Hugh Howey - Shift

‘Robbie, I need you to get in touch with some friends of mine. Can you send out a wire? Something’s wrong with our computers down here.’

‘No, ours are all kind of sideways. We’ve been having to use the terminal up at the mayor’s office. It’s the only one working.’

‘The mayor’s office? Okay, I need you to send a couple of wires, then. You got something to write with?’

‘Wait,’ Robbie said. ‘These are official wires, right? If not, I don’t have the authority—’

‘Dammit, Robbie, this is important! Grab something to write with. I’ll pay you back. They can dock me for it if they want.’ Mission glanced up at Lyn, who was shaking her head in disbelief. He coughed into his fist, the smoke tickling his throat.

‘All right, all right,’ Robbie said. ‘Who’m I sending this to? And you owe me for this piece of paper because that’s all I have to write on.’

Mission let go of the transmit button to curse the kid. He thought about who would be most likely to get a wire and send it along to the others. He ended up giving Robbie three names, then told him what to write. He would have his friends meet him at the Nest, or meet each other if he couldn’t make it there himself. The Nest had to be safe. Nobody would attack the school or the Crow. Once the gang was together, they could figure out what to do. Maybe the Crow would know what to do. The hardest part for Mission would be working out how to join them.

‘You got all that?’ he asked Robbie when the boy didn’t reply.

‘Yeah, yeah, man. I think you’re gonna be over the character limit, though. This better come out of your pay.’

Mission shook his head in disbelief.

‘Now what?’ Lyn asked as he hung up the receiver.

‘I need overalls,’ Mission said. He splashed around the counter and joined Joel by the shelves, began searching through the nearest crates. ‘They’re looking for me, so I’m gonna need new colours if I’m getting up there.’

‘We,’ Lyn told him. ‘ We need new colours. If you’re going to the Nest, I’m coming with you.’

‘Me too,’ Joel said.

‘I appreciate that,’ Mission said, ‘but company might make it more dangerous. We’d be more conspicuous.’

‘Yeah, but they’re looking for you,’ Lyn said.

‘Hey, we have a ton of these new whites.’ Joel pulled the lid off a sorting bin. ‘But they’ll just make us stand out, won’t they?’

‘Whites?’ Mission headed over to see what Joel was talking about.

‘Yeah. For Security. We’ve been moving a ton of these lately. Came down from Garment a few days ago. No idea why they made up so many.’

Mission checked the overalls. The ones on top were covered in soot, more grey than white. There were dozens of them stacked in the sorting crate. He remembered all the new hires. It was as if they wanted half the silo dressed in white and the other half fighting one another. It made no sense. Unless the idea was to get everyone killed.

‘Killed,’ Mission said. He splashed down the shelves to another crate. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’ He found the right bin — he and Cam had been given one of these just a few days ago. He reached in and pulled out a bag. ‘How would you two like to make some money?’

Joel and Lyn hurried over to see what he’d found and Mission held up one of the heavy plastic bags with the bright silver zipper and the hauling straps.

‘Three hundred and eighty-four chits to divide between you,’ he promised. ‘Every chit I own. I just need you for one last tandem.’

The two porters played their lights across the object in his hands. It was a black bag. A black bag made for carrying the dead.

MISSION SAT ON the counter and worked the laces on his boots free. They were soaked, his socks as well. He shucked them off to keep the water out of the bag and to save the weight. Always a porter, thinking about weight. Lyn handed him one of the Security overalls, an extra precaution. He wiggled out of his porter blues and tugged the whites on while Lyn looked the other way. His knife he strapped back to his waist.

‘You guys sure you’re up for this?’ he asked.

Lyn helped him slide his feet into the bag and worked the inside straps around his ankles. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, cinching the straps.

Mission laughed, his stomach fluttering with nerves. He stretched out and let them work the top straps under his shoulders. ‘Have you both eaten?’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Joel said. ‘Stop worrying.’

‘If it gets late—’

‘Lie your head back,’ Lyn told him. She worked the zipper up from his feet. ‘And don’t talk unless we tell you it’s okay.’

‘We’ll take a break every twenty or so,’ Joel said. ‘We’ll bring you into a bathroom with us. You can stretch and get some water.’

Lyn worked the zipper up over his chest to his chin, hesitated, then kissed the pads of her fingers and touched his forehead the same way he’d seen countless loved ones and priests bless the dead. ‘May your steps rise to the heavens,’ she whispered.

Her wan smile caught in the spill of Joel’s flashlight before the bag was sealed up over Mission’s face.

‘Or at least until Upper Dispatch,’ Joel added.

They carried him outside and down the hall, and the porters made way for the dead. Several hands reached out and touched Mission through the black plastic, showing respect, and he fought not to flinch or cough. It felt as though the smoke was trapped in the bag with him.

Joel took the lead, which meant Mission’s shoulders were pressed against his. He faced upward, his body swaying in time to their steps, the straps beneath his armpits pulling the opposite way from what he was used to. It grew more comfortable as they hit the stairs and began the long spiral up. His feet were lowered until the blood no longer pooled in his head. Lyn carried her half of his weight from several steps below.

The dark and quiet overtook him as they left the chaos of Lower Dispatch. The two porters didn’t talk as some tandems might. They saved their breath and kept their thoughts to themselves. Joel set an aggressive pace. Mission could sense it in the gentle swaying of his body, suspended above the steel treads.

As the steps passed, the journey grew more and more uncomfortable. It wasn’t the difficulty breathing, for he had been shadowed well to manage his lungs on a long climb. He could also handle the stuffiness from the plastic pressed against his face. Nor was it the dark, for his favourite hour for porting had always been the dim-time, time alone with his thoughts while others slept. It wasn’t the stench of plastic and smoke, the tickle in his throat or the pain of the straps.

It was the act of lying still. Of being carried. Of being a burden.

The straps pinched his shoulders until his arms fell numb, and he swayed in the darkness, the sounds of boots on steel, of Joel and Lyn’s heavy breathing, as he was lifted up the stairwell. Too great a burden , he thought.

He thought of his mother carrying him for all those months with no one to confide in and no one to support her. Not until his father had found out, and by then it was too late to terminate the pregnancy. He wondered how long his father had hated the bulge in her belly, how long he had wanted to cut Mission out like some kind of cancer. Mission had never asked to be carried like that. And he had never wanted to be ported by anyone ever again.

Two years ago to the day. That was the last time he had felt this, this sense of being a burden to all. Two years since he had proved too much for even a rope to bear.

It was a poor knot he had tied. But his hands had been trembling and he had fought to see the knot through a film of tears. When it failed, the knot didn’t come free so much as slide, and it left his neck afire and bleeding. His great regret was having jumped from the lower stairwell in Mechanical, the rope looped over the pipes above. If he had gone from a landing, the slipping knot wouldn’t have mattered. The fall would’ve claimed him.