Hugh Howey: First Shift: Legacy

What he couldn’t figure out was where they were putting all those supplies. The tents seemed to keep gobbling them up with no end in sight. The four-wheelers with their little boxed trailers had been rumbling up and down the slopes the entire two weeks he’d been there helping prep for the national convention.

A set of brakes squealed beside him as Mick rumbled to a stop, sitting atop one of the ubiquitous ATVs. He grinned at Donald like a guilty frat boy and goosed the throttle while still holding the brakes. The Honda lurched, tires growling against the dirt.

“Wanna go for a ride?” he yelled.

“Where to?” Donald screamed back. The rock band resumed its sound check, the Honda blatting as Mick worked the throttle.

“South Carolina,” Mick said, smiling. He scooted forward on the seat to make room.

“You got enough gas to make it there?” Donald held his friend’s shoulder and stepped on the second set of pegs, threw his leg over the seat.

“It’s just over that hill, you idiot.”

Donald resisted the urge to assure Mick he’d been joking. He held on to the metal rack behind him as Mick gave it gas and shifted through to third gear. His friend stuck to the dusty highway between the tents until they reached the grass, then angled toward the South Carolina delegation, the tops of the buildings of downtown Atlanta visible off to one side.

Mick turned his head as the Honda climbed the hill. “When is Helen getting here?” he yelled.

Donald leaned forward. He loved the feel of the cool October morning air as the ATV created a breeze. It reminded him of Savannah that time of year, the chill of a sunrise on the beach. He had just been thinking of Helen when Mick asked about her.

“Tomorrow,” he shouted. “She’s coming on a bus with the delegates from Savannah.”

They crested the hill, and Mick throttled back and steered along the ridgeline. They passed a loaded-down four-wheeler heading in the opposite direction. The network of ridges formed an interlocked maze of highways high above each containment facility’s sunken bowl.

Peering into the distance—the bumps in the trail traveling up through the metal cargo rack and into his arms—Donald watched the ballet of scooting ATVs weave across the landscape. One day, he imagined, the flat roads on top of the hills would rumble with much larger trucks bearing hazardous waste and radiation warnings. This would be the last time civilians could march up and down grass hillsides designed not for stadium seating but simply because all the soil dug up from below had to go somewhere .

And yet, seeing the flags waving over the Florida delegation to one side and the Georgia stage to the other, and noting the way the slopes would carry record crowds and afford everyone a perfect view of each stage, Donald couldn’t help but think that all the happy accidents had some larger purpose. It was as if the facility had been planned from the beginning to serve the 2052 Democratic National Convention, as if it had been built with more than its original goal in mind.

A large blue flag with a white tree and crescent moon swayed lazily over the South Carolina stage. Mick parked the four-wheeler in a sea of ATVs ringing the large hospitality tent. Donald watched his friend pocket the key, even though all of the vehicles were on loan. He supposed it prevented someone from taking their ride by mistake.

Following Mick through the parked vehicles, Donald saw that they were heading toward a smaller tent, which was swallowing a ton of traffic.

“What kind of errand are we on?” he asked.

Not that it mattered. In recent days they’d done a little of everything around the facility: running bags of ice to various state headquarters, meeting with congressmen and senators to see if they needed anything, making sure all the volunteers and delegates were settling into their trailers okay, whatever the Senator needed.

“Oh, we’re just taking a little tour,” Mick said cryptically. He waved Donald into the small tent where workers were filing through in one direction with their arms loaded and coming out the other side empty-handed.

In comparison, he and Mick looked conspicuously lazy—or perhaps important—as they passed through with nothing.

The inside of the small tent was lit up with flood-lights, the ground packed hard from the traffic, the grass matted flat. A concrete ramp led deep into the earth, workers with volunteer badges trudging up one side. Mick jumped into the line heading down.

Donald knew where they were going. He recognized the ramp. He hurried up beside Mick.

“This is one of the rod storage facilities.” He couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice, didn’t even try. He’d been dying to see the other design, either on paper or in person. “Can we just go in ?”

As if to answer, Mick started down the ramp, blending with the others.

“I begged for a tour the other day,” Donald hissed, “but Thurman spouted all this national security crap—”

Mick laughed. Halfway down the slope, the roof of the tent seemed to recede into the darkness above, the concrete walls on either side funneling the workers toward the gaping steel doors.

“You’re not gonna get inside one of those other facilities,” Mick told him. He put his hand on Donald’s back and ushered him through the industrial-looking and familiar entrance chamber. The foot traffic ground to a halt as people took turns entering or leaving through the small hatch ahead. Donald felt turned around.

“Wait.” Donald caught glimpses through the hatch. “This is my design.”

They shuffled forward. Mick made room for the people coming out. He had a hand on Donald’s shoulder, guiding him along.

“What’re we doing here?” Donald asked. He could’ve sworn his bunker design was in the bowl set aside for Tennessee. Then again, they’d been making so many last-minute changes the past weeks—and the CAD-FAC design made it easy to get turned around—maybe he’d been mixed up.

“Anna told me you wimped out and skipped the tour of this place.”

“That’s bullshit.” Donald stopped at the oval hatch. He recognized every rivet—more from his drawings than from passing through a few weeks before. He waved the inside people out, allowing them to pass through the tight squeeze first. “Why would she say that? I was right here. I cut the damn ribbon.”

Mick pushed at his back. “Go. You’re holding up the line.”

“I don’t want to go.” He waved more people out. The workers behind Mick shifted in place, heavy Tupperware containers in their hands. “I saw the top floor,” he said. “That was enough.”

His friend clasped his neck with one hand and gripped his wrist with the other. As his head was bent forward—like a perp shoved into a squad car—Donald had to move along to avoid falling on his face. He tried to reach for the jamb of the interior door, but Mick had his wrist.

“I want you to see what you built ,” his friend said.

Donald stumbled through to the security office. He and Mick stepped aside to let the congestion they’d caused ease past.

“I’ve been looking at this damn thing every day for three years,” Donald said. He patted his pocket for his pills, wondered if it was too soon to take another. What he didn’t tell Mick was that he’d forced himself to envision his design being above ground the entire time he’d worked on it, more a skyscraper than a buried straw. No way could he share that with his best friend, tell him how terrified he felt right then with no more than ten meters of dirt and concrete over his head. He seriously doubted Anna had used the phrase “wimped out,” but that’s exactly what he had done after working those oversized shears. While the Senator led dignitaries through the complex, Donald had gone up to find a patch of grass with nothing but bright blue above while the sweat cooled from his neck and he gasped for fresh air.