Someone in the crowd immediately took his place on the steps. Shoulders and elbows knocked into his ankles. He remained crouched there, the undersides of the steps above him transmitting the scrapes of shuffling boots from those overhead. He slid his feet along the narrow bar of steel made slick by the rubbing of thousands of palms and worked his way down the railing after his mom. His foot slipped into the gap by the centre post. It seemed eager to swallow his leg. Jimmy righted himself, fearful of falling onto the lurching crowd, imagining how he could be tossed across their frenzied arms and slip out into space.
He was half a circuit around the inner post before he found his mom. She had been forced towards the outside by the crowds. ‘Mom!’ he yelled. Jimmy held the edge of the steps above his head and reached over the crowd for her. A woman in the middle of the steps screamed and disappeared, her head sinking below those who took her place. As they trampled her, the woman’s screams disappeared. The crowd surged upward. They carried Jimmy’s mom a few steps with them.
‘Get to your father!’ she screamed, cupping her hands around her mouth. ‘Jimmy!’
‘Mom!’
Someone knocked into his shins, and he lost his grip on the stairs overhead. Jimmy waved his arms once, twice, in little circles, trying to keep his balance. He fell inward on the sea of heads and rolled. Someone punched him in the ribs as they protected themselves from his fall.
Another man threw Jimmy aside. He tumbled outward across an undulating platform of sharp elbows and hard skulls, and time slowed to a crawl. There was nothing but empty space and a long fall beyond the crowd, now packed five wide. Jimmy tried to grab one of the hands pushing and shoving at him. His stomach lurched as the space grew nearer. He couldn’t see the rail. He heard his mother’s voice, a screech recognisable above all the others, as she watched, helpless. Someone screamed to help that boy as he slid down the spiral of heads, rolling and grasping. That boy they were screaming after was him.
Jimmy rolled into open space. He was thrown aside by those trying to protect themselves. He slid between two people — a shoulder catching him in the chin — and he saw the railing at last. He clutched for it, got one hand wrapped around the bar. As his feet tumbled over his head he was twisted around, his shoulder wrenched painfully, but he kept his grip. He hung there, clutching the railing with one hand and one of the vertical stanchions with the other, his feet dangling in the open air.
Someone’s hip pinched his fingers against the rail and Jimmy cried out. Hands scrambled at his arms to help, but these people and their concerns were pushed upward by the madness below.
Jimmy tried to pull himself up. He looked down past his kicking feet at the crowds jostling beyond the rail below him. Two turns down was the landing to thirty-four. Again he tried to hoist himself, but there was a fire in his wrenched shoulder. Someone scratched his forearm as they tried to help and then they too were gone, surging upward.
Peering down his chest, between his feet, Jimmy saw that the landing to thirty-four was packed. A crowd spilled out of the jammed stairs and tried to shove their way back in again. Someone barged out of the doors to IT with a cleaning suit on, helmet and everything. They threw themselves into the crowd, silvery arms swimming amid the flesh, everyone trying to get up, more of the bangs and shouts from down below, a sudden pop like the balloons from the bazaar but much, much louder.
Jimmy lost his grip on the railing — his shoulder was too injured to bear the weight any longer. He clutched the stanchion with his other hand as he slid down, sweaty palm on steel adding one more squeal to the uproar of the mob. He was left clutching the edge of the steps at the base of the stanchion. With his feet, he tried to feel for the railing one turn below, but all he felt were angry arms knocking his boots aside. His busted shoulder was alive with pain. He swung down on one hand, dangling for an instant.
Jimmy cried out in alarm. He cried out for his mother, remembering what she’d told him.
Get to your father.
There was no way he was getting back up on the stairwell. He didn’t have the strength. There was no room. Nobody was going to help him. A surging crowd, and yet he hung there all alone.
Jimmy took a deep breath. He dangled a moment longer, glanced down at the packed landing below him, and let go.
61
2312 – Hour One
• Silo 17 •
TWO TURNS OF the spiral staircase flew by. Two turns of wide eyes among the packed and crushing crowd. Jimmy felt the swoosh of wind on his neck grow and grow. His stomach flew up into his throat, and there was a glimpse of a face turning in alarm to watch him plummet past.
Slamming into the crowd on the landing below, he hit with a sickening thud. The man in the silver suit, faceless behind his small visor, was pinned beneath him.
People yelled at him. Others crawled out from underneath him. Jimmy rolled away, an electric shock in his ribs where he’d hit someone, a throbbing pain in one knee, his shoulder burning. Limping, he hurried towards the double doors as another person barged out, a bundle in their arms. They pulled to a halt at the sight of the crowd on the stairs. Someone yelled about the forbidden Outside, and nobody seemed to care. Tomorrow, there was to be a cleaning. Maybe it was too late. Jimmy thought of the extra hours his dad had been putting in. He wondered how many more people would be sent out for all this violence.
He turned back to the stairs and searched for his mom. The screams and shouts for people to move, to get out of the way, made it impossible to hear. But her voice still rang in his ears. He remembered her last command, the plaintive look on her face, and hurried inside to find his father.
It was chaos beyond the doors, people running back and forth in the halls, loud voices arguing. Yani stood by the security gate, the large officer’s hair matted with sweat. Jimmy ran towards him. He clutched his elbow to pin his arm to his chest and keep his shoulder from swinging. The sting in his ribs made it difficult to take in a full breath. His heart was still pounding from the rush of the long fall.
‘Yani—’ Jimmy leaned against the security gate and gasped for air. It seemed to take a moment for the guard to register his existence. Yani’s eyes were wide; they darted back and forth. Jimmy noticed something in his hand, a pistol like the sheriff wore. ‘I need to get through,’ Jimmy said. ‘I need to find Dad.’
The officer’s wild eyes settled on Jimmy. Yani was a good man, a friend of his father’s. His daughter was just two years younger than Jimmy. Their family came over for dinner around the holidays sometimes. But this was not that Yani. Some sort of terror seemed to have him by the throat.
‘Yes,’ he said, bobbing his head. ‘Your father. Won’t let me in. Won’t let any of us in. But you—’ It seemed impossible, but Yani’s eyes grew wilder.
‘Can you buzz me—’ Jimmy started to ask, nudging the turnstile.
Yani grabbed Jimmy by his collar. Jimmy was no small boy, was growing into his adult frame, but the massive guard practically lifted him over the turnstile as if he were a sack of dirty laundry.
Jimmy struggled in the man’s fierce grip. Yani pressed the end of the pistol against Jimmy’s chest and dragged him down the hall. ‘I’ve got his boy!’ he yelled. To whom, it wasn’t clear. Jimmy tried to twist free. He was hauled past offices in disarray. The entire level looked cleared out. He thought of all the overalls in silver and grey on the stairway earlier and feared for a moment that his father had been among those he’d passed. The crowd had been littered with people from this level, as though they’d been leading the charge — or were the ones being chased.