Hugh Howey - Third Shift - Pact

One of the rooms smelled funny, like hot electrics, like the smell of his rifle after a shell was ejected. The walls in that room were charred black. The darkness swallowed his flashlight’s beam. He moved to the next door, leaving far behind the wan green emergency light trickling from the stairwell and through the tall shelves of bolts and screws.

An ominous glow emanated from down the hall. An open door. Solo thought he heard something. He stilled his breathing and waited. Not a whisper, just his heartbeat, probably nothing. He thought of the thousands who had lived in the silo before. How many like him had survived? How many tended the remnants of the farms, scraped the insides of cans with the flat of a knife, digging for those calories at the bottom, watching for spots of rust? Maybe it was just him anymore. Just Solo.

The next door leaked a faint spill of light. Solo approached warily, annoyed at his boots for squeaking, and nudged the door open with the end of his barrel. He remembered what it felt like to kick a man from a distance, to watch the blood spurt from his chest. His flashlight blinked on and off, the battery acting up again. Solo let go of his rifle and knocked the light against his thigh until the beam woke up. He aimed photons and bullets into the room, searching for the source of the glow.

A wedge of light sliced up from the floor inside the room. A wedge of light from a glowing circle. It was the lens of another flashlight.

Solo sucked in a shallow breath at the fortuitous discovery. He hurried forward, scattering cans and wads of trash, and crouched by the lit torch. He flicked his own flashlight off and tucked it into his pocket, picked up this other one. It shone brightly. He aimed it around the room, excited. This was what he had come for. Better than just batteries, a new flashlight as well. The batteries inside would last him years if he was careful, if he conserved. But they wouldn’t last him more than a few days if he accidentally left it on.

A few days.

A bucket of cold water spilled down Solo’s spine. The darkness all around him crowded closer. He heard imagined whispers from the shadows, and the flashlight was warm in his grip. Had it been warm when he picked it up?

He stood. An empty can clattered noisily from his boot. Solo realized how much of a racket he was making, how much light and life he had brought into this dark and deathly place. He backed toward the door, pulled his gun against his shoulder, the feeling of hands coming at him from every direction, long fingernails of the unkempt about to sink into his flesh.

He nearly dropped the flashlight as he turned to run. The rifle knocked against the doorjamb and pressed into his finger. There was a blinding flash in the coal-dark corridor, a bang like the end of the world, a kick from the rifle. And then Solo was running. Running back toward the shelves with their trickle of stairlight. Running away while imaginary things chased him, no room in his startled mind for the truth that he had brought terror to those who lived there, that his swinging new flashlight, bright and harmonious, had left someone else in the echoing bang and the pitch black that he left behind.

He fled from Supply and headed deeper, a second flashlight his reward for the scare. On one-twenty-eight, he stopped in an apartment to empty his bladder, which seemed to fill whenever he was afraid. There was a thought of getting some rest on the apartment’s bare mattress, but he suspected it wasn’t yet nighttime. It was just the fading adrenaline that made him feel sleepy.

Back on the landing, he considered his options. He had seen almost all that was left of the silo. It was just him and the ghosts. He had plenty of notes in his head on where things were, had discovered a second farm full of food, had found the water stock on one-twelve, had used his gun to bust open a door. Still no can opener, but he could make do with his screwdriver and hammer. Things were looking up the more he explored down, so that’s the way he went.

A dozen levels deeper, the temperature really began to dip. The air grew cool and moist and blossomed in clouds when he blew his breath. An emergency fire hose had been left out on one-thirty-six, unspooled from its little rusted closet. The hose lay tangled on the landing. Water dripped from the nozzle, and Solo could hear the plummeting impacts ring out like tiny bells somewhere farther below. He was almost at the end. The Deep. He had never been to the Deep before.

He filled his water jug from the nozzle. Normally, even a slight crack from those valves would let loose a powerful torrent. Solo was able to open this one all the way, and even then he had to lift the tangle of hose from the landing and coax out half a jugful. He took a few sips, wincing at the bitter taste of the hose’s fabric, then screwed the lid back on the jug. It hung from his pack, which jangled with the odds and ends he’d picked up since he’d left home the day before. Along with the rifle, it was a lot to carry.

Solo peered over the railing and spotted the bottom of the silo below: the floor of the Deep, slick and shiny. All he knew of Mechanical—the levels beneath the last twist of the stairway—was that power and air came from there. Since there was still some of both, maybe that meant people. Solo clutched his rifle warily. He wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to see people again, ever.

He twisted his way down another few flights, his boots clomp-clomping. Anyone with an ear pressed to the railing would hear his progress. The thought sent chills down his arms. Solo imagined ten thousand people lining the rail, noses touching the crowns of those before them, all listening to him as he descended, an uninterrupted spiral of disembodied noggins attuned to his every move.

“Go away, ghosts,” he whispered. He hugged the inner rail, just in case. The steps made less noise near the post. He flashed back to years ago when there’d been no space on the steps, when it’d been hard to breathe as people packed in around him, and his mother had yelled for him to go on without her. Solo felt sixteen again, except his tears disappeared into his beard where before he could wipe them away. He was sixteen again. Would always be sixteen.

His boots splashed into cold water. Solo startled and lost his grip on the rail. He slid, fought for balance, and fell to one knee, water soaking him up to his crotch, his rifle slipping off his shoulder, his bag getting wet.

Cursing, he struggled to his feet. Water dripped from the barrel of his rifle, a stream of liquid bullets. His coveralls were freezing cold and clung to his skin where they’d gotten soaked. Solo wiped at his eyes, which were full of tears, and wondered briefly if all that water at his feet had come from his years of crying.

“Stupid,” he said. It was a stupid thought. The water had probably drained from all the toilets that didn’t work. Or maybe this is where they flushed to, and now the mechanics weren’t around to filter it and pump it back to the Top.

He retreated up a step and watched the agitated surface slowly settle. This was the shiny floor he’d seen from above. Peering through its murky surface—a colorful film across the top with all the colors that existed—he saw that the stairs spiraled out of sight and into the dark depths of the water. The silo was flooded.

Solo watched where the water met the railing and waited to see if the flood was rising. If so, it was far slower than he could tell. It was slower than he was patient enough to sit and stare.

One of the open doors on level one-thirty-seven moved back and forth with the waves his splashing had caused. He watched this gentle undulation, which made him sleepy. The water was two feet or more above the level of the landing. It was that high inside the door as well. The entire silo was filling up with water, he thought. It had taken years for it to get this high. Would it go on forever? How long before it filled his home up on thirty-four? How long before it reached the Top?