“Well, you need to dispel those rumors,” Juliette said. “I’m sure it’s better up or down than it is here. Have you seen Solo and the kids, the ones who used to live here? I heard they came up this way.”
“Yup. A few of those kids were staking a plot right down the hall before I rigged the lights. But they left a few hours ago.” Hank eyed Juliette’s wrist. “What time is it, anyway?”
Juliette glanced at her watch. “It’s a quarter past two.” She saw he was about to ask another question. “In the afternoon,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“We’re going to try and catch up with them,” Juliette said. “Can I leave you to handle these lights? You can’t draw this much power. And get more people to move up from here. The farms in the Mids are doing much better, or they were when I was here. And if you have people looking for work, they can use hands in Mechanical.”
Hank nodded and struggled to his feet. Raph was already heading to the exit, his coveralls spotted with sweat. Juliette clasped Hank on the shoulder before heading off as well.
“Hey,” Hank called out. “You said what time it was. But what day is it?”
Juliette hesitated at the door. She turned and saw Hank gazing at her, his hand shielding his eyes. “Does it matter?” she asked. And when Hank didn’t respond, she supposed it didn’t. All the days were the same now, and every one numbered.
54
Jimmy decided to search for Elise on two more levels before turning back. He had begun to suspect that he’d missed her, that she’d run inside a level after her animal or to use the bathroom and he’d gone right by. Most likely, she was back at the farms with everyone else while he was stomping up and down the silo alone.
At the next landing, he checked inside the main door, saw nothing but darkness and silence, called out for Elise, and debated going even one level further. Turning back to the stairwell, a flash of brown caught his eye above. He shielded his old eyes and peered up through the green gloom to see a boy peering over the rails at him. The kid waved. Jimmy did not wave back.
He headed for the stairs with a mind of returning to the lower farms, but he soon heard the patter of light footsteps spiraling down toward him. Another kid to look after, he thought. He didn’t wait for the boy, but continued along. It took a turn and a half before the child caught up to him.
Jimmy turned to berate the kid for bugging him, but he recognized the boy up close. The brown coveralls and the wiry mop of corn-colored hair. It was the kid who had chased Elise through the bazaar.
“Hey,” the boy hissed, breathing hard. “You’re that guy.”
“I’m that guy,” Jimmy agreed. “I suppose you’re looking for food. Well, I don’t have a thing—”
“No.” The kid shook his head. He had to be nine or ten. About the same age as Miles. “I need you to come with me. I need your help.”
Everyone needed Jimmy’s help. “I’m a bit busy,” he said. He turned to go.
“It’s Elise,” the boy said. “I followed her here. Through the mines. Some people up there won’t let her go.” He glanced up the stairwell, his voice a whisper.
“You’ve seen Elise?” Jimmy asked.
The boy nodded.
“What do you mean, people?”
“It’s a bunch of them from that church. My dad goes to their Sundays.”
“And you say they have Elise?”
“Yeah. And I found her dog. Her dog was trapped behind a busted door a few levels down from here. I penned it up so it couldn’t get loose. And then I found where they’re keeping Elise. I tried to get to her, but some guy told me to scram.”
“Where was this?” Jimmy asked.
The boy pointed up. “Two levels,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
“Shaw.”
“Good work, Shaw.” Jimmy hurried to the stairwell and started down.
“I said up from here,” the boy said.
“I need to grab something,” Jimmy told him. “It’s not far.”
Shaw hurried after him. “Okay. And look, mister, I want you to know how hungry I was. But that I wasn’t going to eat the dog.”
Jimmy paused and allowed the boy to catch up. “I didn’t think you would,” he said.
Shaw nodded. “Just so Elise knows,” he said. “I want to make sure she knows I would never do that.”
“I’ll make sure she knows,” Jimmy said. “Now c’mon. Let’s hurry.”
Two levels down, Jimmy peeked inside a dark hallway; he played his flashlight across the walls, then turned guiltily to Shaw, who crowded behind him. “Went too far,” Jimmy admitted.
He turned and began climbing back up a level, frustrated with himself. So hard to remember where he put everything. Such a long time ago. He used to have mnemonics for recalling his stashes. He had hidden a rifle way up on level fifty-one. He remembered that because it took a hand to hold the rifle and another finger to pull the trigger. Five and one. That rifle was wrapped in a quilt and buried in the bottom of an old trunk. But he’d left one down here as well. He had carried it down to Supply a lifetime ago; it would’ve been the trip when he found Shadow. Hadn’t carried it all the way back up – not enough hands. One-eighteen. That was it. Not one-nineteen. He hurried up to the landing, his legs getting sore, and went inside the hallway he and Shaw had passed moments prior.
This was it. Apartments. He had left things in lots of them. Poop, mostly. He didn’t know you could go in the farms, right in the dirt. The kids taught him that late in life. Elise taught him. Jimmy thought of people doing something bad to Elise, and he remembered what he’d done to people when he was a boy. He’d been young when he’d taught himself to fire a rifle. He remembered the noise it made. He remembered what it did to empty soup cans and people. It made things jump and fall still. Third apartment down on the left.
“Hold this,” he told Shaw, stepping inside the apartment. He handed his flashlight to the boy, who kept it trained in the center of the room. Jimmy grabbed the metal dresser shoved against one wall and pulled it out a ways. Just like yesterday. Except for the thick dust on the top of the dresser. His old bootprints were gone. He climbed up to the top and pushed the ceiling panel up and to the side, asked for the flashlight. A rat squeaked and scattered as he shined the light in there. The black rifle was waiting on him. Jimmy took it down and blew the dust off.
••••
Elise didn’t like her new clothes. They had taken her coveralls from her, saying the color was all wrong, and had wrapped her in a blanket that was sewn up the front and scratchy. She’d asked to leave several times, but Mr. Rash said she had to stay. There were rooms up and down the halls with old beds, and everything smelled awful, but there were people trying to clean it up and make it better. But Elise just wanted Puppy and Hannah and Solo. She was shown a room and was told it would be her new home, but Elise lived beyond the Wilds and never wanted to live anyplace else.
They took her back to the big room where she’d signed her name and had her sit on the bench some more. If she tried to go, Mr. Rash squeezed her wrist. When she cried, he squeezed even harder. They made her sit on a bench they called something else while a man read from a book. The man with the white robes and the bald patch had left, and a new man had taken his place to read from a book. There was a woman off to the side with two other men, and she didn’t look happy. A lot of people on the benches spent time watching this woman instead of the man reading.
Elise was both sleepy and restless. What she wanted to do was get away and nap somewhere else. And then the man was done reading, and he lifted the book up into the air, and everyone around her said the same thing, which was really strange, as if they all knew they were going to say it beforehand, and their voices were funny and hollow like they knew the words but didn’t know what they meant.
The man with the book waved the men and the woman up, and it seemed almost like they carried her. There were two tables pushed together back near the colored window with the light shining through it. The woman made a noise as they lifted her to the tables. She had a blanket on like Elise’s but bigger, making it easy for the men to expose her bare leg. The people on the benches strained to see better. Elise felt less sleepy than she had before. She whispered to Mr. Rash to find out what they were doing, and he told her to be quiet, not to talk.
The man with the book brought a knife out of his robes. It was long and flashed like a bright fish.
“Be ye fruitful and multiply,” he said. He faced the audience, and the woman moved about on the tables, but she couldn’t go anywhere. Elise wanted to tell them not to hold her wrists so tight.
“Behold,” the man said, reading from the book, “I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you.” And Elise wondered if they were going to plant something. And he went on and said, “Neither shall all flesh be cut off anymore. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the blade shall be seen in the cloud.”
He held the knife even higher, and the people on the benches mumbled something. Even a boy younger than Elise knew the words. His lips moved like the others’.
The man took the knife to the woman, but he didn’t give it to her. There was a man holding her feet and another her wrists, and she tried to be still. And then Elise knew what they were doing. It was the same as her mom and Hannah’s mom. And a fearsome scream came from the woman as the knife went in, and Elise couldn’t stop watching, and blood came out and down her leg, and Elise could feel it on her own leg, and tried to squirm free, but then it was her wrist being held, and she knew one day this would be her, and the screaming went and went, and the man dug around with the knife and his fingers, a shine of sweat on the top of his head, saying something to the men, who were having trouble with the woman, and there were whispers along the benches, and Elise felt hot, and more blood until the man with the knife erupted with a shout and stood facing the benches with something between his fingers, blood running down his arm to his elbow, his blanket drooping open, a smile on his face as the screams died down.
“Behold!” he shouted.
And the people were clapping. The men bandaged the woman on the table, then brought her down, though she could barely stand. Elise saw that there was another woman by the stage. They were lining up. And the clapping gained a rhythm like when she and the twins would march up the stairs watching each other’s feet, clap, clap at the same time. The clapping grew louder and louder. Until there was a giant clap that made them all go quiet. A clap that made her heart leap up in her chest.
Heads turned to the back of the room. Elise’s ears hurt from the loud bang. Someone shouted and pointed, and Elise turned and saw Solo in the doorway. White powder rained down from the ceiling, and he had something long and black in his hands. Beside him stood Shaw, the boy in the brown coveralls from the bizarre. Elise wondered how he was there.
“Excuse me,” Solo said. He scanned the benches until he saw Elise, and his teeth shined through his beard. “I’ll be taking that young lady with me.”
There were shouts. Men got up from their seats and yelled and pointed, and Mr. Rash shouted something about his wife and property and how dare he interrupt. And the man with the blood and the knife was outraged and stormed down the aisle, which made Solo lift the black thing to his shoulder.
Another clap like it was God doing it with his biggest palms, a bang so loud it made Elise’s insides hurt. There was a noise after it, a shattering of glass, and she turned and saw the pretty colored window was even more broke than before.
The people stopped shouting and moving toward Solo, which Elise thought was a very good thing.
“Come along,” Solo said to Elise. “Hurry now.”
Elise got up from the bench and started toward the aisle, but Mr. Rash grabbed her by the wrist. “She is my wife!” Mr. Rash shouted, and Elise realized this was a bad thing to be. It meant she couldn’t leave.
“You do marriages quick,” Solo said to the quiet crowd. He waved the black thing at them all, and this seemed to make them nervous. “What about funerals?”
The black thing pointed at Mr. Rash. Elise felt his grip on her loosen. She made it to the aisle and ran past the man with the dripping blood, ran to Solo and Shaw and down the hall.
55
Juliette was drowning again. She could feel the water in her throat, the sting in her eyes, the burn in her chest. As she climbed the stairwell, she could sense the old flood around her, but that wasn’t what made her feel as though she couldn’t breathe. It was the voices ranging up and down the stairwell shaft, the evidence already of vandalism and theft, the long stretches of wire and pipe gone missing, the scattering of stalk and leaf and soil from those hurrying away with stolen plants.
She hoped to rise above the injustices strewn about her, to escape this last spasm of civility before chaos reigned. It was coming, she knew. But as high as she and Raph climbed, there were people throwing open doors to explore and loot, to claim territory, to yell down from landings some finding or shout up some question. In the depths of Mechanical, she had lamented how few had survived. And now it seemed like so many.
Stopping to fight any of this would be a waste of time. Juliette worried about Solo and the kids. She worried about the razed farms. But the weight of the explosives in her pack gave her purpose, and the calamity surrounding her gave her resolve. She was out to see that this never happened again.
“I feel like a porter,” Raph said, wheezing between words.
“If you fall behind, we’re heading for thirty-four. Both of the mid farms should have food. You can get water from the hydro pumps.”