Hugh Howey - Shift

Allie was the first to notice Mission’s arrival. She turned and spotted him at the door, her bright eyes shining amid her farmer freckles, her dark hair tied back in a bun. She rushed over, and Mission saw how her overalls were bunched up around her boots, the straps knotted at her shoulders to make them shorter. They must’ve been Frankie’s overalls. As she threw herself into his arms, he wondered what the two of them had risked to meet him there.

‘Mission, my boy.’ Mrs Crowe stopped her singing, smiled and waved him by her side. After a moment, Allie reluctantly loosened her grip.

Mission shook Frankie’s hand and thanked him for coming. It took a moment to realise something was different, that his hair had been cut short as well. They both rubbed their scalps and laughed. Humour came easy in humourless times.

‘What is this I hear about my Rodny?’ the Crow asked. Her chair twitched back and forth, her hand working the controls, her faded blue nightgown tucked under her narrow bones.

Mission drew a deep breath, smoke lingering in his lungs, and told them everything he had seen on the stairwell, about the bombs and the fires and what he had heard of Mechanical, the security forces armed with rifles — until the Crow dispelled his frenzied chatter with a wave of her frail arms.

‘Not the fighting,’ she said. ‘The fighting I’ve seen. I could paint a picture of the fighting and hang it from my walls. What of Rodny? What of our boy? Has he got them? Has he made them pay?’ She made a small fist and held it aloft.

‘No,’ Mission said. ‘Got who? He needs our help.’

The Crow laughed, which took him aback. He tried to explain. ‘I gave him your note, and he passed me one in return. It begged for help. They have him locked up behind these great steel doors—’

‘Not locked up,’ the Crow said.

‘—like he’d done something wrong—’

‘Something right ,’ she said, correcting him.

Mission fell silent. He could see knowledge shining behind her old eyes, a sunrise on the day after a cleaning.

‘Rodny is in no danger,’ she said. ‘He is with the old books. He’s with the people who took the world from us.’

Allie squeezed Mission’s arm. ‘She’s been trying to tell us,’ she whispered. ‘Everything’s going to be okay. Come, help with the desks.’

‘But the note…’ Mission said, wishing he hadn’t turned it to confetti.

‘The note you gave him was to give him strength. To let him know it was time to begin. Our boy is in a place to hurt them good for what they’ve done.’ There was a wildness in the Crow’s eyes.

‘No,’ Mission said. ‘Rodny was afraid. I know my friend, and he was afraid of something.’

The Crow’s face hardened. She relaxed her fist and smoothed the front of her faded dress. ‘If that be the case,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘then I judged him most wrongly.’

THE DIM-TIME approached while they arranged desks and the Crow resumed her singing. Allie told him a curfew had been announced, and so Mission lost hope that the others would show up that night. They pulled out mats from the cubbies to rest and plan, and decided to give the others until daybreak. There was much Mission wanted to ask the Crow, but she seemed distracted, her thoughts elsewhere, possessed with a joyousness that made her giddy.

Frankie felt certain he could get them through security and deeper into IT if only he could reach his father. Mission told them how well he’d been able to move about with the whites on. Maybe he could reach Frankie’s dad in a pinch. Allie produced fresh fruits harvested from her plot and passed them around. The Crow drank one of her dark green concoctions. Mission grew restless.

He wandered out to the landing, torn between waiting for the others and his anxiety to get going. For all he knew, Rodny was being marched up to his death already. Cleanings tended to settle people down, to follow bouts of unrest, but this was unlike any of the spates of violence he had seen before. This was the burning his father spoke of, the embers of distrust and crumbling trade that jumped up all at once. He had seen this coming, but it had approached with the swiftness of a knife plummeting from the up top.

Out on the landing, he heard the sounds of a mob echoing from far below. Holding the landing rail, he could feel the hum of marching boots. He returned to the others and said nothing of it. There was no reason to suspect those boots were coming for them.

Allie looked as though she’d been crying when he got back. Her eyes were moist, her cheeks flushed. The Crow was telling them an Old Time story, her hands painting a scene in the air.

‘Is everything all right?’ Mission asked.

Allie shook her head as if she’d rather not say.

‘What is it?’ he said. He held her hand, heard the Crow speaking of Atlantis, another tale of the crumbling and lost city of magic beyond the hills, a bygone day when those ruins shone like a wet dime.

‘Tell me,’ he said. He wondered if the stories were affecting her the way they sometimes did him, making her sad and not knowing why.

‘I didn’t want to say anything until after,’ she cried, fresh tears welling up. She wiped them away and the Crow fell silent, her hands dropping into her lap. Frankie sat quietly. Whatever it was, the two of them knew as well.

‘Father,’ Mission said. It had to do with his father. He was gone, he knew it instantly. Allie was close to his father in a way that Mission had never been. And suddenly, he felt a powerful regret for ever having left home. While she wiped her eyes, the words unable to form on her trembling lips, Mission imagined himself on his hands and knees, in the dirt, digging for forgiveness.

Allie bawled, and the Crow hummed a tune of aboveground days. Mission thought of his father, gone, all he longed to say, and wanted nothing more than to hurl himself at the posters on the walls, to tear them down and rip to shreds their urgings to go and be free.

‘It’s Riley,’ Allie finally said. ‘Mish, I’m so sorry.’

The Crow ceased her humming. All three of them watched him.

‘No,’ Mission whispered.

‘You shouldn’t have told him—’ Frankie began.

‘He ought to know!’ Allie demanded. ‘His father would want him to know.’

Mission gazed at a poster of green hills and blue skies. That world blurred with tears as surely as it might with dust. ‘What happened?’ he whispered.

She told him that there’d been an attack on the farms. Riley had begged to go and help fight, had been told no, and had then disappeared. He’d been found with a knife from the kitchen still clutched in his hands.

Mission stood and paced the room, tears splashing from his cheeks. He shouldn’t have left. He should have been there. He hadn’t been there for Cam, either. Death preceded him in all the places he couldn’t be. He had done the same to his mother. And now the end was coming for them all.

A rumble grew from the landing and filled the hallway — the sound of approaching boots. Mission wiped his cheeks. He had given up on any of the others coming and thought it might be Security with their guns. They would ask him where his own gun was before realising he was an impostor, before shooting them all.

He pushed the door shut, saw that the Crow had no lock on the thing, and wedged a desk under the handle. Frankie hurried to Allie, told her to get behind the Crow’s desk. He grabbed the back of the Crow’s wheelchair — the overhead wire swinging dangerously — but she insisted she could manage herself, that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Mission knew better. This was Security coming for them — Security or some other mob. He’d travelled the stairwell, knew what was out there.