He began to fear he wouldn’t see it at all when it finally caught his eye. The unique coloration of the spiral stripe that raced along that black wrapping was hard to miss and he thought that made sense since it was attached to something as important as a method for destroying the whole silo. One wouldn’t want to mix up those wires, after all.
As Graham craned his neck to read the fine white printing on the black sleeve to verify his find, the radio crackled with Wallis’ relieved voice. “Got it! It’s marked X-2-49.”
“Me, too,” Graham said as he keyed his radio.
“Perfect,” Grace replied, her voice smooth with relief, “I’ve got mine too. That’s the most important one, but now let’s locate the camera bundles. Bend that one, if you can, so you can grab it quickly again. If you can’t, then tie the cloth to it like I told you.”
Graham wasn’t able to bend his very far, but he was able to bend a good many others out of the way. He tied the cloth, long ends hanging down, around the target bundle and that way, even in the dark he would be able to grab those hanging ends and know exactly what to cut. It was an electrician’s trick Grace had taught them and he thought it a pretty brilliant one.
She patiently guided them in finding the two big bundles that held special types of lines that fed visual data. There were several others that were suspect according to Silo 40 that they would cut later, but they weren’t the priority right now, except to mark them.
For today, they just wanted to stop any possibility of destruction. It was the people of Silo 40 taking all the risk with their fake uprising and going offline. If nothing happened to them, well, then Graham supposed the three of them would be making another trip down here in the near future to finish the job.
He was tying the last of the marker fabric, shorter strips for these future cuts, to the wires and bundles when Graham heard the timer beep on his radio. His stomach fairly leapt up into his chest and he felt a painful constriction in his throat accompanied by a soggy thudding sound in his ears as his heart kicked into high gear. He pulled the knot tight and reached for the radio, silencing the alarm.
He wasn’t really worried about the time since the timer had been set based on an estimate and who knew if Silo 40 would be able to pull off their own complicated scheme with exact timing. He was concerned about enough things to more than take up the slack on the worry line. He would do more than worry if he didn’t get a call soon, he would probably completely lose it and start screaming or else faint.
He was about to radio the other two and let them know the order would come at any time when the radio blared with noise and Nella’s excited voice came through to him, “All Silos, this is 40. Do it! Do it! Confirm!”
Graham grabbed the other radio and mashed the talk button so hard his fingernails turned white. He yelled, “Do it! Cut the lines! Now!”
He shoved the radio into the recess of the conduit to hold it secure and plucked up the large wire cutters from the floor, almost flinging himself back toward the dark opening in the concrete filled with that monster made of wire. He yanked the fabric tails to the side, bending the bundle of wires a little and baring it to the blades of the cutters like an animal’s neck being bared for the cleaver.
He squeezed the cutters with as much power as he could but was forced to almost saw the wires apart, opening and closing the blades on the thick bundle as more and more of the wires within began to part. By the time the cutter blades finally slammed together with a loud clack, he was spewing equal parts curses and spittle from between clenched teeth and he could feel the painful release of the cords in his neck as he stopped squeezing the tool.
He dropped the cutters to the floor and was reaching for both radios when both Grace and Wallis tried to come through, one stomping on the other. Grace bowed out apparently because Wallis came through clearly with the single word, “Done!”, and Grace followed directly after with the same. Graham smiled.
His sweat soaked hair and coveralls felt heavy on him and he was terribly tired all of the sudden. He pressed the talk button on the radio to his two conspirators and also pressed the one on the radio to Silo 40 so that his message would be heard by all parties.
“This is Silo 49. We have cut the lines. I repeat, the lines are cut,” Graham said, enunciating as clearly as he could because he wanted no mistakes. But it was strangely difficult to do so. He wasn’t sure why but he was having so much trouble thinking of the right thing to say. His finger slipped from the button on the radio to Silo 40. He tried to set it down gently but it started falling from his hand without him wanting it to. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, his left hand wasn’t working properly and the bright pain in his neck was moving down his arm.
He heard the voices of other silos coming through the radio on the floor, a chorus of “Done!” or “Complete!” coming through in foggy blobs of sound. He still had a grip on the radio in his right hand and he concentrated with all his might as he pressed the button once more and said, “Wallis, Grace, thank you. We’re safe. I… I…”
Grace was the first to reach him, her path easier through to him than the circuitous one Wallis had to take. She dropped to her knees and lifted Graham’s head so that she might cradle it on her folded legs. She smoothed the sweat soaked hair from his brow and tried to make him answer but his half lidded eyes were gazing off toward some other place she wasn’t able to see. She didn’t cry for him then, that came later, but she talked to him and told him how much he would be loved and missed in case there was some part of him that could still hear her.
When Wallis came sliding around that last corner and saw them there, he uttered a cry like a kicked dog and then began screaming profanities so profoundly original that Grace thought perhaps he was also suffering some sort of attack. It wasn’t until she lay Graham’s head gently back on the floor, his pack for a pillow, and approached Wallis cautiously that he stopped spewing his stream of filth.
He looked at her with such pain in his expression that she said nothing, merely opened her arms so he could take comfort from her hug if he chose to. He went into her embrace like a child. He cried and sobbed and repeated the same words over and over, “We were going to fix this shit.”
Goodbye, Friend
The next day Graham’s body was gently placed under the soil of the upper farms. Grace was there and she cried then but there were few others who attended. A few of the employees in IT and some of the neighbors on his level had come but there were so many jobs to be done that for every person that did attend, there were a dozen others who had wanted to but couldn’t. In the end, even the priest was late and he appeared worn and tired from a long shift doing his other job.
It seemed to Wallis that this was not a worthy turnout for such a person as Graham. The 144 of this situation was that Graham had saved the life of every person who lived in this silo and every future person who might ever be born into this silo. Others should know that. He should be remembered. Somehow, Wallis resolved to himself as the priest said the words, he would see this done.
Grace reached for his hand at the graveside and they ate their tomatoes in honor of their fallen third, tossing the dripping remains after him and licking the juice from their fingers so that nothing was wasted. Her grip on his hand never wavered. The little bulge on the side of her throat must have pained her because she grimaced when she swallowed and it looked to Wallis as if she had to swallow many times to get the bits of tomato down.