Hugh Howey - Third Shift - Pact

The wheelchair rattled out the door and down the hall, and Donald’s palms felt sweaty against the handles. To keep the front wheels silent, he rocked the chair back on its large rubber tires. The small wheels spun lazily in the air as he hurried.

He entered his code into the keypad and waited for a red light, for some impediment, some blockade. The light winked green. Donald pulled the door open and swerved between the pods toward the one that held his sister.

There was a mix of anticipation and guilt. This was as bold a step as his run up that hill in a suit. The stakes were higher for involving family, for waking someone into this harsh world, for subjecting her to the same brutality Anna had foisted upon him, that Thurman had foisted upon her, on and on, a never ending misery of shifts.

He left the wheelchair in place and knelt by the control pad. Hesitant, he lurched to his feet and peered through the glass porthole, just to make sure.

She looked so serene in there, probably wasn’t plagued by nightmares like he was. Donald’s doubts grew. And then he imagined her waking up on her own; he imagined her conscious and beating on the glass, demanding to be let out. He saw her feisty spirit, heard her demand not to be lied to, and he knew that if she were standing there with him, she would ask him to do it. She would rather know and suffer than be left asleep in ignorance.

This is what Donald told himself, anyway. He crouched by the keypad and entered his code. The keypad beeped cheerfully as he pressed the red button. There was a click from within the pod, like a valve opening. He turned the dial and watched the temperature gauge, waited for it to start climbing.

Donald rose and stood by the pod, and time slowed to a crawl. He expected someone to come find him before the process was complete. But there was another clack and a hiss from the lid. He laid out the gauze and the tape. He separated the two rubber gloves and began pulling them on, a cloud of chalk misting the air as he snapped the elastic.

He opened the lid the rest of the way.

His sister lay on her back, her arms by her side. She had not yet moved. Donald seemed to remember having moved by the time the lid opened, but he couldn’t remember. A panic seized him as he went over the procedure again. Had he forgotten something? Dear god, had he killed her?

Charlotte coughed. Water trailed down her cheeks as the frost on her lids melted. And then her eyes fluttered open weakly before returning to thin slits against the light.

“Hold still,” Donald told her. He pressed a square of gauze to her arm and removed the needle. He could feel the steel slide beneath the pad and his fingers as he extracted it from her arm. Holding the gauze in place, he took a length of tape hanging from the wheelchair and applied it across the gauze. The last was the catheter. He covered her with the towel, applied pressure, and slowly removed the tube. And then she was free of the machine, crossing her arms and shivering. He helped her into the paper gown, left the back open.

“I’m lifting you out,” he said.

Her teeth clattered in response.

Donald shifted her feet toward her butt to tent her knees. Reaching down beneath her armpits—her flesh cool to the touch—and another arm under her legs, he lifted her easily. It felt like she weighed so little. He could smell the cast-stink on her flesh.

Charlotte mumbled something as he placed her in the wheelchair. The blanket was draped across so that she sat on the fabric rather than the cold seat. As soon as she was settled, he wrapped the blanket around her. She chose to remain in a ball with her arms wrapped around her shins rather than place her feet on the stirrups.

“Where am I?” she asked, her voice a sheet of crackling ice.

“Take it easy,” Donald told her. He closed the lid on the pod, tried to remember if there was anything else, looked for anything he’d left behind. “You’re with me,” he said as he pushed her toward the exit. That was where both of them were: with each other. There was no home, no place on the Earth to welcome one to anymore, just a hellish nightmare in which to drag another for sad company.

The hardest part was making her wait to eat. Donald knew what it felt like to be that hungry. He put her through the same routine he’d endured a number of times: made her drink the bitter concoction, made her use the bathroom to flush her system, had her sit on the edge of the tub and take a warm but not hot shower, then put her in a fresh set of clothes and a new blanket.

He watched as she finished the last of the drink. Her lips gradually faded to pink from pale blue. Her skin was so white. Donald couldn’t remember if it’d been white like that before orientation. Maybe it’d happened overseas, sitting in those dark trailers with only the light of a monitor to bathe in.

“I need to go make an appearance,” he told her. “Everyone else will be getting up. I’ll bring you breakfast on my way back down.”

Charlotte sat quietly in one of the leather chairs around the old war planning table, her feet tucked up under her. She tugged at the collar of the coveralls as if they itched her skin. “Mom and Dad are gone,” she said, repeating what he’d told her earlier. Donald wasn’t sure what she would and wouldn’t remember. She hadn’t been on her stress medications as long or as recently as him. But it didn’t matter. He could tell her the truth. Tell her and hate himself for doing it.

“I’ll be back in a little bit. Just stay here and try to get some rest. Don’t leave this room, okay?”

The words echoed hollow as he hurried through the warehouse and toward the elevator. He remembered hearing from others as soon as they woke him that he should get some rest. He was usually on the other side of that advice, thinking those dispensing it were out of their minds. Charlotte had been asleep for three centuries. As he scanned his badge and waited for the elevator, Donald thought on how much time had passed and how little had changed. The world was still the ruin they’d left it. Or if it wasn’t, they were about to find out.

He rode up to the operations level. The express was anything but. It stopped twice to pick up four others with sleep in their eyes and a shuffle in their step. They rode in silence, all in coveralls of various hues, like men in a factory from the olden days heading to another Monday morning. Always Mondays in that place. Six months of Mondays. No weekends to look forward to.

The lift spilled them into the hall. Donald felt a chill from the thought that his sister was down below, awake and alone. He felt an impatience like bugs beneath his skin, urging him forward faster than he could go.

He checked with Eren, knocked on his doorframe. The Ops Head was already at his desk, surrounded by files, one hand tangled in his hair, his elbow on piles of paperwork. There was no steam from his mug of coffee. He’d been at his desk a while.

“Thurman,” he said, glancing up.

Donald startled and glanced down the hall, looking for someone else.

“Any progress with 18?”

“I, uh …” Donald tried to remember. “Last I heard, they’d breached the barrier in the lowest levels. The Head over there thinks the fighting will be over in a day or two.”

“Good. Glad the shadow is working out. Scary time not to have one. There was this one time on my third shift I think it was when we lost a Head while he was between shadows. Helluva time finding a recruit.” Eren leaned back in his chair. “The mayor wasn’t an option; the head of Security was as bright as a lump of coal; so we had to—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Donald said, pointing down the hall. “I need to get back to—”