He couldn’t entertain thoughts that like right now. He needed to stay angry with them. He needed to keep that target full of blame pointed right where it belonged. They were the ones who were the arms and hands of the monster that put them down in these silos and took away the outside.
He clenched and unclenched a hand rhythmically on a little pillow filled with flax seed. The medic had given it to him to help with his stress. He clicked the mouse on his screen awkwardly with his left hand to retrieve the rest of his messages. He gave some instructions in response to requests from IT and forwarded others to the right person. So many people were gone that many things just got sent directly to him or to Wallis, their interim mayor, because no one knew who else to send requests to.
Once he felt calm he forwarded one specific request, this time for possible technical assist from IT for a busted control panel, to Grace. It was the perfect cover email and in his forward he used the coded phrase they had worked up. He included the time they were to meet as a time he would be available if she had questions. All his wires were considered important and she said that the dimming team would wake her if one came from him during that period. He hoped that was happening and she would be at their agreed upon place well before the time of their need. She had just twenty or so levels to climb, though that was plenty when you were in a hurry and moving on legs that were growing a little older.
He and Wallis, on the other hand, needed to get down almost seventy levels and they had to do it within the day. And to pile on more, they had to be fit enough to do what needed doing when they got there. Graham had an idea about that but getting Wallis to agree to it would be another matter.
He finished off his tea in one big swallow, got dressed in some relatively clean coveralls and stuffed his backpack with his radio, food and three canteens of water before heading out of his compartment. Into his pocket he slipped the three diagrams they would need for parsing out the correct wires.
He looked back before he closed the door behind him and his gaze fell on the charcoal portrait of his wife on the wall. Drawn when they were young and had the whole future of their lives ahead of them, she was smiling. In a few bold and spare strokes, the essence of her was captured in black and grey lines on that rough pulpy paper. He blew her a kiss and left, wondering if it would be the last time he would see it and hoping that it wasn’t.
Wallis didn’t need to be told anything once he opened his door and saw Graham standing there, backpack strapped on and hair combed. It wasn’t Graham’s habit to come knocking on his door before the lights came on to signal the start of a new day. Just woken and in his undershorts, Wallis merely grinned and waved him inside. With the door safely closed he asked, “Now? Tell me it’s now.”
Graham grinned back at him, his own nervousness fading in the presence of Wallis’ excitement. He said, “Yep. We have about ten hours to get down to 72.”
“Yikes! Crap.”
Wallis proceeded to tear about his compartment, first looking for a decent pair of coveralls and finally settling for some that were very wrinkled and faded, but didn’t stink too badly. Then he searched for his pack, which Graham eventually found stuffed under a cushion in Wallis’ chair. The only thing he didn’t have trouble finding were the radios he had liberated from the sheriff’s office.
Though it only took a few minutes, it was an extremely disorganized search and Graham was a little concerned with how hard Wallis was breathing by the time he had packed up his supplies and started to shrug into his pack. That huffing breath decided the matter for Graham.
“Wallis, umm, what do you think about… umm… using the lifts for some of the trip down?”
His friend stopped short, arms akimbo and backpack straps askew, “You mean, as in actually get inside the lifts?”
Graham nodded.
“No way. No! That is fine for fruit but that isn’t natural for humans. Are you kidding?”
“Wallis, think about it. We have to get down there and we need to be in good shape to do it. What’s the difference in me lowering you five levels or a few bags of apples? You weigh less than the food. Then you can use the same pulley to lower me. It can work!” Graham said earnestly, trying to convince his friend and himself too.
Wallis surprised him them. He finished adjusting his pack and said simply, “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”
Ghosts in the Wall
They drew attention the whole way down and Graham reconsidered his idea as soon as he saw the first whispering and pointing groups on a landing. The silo may be losing population at a rapid rate, but people still needed to get around as they lived their lives. It was early, the dimming time just ending. The sharp clacks of lights switching from red to white sounded throughout the central column of the silo stairs and people were moving about as shifts changed.
Plenty of small groups saw them as they lowered each other past the landings. Worse, there were cameras everywhere on the landings. If anyone was watching from Silo One, this would be a certain cause for alarm and could get them all blasted to ruin before he could make it right. Graham took his hat out of his pack and squashed the misshapen thing onto his head, pulling it low to shield his face from the view of any cameras above him.
Most of the silo was still recovering from the dosed water and even though Graham could see that particular dullness in their eyes and that certain something in their posture, they perked up, smiled and waved as they caught sight of the pair. It made the people look more alive than they had since he had turned on the dosing system. He couldn’t wait to see them again when it had cleared from their systems. Without the hat and without having to hide a single thing from any of them, he relished the idea of speaking to people truthfully, face to face.
People were more than curious as to why the two men were using the lifts on themselves. It was forbidden and declared unsafe by the very men who were now being seen using them. Wallis found an effortless solution to their obvious dilemma when he announced, enthusiastically, to the first crowd and to every one thereafter, that he was bringing happy news of a new mother in the down deep. Scattered applause met his announcement but also a few sad cries. The diversion worked though, and they passed each level with ease, often gaining assistance on the rope from people who happened to be nearby.
Not every level included a lift ride, which Graham found surprisingly fun to do. Lifts that only went a floor or two weren’t worth the effort two entire trips in the cloth bucket would require. For those they walked the stairs. Those lifts that went three or more floors provided a surprising amount of rest for the two journeyers. Even though they worked with their arms on the ropes and pulleys, one person could lift hundreds of pounds with relative ease so the comparatively meager weight of one old man in a bucket was almost too easy.
Another benefit to the lifts was that they provided a bit of distraction and made the placement of the tiny repeaters under the ledges of the landings much easier to accomplish. Every five landings the repeaters, part of the radio modification instructions Silo 40 had passed along, had to be stuck where they could do their work yet remain undisturbed.
The sticky paste he smeared on each one held it tight within the shelf of metal on the underside of the chosen landings, but it was an awkward business to get them securely fit. He would have had to lie down and reach around the edge to place them had he walked the stairs, but inside a lift bucket, he just reached up and slammed it home as he passed his target landing. The movement was utterly unnoticed as one needed to place a hand on landings as they passed to be sure not to swing into it by accident anyway.