羊毛战记 Part 4 The Unraveling 36

　　36

　　Eyes, look your last!

　　Arms, take your last embrace! And, lips,

　　O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kissa dateless bargain to engrossing¹ death!

　　The bodies were everywhere. Covered in dust and dirt, suits worn down by the toxic² eaters that livedin the winds. Juliette found herself stumbling over more and more of them. And then, they wereconstant, a mass of boulders³ jumbled⁴ together. A few were in suits similar to her own, but most worerags that had been eaten away into streamers. When the wind blew past her boots and across thebodies, strips of clothing waved like kelp in the down deep’s fish farms. Unable to pick her wayaround them all, she found herself stepping over the remains⁵, working her way closer and closer tothe sensor⁶ tower, the bodies easily in the hundreds, possibly the thousands.

　　These weren’t people from her silo, she realized. However obvious, the sensation was startling.

　　Other people. That they were dead did nothing to diminish the soul-shattering reality that people hadlived so close and she had never known. Juliette had somehow crossed an uninhabitable void, hadgone from one universe to another, was possibly the first ever to have done so, and here was agraveyard of foreign souls, of people just like her having lived and died in a world so similar and sonear to her own.

　　She made her way through dead bodies thick as crumbling⁸ rock, the forms becomingindistinguishable from one another. They were piled high in places, and she had to choose her pathcarefully. As she neared the ramp⁹ leading down to this other silo, she found herself needing to stepon a body or two in order to pass. It looked as though they’d been trying to get away and hadscampered over one another, creating their own small hills in a mad attempt to reach the real ones.

　　But then, when she reached the ramp leading down, she saw the crush of bodies at the steel airlockdoor and realized they had been trying to get back in.

　　Her own imminent¹⁰ death loomed¹¹ large—a constant awareness¹², a new sense worn on her skin andfelt keenly in every pore. She would soon join these bodies, and somehow she was not afraid. Shehad passed through that fear on the crest¹³ of the hill and was now in new lands, seeing new things, aterrible gift for which she had to be grateful. Curiosity drove her forward, or maybe it was thementality of this frozen crowd, all in scrambling¹⁴ repose¹⁵, bodies swimming over each other andreaching toward the doors below.

　　She swam among them. Waded¹⁶, where she had to. She stepped through broken and hollow bodies,kicked aside bones and tattered¹⁷ remains, and fought her way to the partly cracked doors. There was afigure there frozen between its iron teeth, one arm in, one out, a scream trapped on a gray andwithered face, two eye sockets¹⁸ empty and staring.

　　Juliette was one of them, one of these others. She was dead, or nearly so. But while they werefrozen in motion, she was still pushing ahead. Shown the way. She tugged¹⁹ the body out of the gap,her breathing loud in her helmet, her exhalations misting on the screen before her nose. Half the bodypulled free—the other half collapsed²⁰ inside the door. A mist of powdered flesh drifted down inbetween.

　　She wiggled one of her arms inside and tried to push through sideways. Her shoulder slippedthrough, then her leg, but her helmet caught. She turned her head and tried again, but the helmet stillwedged tightly between the doors. There was a moment of panic as she could feel the steel jawsgripping her head, supporting the weight of her helmet, leaving her semi-dangling from its grasp. Sheswam her arm all the way through, trying to reach around the door for purchase, to pull herself therest of the way, but her torso was stuck. One leg was in, the other out. There was nothing to pushagainst or pull in order to go the rest of the way. She was trapped, an arm useless on the inside,waving frantically²², her rapid breathing using up what remained of her air.

　　Juliette tried to fit her other arm through. She couldn’t turn her waist, but she could bend herelbow and slide her fingers across her belly²³ through the tight space between her stomach and thedoor. She curled her fingers around the edge of the steel and pulled. There was no leverage²⁴ in thoseconfines. It was just the strength in her fingers, in her grip. Juliette suddenly didn’t want to die, notthere. She curled her hand as if to make a fist, her fingers bent²⁵ around the edge of those steel jaws²¹, herknuckles singing out from the strain. Jerking her head against her helmet, trying to bang her faceagainst the damned screen, twisting and shoving and yanking—she suddenly popped free.

　　She stumbled forward into the airlock, a boot catching²⁶ briefly²⁷ on the gap behind her, armswindmilling for balance as she kicked through a pile of charred²⁸ bones and sent a cloud of black ashinto the air. It was the remains of those who had been caught in the cleansing²⁹ fire of the airlock.

　　Juliette found herself in a burned room eerily³⁰ similar to the one she had recently left. Her exhaustedand bewildered mind spun³¹ with outrageous³² delusions³³. Perhaps she was already dead, and these werethe ghosts awaiting her. Maybe she had burned alive inside the airlock of her own silo, and thesewere her mad dreams, her escape from the pain, and now she would haunt this place forever.

　　She stumbled through the scattered³⁴ remains toward the inner door and pressed her head againstthe thick glass porthole. She looked for Peter Billings beyond, sitting at his desk. Or perhaps aglimpse of Holston wandering the hallways, a specter searching for his ghostly wife.

　　But this was not the same airlock. She tried to calm herself. She wondered if her air was runninglow, if sucking on her own exhaust was like breathing the fumes³⁵ of a hot motor, choking off herbrain.

　　The door was sealed. It was real. The thousands were dead, but she wasn’t. Not yet.

　　She tried to spin the large wheel that secured the door, but it was either frozen in place or lockedfrom the inside. Juliette banged on the glass, hoping the silo sheriff would hear her, or maybe acafeteria worker. It was dark inside, but the thought lingered that someone must be there. Peoplelived inside silos. They didn’t belong piled up around them.

　　There was no answer. No light flicked³⁶ on. She leaned on the large wheel, remembered Marnes’sinstructions, how all the mechanisms³⁷ worked, but those lessons felt like so long ago and she hadn’tthought them important at the time. But she remembered something: after the argon bath and the fire,didn’t the inner door unlock? Automatically? So the airlock could be scrubbed? This seemed likesomething she remembered Marnes saying. He had joked that it wasn’t as if anyone could come backinside once the fire had run its course. Was she remembering this or making it up? Was it the wishfulthinking of an oxygen-starved mind?

　　Either way, the wheel on the door wouldn’t budge³⁸. Juliette pushed down with all her weight, but itdefinitely felt locked to her. She stepped back. The bench hanging from the wall where cleaners gotsuited up before their deaths looked inviting³⁹. She was tired from the walk, from the struggle to getinside. And why was she trying to get inside? She spun in place, indecisive. What was she doing?

　　She needed air. For some reason, she thought the silo might have some. She looked around at allthe scattered bones of an uncountable number of bodies. How many dead? They were too jumbled toknow. The skulls⁴⁰, she thought. She could count those and know. She shook this nonsense from herhead. She was definitely losing her senses.

　　The wheel on the door is a stuck nut, some receding⁴¹ part of her said. It’s a frozen bolt.

　　And hadn’t she made a reputation as a young shadow for working them free?

　　Juliette told herself that this could be done. Grease, heat, leverage. Those were the secrets to apiece of metal that wouldn’t budge. She didn’t have any of the three, but she looked around anyway.

　　There was no squeezing back through the outer door; she knew she wouldn’t make it a second time,not that kind of straining. So she had this room. The bench was secured to the wall along the backedge and hung from two chains. Juliette wiggled the chains but didn’t see how they could come free,or what good they would do her anyway.

　　In the corner, there was a pipe snaking up that led into a series of vents⁴². It must be what deliveredthe argon, she thought. She wrapped her hands around the pipe, put her feet on the wall, and tugged.

　　The connection to the vent⁴³ wiggled; the toxic air had corroded⁴⁴ and weakened it. Juliette smiled,set her teeth, and yanked back ferociously⁴⁵.

　　The pipe came free of the vent and bent at its base. She felt a sudden thrill, like a wild rat standingover a large crumb⁷. She grabbed the free end of the pipe and worked it back and forth⁴⁶, bending andwrenching the fastened end. Metal would snap if you could wiggle it even a little bit, if you did itlong enough. She had felt the heat of weakened steel countless⁴⁷ times while bending it over and overuntil it broke.

　　Sweat beaded on her brow and twinkled in the dim light allowed by her visor screen. It drippeddown her nose, fogged the screen, and still she yanked and pushed, back and forth, growing franticand desperate—

　　The pipe snapped, taking her by surprise. Just a faint pop bled through her helmet, and then thelong piece of hollow metal was free. One end was crushed and twisted, the other whole and round.

　　Juliette turned to the door, a tool now in hand. She slid the pipe through the wheel, leaving as muchas she could hanging out the side, just short enough not to brush the wall. With both gloved handswrapped around the pipe, she hoisted⁴⁸ herself and bent at the waist over the pipe, her helmet touchingthe door. She bounced her weight on the lever, knowing it was a jerking motion that freed a bolt, nota steady force. She wiggled her way toward the end of the pipe, watching it bend a little, worried itmight snap in half long before the door budged⁴⁹.

　　When she got toward the end—maximum leverage—she threw her weight up and down with allher strength, and she cursed as the pipe snapped. There was a loud clang, barely muffled⁵⁰ by her suit,and then she collapsed to the floor, landing painfully on her elbow.

　　The pipe was at an angle beneath her, digging into her ribs⁵¹. Juliette tried to catch her breath. Hersweat dripped against the visor screen, blurring⁵² her view. She got up and saw that the pipe wasunbroken. She wondered if it had slipped free, but it was still threaded through the spokes⁵³ of the largewheel.

　　Disbelieving, excited, she slid the pipe out the other side. She wrapped her hands around thespokes and leaned into it.

　　And the wheel.

　　It budged.

 

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