Hugh Howey - Third Shift - Pact

Donald read the last paragraph again. It was a suicide note. Thurman knew. All along, while Donald wrestled with Victor’s fate on his last shift, Thurman knew. He had this note in his possession and didn’t share it. And Donald had almost grown convinced that Victor had been murdered. Unless the note was a fake— But no, Donald shook that thought away. Paranoia like that could spiral out of control and know no end. He had to cling to something.

He backed out of the message with a heavy heart and scrolled up the list, looking for some other clue. Near the top of the screen was a message with the subject line: Urgent - The Pact . That word had appeared more than once in Victor’s note. Donald clicked the message open. The body was short. It read, simply:

Wake me when you get this.

Donald blinked rapidly at the sight of her name. He glanced across the hall at the silo Head and listened for footsteps heading his way. His arms were covered in gooseflesh. He rubbed them, wiped at the bottoms of his eyes, and read the note a second time.

It was signed Anna. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t to him. It was a note between daughter and father. There was no send date listed, which was curious, but it was sorted near the very top. Perhaps it was from before their last shift together? Maybe the two of them had been awake recently. Donald studied the number at the bottom. 20391102 . It looked like a date. An old date. Inscribed on a locket, perhaps. Something meaningful between the two of them. And what of the mention of this Pact? That was the name the silos used for their constitutions. What was urgent about that?

Footsteps in the hallway broke his concentration. Eren rounded the corner and covered the office in a few steps. He circled the desk and placed two folders by the keyboard, then glanced at the screen as Donald fumbled with the mouse to minimize the message. “H-how’d it go?” Donald asked. “You got through to everyone?”

“Yeah.” Eren sniffed and scratched his beard. “The Head of sixteen took it badly. He’s been in that position a long time. Too long, I think. He suggested closing down his cafeteria or shutting off the wallscreen, just in case.”

“But he’s not going to.”

“No, I told him as a last resort. No need to cause a panic. We just wanted them to have a heads-up.”

“Good, good.” Donald liked someone else thinking. It took the pressure off of him. “You need your desk back?” He made a show of logging off.

“No, actually, you’re on if you don’t mind.” Eren checked the clock in the corner of the computer screen. “I can take the afternoon shift. How’re you feeling, by the way? Any shakes?”

Donald shook his head. “No. I’m good. It gets easier every time.”

Eren laughed. “Yeah. I’ve seen how many shifts you’ve taken. And a double a while back. Don’t envy you at all, friend. But you seem to be holding up well.”

Donald coughed. “Yeah,” he said. He picked up the topmost of the two folders and read the tab. “This is what we have on Seventeen?”

“Yep. The thick one is your cleaner.” He tapped the other folder. “You might want to check in with the Head of eighteen today. He’s pretty shaken up, is shouldering all the blame. Name’s Bernard. There are already grumblings from his lower levels about the cleaning not going through, so he’s looking at a very probable uprising. I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Oh, and he doesn’t have an official second right now. His last shadow didn’t work out, and he’s been putting off a replacement. I hope you don’t mind, but I told him to get on that. Just in case.”

“No, no. That’s fine.” Donald waved his hand. “I’m not here to get in your way.” He didn’t add that he had absolutely no clue why he was there at all.

Eren smiled and nodded. “Great. Well, if you need anything, call me. And the guy across the hall goes by Gable. He used to hold down a post over here but couldn’t cut it. Opted for a wipe instead of a deep freeze when given the choice. Good guy. Team player. He’ll be on for a few more months and can get you anything you need.”

Donald peered across the hall at the man in the funhouse mirror. He remembered the vacuous sensation of manning that desk, the hollow pit that had filled him. How Donald had ended up there had seemed unusual, a last-minute switch with his friend Mick. It never occurred to him how all the others were selected. To think that any might volunteer for such an empty post filled him with sadness.

Eren stuck out his hand. Donald studied it a moment, then accepted it.

“I’m really sorry we had to wake you like this,” he said, pumping Donald’s hand. “But I have to admit, I’m damn sure glad you’re here.”

The box on the wall was unrelenting with its awful sounds. His father had called it a radio. The noise it made was like a person hissing and spitting. Even the steel cage surrounding it looked like a mouth with its lips peeled back and iron bars for teeth.

Jimmy wanted to silence the radio but was scared to touch it or adjust anything. He waited to hear from his father, who had left him in a strange room, a hidden warren between the silo’s levels.

How many more of these secret places were there? He glanced through an open door at the other room his dad had shown him, the one like a small apartment with its stove, table, and chairs. When his parents got back, would they all stay here overnight? How long before the madness cleared from the stairs and he could see his friends again? He hoped it wouldn’t be long.

He glared at the black box with its spitting sounds, patted his chest, felt for the key there. His ribs were sore from the fall, and he could feel a knot forming in his thigh from where he’d landed on someone. His shoulder hurt when he lifted his arm. He turned to the monitor to search for his mother again, but she was no longer on the screen. A jostling crowd moved in jerks and fits. A stairwell writhed with more traffic than it was meant to hold.

Jimmy reached for the box with the controls his father had used. He twisted one of the knobs, and the view changed. It was an empty hall. A faint number 33 stood in the lower left corner of the screen. Jimmy turned the dial once more and got a different hallway. There was a trail of clothes on the ground, like someone had walked by with a leaking laundry bag. Nothing moved.

He tried a different dial, and the number on the bottom changed to 32. He was going up the levels . Jimmy spun the first dial until he found the stairwell again. Something flashed down and off the bottom of the screen. There were people leaning over the railing with their arms outstretched, mouths open in silent horror. There was no sound from the little windows that allowed him to see the world, but Jimmy remembered the screams from the woman who fell earlier. This was too far up to be his mother, he consoled himself. His dad would find her and bring her back. His dad had a gun.

Jimmy spun the dials and tried to locate either of his parents, but it seemed that not every angle was covered. And he couldn’t figure out how to make the windows multiply. He was decent on a computer—he was going to work for IT like his father someday—but the little box was unintuitive as the deeps. He dialed it back down to 34 and found the main hallway. He could see a shiny steel door at the far end of a long corridor. Sprawled in the foreground was Yani. Yani hadn’t moved, was surely dead. The men standing over him were gone, and there was a new body at the end of the hall, near the door. The color of his coveralls assured Jimmy that it wasn’t his father. His father probably put that man there on his way out. Jimmy wished he hadn’t been left alone.