Hugh Howey: Shift

‘I’m lifting you out,’ he said.

Her teeth clattered in response.

Donald shifted her feet towards her butt to tent her knees. Reaching down beneath her armpits — her flesh cool to the touch — and another arm under her legs, he lifted her easily. It felt like she weighed so little. He could smell the cast-stink on her flesh.

Charlotte mumbled something as he placed her in the wheelchair. The blanket was draped across so that she sat on the fabric rather than the cold seat. As soon as she was settled, he wrapped the blanket around her. She chose to remain in a ball with her arms wrapped around her shins rather than place her feet on the stirrups.

‘Where am I?’ she asked, her voice a sheet of crackling ice.

‘Take it easy,’ Donald told her. He closed the lid on the pod, tried to remember if there was anything else, looked for anything he’d left behind. ‘You’re with me,’ he said as he pushed her towards the exit. That was where both of them were: with each other. There was no home, no place on the earth to welcome one to any more, just a hellish nightmare in which to drag another soul for sad company.

THE HARDEST PART was making her wait to eat. Donald knew what it felt like to be that hungry. He put her through the same routine he’d endured a number of times: made her drink the bitter concoction, made her use the bathroom to flush her system, had her sit on the edge of the tub and take a warm shower, then put her in a fresh set of clothes and a new blanket.

He watched as she finished the last of the drink. Her lips gradually faded to pink from pale blue. Her skin was so white. Donald couldn’t remember if she’d been so pale before orientation. Maybe it had happened overseas, sitting in those dark trailers with only the light of a monitor to bathe in.

‘I need to go make an appearance,’ he told her. ‘Everyone else will be getting up. I’ll bring you breakfast on my way back down.’

Charlotte sat quietly in one of the leather chairs around the old war planning table, her feet tucked up under her. She tugged at the collar of the overalls as if they itched her skin. ‘Mom and Dad are gone,’ she said, repeating what he’d told her earlier. Donald wasn’t sure what she would and wouldn’t remember. She hadn’t been on her stress medications as long or as recently as him. But it didn’t matter. He could tell her the truth. Tell her and hate himself for doing it.

‘I’ll be back in a little bit. Just stay here and try to get some rest. Don’t leave this room, okay?’

The words echoed hollow as he hurried through the warehouse and towards the lift. He remembered hearing from others as soon as they woke him that he should get some rest. Charlotte had been asleep for almost three centuries. As he scanned his badge and waited for the lift, Donald thought on how much time had passed and how little had changed. The world was still the ruin they’d left it. Or if it wasn’t, they were about to find out.

He rode up to the operations level and checked in with Eren. The Ops head was already at his desk, surrounded by files, one hand tangled in his hair, his elbow on piles of paperwork. There was no steam from his mug of coffee. He’d been at his desk for a while.

‘Thurman,’ he said, glancing up.

Donald started and glanced down the hall, looking for someone else.

‘Any progress with eighteen?’

‘I, uh…’ Donald tried to remember. ‘Last I heard, they’d breached the barrier in the lowest levels. The head over there thinks the fighting will be over in a day or two.’

‘Good. Glad the shadow is working out. Scary time not to have one. There was this one time on my third shift I think it was when we lost a head while he was between shadows. Helluva time finding a recruit.’ Eren leaned back in his chair. ‘The mayor wasn’t an option; the head of Security was as bright as a lump of coal; so we had to—’

‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Donald said, pointing down the hall. ‘I need to get back to—’

‘Oh, of course.’ Eren waved his hand, seemed embarrassed. ‘Right. Me too.’

‘—just a lot to do this morning. Grabbing breakfast and then I’ll be in my room.’ He jerked his head towards the empty office across the hall. ‘Tell Gable I took care of myself, okay? I don’t want to be disturbed.’

‘Sure, sure.’ Eren shooed him with his hand.

Donald spun back to the lift. Up to the cafeteria. His stomach rumbled its agreement. He’d been up all night without eating. He’d been up and empty for far too long.

HE WAS PUSHING the time limit by letting her eat an hour early, but it was difficult to say no. Donald encouraged her to take small bites, to slow down. And while Charlotte chewed, he brought her up to date. She knew about the silos from orientation. He told her about the wall screens, about the cleaners, that he had been woken because someone had disappeared. Charlotte had a hard time grasping these things. It took saying them several times until they became strange even to his ears.

‘They let them see outside, these people in the other silos?’ she asked, chewing on a small bite of biscuit.

‘Yeah. I asked Thurman once why we put them there. You know what he told me?’

Charlotte shrugged and took a sip of water.

‘They’re there to keep them from wanting to leave. We have to show them death to keep them in. Otherwise, they’ll always want to see what’s over the rise. Thurman said it’s human nature.’

‘But some of them go anyway.’ She wiped her mouth with her napkin, picked up her fork, her hand trembling, and pulled Donald’s half-eaten breakfast towards her.

‘Yeah, some of them go anyway,’ Donald said. ‘And you need to take it easy.’ He watched her dig into his eggs and thought about his own trip up the drone lift. He was one of those people who had gone anyway. It wasn’t something she needed to know.

‘We have one of those screens,’ Charlotte said. ‘I remember watching the clouds boil.’ She looked up at Donald. ‘Why do we have one?’

Donald reached quickly for his handkerchief and coughed into its folds. ‘Because we’re human,’ he answered, tucking the cloth away. ‘If we think there’s no point in going out there — that we’ll die if we go — we’ll stay here and do what we’re told. But I know of a way to see what’s out there.’

‘Yeah?’ Charlotte scraped the last of his eggs onto her fork and lifted them to her mouth. She waited.

‘And I’m going to need your help.’

They pulled the tarp off one of the drones. Charlotte ran a trembling hand down its wing and walked unsteadily around the machine. Grabbing the flap on the back of a wing, she worked it up and down. She did the same for the tail. The drone had a black dome and nose that gave it something like a face. It sat silently, unmoving, while Charlotte inspected it.

Donald noticed that three of the other drones were missing — the floor glossy where their tarps used to drape. And the neat pyramid of bombs in the munitions rack was missing a few from the top. Signs of the armoury’s use these past weeks. Donald went to the hangar door and worked it open.

‘No hardware?’ Charlotte asked. She peered under one of the wings where bad things could be attached.

‘No,’ Donald said. ‘Not for this.’ He ran back and helped her push. They steered the drone towards the open maw of the lift. The wings just barely fitted.

‘There should be a strap or a linkage,’ she said. She lowered herself gingerly and crawled behind the drone, worked her way beneath the wing.

‘There’s something in the floor,’ Donald said, remembering the nub that moved along the track. ‘I’ll get a light.’