Hugh Howey - Third Shift - Pact

Shift , it read, in large stenciled letters. The clear plastic was heavily wrinkled, a few items appearing inside as inscrutable bulges. Donald slid the plastic seal to the side and peeled open the bag. Turning it over, there was a jingle of metal as a pair of dog tags rattled out, a fine chain slithering after them like a startled snake. Donald inspected the tags and saw that they were Thurman’s. Dented and thin, and without the rubber edging he remembered from his sister’s tags, they seemed like antiques. Which he supposed they were.

A small pocketknife was next. The handle looked like ivory but was probably a substitute. Donald opened the blade and tested it. Both sides were equally dull. The tip had been snapped off at some point, used to pry something open, perhaps. It had the look of a memento, no longer good for cutting. Like an old man who had seen war but would no longer be useful in one.

The only other item in the bag was a coin, a quarter. The shape and heft of something once so common made it difficult to breathe. Donald thought of an entire civilization, gone. It seemed impossible for so much to go away completely, but then he remembered Roman coins and Mayan coins and who knew what else pulled from the ocean floors and unearthed in deserts and jungles. He turned the coin over and over and contemplated the only thing unusual about him holding a trinket from a world fallen to ashes—and that was him being around to marvel at the loss. It was supposed to be people who died and cultures that lasted. Now, it was the other way around.

Something about the coin caught Donald’s attention as he turned it over and over. It was heads on both sides. He laughed and inspected it more closely, wondering if it was a gag item, but the feel of the thing seemed genuine. On one of the sides, there was a faint arc where the stamp had missed its mark. A mistake coin. Perhaps a gift from a friend in the Treasury?

He placed the items on the bedside table and remembered Anna’s note to her father. He was surprised there wasn’t a locket in the bag. The note had been marked urgent and had mentioned a locket with a date. Donald folded the bag marked Shift and slid it beneath his glass of water. People hurried up and down the hall outside. The silo was in a panic. He supposed if the real Thurman were there, the old man would be storming up and down as well, barking orders, shutting down facilities, commanding lives to be taken.

Donald coughed into the crook of his arm, his throat tickling. Someone had put him in this position. Erskine, or Victor beyond the grave, or maybe a hacker with more nefarious designs. He had nothing to go on.

Lifting the two folders, he thought of the panic roused by a person meandering out of sight. He thought about the violence brewing in the depths of another silo. These were not his mysteries, he thought. What he wanted to know was why he was awake, why he was even alive . What exactly was out there beyond those walls? What was the plan for the world once these shifts were over? Was it getting better out there? Would there be a day when the people underground would be set free? What would be expected of them?

Something didn’t sit right with him, imagining how that last shift would play out. There was a nagging suspicion that things wouldn’t end so simply. Every layer he’d peeled back so far, every skin of this onion, possessed the sting of a lie. And he didn’t think he’d reached the core just yet. Perhaps someone had placed him in Thurman’s boots to keep digging.

He recalled what Erskine had said about people like himself being in charge. Or was it Victor who said it to Erskine? He couldn’t remember. What he did know, patting his pocket for the badge there, a badge that would open doors previously locked to him, was that he was very much in charge now. There were questions he wanted answers to. And he was in a position to ask them.

Donald coughed into the crook of his elbow once more, an itch in his throat he couldn’t quite soothe. He opened one of the folders and reached for his glass. Taking a few gulps of water and beginning to read, he failed to notice the faint stain left behind, the spot of blood in the crook of his elbow.

Jimmy didn’t want to move. He couldn’t move. He remained curled on the steel grating, the lights flashing overhead, on and off, on and off, the color of crimson.

People on the other side of the door yelled at him and at each other. Jimmy slept in fits. There were dull pops from guns and zings that rang against the door. The keypad buzzed. Only a single digit entered, and it buzzed. The whole world was angry with him.

Jimmy dreamt of blood. It seeped under the door and filled the room. It rose up in the shape of his mother and father, and they stood there, great red puddles with arms and legs, and they lectured him, mouths yawning open in anger. But Jimmy couldn’t hear.

He awoke to a great pressure in his skull. Clasping his hands over his eyes, he curled into a tighter and tighter ball, knees against his chin. Jimmy felt something crack within his skull, a pop like the sound a too-big yawn makes deep behind his ear. There was a great release of pressure that had built up and built up—and it sent him back to sleep.

There were no days, no time. The yelling on the other side of the door came and went. They were fighting, these men. Fighting to get inside where it was safe. Jimmy didn’t feel safe. He felt hungry. He needed to pee.

Standing was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Jimmy’s cheek made a tearing sound as he lifted it from the grating. He wiped the drool from the side of his face and felt the ridges there, the deep creases and the places his skin puffed out. His joints were stiff. His eyes were crusted together from crying. Jimmy staggered toward the far corner of the room and tugged at his coveralls, tried to get them free before he accidentally went with them on.

The great black machines hummed and whirred and watched him go. Urine splashed through the grating and trickled down on bright runs of wires in neat channels. His stomach rumbled and spun inside his belly, but he didn’t want to eat. He wanted to not eat and to waste away completely. He glared up at the annoying lights overhead trying to drill into his skull. His stomach was angry with him. Everything was angry with him.

Back at the door, he waited for someone to call his name. He went to the keypad and pressed the number “1.” The door buzzed at him immediately. It was angry, too.

Jimmy wanted to lie back down on the grating and curl back into a ball, but his stomach said to look for food. Below. There were beds and food below. Jimmy walked in a daze between the black machines. He touched their warm skin for balance, heard them clicking and whirring like everything was normal. The red lights flashed over and over. Jimmy weaved his way until he found the hole in the ground.

He lowered his feet to the rungs of the ladder and noticed the buzzing noise. It came and went in time with the throbbing lights. He pulled himself out of the shaft and crawled across the floor in pursuit of the sound. It was coming from the server with its back off. His father had called it a comm something. Where had his father gone? Off to find his mother. There was something else—

Jimmy couldn’t remember. He patted his chest and felt the key against his breastbone. The buzzing came and went with the flashing lights in perfect synchrony. This machine was making that overhead throb drilling into his skull. He peered inside the machine. A comm hub, that’s what his father had called it. There was a headset hanging on a hook. He wished his father were there, but that seemed an impossible wish. Jimmy fumbled with the headset. There was a wire dangling from it. The piece on the end looked like something from computer class. He searched for a place to plug it in and saw a bank of sockets. One of them was blinking. The number “40” was lit up above it.