Second Shift: Order (Shift, #2)(11)

“Rest, and then we’ll get our answers together. There’s someone who wants to see you.”

The room was sealed tight before Donald could ask what that meant. And somehow, with the door shut and him gone, there was more air to breathe in that small space. Donald took a few deep breaths. He waited for the world to change, for the snarling dogs with the bat-like wings to return, for the mountain of skulls to reappear beneath his scrambling hands and knees, that interminable climb upward to a peak that would not come. But the room was too solid for that. After a long while, he grabbed the frame of the bed and struggled to his feet. He stood there a moment, swaying.

“Get our answers,” he repeated aloud. Someone wants to see him.

He shook his head, which made the world spin. As if he had any answers. All he had were questions. He remembered the orderlies who woke him saying something about a silo falling. He couldn’t remember which one. Why would they wake him for that

He moved unsteadily to the door, tried the knob, confirmed what he already knew. He went to the dresser where the piece of paper stood on its remembered folds.

“Get some rest,” he said, laughing at the suggestion. As if he could sleep. He felt as though he’d been asleep forever. He picked up the piece of paper and unfolded it.

A report. Donald remembered this. It was a copy of a report. A report about a young man doing horrible things. The room twisted around him as if he stood on some great pivot, the memory of men and women trampled and dying, of giving some awful order, faces peering in at him from a hallway somewhere far in the past. Somewhere like yesterday.

Donald blinked away a curtain of tears and studied the trembling report. Hadn’t he written this He had signed it, he remembered. But that wasn’t his name at the bottom. It was his handwriting, but it wasn’t his name.

Troy.

Donald’s legs went numb. He sought the bed—but collapsed to the floor instead. He kept saying he remembered even as more and more washed over him. Troy and Helen. Helen and Troy. He remembered his wife. He saw her disappearing over a hill, her arm raised to the sky where bombs were falling, his sister and some dark and nameless shadow pulling him back as people spilled like marbles down a slope, spilled and gathered, plunking through a funnel and into some deep hole filled with white mist.

Donald remembered. He remembered all that he had helped do to the world. There was a troubled boy in a silo full of the dead, a shadow among the servers. That boy had brought an end to silo number 12. But Donald— What had he done There were no numbers to contain all the dead. Their skulls made a pile that reached to the heavens. And the tears that popped against the trembling report, they were tinged a pale blue.





7




A doctor brought soup and bread a few hours later, plus a tall glass of water. Donald ate hungrily while the man checked his arm. The warm soup felt good. It slid to his center and seemed to radiate its heat outward. He tore at the bread with his teeth and chased it with the water. Somehow these things were going to keep his flesh from collapsing inward. Donald ate with the desperation of so many years of fasting.

“Thank you,” he said between bites. “For the food.”

The doctor glanced up from checking his blood pressure. He was an older man, heavyset, with great bushy eyebrows and a fine wisp of hair clinging to his scalp like a cloud to a hilltop.

“I’m Donald,” he said, introducing himself.

There was a wrinkle of confusion on the old man’s brow. His gray eyes strayed toward his clipboard as if either it or his patient couldn’t be trusted. The needle on the gauge jumped with Donald’s pulse.

“Who’re you” Donald asked.

“I’m Doctor Henson,” he finally said, though without confidence.

Donald took a long swig on his water, thankful they’d left it at room temperature. He didn’t want anything cold inside him ever again. “Where’re you from”

The doctor removed the cuff from Donald’s arm with a loud rip. “Level ten. But I work out of the shift office on sixty-eight.” He put his tools back in his bag and made a note on the clipboard.

“No, I mean, where are you from. You know . . . before.”

Dr. Henson patted Donald’s knee and stood. The clipboard went on a hook on the outside of the door. “You might have some dizziness the next few days. Let us know if you experience any trembling, okay”

Donald nodded. He remembered being given the same advice earlier. Or was that his last shift Maybe the repetition was for those who had trouble remembering. He wasn’t going to be one of those people. Not this time.

A shadow fell into the room. Donald looked up to see the Thaw Man in the doorway. He gripped the meal tray to keep it from sliding off his knees.

The Thaw Man nodded to Dr. Henson, but this was not their names. Thurman, Donald told himself. Senator Thurman. He knew this.

“Do you have a moment” Thurman asked the doctor.

“Of course.” Henson grabbed his bag and stepped outside. The door clicked shut, leaving Donald alone with his soup.

He took quiet spoonfuls, trying to make anything of the murmurs on the other side of the door. Thurman, he reminded himself again. And not a senator. Senator of what Those days were gone. Donald had drawn the plans.

The report stood tented on the dresser, returned to its spot. Donald took a bite of bread and remembered the floors he’d laid out. Those floors were now real. They existed. People lived inside them, raising their children, laughing, having fights, singing in the shower. People lived in the things he’d made, in the holes he’d dug. Those people—and no more.