay nearby, on its side. It looked sad like that. No longer useful for holding things.



“Ideas are contagious, Lukas. This is basic Order material. You know this stuff.”



He nodded. He thought of Juliette, wondered why she hadn’t called in forever. She was one of these viruses Bernard was talking about, her words creeping in his mind and infecting him with outlandish dreams. He felt his entire body flush with heat as he realized he’d caught some of it too. He wanted to touch his breast pocket, feel the lumps of her personal effects there, the watch, the ring, the ID. He had taken them to remember her in death, but they had become even more precious knowing that she was still alive.



“This uprising hasn’t been nearly as bad as the last one,” Bernard told him. “And even after that one, things were eventually smoothed over, the damage welded back together, the people made to forget. The same thing will happen here. Are we clear?”



“Yessir.”



“Excellent. Now, was that all you wished to know from this folder?”



Lukas nodded.



“Good. It sounds like you need to be reading something else, anyway.” His mustache twitched with half a smile. Bernard turned to go.



“It was you, wasn’t it?”



Bernard stopped, but didn’t turn to face him.



“That killed George Wilkins. It was you, right?”



“Does it matter?”



“Yeah. It matters to— To me— It means—”



“Or to your friend?” Bernard turned to face him. Lukas felt the temperature in the room go up yet another notch.



“Are you having second thoughts, son? About this job? Was I wrong about you? Because I’ve been wrong before.”



Lukas swallowed. “I just want to know if it’s something I’d ever have to— I mean, since I’m shadowing for—”



Bernard took a few steps toward him. Lukas felt himself back up half a step in response.



“I didn’t think I was wrong about you. But I was, wasn’t I?” Bernard shook his head. He looked disgusted. “Goddammit,” he spat.



“Nossir. You weren’t. I think I’ve just been in here too long.” Lukas brushed his hair off his forehead. His scalp was itchy. He needed to use the bathroom. “Maybe I just need some air, you know? Go home for a while? Sleep in my bed. What’s it been, a month? How long do I need—?”



“You want out of here?”



Lukas nodded.



Bernard peered down at his boots and seemed to consider this a while. When he looked up, there was sadness in his eyes, in the droop of his mustache, across the wet film of his eyes.



“Is that what you want? To get out of here?”



He adjusted his hands inside his coveralls.



“Yessir.” Lukas nodded.



“Say it.”



“I want out of here.” Lukas glanced at the heavy steel door behind Bernard. “Please. I want you to let me out.”



“Out.”



Lukas bobbed his head, exasperated, sweat tickling his cheek as it followed the line of his jaw. He was suddenly very afraid of this man, this man who all of a sudden reminded him even more of his father.



“Please,” Lukas said. “It’s just…I’m starting to feel cooped up. Please let me out.”



Bernard nodded. His cheeks twitched. He looked as if he were about to cry. Lukas had never seen this expression on the man’s face.



“Sheriff Billings, are you there?”



His small hand emerged from his coveralls and raised the radio to his sad, quivering mustache.



Peter’s voice crackled back. “I’m here, sir.”



Bernard clicked the transmitter. “You heard the man,” he said, tears welling up in the bottoms of his eyes. “Lukas Kyle, IT engineer first class, says he wants out—”



25



• Silo 17 •



“Hello? Walk? Shirly?”



Juliette shouted into the radio, the orphans and Solo watching her from several steps below. She had hurried the kids through the farms, made hasty introductions, checking the radio all the while. Several levels had gone by, the others trudging up behind her, and still no word from them, nothing since she’d been cut off, the sound of gunfire sprinkled among Walker’s words. She kept thinking if she just got higher, if she tried one more time. She checked the light by the power knob and made sure the battery wasn’t dead, turned the volume up until she could hear the static, could know the thing was working.



She clicked the button. The static fell silent, the radio waiting for her to speak. “Please say something, guys. This is Juliette. Can you hear me? Say anything.”



She looked to Solo, who was being supported by the very man who had dazed him. “We need to go higher, I think. C’mon. Double-time.”



There were groans; these poor refugees of silo 17 acted like she was the one who’d lost her mind. But they stomped up the stairs after her, their pace dictated by Solo, who had seemed to rally with some fruit and water but had slowed as the levels wore on.



“Where are these friends of yours we talked to?” Rickson asked. “Can they come help?” He grunted as Solo lurched to one side. “He’s heavy.”



“They aren’t coming to help us,” Juliette said. “There’s no getting from there to here.” Or vice-versa, she told herself.



Her stomach lurched with worry. She needed to get to IT and call Lukas, find out what was going on. She needed to tell him how horribly awry her plans had gone, how she was failing at every turn. There was no going back, she realized. No saving her friends. No saving this silo. She glanced back over her shoulder. Her life was now going to be one of a mother to these orphaned children, kids who had survived merely because the people who were left, who were committing the violence on each other, didn’t have the stomach to kill them. Or the heart, she thought.



And now it would fall to her. And to Solo, but to a lesser degree. Often, he would probably be just one more child for her to attend to.



They made their gradual way up another flight, Solo seeming to regain his senses a little, progress being made. But still a long way to go.



Each step, each moment that went by without a reply from silo 17 took her that many more paces into her new future. She thought of the work they’d need to perform in IT to make it ready. The kids were already adept at tending the farms, which was good. There’d be plenty of that to do. And she was alive. She reminded herself how lucky she was to be alive. She’d been sent to clean and had not perished. This was something—no matter the life she’d found on the other side. It was a life. It would be.



They stopped in the mids for bathroom breaks, filling more empty toilets that wouldn’t flush. Juliette helped the young ones. They didn’t like going like this, preferred to do it in the dirt. She told them that was right, that they only did this when they were on the move. She didn’t tell them about the years Solo had spent destroying entire levels of apartments. She didn’t tell them about the clouds of flies she’d seen.



The last of their food was consumed, but they had plenty of water. Juliette wanted to get to the hydroponics on sixty-two before they stopped for the night. There was enough food and water there for the rest of the trip. She tried the radio repeatedly, aware that she was running down the battery. There was no reply. She didn’t understand how she’d heard them to begin with; all the silos must use something different, some way of not hearing each other. It had to be Walker, something he’d engineered. When she got back to IT, would she be able to figure it out? Would she be able to contact him or Shirly? She wasn’t sure, and Lukas had no way of talking to Mechanical from where he was, no way of patching her through. She’d asked a dozen times.



Lukas—



And Juliette remembered.



The radio in Solo’s hovel. What had Lukas said one night—they were talking late and he’d said he wished they could chat from down below where it was more comfortable. Wasn’t that where he was getting his updates about the uprising? It was over the radio. Just like the one in Solo’s place, beneath the servers, locked behind that steel cage for which he’d never found the key.



Juliette turned and faced the group; they stopped climbing and gripped the rails, stared up at her. Helena, the young mother who didn’t even know her own age, tried to comfort her baby as it began to squeal. The nameless infant preferred the sway of the climb.



“I need to go up,” she told them. She looked to Solo. “How’re you feeling?”



“Me? I’m fine.”



He didn’t look fine.



“Can you get them up?” She nodded to Rickson. “Are you okay?”



The boy dipped his chin. His resistance had seemed to crumble during the climb, especially during the bathroom break. The younger children, meanwhile, had been nothing but excited to see new parts of the silo, to feel that they could raise their voices without bad things happening to them. They were coming to grips with there being only two adults left, and neither seemed all that bad.



“There’s food on sixty-two,” she said.



“Numbers—” Rickson shook his head. “I don’t—”



Of course. Why would he need to count numbers he’d never live to see, and in more ways than one?



“Solo will show you where,” she told him. “We’ve stayed there before. Good food. Canned stuff as well. Solo?” She waited until he looked up at her, the glazed expression partly melting away. “I have to get back to your place. I have people I need to call, okay? My friends. I need to find out if they’re okay.”



He nodded.



“You guys will be fine?” She hated to leave them but needed to. “I’ll try and make it back down to you tomorrow. Take your time getting all the way up, okay? No need to rush home.”



Home. Was she already resigned to that?



There were nods in the group. One of the young boys pulled a water bottle out of the other’s bag and unscrewed the cap. Juliette turned and began taking the stairs two at a time, her legs begging her not to.



This was her home. It was a sickening realization. A horrible new awareness. She clutched her shoulder bag and set a porter’s pace, the change in clothing becoming damp with her sweat, the air growing less frigid as she put distance between herself and that flood below. A level up, and she could hear the kids behind her already getting back to their games, their shouts and their laughter. This terrible trip of hers, this dreadful sprint up on dead legs, it was for them the most exciting and uplifting experience of their young and tragic lives.