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

The saddest part of this journey had been this understanding she’d come to with Holston’s ghost. She could admit it now: A great reason for her hike, perhaps even the reason for wanting Juliette as sheriff, was to fall all the way to the down deep, away from the sad sight of two lovers nestled together in the crook of a hill as the wind etched away all their wasted youth. She had set out to escape Holston, and had instead found him. Now she knew, if not the mystery of why all sent out to clean actually did so, why a sad few would dare volunteer for the duty. Better to join a ghost than be haunted by them, Jahns now knew. Better no life than an empty one—

The door to the deputy’s office squeaked on a hinge long worn beyond the repair of grease. Jahns tried to sit up, to see in the dark, but her muscles were too sore, her eyes too old. She wanted to call out, to let her hosts know that she was okay, in need of nothing, but she listened instead.

Footsteps came to her, nearly invisible in the worn carpet. There were no words, just the creaking of old joints as they approached the bed, the lifting of expensive and fragrant sheets, and an understanding between two living ghosts.

Jahns’ breath caught in her chest. Her hand groped for a wrist as it clutched her sheets. She slid over on the small convertible bed to make room and pulled him down beside her.

Marnes wrapped his arms around her back, wiggled beneath her until she was lying on his side, a leg draped over his, her hands on his neck. She felt his mustache brush against her cheek, heard his lips purse and peck the corner of hers.

Jahns held his cheeks and burrowed her face into his shoulder. She cried, like a schoolchild, like a new shadow who felt lost and afraid in the wilderness of a strange and terrifying job. She cried with fear, but that soon drained away. It drained like the soreness in her back as his hands rubbed her there. It drained until numbness found its place, and then, after what felt like a forever of shuddering sobs, with sensation taking the place of that.

Jahns felt alive in her skin. She felt the tingle of flesh touching flesh, of just her forearm against his hard ribs, her hands on his shoulder, his hands on her hips. And then the tears were some joyous release, some mourning of the lost time, some welcomed sadness of a moment long delayed and finally there, arms wrapped around it and holding tight.

She fell asleep like that, exhausted from far more than the climb, nothing more than a few trembling kisses, hands interlocking, a whispered word of tenderness and appreciation, and then the depths of sleep pulling her down, the weariness in her joints and bones succumbing to a slumber she didn’t want but sorely needed. She slept with a man in her arms for the first time in decades, and woke to a bed familiarly empty, but a heart strangely full.

In the middle of their fourth and final day of climbing, they approached the mid-thirties of IT. Jahns had found herself taking more breaks for water and to rub her muscles along the way, not for the exhaustion she feigned, but the dread of this stopover and seeing Bernard, the fear of their trip ever coming to an end.

The dark and deep shadows cast by the power holiday followed them up, the traffic sparse as most merchants had closed for the silo-wide brownout. Juliette, who had stayed behind to oversee the repairs, had warned Jahns of the flickering lights from the backup generator. Still, the effect of the shimmering illumination had worn on her during the long climb. The inconstancy was bothersome.

When they reached the thirty-fourth, Jahns felt like they were, in a sense, home again. Back in the realm of the familiar, at the main landing for IT. She waited by the railing, leaning on it and her walking stick, while Marnes got the door. As it was cracked open, the pale glow of diminished power was swept off the stairwell by the bright lights blooming inside. It hadn’t been widely publicized, but the reason for the severe power restrictions on other levels was largely due to the exemption IT maintained it possessed in spite of this holiday. Bernard had pointed to various clauses in the Pact to support this. Juliette had bitched that servers shouldn’t get priority over grow lights, but resigned herself to getting the main generator re-aligned, and taking what she could. Jahns told Juliette to view this as her first lesson in political compromise. Juliette said she saw it as a display of weakness.

Inside, Jahns found Bernard waiting on them, a look on his face like he’d swallowed sour fruit juice. A conversation between several IT workers standing off to the side quickly silenced with their entry, leaving Jahns little doubt that they’d been spotted on the way up and expected.

“Bernard,” she said, trying to keep her breathing steady. She didn’t want him to know how tired she was. Let him think she was strolling by on her way up from the down deep, like it was no big deal.

“Marie.”

It was a deliberate slight. He didn’t even look Marnes’ way or acknowledge that the deputy was in the room.

“Would you like to sign these here? Or in the conference room?” She dug into her bag for the contract with Juliette’s name on it.

“What games are you playing at, Marie?”

Jahns felt her temperature rise. The cluster of workers in silver IT jumpsuits were following the exchange. “Playing at?” she asked.

“You think this power holiday of yours is cute? Your way of getting back at me?”

“Getting back—?”

“I’ve got servers, Marie—”

“Your servers have their full allocation of power,” Jahns reminded him, her voice rising.

“But their cooling comes ducted from Mechanical, and if temps get any higher, we’ll be ramping down, which we’ve never had to do!”

Marnes stepped between the two of them, his hands raised. “Easy,” he said cooly, his gaze on Bernard.

“Call off your little shadow here,” Bernard said.

Jahns placed a hand on Marnes’ arm.

“The Pact is clear, Bernard. It’s my choice. My nomination. You and I have a nice history of signing off on each others—”

“And I told you this girl from the pits will not do—”

“She’s got the job,” Marnes said, interrupting. Jahns noticed his hand had fallen to the butt of his gun. She wasn’t sure if Bernard noticed or not, but he fell silent. His eyes, however, did not leave Jahns’.

“I won’t sign it.”

“Then next time, I won’t ask.”

Bernard smiled. “You think you’ll outlive another sheriff?” He turned toward the workers in the corner and waved one of them over. “Why do I somehow doubt that?” The worker approached. Bernard nodded to the young man, a face familiar to Jahns from level meetings. “Sign whatever she needs, I refuse to. Make copies. Take care of the rest.” He waved his hand dismissively, turned and looked Marnes and Jahns up and down one final time, as if disgusted with their condition, their age, their positions, something . “Oh, and top off their canteens and see that they have food enough to stagger back to their homes. Whatever it takes to power their decrepit legs to wherever it is they belong.”

And with that, Bernard strode off toward the barred gates that led into the heart of IT, back to his brightly lit offices where servers hummed happily, the temperature rising in the slow-moving air like the heat of angered flesh as capillaries squeezed, the blood in them rising to a boil.

The floors flew by faster as they approached home. In the darkest sections of the staircase, between quiet floors of people hunkered down and awaiting a return to normalcy, old hands wrapped around each other and swung between two climbers, brazenly and open, grasping each other while their other hands slid up the cool steel of the rails.