Wool (54 page)

“If this works,” Walker grumbled, fiddling with one of the transmitters, “we can ask Jules herself.”

Shirly turned and peered through the control room’s observation window. She lowered her sleeve away from her face. “What’s Karl and them doing with the exhaust feed?” she asked.

“They’ve got some plan to reroute it,” Courtnee said. She got up from the floor while Walker started soldering something, the smell reminding her of his workshop. He grumbled about his eyesight while Courtnee joined her by the glass.

“Reroute it where?”

“IT. That’s what Heline said, anyway. The cooling feed for their server room runs through the ceiling here before shooting up the Mechanical shaft. Someone spotted the proximity on a schematic, thought of a way to fight back from here.”

“So, we choke them out with our fumes?” Shirly felt uneasy about the plan. She wondered what Knox would say if he were still alive, still in charge. Surely all the men and women riding desks up there weren’t the problem. “Walk, how long before we can talk? Before we can try and contact her?”

“Almost there. Blasted magnifiers …”

Courtnee rested her hand on Shirly’s arm. “Are you okay? How’re you holding up?”

“Me?” Shirly laughed and shook her head. She checked the bloodstains on her sleeve, felt the sweat trickling down her chest. “I’m walking around in shock. I have no idea what the hell’s going on anymore. My ears are still ringing from whatever they did to the stairwell. I think I’ve screwed up my ankle. And I’m starving. Oh, and did I mention my friend isn’t as dead as I thought she was?”

She took a deep breath.

Courtnee continued to stare at her worryingly. Shirly knew none of this was what her friend was asking her about.

“And yeah, I miss Marck,” she said quietly.

Courtnee put her arm around her friend and pulled her close. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”

Shirly waved her off. The two of them stood quietly and watched through the window as a small crew from second shift worked on the generator, trying to reroute the outpouring of noxious fumes from the apartment-sized machine to the floors of the thirties high above.

“You know what, though? There are times when I’m
glad
he’s not here. Times when I know I won’t be around much longer either, not once they get to us, and I’m glad he’s not here to stress about it, to worry about what they’ll do to us. To me. And I’m glad I haven’t had to watch him do all this fighting, living on rations, this sort of craziness.” She dipped her chin at the crew outside. She knew Marck would have been either up there leading that terrible work or outside with a gun pressed to his cheek.

“Hello. Testing. Hello, hello.”

The two women turned around to see Walker clicking the red detonate switch, the microphone from the headset held beneath his chin, furrows of concentration across his brow.

“Juliette?” he asked. “Can you hear me? Hello?”

Shirly moved to Walker’s side, squatted down, rested a hand on his shoulder. The three of them stared at the headphones, waiting for a reply.

“Hello?”

A quiet voice leaked out of the tiny speakers. Shirly clapped a hand to her chest, her breath stolen from the miracle of a reply. It was a fraction of a second later, after this surge of desperate hope, that she realized this wasn’t Juliette. The voice was different.

“That’s not her,” Courtnee whispered, dejected. Walker waved his hand to silence her. The red switch clicked noisily as he prepared to transmit.

“Hello. My name is Walker. We received a transmission from a friend. Is there anyone else there?”

“Ask them where they are,” Courtnee hissed.

“Where exactly are you?” Walker added, before releasing the switch.

The tiny speakers popped.

“We are nowhere. You’ll never find us. Stay away.”

There was a pause, a hiss of static.

“And your friend is dead. We killed him.”

The water inside the suit was freezing, the air cold, the combination lethal. Juliette’s teeth chattered noisily while she worked the knife. She slid the blade into the soggy skin of the suit, the feeling of having already been here, having done all this before, unmistakable.

The gloves came off first, the suit destroyed, water pouring out of every cut. Juliette rubbed her hands together, could barely feel them. She hacked away at the material over her chest, her eyes falling to Solo, who had gone deathly still. His large wrench was missing, she saw. Their supply bag was gone as well. The compressor was on its side, the hose kinked beneath it, fuel leaking from the loose filling cap.

Juliette was freezing. She could hardly breathe. Once the chest of the suit was cut open, she wiggled her knees and feet through the hole, spun the material around in front of herself, then tried to pry the Velcro apart.

Her fingers were too senseless even to do this. She ran the knife down the joint instead, sawing the Velcro apart until she could find the zipper.

Finally, squeezing her fingers until they were white, she pulled the small tab free of the collar and threw the suit away from herself. The thing weighed double with all the water in it. She was left in two layers of black undersuit, still soaking wet and shivering, a knife in her trembling hand, the body of a good man lying beside her, a man who had survived everything this nasty world could throw at him except for her arrival.

Juliette moved to Solo’s side and reached for his neck. Her hands were icy; she couldn’t feel a pulse, wasn’t sure if she would be
able
to. She could barely feel his neck with her frozen fingers.

She struggled to her feet, nearly collapsed, hugged the landing’s railing. She teetered toward the compressor, knowing she needed to warm up. She felt the powerful urge to go to sleep but knew she’d never wake up if she did.

The fuel can was still full. She tried to work the cap, but her hands were useless. They were numb and vibrating from the cold. Her breath fogged in front of her, a chilly reminder of the heat she was losing, what little heat she had left.

She grabbed the knife. Holding it in both hands, she pressed the tip into the cap. The flat handle was easier to grasp than the plastic cap; she spun the knife and cracked the lid on the jug of fuel. Once the cap was loose, she pulled the blade out and did the rest with her palms, the knife resting in her lap.

She tilted the can over the compressor, soaking the large rubber wheels, the carriage, the entire motor. She would never want to use it again anyway, never rely on it or anything else for her air. She put the can down, still half-full, and slid it away from the compressor with her foot. Fuel dripped through the metal grating and made musical impacts in the water below, drips that echoed off the concrete walls of the stairwell and added to the flood’s toxic and colorful slick.

Wielding the knife with the blade down, the dull side away from her, she smacked it against the metal fins of the heat exchanger. She yanked her arm back with each strike, expecting the whoosh of an immediate flame. But there was no spark. She hit it harder, hating to abuse her precious tool, her only defense. Solo’s stillness nearby was a reminder that she might need it if she were able to survive the deadly cold—

The knife struck with a snick, and there was a pop, heat traveling up her arm, a wash of it against her face.

Juliette dropped the knife and waved her hand, but it wasn’t on fire. The compressor
was
. Part of the grating, too.

As it began to die down, she grabbed the can and sloshed some more fuel out of it, large balls of orange flame rewarding her, leaping up in the air with a whoosh. The wheels crackled as they burned. Juliette collapsed close to the fire, felt the heat from the dancing flame as it burned all across the metal machine. She began to strip, her eyes returning now and then to Solo, promising herself that she wouldn’t leave his body there, that she would come back for him.

Feeling returned to her extremities—at first gradually, but then with a tingling pain. Naked, she curled into a ball next to the small and feeble fire and rubbed her hands together, breathing her warm and visible breath into her palms. Twice she had to feed the hungry and stingy fire. Only the wheels burned reliably, but they kept her from needing another spark. The glorious heat traveled somewhat through the landing’s grated decking, warming her bare skin where it touched the metal.

Her teeth chattered violently. Juliette eyed the stairs, this new fear coursing through her that boots could rumble down at any moment, that she was trapped between these other survivors and the freezing water. She retrieved her knife, held it in front of her with both hands, tried to will herself not to shiver so violently.

Glimpses of her face in the blade caused her to worry more. She looked as pale as a ghost. Lips purple, eyes ringed dark and seeming hollow. She nearly laughed at the sight of her lips vibrating, the clacking blur of her teeth. She scooted closer to the fire. The orange light danced on the blade, the unburned fuel dripping and forming silvery splashes of color below.

As the last of the gas burned and the flames dwindled, Juliette decided to move. She was still shaking, but it was cold in the depths of the shaft so far from the electricity of IT. She patted the black underlinings she’d stripped off. One of them had been left balled up and was still soaked. The other she had at least dropped flat; if she’d been thinking clearly she would’ve hung it up. It was damp, but better to wear it and heat it up herself than allow the cold air to wick her body temperature away. She worked her legs in, struggled to get her arms through the sleeves, zipped up the front.

On bare, numb, and unsteady feet, she returned to Solo. She could feel his neck this time. He felt warm. She couldn’t remember how long a body stayed that way. And then she felt a weak and slow thrumming in his neck. A beat.

“Solo!” She shook his shoulders. “Hey …” What name had he whispered? She remembered: “Jimmy!”

His head lolled from side to side while she shook his shoulder. She checked his scalp beneath all that crazy hair, saw lots of blood. Most of it was dry. She looked around again for her bag—they had brought food, water, and dry clothes for when she got back up—but the satchel was gone. She grabbed her other undersuit instead. She wasn’t sure about the quality of the water in the fabric, but it had to be better than nothing. Wrenching the material in a tight ball, she dripped what she could against his lips. She squeezed more on his head, brushed his hair back to inspect the wound, probed the nasty cut with her fingers. As soon as the water hit the open gash, it was like pushing a button. Solo lurched to the side, away from her hand and the drip from the undersuit. His teeth flashed yellow in his beard as he screamed in pain, his hands rising from the landing and hovering there, arms tensed, still senseless.

“Solo. Hey, it’s okay.”

She held him as he came to, his eyes rolling around, lids blinking.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re gonna be okay.”

She used the balled-up undersuit to dab at his wound. Solo grunted and held her wrist but didn’t pull away.

“Stings,” he said. He blinked and looked around. “Where am I?”

“The down deep,” she reminded him, happy to hear him talking. She felt like crying with relief. “I think you were attacked …”

He tried to sit up, hissing between his teeth, a powerful grip pinching her wrist.

“Easy,” she said, trying to hold him down. “You’ve got a nasty cut on your head. A lot of swelling.”

His body relaxed.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Juliette said. “What do you remember? How many were there?”

He closed his eyes. She continued to dab at his wound.

“Just one. I think.” He opened his eyes wide as if shocked by the memory of the attack. “He was
my
age.”

“We need to get up top,” she told him. “We need to get where it’s warm, get you cleaned up, get me dry. Do you think you can move?”

“I’m not crazy,” Solo said.

“I know you’re not.”

“The things that moved, the lights, it wasn’t me. I’m not crazy.”

“No,” Juliette agreed. She remembered all the times she had thought the same thing of herself, always in the down deep of this place, usually while rummaging around Supply. “You aren’t crazy,” she said, comforting him. “You aren’t crazy at all.”

Lukas couldn’t force himself to study, not what he was supposed to be studying. The Order sat flopped open on the wooden desk, the little lamp on its thousand-jointed neck bent over and warming it in a pool of light. He stood before the wall schematics instead, staring at the arrangement of silos, which were spaced out like the servers in the room above him, and listened to the radio crackle with the sounds of distant warring.

The final push was being made. Sims’s team had lost a few men in an awful explosion, something about a stairwell—but not the great stairwell—and now they were in a fight they hoped would be the last. The little speakers by the radio crackled with static as the men coordinated themselves, as Bernard shouted orders from his office one level up, always with the crackle of gunfire erupting behind the voices.

Lukas knew he shouldn’t listen, and yet he couldn’t stop. Juliette would call him any time now and ask him for an update. She would want to know what had happened, how the end had come, and the only thing worse than telling her would be admitting he didn’t know, that he couldn’t bear to listen.

He reached out and touched the round roof of silo seventeen. It was as though he were a god surveying the structures from up high. He pictured his hand piercing the dark clouds above Juliette and spanning a roof built for thousands. He rubbed his fingers over the red X drawn across the silo, those two slashes that admitted to such a great loss. The marks felt waxy beneath his fingers, like they’d been drawn with crayon or something similar. He tried to imagine getting the news one day that an entire people were gone, wiped out. He would have to dig in Bernard’s desk—
his
desk—and find the red stick, cross out another chance at their Legacy, another pod of buried hope.