Hugh Howey - Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

Peter's voice crackled back. “I'm here, sir.”

Bernard clicked the transmitter. “You heard the man,” he said, tears welling up in the bottoms of his eyes. “Lukas Kyle, IT engineer first class, says he wants out —”

“Hello? Walk? Shirly?”

Juliette shouted into the radio, the orphans and Solo watching her from several steps below. She had hurried the kids through the farms, made hasty introductions, checking the radio all the while. Several levels had gone by, the others trudging up behind her, and still no word from them, nothing since she’d been cut off, the sound of gunfire sprinkled among Walker’s words. She kept thinking if she just got higher, if she tried one more time. She checked the light by the power knob and made sure the battery wasn’t dead, turned the volume up until she could hear the static, could know the thing was working.

She clicked the button. The static fell silent, the radio waiting for her to speak. “Please say something, guys. This is Juliette. Can you hear me? Say anything.”

She looked to Solo, who was being supported by the very man who had dazed him. “We need to go higher, I think. C’mon. Double-time.”

There were groans; these poor refugees of silo 17 acted like she was the one who’d lost her mind. But they stomped up the stairs after her, their pace dictated by Solo, who had seemed to rally with some fruit and water but had slowed as the levels wore on.

“Where are these friends of yours we talked to?” Rickson asked. “Can they come help?” He grunted as Solo lurched to one side. “He’s heavy.”

“They aren’t coming to help us,” Juliette said. “There’s no getting from there to here.” Or vice-versa , she told herself.

Her stomach lurched with worry. She needed to get to IT and call Lukas, find out what was going on. She needed to tell him how horribly awry her plans had gone, how she was failing at every turn. There was no going back, she realized. No saving her friends. No saving this silo. She glanced back over her shoulder. Her life was now going to be one of a mother to these orphaned children, kids who had survived merely because the people who were left, who were committing the violence on each other, didn’t have the stomach to kill them. Or the heart , she thought.

And now it would fall to her. And to Solo, but to a lesser degree. Often, he would probably be just one more child for her to attend to.

They made their gradual way up another flight, Solo seeming to regain his senses a little, progress being made. But still a long way to go.

Each step, each moment that went by without a reply from silo 17 took her that many more paces into her new future. She thought of the work they’d need to perform in IT to make it ready. The kids were already adept at tending the farms, which was good. There’d be plenty of that to do. And she was alive . She reminded herself how lucky she was to be alive. She’d been sent to clean and had not perished. This was something—no matter the life she’d found on the other side. It was a life . It would be.

They stopped in the mids for bathroom breaks, filling more empty toilets that wouldn’t flush. Juliette helped the young ones. They didn’t like going like this, preferred to do it in the dirt. She told them that was right, that they only did this when they were on the move. She didn’t tell them about the years Solo had spent destroying entire levels of apartments. She didn’t tell them about the clouds of flies she’d seen.

The last of their food was consumed, but they had plenty of water. Juliette wanted to get to the hydroponics on sixty-two before they stopped for the night. There was enough food and water there for the rest of the trip. She tried the radio repeatedly, aware that she was running down the battery. There was no reply. She didn’t understand how she’d heard them to begin with; all the silos must use something different, some way of not hearing each other. It had to be Walker, something he’d engineered. When she got back to IT, would she be able to figure it out? Would she be able to contact him or Shirly? She wasn’t sure, and Lukas had no way of talking to Mechanical from where he was, no way of patching her through. She’d asked a dozen times.

Lukas —

And Juliette remembered .

The radio in Solo’s hovel. What had Lukas said one night—they were talking late and he’d said he wished they could chat from down below where it was more comfortable. Wasn’t that where he was getting his updates about the uprising? It was over the radio. Just like the one in Solo’s place, beneath the servers, locked behind that steel cage for which he’d never found the key.

Juliette turned and faced the group; they stopped climbing and gripped the rails, stared up at her. Helena, the young mother who didn’t even know her own age, tried to comfort her baby as it began to squeal. The nameless infant preferred the sway of the climb.

“I need to go up,” she told them. She looked to Solo. “How’re you feeling?”

“Me? I’m fine.”

He didn’t look fine.

“Can you get them up?” She nodded to Rickson. “Are you okay?”

The boy dipped his chin. His resistance had seemed to crumble during the climb, especially during the bathroom break. The younger children, meanwhile, had been nothing but excited to see new parts of the silo, to feel that they could raise their voices without bad things happening to them. They were coming to grips with there being only two adults left, and neither seemed all that bad.

“There’s food on sixty-two,” she said.

“Numbers—” Rickson shook his head. “I don’t—”

Of course. Why would he need to count numbers he’d never live to see, and in more ways than one?

“Solo will show you where,” she told him. “We’ve stayed there before. Good food. Canned stuff as well. Solo?” She waited until he looked up at her, the glazed expression partly melting away. “I have to get back to your place. I have people I need to call, okay? My friends. I need to find out if they’re okay.”

He nodded.

“You guys will be fine?” She hated to leave them but needed to. “I’ll try and make it back down to you tomorrow. Take your time getting all the way up, okay? No need to rush home.”

Home . Was she already resigned to that?

There were nods in the group. One of the young boys pulled a water bottle out of the other’s bag and unscrewed the cap. Juliette turned and began taking the stairs two at a time, her legs begging her not to.

This was her home . It was a sickening realization. A horrible new awareness. She clutched her shoulder bag and set a porter’s pace, the change in clothing becoming damp with her sweat, the air growing less frigid as she put distance between herself and that flood below. A level up, and she could hear the kids behind her already getting back to their games, their shouts and their laughter. This terrible trip of hers, this dreadful sprint up on dead legs, it was for them the most exciting and uplifting experience of their young and tragic lives.

Juliette was in the forties when it occurred to her that she might not make it. The sweat she’d worked up was chilling her skin; her legs were beyond the ache, beyond the pain; they were numb with fatigue. She found her arms doing a lot of the work as she lunged ahead, gripped the railing with clammy hands and hauled herself up another two steps.

Her breathing was ragged. It had been for half a dozen levels. She wondered if she’d done damage to her lungs from the underwater ordeal. Was that possible? She had no idea. Her father would know. She thought of spending the rest of her life without a doctor, of teeth as yellow as Solo’s, of caring for a growing child and the challenge of seeing that more weren’t made.