Hugh Howey - Dust

The chewing disc entered the room, sharpened wheels spinning and screaming in the air, rock thrown up on one side and crumbling down from the other. The violence lessened. The squealing of dry metal joints grew less deafening. Hannah cooed to her child, rocking her arms back and forth, eyes wide and fixed on this intrusion into their home.

Somewhere, shouts emerged. They leaked through the falling rock. The rotating disc slowed to a halt, while some of the smaller wheels spun a while longer. Their edges revealed themselves as shiny and new where their battle through the earth had worn them bare. A length of rebar was wrapped around one like a knotted bootlace.

A respite of silence grew. The child fell still once more. A distant clatter and hum — the digger’s rumbling belly perhaps — was the only sound.

“Hello?”

A shout from around the digger.

“Yeah, we’re through,” another voice called. A woman’s voice.

Jimmy swept up Elise, who hugged his neck and locked her ankles around his waist. He ran toward the wall of studded steel before him.

“Hey!” Rickson called as he hurried after.

The twins raced along as well.

Jimmy couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t Elise squeezing him this time — it was the idea of visitors . Of people not to be afraid of. Someone he could run to rather than from.

Everyone felt it. They raced, grinning, toward the digger’s maw.

Between the gap in the wall and the silent disc, an arm emerged, a shoulder, a woman climbing up from the cut tunnel that dipped below the floor.

She pushed herself to her knees, stood up straight, and brushed her hair from her face.

Jimmy pulled up. The group stopped a dozen paces away. A woman. A stranger. She stood in their silo, smiling, covered in dust and grime.

“Solo?” she asked.

Her teeth flashed. She was pretty, even covered in dirt. She walked toward the group and tugged off a pair of thick gloves while someone else crawled out from behind the digger’s teeth. An outstretched hand. The baby crying. Jimmy shook the woman’s hand, mesmerized by her smile.

“I’m Courtnee,” the woman said. She swept her gaze over the children, her smile widening. “You must be Elise.” She squeezed the young girl’s shoulder, which caused the grip around Jimmy’s neck to tighten.

A man emerged from behind the digger, pale as fresh paper with hair just as white, and turned to survey the wall of cutting teeth.

“Where’s Juliette?” Jimmy asked, hiking Elise higher on his hip.

Courtnee frowned. “Didn’t she tell you? She went outside.”

Juliette stood in the airlock while gas was pumped in around her. The cleaning suit crinkled against her skin. She felt none of the fear from the last time she was sent out, but none of the deluded hope that drove many to exile. Somewhere between pointless dreams and hopeless dread was a desire to know the world. And, if possible, make it better.

The pressure in the airlock grew, and the folds of her suit found every raised scar across her body, wrinkles pressing where wrinkles had once burned. It was a million pricks from a million gentle needles, every sensitive part of her touched all at once, as if this airlock remembered, as if it knew her. A lover’s apology.

Clear plastic sheets had been hung over the walls. These began to ripple as they were forced tight around pipes, around the bench where she’d been dressed. Not long now. If anything, she felt excitement. Relief. A long project coming to an end.

She pulled one of the sample containers off her chest and cracked the lid, gathering some of the inert argon for a reference. Screwing the lid back on, she heard a dull and familiar thud within the recesses of the great outer door. The silo opened, and a wisp of fog appeared as pressurized gas pushed its way through, preventing the outside from getting in.

The fog swelled and swirled around her. It pushed at her back, urging her along. Juliette lifted a boot, stepped through the thick outer doors of Silo 18 and was outside once again.

The ramp was just as she remembered it: a concrete plane rising up through the last level of her buried home and toward the surface of the earth. Trapped dirt made slopes of hard corners, and streaks and splatters of mud stained the walls. The heavy doors thumped together behind her, and a dispersing fog rose up toward the clouds. Juliette began her march up the gentle rise.

“You okay?”

Lukas’s soft voice filled her helmet. Juliette smiled. It was good to have him with her. She pinched her thumb and finger together, which keyed the microphone in her helmet.

“No one has ever died on the ramp, Lukas. I’m doing just fine.”

He whispered an apology, and Juliette’s smile widened. It was a different thing altogether to venture out with this support behind her. Much different than being exiled while shamed backs were turned, no one daring to watch.

She reached the top of the ramp, and a feeling of rightness overtook her. Without the fear or the digital lies of an electronic visor, she felt what she suspected humans were meant to feel: a heady rush of disappearing walls, of raw land spread out in every direction, of miles and miles of open air and tumbling clouds. Her flesh tingled from the thrill of exploration. She had been here twice before, but this was something new. This had purpose.

“Taking my first sample,” she said, pinching her glove.

She pulled another of the small containers from her suit. Everything was numbered just like a cleaning, but the steps had changed. Weeks of planning and building had gone into this, a flurry of activity up top while her friends tunneled through the earth. She cracked the lid of the container, held it aloft for a count of ten, and then screwed the cap back on. The top of the vessel was clear. A pair of gaskets rattled inside, and twin strips of heat tape were affixed to the bottom. Juliette pressed waxy sealant around the lip of the lid, making it airtight. The numbered sample went into a flapped pouch on her thigh, joining the one from the airlock.

Lukas’s voice crackled through the radio: “We’ve got a full burn in the airlock. Nelson is letting it cool down before he goes in.”

Juliette turned and faced the sensor tower. She fought the urge to lift her hand, to acknowledge the dozens of men and women who were watching on the cafeteria’s wallscreen. She looked down at her chest and tried to clear her mind, to remember what she was supposed to do next.

Soil sample. She shuffled away from the ramp and the tower toward a patch of dirt that maybe hadn’t seen footsteps in centuries. Kneeling down — the undersuit pinching the back of her knee — she scooped dirt using the shallow container. The soil was packed hard and difficult to dig up, so she brushed more of the surface soil onto the top, filling the dish.

“Surface sample complete,” she said, pinching her glove. She screwed the lid on carefully and pressed the ring of wax before sliding it into a pouch on her other thigh.

“Good going,” Lukas said. He was probably aiming for encouragement. All she could hear was his intense worry.

“Taking the deep sample next.”

She grabbed the tool with both hands. She had built the large T on the top while wearing bulky suit gloves to make sure the grip would be right. With the corkscrew end pressed against the earth, she twisted the handle around and around, leaning her weight into her arms to force the blades through the dense soil.

Sweat formed on her brow. A drop of perspiration smacked her visor and trembled into a little puddle as her arms jerked with effort. A caustic and stiff breeze buffeted her suit, pushing her to the side. When the tool penetrated all the way to the tape mark on the handle, she stood and pulled the T-bar, using her legs.