ust (Silo, #3) by Hugh Howey
For the survivors
Prologue
“Is anyone there?”
“Hello? Yes. I’m here.”
“Ah. Lukas. You weren’t saying anything. I thought for a second there … that you were someone else.”
“No, it’s me. Just getting my headset adjusted. Been a busy morning.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Boring stuff. Committee meetings. We’re a bit thin up here at the moment. A lot of reassignments.”
“But things have been settling down? No uprisings to report?”
“No, no. Things are getting back to normal. People get up and go to work in the morning. They collapse in their beds at night. We had a big lottery this week, which made a number of people happy.”
“That’s good. Very good. How’s the work on server six coming?”
“Good, thanks. All of your passcodes work. So far it’s just more of the same data. Not sure why any of this is important, though.”
“Keep looking. Everything’s important. If it’s in there, there has to be a reason.”
“You said that about the entries in these books. But so many of them seem like nonsense to me. Makes me wonder if any of this is real.”
“Why? What’re you reading?”
“I’m up to volume C. This morning it was about this … fungus. Wait a second. Let me find it. Here it is. Cordyceps.”
“That’s a fungus? Never heard of it.”
“Says here it does something to an ant’s brain, reprograms it like it’s a machine, makes it climb to the top of a plant before it dies—“
“An invisible machine that reprograms brains? I’m fairly certain that’s not a random entry.”
“Yeah? So what does it mean, then?”
“It means … It means we aren’t free. None of us are.”
“How uplifting. I can see why she makes me take these calls.”
“Your mayor? Is that why—? She hasn’t answered in a while.”
“No. She’s away. Working on something.”
“Working on what?”
“I’d rather not say. I don’t think you’d be pleased.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because I’m not pleased. I’ve tried to talk her out of this. But she can be a bit … obstinate at times.”
“If it’s going to cause trouble, I should know about it. I’m here to help. I can keep heads turned away—”
“That’s just it … she doesn’t trust you. She doesn’t even believe you’re the same person every time.”
“It is. It’s me. The machines do something with my voice.”
“I’m just telling you what she thinks.”
“I wish she would come around. I really do want to help.”
“I believe you. I think the best thing you can do right now is just keep your fingers crossed for us.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’ve got a feeling that nothing good will come of this.”
Part I ~ The Dig
Silo 18
1
Dust rained in the halls of Mechanical; it shivered free from the violence of the digging. Wires overhead swung gently in their harnesses. Pipes rattled. And from the generator room, staccato bangs filled the air, bounced off the walls, and brought to mind a time when unbalanced machines spun dangerously.
At the locus of the horrible racket, Juliette Nichols stood with her coveralls zipped down to her waist, the loose arms knotted around her hips, dust and sweat staining her undershirt with mud. She leaned her weight against the excavator, her sinewy arms shaking as the digger’s heavy metal piston slammed into the concrete wall of Silo 18 over and over.
The vibrations could be felt in her teeth. Every bone and joint in her body shuddered, and old wounds ached with reminders. Off to the side, the miners who normally manned the excavator watched unhappily. Juliette turned her head from the powdered concrete and saw the way they stood with their arms crossed over their wide chests, their jaws set in rigid frowns, angry perhaps for her appropriating their machine. Or maybe over the taboo of digging where digging was forbidden.
Juliette swallowed the grit and chalk accumulating in her mouth and concentrated on the crumbling wall. There was another possibility, one she couldn’t help but consider. Good mechanics and miners had died because of her. Brutal fighting had broken out when she’d refused to clean. How many of these men and women watching her dig had lost a loved one, a best friend, a family member? How many of them blamed her? She couldn’t possibly be the only one.
The excavator bucked and there was the clang of metal on metal. Juliette steered the punching jaws to the side as more bones of rebar appeared in the white flesh of concrete. She had already gouged out a veritable crater in the outer silo wall. A first row of rebar hung jagged overhead, the ends smooth like melted candles where she’d taken a blowtorch to them. Two more feet of concrete and another row of the iron rods had followed, the silo walls thicker than she’d imagined. With numb limbs and frayed nerves she guided the machine forward on its tracks, the wedge-shaped piston chewing at the stone between the rods. If she hadn’t seen the schematic for herself – if she didn’t know there were other silos out there – she would’ve given up already. It felt as though she were chewing through the very earth itself. Her arms shook, her hands a blur. This was the wall of the silo she was attacking, ramming it with a mind to pierce through the damn thing, to bore clear through to the outside.