Silo 49: Deep Dark

Chapter Twenty

The maintenance men half dragged and half carried her out of the hallway, not understanding what was happening but knowing that their best bet was medical help. Eventually, they picked her up and managed a stumbled run toward the Memoriam proper. She kept trying to get out words to tell them as the dizziness passed, but the sounds that came out were clicking and incoherent. Something in her throat was damaged, that much she knew.

One of the maintainers hollered out as he opened the Memoriam door and the shadow on duty met them in the main exhibit throughway. The girl stopped short and put her hands to her mouth. She pointed them to a padded bench big enough for a dozen to sit on where they laid her down carefully. The girl bent, looked once and saw the red on her throat. Her brows drew together and she turned to the men. She asked them what happened and they reported what they saw in a few brief and confused phrases.

The girl told one of the men to get to the medics on Level 70 and the other to stay with Marina. She patted Marina’s arm and said she was going to get Greta for her. Marina could only picture Taylor and his hands and this girl walking the hallways unaware. She gripped the girl’s arm before she could turn and tried to tell her but the clicking and wheezing were all that came out. She pulled the girl toward her with a clawed grasp, alarm growing on the girl’s face. When she was close enough, she breathed the words, “Taylor. Hurt me.”

The girl didn’t seem to be registering what Marina meant so she reached up and put her fingers around the girl’s throat in a gentle imitation of what Taylor did and croaked, “Taylor.”

Her brow cleared but horror replaced the confusion as she realized what Marina was trying to say. The maintainers, obviously not knowing Taylor, understood the parody well enough. Such violence was so rare that it immediately passed into a sort of perpetual silo-wide memory when it occurred.

The larger of the two men put a halting hand on the shadow’s back and said, “You stay here. I’ll go.” He pulled a big wrench and then a hammer from his bag. He turned to the other maintainer, handed him the wrench and said, “You stay here too. We’ll get medical once I’m back.”

Without a word he turned and marched with purpose the way they had just come. Before he went out of sight he turned back and asked which room. The shadow answered and he gave a brief and serious nod. The nod told them he was ready and he would take care of everything. The shadow let out a relieved breath.

The dizziness was almost completely gone. It amazed Marina that she was thinking and felt almost in control of her limbs in so short a time. It seemed impossible that one can go from near death from lack of air to this in a few short minutes. Her throat was another matter. She swallowed and felt a strange moving click and a pain so sharp it made her want to avoid swallowing again. She pushed herself up on her elbows. She could taste metal in her mouth so she turned and spit a stream of saliva and blood into her hand.

The girl froze with a look of disgust and fright fighting for dominance on her face but the maintainer didn’t bat an eyelash. He whipped a rag out of his pocket and put it on the palm of the hand she had just spit on. He braced her as she sat upright and didn’t let go until he saw her eyes and the clarity there. She wiped her hand and then made a motion like writing on air before motioning toward her throat.

The shadow understood and darted away, returning a moment later with a few slips of lumpy pulp paper and a writing stick. She thrust these at Marina like she was preparing to dodge another stream of blood. Marina wrote, ‘Broken in Throat. Need Medic. Taylor from IT choked me. Need deputy! Don’t touch things in room. Important!’

Both people read the words, eyes darting from the words and back to her a couple of times. The maintainer shuffled his feet, unsure about what he should do but obviously knowing that a medic and a deputy were probably both just a few levels away. Marina could see him weigh that against the orders he had just gotten.

She reached out and took the wrench from him and stood. She held the wrench in two hands, took a ready stance and motioned with her head for him to go. He did, running with the easy grace of a former porter on a delivery of utmost importance.

The shadow watched all this in silence, clearly afraid and without any idea what she should do. She looked at the wrench and at Marina a few times, apparently decided something and darted away once more. A few seconds later, she returned with a long metal rod, metal pins dangling from each end. At Marina’s inquisitive look, she said, “From the Podium.”

Marina gave her a grave and impressed nod that hurt more than she could have imagined. The girl turned to stand next to Marina, facing the door to the private quarters where Marina had been attacked. They heard the commotion and the muffled bangs of something coming before the door swung open.

They both braced themselves. Marina felt sweat slicking her palms and hoped the wrench wouldn’t fly if she tried to hit Taylor with it. Even though they were ready, both of the women still flinched when the door swung wide and slammed against the wall.

Through the door came the maintainer, dragging a blanket wrapped shape behind him. Greta followed close behind, eyeing the blanket for anything amiss. It must have been Taylor wrapped in the blanket and Marina could see the multiple colors of many blankets. They had wrapped him over and over and she wondered how in the silo they had gotten him still enough to do that. The maintainer had a split lip that was already swelling to impressive size and Greta had two rows of scratch marks on her bare arms.

Inside his blankets, Taylor was thrashing and she could hear the mumbled sounds that were probably screams from his point of view. For a brief second she wondered how he could breathe in there and then she thought of how it felt not to be able to breathe and pursed her lips. Greta must have been thinking the same thing because she told the maintainer, “Harvey. We’ve got to pull that back enough for him to breathe.”

Without delay, Greta threw a leg over the wriggling figure and dropped hard, sitting right on top of him. Both ends of the blanket lifted when she did and a small sound escaped. Harvey took that moment to yank the edges of the blankets down and Marina saw first Taylor’s hair and then his face appear from the mass of pink and green and yellow blankets. His breathing was a parody of her own mere moments before and Marina fought the urge to come down on that head with her wrench.

Harvey must have seen that in her eyes because he said, “He can’t hurt anyone now.” He looked around for the other maintainer, the one he had told to stay put.

Marina waved a hand in front of his face to regain his attention and then pointed to the metal bar in the shadow’s hand and held up the wrench. She handed him the note she had written for the others. He pursed his lips but gave her a curt nod of acceptance.

Greta watched it all from her seat on top of Taylor with utter calm. She looked so different from any other time Marina had seen her that she really wished she could say something instead of stand there and wheeze. Her hair had always been tightly braided and coiled at the back of her head but now it seemed to flow without end. Tight waves from the braids cascaded down her back and puddled on the blanket wrapped form below her. Her coveralls were pulled on halfway and the arms were tied around her waist. In her undershirt, Marina saw that she looked just like everyone else without the patchwork of color to hide behind. And she was pretty.

Taylor began to get agitated again now that he had sufficient air. He was combining yelling, whining, pleads and demands in a most unpleasant way. At the moment, he was claiming that it was all a misunderstanding. He jerked his head in Marina’s direction, the rest of him tightly bound in blankets. He said, “Look. See, she’s fine! It was an accident.”

Greta looked away from him to the angry red marks on Marina’s neck, the finger marks clear against the white skin. Marina couldn’t see it, but she could feel it. The historian could see what Marina couldn’t apparently because when she looked away from Marina, she landed a sharp and loud slap across Taylor’s exposed cheek. He froze and went silent.

The other historians and shadows began to file out, wakened by the commotion or through some other means. As they came out they all looked at the blanket wrapped man and then at the tableau of people and edged around, giving them all a wide berth.

The shadow girl finally handed her metal rod to the big maintainer, him having returned without his hammer, and joined the little cluster of her fellows. Marina saw her gesticulating and speaking and saw the eyes of the listeners widen and narrow and look from person to person as the story unfolded. Marina hated that this would now travel all over.

Greta must have thought the same because she called to the group, “This is not for discussion. To anyone. For any reason. We don’t talk about people when they get sick like this.”

With those few words she had changed the situation from a sudden attempt at murder that would inspire gossip to a man who had suffered a break that needed remediation or some other treatment. In the silo, there were few topics off limits but this was one of them. Her authoritative glare drove the point home and Marina would have sighed in relief if it didn’t hurt so bad just to breathe at all.

Greta turned to Marina and leveled that same glare in her direction. Marina stiffened but didn’t flinch from it. Greta said, “I’ve secured the space. That’s no problem.”

Marina closed her eyes tightly and felt a combination of shame and relief wash over her. When she opened her eyes, Greta was still looking at her. She nodded her acceptance of the information and all that would come after and Greta finally released her from her gaze.

Taylor started in again, clearly not at all happy at this turn of events and Greta raised her hand again. She lifted her eyebrows and the message was clear. Do you want this again? Taylor apparently didn’t and shut his mouth.

The deputy showed up first, panting and sweating from running down from the station. He saw Marina and stopped short, looked at her neck and then turned a mottled red himself. It was someone she knew, of course. He charged over toward Greta, Taylor and Harvey and took in the scene. “Anyone want to tell me what the silo is going on here?” he demanded.

Greta’s eyes flicked once toward Marina and then back to the deputy. She licked her lips and said, “Deputy, we have the situation under a measure of control right now but we need your assistance.”

The deputy snorted and said, “I can see that.”

Greta cleared her throat and said with a dignity Marina didn’t think could be accomplished while sitting on a man wrapped in blankets, “This is a special situation.” She emphasized the special and the deputy straightened. She went on, “We’re going to need the medic representative to the council for this. We need you to make sure everything stays controlled until we get him here. Okay?”

The way she said it, the emphasis on certain words, let everyone know that this was going to be one of those things. Those stories dealt with a person badly in need of remediation whose words and actions weren’t to be thought of, let alone repeated. The deputy cleared his throat and nodded. He stepped away and tuned his radio, speaking quietly and rapidly to whoever was on the other side of the line. He kept his eyes on Taylor and his free hand near his stick.

The medic from Level 70 came while he spoke and both Greta and the deputy pointed directly at her when he arrived. Finally, Marina could put down the wrench.