Shadows (26 page)

“
There are
other silos?
”
the mayor replied, still caught up
by what Jules had said.

Jules nodded.

Susan should have been more
prepared for this revelation, based on what Charlie had told her
about seeing a flying machine. They both suspected there were more
silos, but to actually see people from those silos was
overwhelming. There were dozens of silos out there, each with a
Great Fall, a grand staircase, farms and garment factories,
cafeterias and wall-screens along with thousands of people living
their lives in ignorance. The concept was bewildering. She could
understand the mayor's stunned look.

Sheriff Cann seemed to
grasp the concept quicker. He didn't look shaken at all.

“
I may be
late to the party,
”
he said, pointing at
Charlotte.
“
But I know she's not
from any silo.
”

His words weren't an
accusation, they were an observation, as though he had already
pieced together what was happening.

Charlotte
stiffened, saying,
“
Captain Charlotte
Keene, United States Air Force.
”

“
United,
”
the mayor said, struggling to
add,
“
States.
”

“
What are
these United ... States?
”
the sheriff asked,
like the mayor he articulated each word individually, as though
they didn't belong together in the same sentence.

“
This,
”
Charlotte began, pointing at the
table but clearly intending the ground beneath them.
“
This is the United States of America. You are all that
remains of a nation that once numbered in excess of three hundred
million people, you and fifty other silos out there, with each silo
representing one of those states. You guys are all that remains of
the Great State of Alabama.
”

Susan noticed the patches
on Charlotte's coveralls, something she'd never seen on coveralls
before. There were three colorful patches breaking up the drab
olive uniform, and they weren't coveralls as they had
sleeves.

One of the
patches depicted a pair of golden wings with the words,
“
Capt. Keene
”
displayed proudly beneath. Another
displayed the head of a bird she didn't recognize: a dark eye
peered out from behind white feathers, with a curved, yellow beak
looking proud and defiant. What the designation L-39 meant on that
particular patch was something lost in the mists of
time.

On her shoulder, the third
patch was a flag. The colors had faded, but the contrasting red and
white stripes were still eye catching. On the top left of the flag,
white dots sat on a dark blue background, and it took Susan a
second to realize what they were. They were stars. Is that what the
stars looked like in a clear sky? She couldn't imagine the stars
were so uniformly distributed. She wanted to ask Charlotte about
the stars on the flag, but she didn't want to sound stupid or
off-topic.

The mayor
shifted on the bench seat, turning to face Charlotte as she
said,
“
I don't understand. How can this be? The old
world hasn't existed for centuries. How can you be standing
here?
”

Charlotte
replied, saying,
“
I'm 28 years old. I
was born in 2026. I was frozen in 2054. Since then, over three
hundred years have passed and through all those years I was asleep,
never waking until now.
”

“
I can't
believe it!
”
the mayor cried.
“
You're
from before? You knew the old world? You saw blue
skies?
”

“
I flew in
blue skies!
”

Susan was speechless.
Charlie was grinning from ear to ear.

Jules sat forward with her
hands together and elbows resting on the table. Susan could see she
was itching to say something but she was giving them time to let
the truth sink in.

“
All
this,
”
Charlotte continued, gesturing around
her.
“
This should have never happened. We should have
continued on.
”

“
How?
”
Susan blurted out.
“
How did it happen?
”

Charlotte pursed her lips
for a moment, and Susan understood the absurdity of her question
from Charlotte's perspective. There were so many questions all of
them had, but answers were just words. Words could never convey all
that had been lost. Words were a poor substitute for the billions
that had died, for the various societies that had perished, for the
loss of culture, of art, of music and literature. Just a few words
from her lips could never do justice to the devastation that had
befallen an entire planet.

“
We were
afraid,
”
Charlotte said candidly.
“
We felt
threatened. There was a conflict of ideals, an struggle between
cultures and countries, between religions and concepts you couldn't
even begin to fathom.

“
Tens of
thousands of years ago, we wielded clubs of wood and blades of
stone. Over time, we developed swords and spears. We built castle
walls and battering rams.
”

Her hand rested on a
firearm set in a holster on a belt drawn around her waist. Susan
had seen guns before, but only ever the large, cumbersome revolvers
carried by the sheriff and his deputies. This gun was different.
The holster didn't have a leather strap buttoned down to prevent
the clunky revolver from being grabbed by someone else. This gun
was exposed, with its black handle clearly visible. Only the barrel
sat in a narrow plastic holder. It was clear the design allowed the
gun to be drawn with astonishing speed.

“
We've always
fought,
”
Charlotte continued, her voice carrying in the
empty cafeteria.
“
We've always sought
a means to fight, from guns to tanks, from airplanes to
nukes.
”

These were terms Susan
didn't understand. The only tanks she'd ever known were used to
hold water or fuel, and she couldn't begin to imagine how such an
item could be used offensively.

“
We laid
waste to entire cities. A single bomb dropped from an airplane
could kill hundreds of thousands of people in the blink of an eye,
but that wasn't enough. We continued to devise ways to destroy each
other until one day, we did.
”

Sheriff Cann
spoke, saying,
“
You said, we ... We
did this? We did this to ourselves?
”

Charlotte bit her lip,
nodding.

Jules spoke
softly, saying,
“
I'm sorry. There's
no easy way to say this. We're not lucky survivors, we're the
descendants of those that perpetuated this madness on the
world.
”

Susan swallowed the lump in
her throat. In a matter of minutes, her world, her entire life had
been cast into darkness. Everything she'd ever known had changed.
The silo and everyone she knew took on an entirely different
meaning.

“
Is
it?
”
she whispered quietly to Charlie, wanting to
ask,
“
Is it true?
”
but struggling to
get the words out.

He simply
nodded.

“
But this
isn't the end,
”
Jules said.
“
We have a
chance to put things right, to end the madness. We can't change
history, but we can change our future. There's a whole world out
there waiting for us, but we need to leave this madness buried
underground, entombed in these concrete silos.
”

Sheriff Cann nodded, as did
the mayor.

“
What do we
need to do?
”
he asked.

“
We need to
get everyone out of here,
”
Jules said with a
sense of authority that commanded respect.
“
We need to
dismantle the power structures of our society and invent new ones,
where transparency and accountability are the only agendas. No more
lies. No more secrets. No more cleaning.
”

Charlotte opened the
cylinder she'd been carrying and rolled out a paper scroll larger
than anything Susan had ever seen in her life. The sheer size of
the map unfolding before her was bewildering. You couldn't earn
enough chits to buy this, she thought, not recognizing any of the
markings and seeing the paper only in terms of its value within the
silo, not realizing the true value of what was being laid before
her.

“
This is the
layout of all the silos,
”
Charlotte said,
leaning across the table. Jules smoothed out a few wrinkles, while
the sheriff held back the curling edge of the map, preventing it
from rolling back on itself.

The silos were evenly
spaced, being laid out in a pattern that wasn't immediately
apparent. Red crosses lay over some of the silos. Their meaning was
clear, and Susan swallowed the lump in her throat at the thought of
an entire silo being destroyed along with thousands of people just
like her, her parents, and her friends.

Looking at
the map, Susan suddenly realized she
’
d seen this layout
before, just moments ago. The silos were spread out in the same
pattern as the stars on the flag set so proudly on
Charlotte
’
s shoulder. Susan had never purposely thought
about the creators of the silos before. She knew someone had made
these concrete bunkers reaching well over a thousand feet beneath
the ground, but now she was looking at a field of fifty of them,
now that she could see the silos laid out in a shape that was
deliberately reminiscent of a flag from a dead country, she got a
glimpse into the mind of the architects that had devised her
lifestyle. These United States, as Charlotte had described them,
were physically united in their survival of this poisoned world,
and yet they were isolated and alone, treated as though they were
children.

Susan was vaguely aware her
perspective failed to appreciate the sheer magnitude of the effort
required to build these silos, but she understood the work must
have been both complex and colossal. She may not have known how
these massive structures could be carved out of the rock, but she
recognized the misplaced pride apparent in their layout like the
stars on a flag. She'd seen this hubris before in the way the
porters wore their 'kerchiefs as a badge of pride, in the way the
mechanics lauded their deep blue coveralls as a mark of superiority
over the yellow of supply or the white of IT. As a porter, Susan
had a glimpse into life as it spanned the levels, a view that
exposed the petty prejudices and ego of one class commending itself
over another. Had an actor on a stage ever applauded his own
performance? Wouldn't that seem incongruous, she thought, and yet
that was the hallmark of tribalism. Sometimes, it seemed as though
the various classes would congratulate themselves for nothing more
than breathing. Sure, there was some impressive work done in
engineering, but that did not negate the work of supply, in the
same way, the intelligence of those in IT did not diminish the
porters or cooks, the weavers or the farmers. Here, in these fifty
silos set like stars on a flag, she got a glimpse into the same
poisonous mindset, one that had led to the destruction of the
world. For the creators of the silos, this arrangement had been one
borne of pride in accomplishment, but for her looking back hundreds
of years later, these stars had lost their meaning: the stars had
fallen to the ground.

Charlotte kept talking,
breaking her train of thought.

“
You're
here,
”
Charlotte said, reaching across and tapping a
circle with the number two in the middle of it.

“
That,
”
she added, pointing at the smoke
billowing from an unseen hole on the wall-screen.
“
That's all that's left of Silo One.
”

Susan could see Silo One
was at the heart of the diagram, in the center of the field of
silos. She was fascinated. There were so many of them. Lines
crisscrossed the map, most of the fine lines leading back to Silo
One and were marked with terms such as em-power, purge-gas and
volatiles.

“
What
happened?
”
the mayor asked, looking at the smoke driving
high into the sky in thick, acrid blooms.

“
Silo One was
the control room,
”
Charlotte said.
“
All the
silos reported in to a man whose name will not be dignified with a
memory.
”