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

“You don’t come back from this,” Holston said angrily. “You think the banished are still out there? You think they choose to not come back because they feel betrayed by us?”

“Why do you think they do the cleaning?” Allison asked. “Why do they pick up their wool and set to work without hesitation?”

Holston sighed. He felt the anger in him draining away. “No one knows why,” he said.

“But why do you think? ”

“We’ve talked about this,” he said. “How many times have we discussed this?” He was sure all couples whispered their theories when they were alone. He looked past Allison as he remembered those times. He looked to the wall and saw the moon’s position and read in it the night’s hour. Their time was limited. His wife would be gone tomorrow. That simple thought came often like lightning from stormy clouds.

“Everyone has theories,” he said. “We’ve shared ours countless times. Let’s just—”

“But now you know something new,” Allison told him. She let go of his hand and brushed the hair from her face. “You and I know something new, and now it all makes sense. It makes perfect sense. And tomorrow I’ll know for sure.” Allison smiled. She patted Holston’s hand as if he were a child. “And one day, my love, you will know it, too.”

The first year without her, Holston had waited, buying into her insanity, hoping she’d come back. He’d spent the first anniversary of her death scrubbing the holding cell clean, washing the yellow airlock door, straining for some sound, some knock, that the ghost of his wife was back to set him free.

When it didn’t happen, he began to consider the alternative: Going out after her. He had spent enough days, weeks, months going through her computer files, reading some of what she had pieced together, making sense of half of it, to become half mad himself. His world was a lie, he came to believe, and without Allison in it he had nothing to live for even if it were truth.

The second anniversary of her departure was his year of cowardice. He had walked to work, the poisonous words in his mouth—his desire to go out—but he had choked them down at the last second. He and Deputy Marnes had gone on patrol that day with the secret of how near he’d come to death burning inside of him. That was a long year of cowardice, of letting Allison down. The first year had been her failure; last year had been his. But no more.

Now, one more year later, he was alone in the airlock, wearing a cleaning suit, full of doubts and convictions. The silo was sealed off behind him, that thick yellow door bolted tight, and Holston thought that this was not how he’d thought he’d die, or what he had hoped would become of him. He had thought he would remain in the silo forever, his nutrients going as the nutrients of his parents had—into the soil of the eighth floor dirt farm. It seemed a lifetime ago that he had dreamed of a family, of his own child, a fantasy of twins or another lottery win, a wife to grow old with—

A klaxon sounded on the other side of the yellow doors, warning everyone but him away. He was to stay. There was nowhere else for him to go.

The argon chambers hissed, pumping the room full of the inert gas. After a minute of this, Holston could feel the pressure of the air as it crinkled the cleaning suit tight around his joints. He breathed the oxygen circulating inside his helmet and stood before the other door, the forbidden door, the one to the awful outside world, and waited.

There was a metal groan from pistons deep within the walls. The sacrificial plastic curtains covering the interior of the airlock wrinkled from the pressure of the built up argon. These curtains would be incinerated inside the airlock while Holston cleaned. The area would be scrubbed clean before nightfall, ready for the next cleaning.

The great metal doors before him shuddered, and then a shaft of incredible space appeared at their joint, widening as the doors withdrew into the jamb. They wouldn’t open all the way, not like they were once designed to—the risk of invading air had to be minimized.

An argon torrent hissed through the gap, dulling to a roar as the space grew. Holston pressed close, as horrified at himself for not resisting as he’d previously been perplexed by the actions of others. Better to go out, to see the world one time with his own eyes, than to be burned alive with the plastic curtains.

As soon as the opening was wide enough, Holston squeezed through, his suit catching and rubbing at the doors. There was a veil of fog all around him as the argon condensed in the less pressurized air. He stumbled forward blindly, pawing through the soft cloud.

While still in that mist, the outer doors groaned and began closing. The klaxon howls behind were swallowed by the press of thick steel against thick steel, locking him out forever while cleansing fires began to rage inside the airlock.

Holston found himself at the bottom of a concrete ramp, a ramp that led up . His time felt short—there was a constant reminder thrumming in the back of his skull— hurry! Hurry! His life was ticking away. He lumbered up the ramp, confused to not already be above ground, so used as he was to seeing the world and the horizon from the cafeteria and lounge, which were on the same level as the airlock.

He shuffled up the narrow ramp, walls of chipped concrete to either side, his visor full of a confusing, brilliant light. At the top of the ramp, Holston saw the heaven into which he’d been condemned for his simple sin of hope. He whirled around, scanning the horizon, his head dizzy from the sight of so much green!

Green hills, green grass, green carpet beneath his feet. Holston whooped in his helmet. His mind buzzed with the sight. Hanging over all the green, there was the exact hue of blue from the children’s books, the white clouds untainted, the movement of living things flapping in the air.

Holston turned around and around, taking it in. He had a sudden memory of his wife doing the same; he had watched her awkwardly, slowly turning, almost as if she were lost or confused or considering whether to do the cleaning at all.

The cleaning!

Holston reached down and pulled a wool pad from his chest. The cleaning! He knew, in a dizzying rush, a torrent of awareness, why, why. Why!

He looked where he always assumed the tall circular wall of the uppermost silo floor would be, but of course that wall was buried. All that stood behind him was a small mound of concrete, a tower no more than eight or nine feet tall. A metal ladder ran up one side; antenna bristled from the top. And on the side facing him—on all the sides he saw as he approached—were the wide, curving, fisheye lenses of the silo’s powerful cameras.

Holston held out his wool and approached the first. He imagined the view of himself from inside the cafeteria, staggering forward, becoming impossibly large. He had watched his wife do the same thing three years ago. He remembered her waving, he had thought at the time for balance, but had she been telling him something? Had she been grinning like a fool, as wide as he was grinning now, while she remained hidden behind that silver visor? Had her heart been pounding with foolish hope while she sprayed, scrubbed, wiped, applied? Holston knew the cafeteria would be empty; there was no one left who loved him enough to watch, but he waved anyway. And for him, it wasn’t the raw anger he imagined many might have cleaned with, it wasn’t the knowledge that they in the silo were condemned and the condemned set free, it wasn’t the feeling of betrayal that guided the wool in his hand in small, circular motions. It was pity. It was raw pity and unconstrained joy.