Second Shift - Order

Silo 18

Mission changed out of his work coveralls while Allie readied dinner. He washed his hands, scrubbing the dirt from beneath his fingernails, and watched the mud slide down the drain. The ring on his finger was getting more and more difficult to remove, his knuckles sore and stiff from the hoeing of a planting season.

He soaped his hands and finally managed to work the ring off. Remembering the time he’d lost it down the drain, he set it aside carefully. Allie whistled in the kitchen while she tended the stove. When she cracked the oven, he smelled the pork roast inside. He’d have to say something. They couldn’t go buying roasts on no occasion.

His coveralls went into the wash. There were candles on the table when he got back to the kitchen. Lit candles. They were for emergencies, for the times when the fools below switched generators and worked on the busted main. Allie knew this. But before he could say anything about the roast or the candles, or tell her that the bean crop wouldn’t be what he’d hoped come harvest, he saw the way she was beaming at him. There was only one thing to be that happy about—but it was impossible.

“No,” he said. He couldn’t allow himself to believe it.

Allie nodded. There were tears in her eyes. By the time he got to her, they were coursing down her cheeks.

“But our ticket is up,” he whispered, holding her against him. She smelled like sweet peppers and sage. He could feel her trembling.

Allie sobbed. Her voice broke from being overfull of joy. “Doc says it happened last month. It was in our window, Mish. We’re gonna have a baby.”

A surge of relief filled Mission to the brim. Relief, not excitement. Relief that everything was legal, on the up-and-up. He wasn’t sure why this is what he felt. He kissed his wife’s cheek, salt to go with the pepper and sage. “I love you,” he whispered.

“The roast.” She pulled away and hurried to the stove. “I was gonna tell you after dinner.”

Mission laughed. “You were gonna tell me now or have to explain the candles.”

He poured two glasses of water, hands trembling, and set them out while she fixed the plates. The smell of cooked meat made his mouth water. He could anticipate the way the roast would taste like it was already in his mouth. A taste of the future, of what was to come. Like by the table, how he could already see two children, two more mouths to feed. He’d have to find a way to put in another row of corn. Or take that part time delivery job he’d been thinking about, just on weekends.

“Don’t let it get cold,” Allie said, setting the plates.

They sat and held hands. Mission cursed himself for not putting his ring back on.

“Bless this food and those who fed its roots,” Allie said.

“Amen,” said Mission. His wife squeezed his hands before letting go and grabbing her utensils.

“You know,” she said, cutting into the roast, “if it’s a girl, we’ll have to name her Allison. Every woman in my family as far back as we can remember has been an Allison.”

Mission wondered how far back her family could remember. Be unusual, if they could. The first piece of meat hit his tongue, an explosion of flavors. He chewed and thought on the name. “Allison it is,” he said. And he thought that eventually they would call her Allie, too. “But if it’s a boy, can we go with Cam?”

“Sure.” Allie lifted her glass. “That’s wasn’t your grandfather’s name, was it?”

“Hmm? No. I don’t know a Cam. I just like the way it sounds.”

He picked up his glass of water, studied it a while. Or did he know a Cam? Where did he know that name from? There was something he was supposed to remember, something about the way water gets made, gets purified. But there were pockets of his past shrouded and hidden from him. There were things like the mark on his neck and the scar on his stomach that he couldn’t remember coming to be. Everyone had their share of these things, parts of their bygone days they couldn’t recall, but Mission more than most. Like his birthday. It drove him crazy that he couldn’t remember when his birthday was. What was so hard about that?

Silo 1

“Sir?”

There was a clatter of bones beneath his feet. Donald stumbled through the dark.

“Can you hear me?”

The haze parted, an eyelid cracking, just like the seal of his pod. A bean. Donald was curled inside that pod like a bean.

“Sir? Are you with me?”

Skin so cold. Donald was sitting up, steam rising from his bare legs. He didn’t remember going to sleep. He remembered a doctor, remembered being in his office. Not his office, an airlock. They were talking. People were angry. Now he was being woken up.

“Drink this, sir.”

Donald remembered this. He remembered waking over and over, but he didn’t remember going to sleep. Just the waking. He took a sip, had to concentrate to make his throat work, had to fight to swallow. A pill. There was supposed to be a pill, but it wasn’t offered.

“Sir, we had instructions to wake you.”

Instructions. Rules. Protocol. Donald was in trouble again. Troy. Maybe it was that Troy fellow. Who was he? Donald drank as much as he could.

“Very good, sir. We’re going to lift you out.”

He was in trouble. They only woke him when there was trouble. A catheter was removed, a needle extracted from his arm.

“What did I—?”

He coughed into his fist. His voice was a sheet of tissue paper, thin and fragile. Invisible.

“What is it?” he asked, shouting to form a whisper.

Two men lifted him up and set him into a wheelchair. A third man held it still. There was a soft blanket instead of a paper gown. There was no rustling this time, no itching on his skin.

“We lost one,” someone said.

A silo. A silo was gone. It would be Donald’s fault again. “Eighteen,” he whispered, remembering his last shift.

Two of the men glanced at each other, mouths open.

“Yes,” one of them said, awe in his voice. “From Silo Eighteen, sir. We lost her over the hill. We lost contact.”

Donald tried to focus on the man. He remembered losing someone over a hill. Helen. His wife. They were still looking for her. There was still hope.

“Tell me,” he whispered.

“We’re not sure how, but one of them made it out of sight.”

“A cleaner, sir—”

A cleaner. Donald sank into the chair; his bones were as cold and heavy as stone. It wasn’t Helen at all.

“Over the hill—” one said.

“We got a call from Eighteen—”

Donald raised his hand a little, his arm trembling and still half-numb from the sleep. “Wait,” he croaked. “One at a time. Why did you wake me?” It hurt to talk. He remembered a hill. A view over a hill.

One of the men cleared his throat. The blanket was tucked up under Donald’s chin to stop him from shivering. He hadn’t known he was shivering. They were being so reverent with him, so gentle. What was this? He tried to clear his head.

“You told us to wake you—”

“It’s protocol—”

Donald’s eyes fell to the pod, still steaming as the chill escaped. There was a screen at the base, empty readouts without him in there, just a rising temp. A rising temp and a name. Not his name.

And Donald remembered a conversation. He didn’t remember going to sleep, but he remembered a doctor, a man with glasses and an accent telling him how names meant nothing unless that was all we had to go by. Unless we didn’t remember each other, didn’t cross paths, and then a name was everything.

“Sir?”

“Who am I?” he asked, reading the little screen, not understanding. This wasn’t him. “Why did you wake me?”

“You told us to, Mr. Thurman.”

The blanket was wrapped snugly around his shoulders. The chair was turned. They were treating him with respect, like he had authority. The wheels on this chair did not squeak at all.

“It’s okay, sir. Your head will clear soon.”

He didn’t know these people. They didn’t know him.

“The doctor will clear you for duty.”

Nobody knew anyone.

“Right this way.”

And then anyone could be anybody.

“Through here.”

Until it didn’t matter who was in charge. One who might do what was needed, another who might do what was right.

“Very good.”

One name as good as any other.