Wool (32 page)

She swam through the tables and chairs, wanting more and more distance between herself and any bad air she had let in. The bodies she had crawled over in the sheriff’s office had felt whole. Naturally dead. Trapped inside and starved or asphyxiated, perhaps. But not rotten. Still, and despite her light-headedness and need to breathe, she wanted to somehow douse herself before cracking the helmet, wanted to dilute the toxins as she would with any other chemical spill back in Mechanical.

She escaped the barrier of tables and chairs and made her way across the open cafeteria floor. The emergency lights in the stairwell leaked a green glow to dimly show the way. She passed through the serving door and into the kitchen, and tried the taps on the large sink. The handles turned, but the spout didn’t leak a drop, didn’t knock with even a futile try from distant pumps. She went to the dangling hose over the dish station and pulled that lever—and was similarly rewarded. There was no water.

Her next thought was the walk-ins, to maybe freeze the nastiness she could feel crawling all over her suit. She staggered around the cooking stations and pulled the large silver handle on the door, her breath wheezy in her helmet. The light in the back reaches of the kitchen was already so dim she could barely see. She couldn’t feel any cold through her suit but wasn’t sure if she’d be able to. It was built to shield her, and built well. The overhead light didn’t come on, so she assumed the freezer was dead. With the door open, she peered inside, looking for anything fluid, and saw what looked like vats of soup.

She was desperate enough to try anything. Juliette moved inside the walk-in, letting the door swing slowly shut behind her. She seized one of the large plastic containers, a bucket the size of the largest cooking pots, and tore the top off. The door clicked shut, returning her to solid darkness. Juliette knelt beneath the shelf and tipped the massive bucket over. She could feel the liquid soup splatter over her suit, crinkling it and splashing to the floor. Her knees slipped in the stuff. She felt for the next one and did the same, ran her fingers into the puddles and coated herself in it. There was no way of knowing if she was being crazy, if she was making things worse, or if any of it mattered. Her boot slipped, sending her flat onto her back, her helmet cracking against the floor.

Juliette lay there in a puddle of tepid soup, unable to see, her breath raspy and stale. Her time had run out. She was dizzy and could think of nothing else to try, didn’t have the breath or energy, anyway. The helmet had to come off.

She fumbled for the latches, could barely feel them through her gloves. Her gloves were too thick. They were going to kill her.

She rolled to her belly and crawled through the soup, her hands and knees slipping. She reached the door, gasping, and fumbled for the handle, found it, threw the door open. There was a rack of knives gleaming behind the counter. She lurched to her feet and grabbed one, held the blade in her thick mitts, and slumped to the floor, exhausted and dizzy.

Turning the blade toward her own neck, Juliette groped for the latch. She slid the point along her collar until it caught in the crack of the button. Steadying herself, her arm shaking, she moved the knife and pressed in, shoving it toward her body against all her most human instincts.

There was a faint click. Juliette gasped and groped along the rim with the blade for the other button until she found it. She repeated the maneuver.

Another click, and her helmet popped off.

Juliette’s body took over for her, compelling her to take deep gulps of foul air. The stench was unbearable, but she couldn’t stop gasping for more. Rotted food, biological decay, a tepid filth of stenches invaded her mouth, tongue, nose.

She turned to the side and retched, but nothing came out. Her hands were still slippery with soup. Breathing was painful; she imagined a burning sensation on her skin, but it could’ve been her fevered state. She crawled away from the walk-in, toward the cafeteria, out of the fog of rotting soup, and took another gulp of air.

Air.

She took a lungful, the odor still overpowering, the soup coating her. But beyond the stench, something else was there. Something faint. Something
breathable
that began to force away the dizziness and the panic. It was
oxygen
. Life.

Juliette was still alive.

She laughed madly and stumbled toward the stairwell, drawn to the green glow of light, breathing deeply and too exhausted to appreciate this, the
impossible
life still in her.

Knox saw the uproar in Mechanical as just another emergency to overcome. Like the time the basement subwall had sprung a leak, or when the oil rig had hit that pocket of methane and they had to evacuate eight levels until the air handlers made it safe to return. Against the inevitable flow of commotion, what he needed to do was push for order. To assign tasks. He had to break a huge undertaking down to discrete bits and make sure they fell to the right hands. Only this time, he and his people wouldn’t be setting out to repair something. There were things the good people of Mechanical meant to
break
.

“Supply is the key,” he told his foremen, pointing to the large-scale blueprint hanging on the wall. He traced the stairwell up the thirty flights to Supply’s main manufacturing floor. “Our greatest advantage is that IT doesn’t know we’re coming.” He turned to his shift leaders. “Shirly, Marck, and Courtnee, you’ll come with me. We’ll load up with supplies and take your shadows with us. Walker, you can wire ahead to let ’em know we’re coming. Be careful, though. Assume IT has ears. Say we have a load of your repairs to deliver.”

He turned to Jenkins, who had shadowed under Knox for six years before he grew his own beard and moved to third shift. The assumption everywhere was that Knox’s job was his in waiting. “Jenks, I want you to take over down here. There are no days off for a while. Keep the place running, but get ready for the worst. I want as much food stockpiled as possible. And water. Make sure the cistern is topped up. Divert from the hydroponics feed if you have to, but be discreet. Think of an excuse, like a leak or something, in case they notice. Meanwhile, have someone make the rounds and check every lock and hinge, just in case the fighting comes to us. And stockpile whatever weapons you can make up. Pipes, hammers, whatever.”

Some eyebrows were lifted at this, but Jenkins nodded at the list as if it all made sense and was doable. Knox turned to his foremen. “What? You know where this is heading, right?”

“But what’s the larger picture?” Courtnee asked, glancing at the tall blueprint of their buried home. “Storm IT, and then what? Take over running this place?”

“We already run this place,” Knox growled. He slapped his hand across the floors of the midthirties. “We just do it in the dark. Like these levels here are dark to us. But now I mean to shine a light in their rat hole and scare them out, see what else they’re hiding.”

“You understand what they’ve been doing, right?” Marck turned to Courtnee. “They’ve been sending people out to die. On purpose. Not because it
had
to happen, but because they wanted it to!”

Courtnee bit her lip and didn’t say anything, just stared at the blueprint.

“We need to get going,” Knox said. “Walker, get that wire out. Let’s load up. And think of something pleasant to chat about while we’re on the move. No grumbling about this where some porter can hear and make a chit or two ratting us out.”

They nodded. Knox slapped Jenkins on the back and dipped his chin at the younger man. “I’ll send word when we need everyone. Keep the bare bones you think you’ve gotta have down here and send the rest. Timing is everything, okay?”

“I know what to do,” Jenkins said. He wasn’t trying to be uppity, just reassuring his elder.

“All right,” Knox said. “Then let’s get to it.”

They made it up ten flights with little complaint, but Knox could begin to feel the burn in his legs from the heavy load. He had a canvas sack stuffed full of welding smocks on his wide shoulders, plus a bundle of helmets. A rope had been strung through their chin straps, and they clattered down his wide back. Marck struggled with his load of pipe stock as they kept trying to slide against one another and slip out of his arms. The shadows brought up the rear, behind the women, with heavy sacks of blasting powder tied together so they hung around their necks. Professional porters with similarly full loads breezed past them in both directions, their glances signaling a mix of curiosity and competitive anger. When one porter—a woman Knox recognized from deliveries to the down deep—stopped and offered to help, he gruffly sent her on her way. She hurried up the steps, looking back over her shoulder before spiraling out of view, and Knox regretted taking his exhaustion out on her.

“Keep it up,” he told the others. Even with the small group, they were making a spectacle. And it was growing ever more tiresome to hold their tongues as news of Juliette’s amazing disappearance gyred all around them. At almost every landing, a group of people, often younger people, stood around and gossiped about what it all meant. The taboo had moved from thought to whisper. Forbidden notions were birthed on tongues and swam through the air. Knox ignored the pain in his back and lumbered up and up, each step driving them closer to Supply, feeling more and more like they needed to get there in a hurry.

As they left the one—thirties, the grumblings were fully in the air. They were nearing the upper half of the down deep, where people who worked, shopped, and ate in the mids mingled with those who would rather they didn’t. Deputy Hank was on the stairwell of one-twenty-eight, trying to mediate between two arguing crowds. Knox squeezed past, hoping the officer wouldn’t turn and see his heavily loaded train and ask them what they were doing up this far. As he ascended past the ruckus, Knox glanced back to watch the shadows slink past, hugging the inner rail. Deputy Hank was still asking a woman to please calm down as the landing sank out of sight.

They passed the dirt farm on one-twenty-six, and Knox figured this to be a key asset. The thirties of IT were a long hike up, but if they had to fall back, they would need to hold at Supply. Between their manufacturing, the food on this level, and the machinery of Mechanical, they might be self-sufficient. He could think of a few weak links, but many more for IT. They could always shut off their power or stop treating their water—but he really hoped, as they approached Supply on weary legs, that it wouldn’t come to any of that.

They were greeted on the landing of one-ten by frowns. McLain, the elder woman and head of Supply, stood with her arms crossed over her yellow overalls, her stance screaming unwelcome.

“Hello, Jove.” Knox fixed her with a wide smile.

“Don’t
Jove
me,” McLain said. “What’s this nonsense you’re after?”

Knox glanced up and down the stairwell, shrugged his heavy load higher up his shoulder. “Mind if we step in and talk about it?”

“I don’t want any trouble here,” she said, her eyes blazing beneath her lowered brow.

“Let’s go inside,” Knox said. “We haven’t stopped once on the way up. Unless you want us collapsing out here.”

McLain seemed to consider this. Her arms loosened across her chest. She turned to three of her workers, who formed an imposing wall behind her, and nodded. While they pulled open the gleaming doors of Supply, she turned and grabbed Knox’s arm. “Don’t get comfortable,” she told him.

Inside the front room of Supply, Knox found a small army of men and women in their yellow overalls, waiting. Most of them stood behind the low, long counter where the people of the silo normally waited for whatever parts they needed, whether newly fabricated or recently repaired. The parallel and deep aisles of shelves beyond ran into the gloomy distance, boxes and bins bulging off of them. The room was noticeably quiet. Usually, the mechanical thrumming and clanking sounds of fabrication could be heard worming their way through the space, or one might hear workers chatting unseen back in the stacks while they sorted newly fashioned bolts and nuts into hungry bins.

Now it was just silence and distrustful glares. Knox stood with his people, their sacks and loads slumping exhaustedly to the floor, sweat on their brows, while the men and women of Supply watched, unmoving.

He had expected a more amicable welcome. Mechanical and Supply had a long history together. They jointly ran the small mine beneath the lowest levels of Mechanical that supplemented the silo’s stockpile of ores.

But now, as McLain followed her boys back inside, she graced Knox with a look of scorn he hadn’t seen since his mother passed away.

“What in the hell is the meaning of this?” she hissed at Knox.

He was taken aback by the language, especially in front of his people. He thought of himself and McLain as equals, but now he was being snapped at as if by one of Supply’s dogs. Made to feel small and worthless.

McLain’s gaze ranged down the exhausted line of mechanics and their shadows before turning back to him.

“Before we discuss how we’re cleaning up this problem, I want to hear how you’re handling your employees, whoever was responsible.” Her eyes bored through him. “I
am
correct in assuming you had nothing to do with this, right? That you’ve come to apologize and shower me with bribes?”

Shirly started to say something, but Knox waved her off. There were a lot of people in the room just waiting for this to go undiplomatically.

“Yes, I do apologize,” Knox said, grinding his teeth together and bowing his head. “And no, I just learned of this earlier today. After I found out about the cleaning, in fact.”

“So it was all your electrician,” McLain said, her thin arms crossed tightly over her chest. “One man.”

“That’s right. But—”

“I’ve meted out punishment to those involved here, let me tell you. And I suppose you’ll have to do more than banish that old fart to his room.”

There was laughter behind the counter. Knox put a hand on Shirly’s shoulder to keep her in place. He looked past McLain to the men and women arranged behind her.