Hugh Howey - Shift

‘We need to know what you remember about this report.’ Thurman held it out. Donald waved the thing away.

‘I already looked it over,’ he said. He didn’t want to see it again. He could close his eyes and see the desperate people spilling out onto the dusty land, the people that he had ordered dead.

‘We have other medications that might ease the—’

‘No. No more drugs.’ Donald crossed his wrists and spread his arms out, slicing the air with both hands. ‘Look, I don’t have a resistance to your drugs.’ The truth. He was sick of the lies. ‘There’s no mystery. I just stopped taking the pills.’

It felt good to admit it. What were they going to do, anyway? Put him back to sleep? He took another sip of water while he let the confession sink in. He swallowed.

‘I kept them in my gums and spat them out later. It’s as simple as that. Probably the case with anyone else remembering. Like Hal, or Carlton, or whatever his name was.’

Thurman regarded him coolly. He tapped the report against his open palm, seeming to digest this. ‘We know you stopped taking the pills,’ he finally said. ‘And when.’

Donald shrugged. ‘Mystery solved, then.’ He finished his water and put the empty glass back on the tray.

‘The drugs you have a resistance to are not in the pills, Donny. The reason people stop taking the pills is because they begin to remember, not the other way around.’

Donald studied Thurman, disbelieving.

‘Your urine changes colour when you stop taking them. You develop sores on your gums where you hide them. These are the signs we look for.’

‘What?’

‘There are no drugs in the pills, Donny.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘We medicate everyone. There are those of us who are immune. But you shouldn’t be.’

‘Bullshit. I remember. The pills made me woozy. As soon as I stopped taking them, I got better.’

Thurman tilted his head to the side. ‘The reason you stopped taking them was because you were… I won’t say getting better. It was because the fear had begun leaking through. Donny, the medication is in the water.’ He waved at the empty glass on the tray. Donald followed the gesture and immediately felt sick.

‘Don’t worry,’ Thurman said. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of it.’

‘I don’t want to help you. I don’t want to talk about this report. I don’t want to see whoever it is you need me to see.’

He wanted Helen. All he wanted was his wife.

‘There’s a chance that thousands will die if you don’t help us. There’s a chance that you stumbled onto something with this report of yours, even if I don’t believe it.’

Donald glanced at the door to the bathroom, thought about locking himself inside and forcing himself to throw up, to expunge the food and the water. Maybe Thurman was lying to him. Maybe he was telling the truth. A lie would mean the water was just water. The truth would mean that he did have some sort of resistance.

‘I barely remember writing the damn thing,’ he admitted. And who would want to see him? He assumed it would be another doctor, maybe a silo head, maybe whoever was running this shift.

He rubbed his temples, could feel the pressure building between them. Perhaps he should just do as they wanted and be put back to sleep, back to his dreams. Now and then, he had dreamed of Helen. It was the only place he could be with her.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll go. But I still don’t understand what I could possibly know.’ He rubbed his arm where they’d taken the blood. There was an itch there. An itch so deep it felt like a bruise.

Senator Thurman nodded. ‘I tend to agree with you. But that’s not what she thinks.’

Donald stiffened. ‘She?’ He searched Thurman’s eyes, wondering if he’d heard correctly. ‘She who?’

The old man frowned. ‘The one who had me wake you.’ He waved his hand at the bunk. ‘Get some rest. I’ll take you to her in the morning.’

HE COULDN’T REST. The hours were cruel, slow and unknowable. There was no clock to mark their passing, no answer to his frustrated slaps on the door. Donald was left to lie in his bunk and stare at the diamond patterns of interlocking wires holding the mattress above him, to listen to the gurgle of water in hidden pipes as it rushed to another room. He couldn’t sleep. He had no idea if it was the middle of the night or the middle of the day. The weight of the silo pressed down upon him.

When the boredom grew intolerable, Donald eventually gave in and looked over the report a second time. He studied it more closely. It wasn’t the original; the signature was flat, and he remembered using a blue pen.

He skimmed the account of the silo’s collapse and his theory that IT heads shadowed too young. His recommendation was to raise the age. He wondered if they had. Maybe so, but the problems were persisting. There was also mention of a young man he had inducted, a young man with a question. This young man’s great-grandmother was one of those who remembered, much like Donald. His report suggested allowing one question from each inductee. They were given the Legacy, after all. Why not show them, in that final stage of indoctrination, that there were more truths to be had?

The tiny clicks of a key entering a lock. Thurman opened the door as Donald folded the report away.

‘Feeling better?’ Thurman asked.

Donald didn’t say.

‘Can you walk?’

He nodded. A walk. When what he really wanted was to run screaming down the hallway and punch holes in walls. But a walk would do. A walk before his next long sleep.

They rode the lift in silence. Donald noticed Thurman had scanned his badge before pressing the button for level fifty-four. Its number stood bright and new while so many others had been worn away. There was nothing but supplies on that level if Donald remembered correctly, supplies they weren’t ever supposed to need. The lift slowed as it approached a level it normally skipped. The doors opened on a cavernous expanse of shelves stocked with instruments of death.

Thurman led him down the middle of it all. There were wooden crates with ‘AMMO’ stencilled on the side, longer crates beside them with military designations like ‘M22’ and ‘M19’. There were rows of shelves with armour and helmets, with boxes marked ‘MEDICAL’ and ‘RATIONS’, many more boxes unlabelled. And beyond the shelves, tarps covered bulbous and winged forms that he knew to be drones. UAVs. His sister had flown them in a war that now seemed pointless and distant, part of ancient history. But here these relics stood, oiled and covered, reeking of grease and fear.

Beyond the drones, Thurman led the way through a murky dimness that made the storehouse seem to go on for ever. At the far end of the wide room, a glow of light leaked from an open-doored office. There were sounds of paper stirring, a chair squeaking as someone turned. Donald reached the doorway and saw, inexplicably, her sitting there.

‘Anna?’

She sat behind a wide conference table ringed with identical chairs, looked up from a spread of paperwork and a computer monitor. There was no shock on her part, just a smile of acknowledgement and a weariness that her smile could not conceal.

Her father crossed the room while Donald gaped. Thurman squeezed her arm and kissed her on the cheek, but Anna’s eyes did not leave Donald’s. The old man whispered something to his daughter, then announced that he had work of his own to see to. Donald did not budge until the Senator had left the room.

‘Anna—’

She was already at the massive table, wrapping her arms around him. She began whispering things, comforting words as Donald sagged into her embrace, suddenly exhausted. He felt her hand caress the back of his head and come to a rest on his neck. His own arms interlocked around her back.