Shadows (31 page)

She rested her hand on her
swollen belly. Susan was six months pregnant and life had never
felt so good.

Charlie sat at an outdoor
table in the shadow of an oak tree, talking with Jules and a few
others about how to rescue the occupants of another silo. The
general consensus had been to wait until they had established a
working community beyond the dust storm before rescuing anyone
else. Without basic constructs like markets and housing an influx
of thousands of people was a logistical nightmare.

In the year since they'd
escaped Silo Two, a lot had changed. There were seven villages now.
Porters no longer climbed stairs, they walked the grassy hills. A
band of engineers had rigged a turbine in the river, harvesting
electricity like the farmers picked fields.

Susan and Charlie still
lived in a tent, but it was home, their home. The lottery for
children had been replaced with a lottery for housing, where the
community would band together to build a new home every fortnight.
Their number would come up, Susan had no doubt about that, so she
was in no rush.

Charlie had found a
telescope in the storage silo and set it up outside their tent.
Most nights, the teens would come to hear him talk about the stars
and line up for a brief glimpse of Saturn and her rings, or of the
Orion Nebula. As stargazing meant extinguishing all lights, teen
couples took full advantage of the dark. Some nights, Susan doubted
they saw anything beyond the stars in each other's eyes.

Lisa came running up to
her, cutting through a meadow dotted in wild flowers.

“
Hey,
”
Susan said, joining her old porting
buddy in a warm embrace.
“
How are
you?
”

“
Never been
better,
”
Lisa said excitedly.
“
They're
accepting applications for shadows. I've been
picked.
”

“
Are you sure
you want to do that?
”
Susan asked, stepping out of the sun
into the shade of the supply silo that dominated the plain. The
villages had been built around the silo, making that the central
point for commerce and trade.

“
Why
not?
”

“
It's
dangerous,
”
Susan replied, knowing the term
shadow no longer applied to an apprentice. These days, the term was
used to describe those advance scouts that would slip unseen into
the various silos to assess their viability for rescue. It was
important to understand the politics and dynamics within each silo,
as they were all so different, and the need to transition an entire
society to living beyond the dust was a delicate
process.

“
If you can
do it, I can too,
”
Lisa said.

“
Well, in my
case it was hardly a choice,
”
Susan
replied.

“
Anyway,
gotta go,
”
Lisa added kissing Susan on the cheek.
“
Gotta get to training.
”

“
You take
care of yourself,
”
Susan cried after her as Lisa jogged
away with a gait that still reminded her of the great
stairs.

There was quite a
discussion going on over at the table, so Susan wandered over,
hoping she wasn't intruding but intensely curious about the plans
to liberate another silo.

Sheriff Cann was pointing
at a map that showed the various levels within the silo along with
sewage lines, water pipes and power cables.

Hammond
scratched his bald head, saying,
“
I'm thinking a less
direct approach to IT is going to be better.
”

Susan couldn't get used to
him without his beard. Hammond had lost weight since his days as
the head of IT. With his head shaved and no facial hair, he looked
twenty years younger. These days, he never let his hair grow more
than a fraction of an inch before shaving it. For him, short hair
must have represented a break with the past, she
figured.

“
Have you got
the plans for level thirty-three as well as
thirty-four?
”
he asked.

Charlotte sorted through a
series of schematics and pulled out two floor-plans, handing them
to Jules.

Jules laid the plans next
to each other on the table, smoothing out the wrinkles and placing
a weight at the edge to stop the gentle, cool breeze from lifting
them.

“
There's
three feet of reinforced concrete,
”
Charlotte
said.
“
I don't see what we can do from thirty-three to
get to IT on thirty-four.
”

“
There,
”
Hammond said, looking at Charlotte
as he tapped the edge of the schematic for the floor above
IT.
“
You're brother might have been pretty sharp at
designing these bunkers, but it's the additional renovations he
didn't know about that will give us an edge.
”

Bunkers, Susan hadn't heard
the silos called that before, but she liked that. It was a nice
touch, she thought, coming from a man that had lived and breathed
every aspect of life underground.

“
You see, the
problem is the server room,
”
Hammond
continued.
“
They had to use a
raised floor for the wiring, and then there was the hidden level.
The builders focused on making room beneath their feet, but that
meant they lost head-height. They had to work fire suppression
systems and air conditioning ducts into the ceiling so they carved
it out. That section of the slab can't be more than a foot thick,
at best. I've been up in the crawl space. I could see light seeping
in around the pipes from the floor above.
”

“
I see where
you're going with this,
”
Jules said, looking
at the floor-plan for thirty-three.
“
This storage room is
directly above the server room.
”

Hammond
looked at her, grinning. She smiled at him, saying,
“
You want to blow the floor with mining charges, don't
you?
”

“
Absolutely,
”
Hammond said.
“
In a
confined space like that, the blast will be
magnified.
”

“
Just don't
stand in front of the door,
”
Charlotte said with
a smile.

Sheriff Cann
added,
“
We're still going to have to figure out how to
disarm IT and take the head of IT without igniting a
firestorm.
”

“
Yes,
”
Hammond agreed.
“
But this
way, we hold all the cards. The blast will destroy most of the
servers. All we have to do is drop down through the roof and
disable the suicide panel. That effectively sidelines IT as a
danger to the silo.
”

Charlotte
added,
“
And they'll have no idea what's happening. This
will come out of the blue. It won't be like your silo where you
were already armed and expecting an assault.
”

“
I've got
it,
”
Jules said.
“
First, we sabotage
the water supply on thirty-three, send a flood down to
thirty-four.
”

“
They'll call
for mechanical,
”
Hammond said, smiling at
her.

“
Exactly,
”
Jules replied.
“
They're
going to welcome us onto the floor, so we're in place before the
charges blow and shut down the whole level without too much
fight.
”

“
I like
it,
”
Hammond said, grinning.
“
It'll
work.
”

The Beginning

Afterword

SHADOWS is a fan-fiction
tribute to Hugh Howey's WOOL universe, expanding on the novels
WOOL, SHIFT and DUST.

Although there have been
several other self-published authors that have made it big, Hugh
Howey has changed the stigma associated with self-publishing,
showing readers and authors alike that independent science fiction
can be as good, if not better than traditionally published books.
Hugh now adopts a hybrid approach, making his books available
through which ever medium best suits the audience. Hugh's natural
writing style, strong characterization and compelling stories have
resonated with readers worldwide, making WOOL an astonishing
success.

Hugh has been gracious to
fan-fiction writers, allowing us to take a few liberties with the
storyline while not straying too far from the core ideas. Thank
you, Hugh, for opening the silos to us.

Originally, I had no
intention of writing fan-fiction, not for any other reason than I
was too busy writing my own original works, but beta-readers Jae
Lee and Deborah Ann Longe encouraged me to have a crack at a silo,
and I'm glad I listened. Initially, I targeted around 25,000 words,
so that I've ended up at 57,000 tells you something about how much
I've enjoyed climbing the stairs through the Great Fall of Silo
Two.

Special thanks go to Ellen
Campbell for having the patience and interest in editing SHADOWS
and helping with continuity within the WOOL universe.

I hope you've enjoyed
SHADOWS as much as I have. It has been a lot of fun to explore Hugh
Howey's WOOL universe.

Please take the time to
leave a review of this story on Amazon as your thoughts are
invaluable to other readers considering this novel.