Hugh Howey: Dust

“Were you going to say something?” she asked.

“I was going to ask that you dig in secret if you have to dig at all. Or leave these men to it and come—”

He bit off the thought.

“If you were about to say home, this is my home. And are we really no better than the last of them who were in charge? Lying to our people? Conspiring?”

“I fear we are worse,” he said. “All they did was keep us alive.”

Juliette laughed at that. “Us? They elected to send you and me to die.”

Lukas let out his breath. “I meant everyone else. They worked to keep everyone else alive.” But he couldn’t help it: he cracked a smile while Juliette continued to laugh. She smeared the tears on her cheeks into mud.

“Give me a few days down here,” she said. It wasn’t a question; it was a concession. “Let me see if we even have the means to dig. Then I’ll come kiss your babies and bury your dead — though not in that order, of course.”

Lukas frowned at her morbidness. “And you’ll tamp down the heresies?”

She nodded. “If we dig, we’ll do it quietly.” To herself, she wondered if such a machine as she’d uncovered could dig any way but with a growl. “I was thinking of going on a slight power holiday, anyway. I don’t want the main generator on a full load for a while. Just in case.”

Lukas nodded, and Juliette realized how easy and necessary the lies felt. She considered telling him right then of another idea of hers, one she’d been considering for weeks, all the way back when she was in the doctor’s office recovering from her burns. There was something she needed to do up top, but she could see that he was in no mood to be angered further. And so she told him the only part of her plan that she thought he’d enjoy.

“Once things are underway down here, I plan to come up and stay for a while,” she said, taking his hand. “Come home for a while.”

Lukas smiled.

“But listen here,” she told him, feeling the urge to warn. “I’ve seen the world out there, Luke. I stay up at night listening to Walk’s radio. There are a lot of people just like us out there, living in fear, living apart, kept ignorant. I mean to do more than save my friends. I hope you know this. I mean to get to the bottom of what’s out there beyond these walls.”

The knot in Lukas’s throat bobbed up and down. His smile vanished. “You aim too far,” he said meekly.

Juliette smiled and squeezed her lover’s hand. “Says the man who watches the stars.”

“Solo! Mr. Solo!”

The faint voice of a young child worked its way into the deepest of the grow pits. It reached all the way to the cool plots of soil where lights no longer burned and things no longer grew. There, Jimmy Parker sat alone atop the lifeless soil and near to the memory of an old friend.

His hands idly picked clumps of clay and crushed them into powder. If he imagined really hard, he could feel the pinprick of claws through his coveralls. He could hear Shadow’s little belly rattling like a water pump. It got harder and harder to imagine as the young voice calling his name grew nearer. The glow of a flashlight cut through the last tangle of plants that the young ones called the Wilds.

“There you are!”

Little Elise made a heap of noise that belied her small size. She stomped over to him in her too-big boots. Jimmy watched her approach and remembered wishing long ago that Shadow could talk. He’d had countless dreams wherein Shadow was a boy with black fur and a rumbly voice. But Jimmy no longer had such dreams. Nowadays, he was thankful for the speechless years with his old friend.

Elise squirmed through the rails of the fence and hugged Jimmy’s arm. The flashlight nearly blinded him as she clutched it against his chest, pointing it up.

“It’s time to go,” Elise said, tugging at him. “It’s time, Mr. Solo.”

He blinked against the harsh light and knew that she was right. The youngest among them, and little Elise settled more arguments than she started. Jimmy crushed another clump of clay in his hand, sprinkled the soil across the ground, and wiped his palm on his thigh. He didn’t want to leave, but he knew they couldn’t stay. He reminded himself that it would be temporary. Juliette said so. She said he could come back here and live with all the others who came over. There would be no lottery for a while. There would be lots of people. They would make his old silo whole again.

Jimmy shivered at the thought of so many people. Elise tugged his arm. “Let’s go. Let’s go,” she said.

And Jimmy realized what he was scared of. It wasn’t the leaving one day, which was still some time off. It wasn’t him setting up home in the Deep, which was nearly pumped dry and no longer frightened him. It was the idea of what he might return to. His home had only grown safer as it had emptied; he had been attacked when it had started filling up again. Part of him just wanted to be left alone, to be Solo.

On his feet, he allowed Elise to lead him back to the landing. She tugged on his calloused hand and pulled him forward with spirit. Outside, she gathered her things by the steps. Rickson and the others could be heard below, their voices echoing up the shaft of quiet concrete. One of the emergency lights was out on that level, leaving a black patch amid the dull green. Elise adjusted the shoulder satchel that held her memory book and cinched the top of her backpack. Food and water, a change of clothes, batteries, a faded doll, her hairbrush — practically everything she owned. Jimmy held the shoulder strap so she could work her arm through, then picked up his own load. The voices of the others faded. The stairwell faintly shook and rang with their footsteps as they headed down, which seemed a fairly odd direction to go in order to get out.

“How long before Jewel comes for us?” Elise asked. She took Jimmy’s hand, and they spiraled down side by side.

“Not long,” Jimmy said, which was his answer for I-don’t-know. “She’s trying. It’s a long way to go. You know how it took a long time for the water to go down and vanish?”

Elise bobbed her head. “I counted the steps,” she said.

“Yes, you did. Well, now they have to tunnel their way through solid rock to get to us. That won’t be easy.”

“Hannah says there’ll be dozens and dozens of people after Jewel comes.”

Jimmy swallowed. “Hundreds,” he said hoarsely. “Thousands, even.”

Elise squeezed his hand. Another dozen steps went by, both of them quietly counting. It was difficult for either of them to count so high.

“Rickson says they aren’t coming to rescue us, but that they want our silo.”

“Yes, well, he sees the bad in people,” Jimmy said. “Just like you see the good in them.”

Elise looked up at Jimmy. Both of them had lost their count. He wondered if she could imagine what thousands of people would be like. He could barely remember himself.

“I wish he could see the good in people like me,” she said.

Jimmy stopped before they got to the next landing. Elise clutched his hand and her swinging satchel and stopped with him. He knelt to be closer to her. When Elise pouted, he could see the gap left by her missing tooth.

“There’s a bit of good in all people,” Jimmy said. He squeezed Elise’s shoulder, could feel a lump forming in his throat. “But there’s bad as well. Rickson is probably more right than wrong at times.”

He hated to say it. Jimmy hated to fill Elise’s head with such things. But he loved her as though she were his own. And he wanted to give her the great steel doors she would need if the silo were to grow full again. It was why he allowed her to cut up the books inside the tin cans and take the pages she liked. It was why he helped her choose which ones were important. The ones he chose were the ones for helping her survive.