Michael Bunker - Refuse

Leah wasn’t ashamed, though. However much she examined herself, she never developed the feeling that she’d done something wrong. It even surprised her a little bit that she didn’t feel ashamed, and, even though she was too disturbed by the whole situation to return to work, she still had a latent sense of satisfaction that she’d been doing what she thought was right.

Time, however, is often the enemy of courage and discipline. The feeling of strength and the desire to stand steadfast against oppression waned as the hours ticked by. Now, the sense of their being options began to bounce around in her brain. If she did nothing, she knew that every member of the paper guild would be sent out to clean. Ivan would die for her intransigence. He was the best friend she had in the whole silo ever since Alexander died. Maybe… maybe she even loved him. Did she? Why did that thought even come up? And now, if she did nothing, he would soon be dead. Was that fair? What if the whole silo erupted in violence? She’d feel a lot better if she were with her brothers and sisters in chains, she thought. But is that even true? Am I ready to die? When she was in the cell down on 70, she’d felt more than ready to die, but now, she wasn’t so sure.

Doubt. Uncertainty. Fear?

Her biggest area of confusion lay in the connection, or lack thereof, between whatever was going on down in Maintenance, and the papermaking guild. As far as she knew, she and her father were the only ones who provided a connection between the two enterprises. She didn’t know what her father was up to, and she was fairly sure that he was ignorant of her illegal activities. The authorities had two problems in the silo, and apparently they had determined that she was the missing link.

She was deep in thought when it happened. The knock on the door was barely recognizable. Her thoughts fled from her and she caught her breath and waited in trembling silence. After a few moments, she heard it again. She had to do something. Twisting the knob, she felt her heart race in her chest. She cracked the door open slightly and a hand began to push against the door. She thought about resisting but before the thought could produce action, a porter rushed through it and quickly slammed it shut behind himself.

“I have only a few seconds,” he said, as he flipped open his satchel and rifled through the contents. Deep in the bag, buried down in a corner, he found what he was looking for and pulled it out. His hands shook as he opened the small envelope. Inside, there were two notes.

“These are from someone up-top. You’ll know who when you read them. This one first,” he said as he handed her one of the notes.

She flipped it open and read the charcoal words and recognized the firm hand and the slant of the letters and immediately knew its author:

Do not help them, Leah. Stand firm. We’re glad to die.They can’t stop what’s coming, and helping them won’t do anything to keep us alive. We’re all dying. All of your friends here in chains give you a big hug, and beg you to stand strong!

The note was initialed by all of the five guild members who’d been arrested. When she finished reading it, the porter handed her the second note and nodded his head in farewell as he took a step to leave and reached for the door.

“Wait!” Leah said. “Let me give you some chits for the delivery.”

“No. I won’t take them. I didn’t do this for chits.”

“Well… what’s your name?”

“Morgan.”

“Thank you, Morgan.”

The porter smiled at her, and with that, he was gone.

Leah,

I wouldmarry a picker. I was joking when I said I wouldn’t. Please forgive me. If this life weren’t about to be over for me, I’d marry you and we’d move into my apartment and be loving wingnuts together. You’re top-shelf with me, and I love you.

Leah sat down, unsure of the trustworthiness of her legs for a moment. Tears ran down her face and onto the paper she clutched in her hands. After reading the second note from Ivan, she poured herself out, sobbing uncontrollably until she had no more tears to shed. After some time, she braced herself and read the note again.

…my apartment…

…wingnuts…

…top-shelf…

Before she could even think about the ramifications of the letter, or ask herself if Ivan really meant the part about wanting to marry her, she’d already slung open her door and was sprinting towards Ivan’s place. He lived on the same floor, and his apartment was tucked away down a long, dark hallway that led away from the 57th floor landing. Arriving at his apartment, she found that the doorway was crisscrossed with duct tape, a rude pronouncement by the authorities that the peaceful man who lived here was really a criminal— an enemy to the silo . On the tape someone had written “Sheriff’s Investigation” several times. She reached through the tape and twisted the knob and the door swung open into the room. Apparently Sheriff Tatum’s office was sufficiently convinced that the mere mention of a Sheriff’s investigation was good enough of a threat to keep out interlopers. They were wrong about that. She’d have busted open the door if it came to that.

Leah looked back down the hallway towards the landing and saw that no one was watching, so she bent down and stepped through a gap in the tape. Slinking her way through the crisscrossed barrier, she made her way into the apartment and closed the door behind her.

She’d never been in Ivan’s apartment before. The tiny living area was Spartan. There was a small loveseat with a threadbare quilted blanket thrown over the back of it. There was a small dinette table with a single chair, and there was a metal bookshelf, identical to the one that the guild had used to press and hide paper. There was almost nothing in the room that betrayed the character of the apartment’s inhabitant. Almost nothing . On the bookshelves there were a few “approved” books, maybe ten or twelve of them. The books were held up by a set of bookends, probably made in a ceramics class. On each of the bookends was the imprint of a massive and towering tree, painted in brown and green to stand out against the black background of the ceramic base.

Leah worked quickly. She reached up beneath the overhanging lip of the top shelf and found the two wing nuts that she knew would be there. Her hands shook and she had to steady herself so that she could continue to twist the nuts to free the under-shelf from its mate. When the nuts were free from their bolts, the under-shelf was loose and she lowered it down and sat it on the love seat.

There on the shelf she saw a folded note written on homemade paper, a brass key, and four flattened sheets of paper that were covered—every millimeter of them—in tiny print.

She opened the folded note first:

If you’re reading this, then something has gone wrong. If you’re one of them, then it’s all over for us anyway, and I hope you feel good about destroying something that is beautiful. If you are one of us (hopefully you are one of us!), you’re reading this because I was able to get a note out to someone who hasn’t been arrested… yet. If there are documents here, PLEASE take them, and do all that you can do to get them into SAMIZDAT. If you truly are one us, the key will lead you to the information you need to know.Ivan.

Samizdat . There was that word again. She’d heard Sheriff Tatum say it when she was in her barely conscious state back in her jail cell.

She rubbed the key, turned it in her hands, and examined it closely.There were no marks or words or numbers that might indicate what it went to.