She fell against the wall on the other side of the hallway. The dizziness was so profound she was having a hard time deciding which way was up. All she could do was lift the pitcher and bang it against the wall. The first couple of strikes were weak but the loud reverberation gave her heart. She hit harder, then harder again, and the clanging of metal on concrete sent increasing waves of sound down the deserted hallway. Piotr and Taylor and she had been the only guests on this hallway. She struck harder and felt a give as the thick metal began to dent.
It was two men in maintenance red that peeked around the corner, tentative and unsure. One held a tool bag and the other a large square filter. They said nothing and stopped at the corner. Marina could no more talk than she could stand up and offer them cookies but she managed one more bang and held out her arm. She got out a single croaking word, “Help.”
Chapter Twenty
The maintenance men half dragged and half carried her out of the hallway, not understanding what was happening but knowing that their best bet was medical help. Eventually, they picked her up and managed a stumbled run toward the Memoriam proper. She kept trying to get out words to tell them as the dizziness passed, but the sounds that came out were clicking and incoherent. Something in her throat was damaged, that much she knew.
One of the maintainers hollered out as he opened the Memoriam door and the shadow on duty met them in the main exhibit throughway. The girl stopped short and put her hands to her mouth. She pointed them to a padded bench big enough for a dozen to sit on where they laid her down carefully. The girl bent, looked once and saw the red on her throat. Her brows drew together and she turned to the men. She asked them what happened and they reported what they saw in a few brief and confused phrases.
The girl told one of the men to get to the medics on Level 70 and the other to stay with Marina. She patted Marina’s arm and said she was going to get Greta for her. Marina could only picture Taylor and his hands and this girl walking the hallways unaware. She gripped the girl’s arm before she could turn and tried to tell her but the clicking and wheezing were all that came out. She pulled the girl toward her with a clawed grasp, alarm growing on the girl’s face. When she was close enough, she breathed the words, “Taylor. Hurt me.”
The girl didn’t seem to be registering what Marina meant so she reached up and put her fingers around the girl’s throat in a gentle imitation of what Taylor did and croaked, “Taylor.”
Her brow cleared but horror replaced the confusion as she realized what Marina was trying to say. The maintainers, obviously not knowing Taylor, understood the parody well enough. Such violence was so rare that it immediately passed into a sort of perpetual silo-wide memory when it occurred.
The larger of the two men put a halting hand on the shadow’s back and said, “You stay here. I’ll go.” He pulled a big wrench and then a hammer from his bag. He turned to the other maintainer, handed him the wrench and said, “You stay here too. We’ll get medical once I’m back.”
Without a word he turned and marched with purpose the way they had just come. Before he went out of sight he turned back and asked which room. The shadow answered and he gave a brief and serious nod. The nod told them he was ready and he would take care of everything. The shadow let out a relieved breath.
The dizziness was almost completely gone. It amazed Marina that she was thinking and felt almost in control of her limbs in so short a time. It seemed impossible that one can go from near death from lack of air to this in a few short minutes. Her throat was another matter. She swallowed and felt a strange moving click and a pain so sharp it made her want to avoid swallowing again. She pushed herself up on her elbows. She could taste metal in her mouth so she turned and spit a stream of saliva and blood into her hand.
The girl froze with a look of disgust and fright fighting for dominance on her face but the maintainer didn’t bat an eyelash. He whipped a rag out of his pocket and put it on the palm of the hand she had just spit on. He braced her as she sat upright and didn’t let go until he saw her eyes and the clarity there. She wiped her hand and then made a motion like writing on air before motioning toward her throat.
The shadow understood and darted away, returning a moment later with a few slips of lumpy pulp paper and a writing stick. She thrust these at Marina like she was preparing to dodge another stream of blood. Marina wrote, ‘Broken in Throat. Need Medic. Taylor from IT choked me. Need deputy! Don’t touch things in room. Important!’
Both people read the words, eyes darting from the words and back to her a couple of times. The maintainer shuffled his feet, unsure about what he should do but obviously knowing that a medic and a deputy were probably both just a few levels away. Marina could see him weigh that against the orders he had just gotten.
She reached out and took the wrench from him and stood. She held the wrench in two hands, took a ready stance and motioned with her head for him to go. He did, running with the easy grace of a former porter on a delivery of utmost importance.
The shadow watched all this in silence, clearly afraid and without any idea what she should do. She looked at the wrench and at Marina a few times, apparently decided something and darted away once more. A few seconds later, she returned with a long metal rod, metal pins dangling from each end. At Marina’s inquisitive look, she said, “From the Podium.”
Marina gave her a grave and impressed nod that hurt more than she could have imagined. The girl turned to stand next to Marina, facing the door to the private quarters where Marina had been attacked. They heard the commotion and the muffled bangs of something coming before the door swung open.
They both braced themselves. Marina felt sweat slicking her palms and hoped the wrench wouldn’t fly if she tried to hit Taylor with it. Even though they were ready, both of the women still flinched when the door swung wide and slammed against the wall.
Through the door came the maintainer, dragging a blanket wrapped shape behind him. Greta followed close behind, eyeing the blanket for anything amiss. It must have been Taylor wrapped in the blanket and Marina could see the multiple colors of many blankets. They had wrapped him over and over and she wondered how in the silo they had gotten him still enough to do that. The maintainer had a split lip that was already swelling to impressive size and Greta had two rows of scratch marks on her bare arms.
Inside his blankets, Taylor was thrashing and she could hear the mumbled sounds that were probably screams from his point of view. For a brief second she wondered how he could breathe in there and then she thought of how it felt not to be able to breathe and pursed her lips. Greta must have been thinking the same thing because she told the maintainer, “Harvey. We’ve got to pull that back enough for him to breathe.”
Without delay, Greta threw a leg over the wriggling figure and dropped hard, sitting right on top of him. Both ends of the blanket lifted when she did and a small sound escaped. Harvey took that moment to yank the edges of the blankets down and Marina saw first Taylor’s hair and then his face appear from the mass of pink and green and yellow blankets. His breathing was a parody of her own mere moments before and Marina fought the urge to come down on that head with her wrench.
Harvey must have seen that in her eyes because he said, “He can’t hurt anyone now.” He looked around for the other maintainer, the one he had told to stay put.
Marina waved a hand in front of his face to regain his attention and then pointed to the metal bar in the shadow’s hand and held up the wrench. She handed him the note she had written for the others. He pursed his lips but gave her a curt nod of acceptance.