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He scanned the horizon for the city--had to work his way around the tower to find it Frorees to the left He had studied the maps to make sure, but now that he was there, he realized he could’ve done it by memory Over there here the tents had stood, and here the stage, and beyond therass as ATVs buzzed up the hillside He could als barking and children playing, the anthehts of the past and ood chance--that so at breakfast in the cafe They would be dropping their spoon into their reconstituted eggs right then and pointing at the wallscreen But he had a head start They would have to wrestle with suits and wonder if the risk orth it By the tiot to him, it would be too late Hopefully, they would simply leave hile inside the bulky suit He slipped and fell several tiust of wind harit and made a noise like the hiss of Anna’s radio There was no telling how long the suit would last He knew enough of the cleaning to suspect it wouldn’t be forever, but Anna had told hined to attack only certain things That hy they didn’t destroy the sensors, or the concrete, or a proper suit And he suspected his silo would only have proper suits

All he hoped for as he labored up the hill was a view He was so obsessed and deterht to look behind hi on his hands and knees the last fifty feet, until finally he was at the su heavily, re him back to safety, back to hell

Not this tie and looked down into the adjacent bowl There, a concrete tower stood like a gravestone, like a monument to Helen She was buried below, and while he could never go to her, never be buried alongside her, he could lie down beneath the clouds and be close enough

He wanted his heled one of the the seal--and dropped it to the soil The heavy winds, heavy enough that he found hi down the slope The grit in the heavy breeze stung his hand The peppering of fine particles burned like a day on a windy beach Donald began tugging on his other glove, resigned to ould corip his shoulder, and he was yanked back froht and pleasant view

•30•

Donald stu touched sent his heart into his throat He waved his arrip on his suit More than one person They dragged hi spot

His screams of frustration filled his helmet Couldn’t they see that it was too late? Couldn’t they leave hirip, but he was being pulled down the hill, back toward Silo 1

When he fell the next tiet his ar over hi athered in the old o!" Thurman yelled into the heavy wind His voice seemed as distant as the clouds

Donald kicked his feet and tried to move like a crab back up the hill, but there were three of theainst the ferocity of the driving wind and pelting soil And they were, none of theain He tried to grab rocks and fistfuls of soil as they pulled hiainst the lifeless pack of dirt He watched the clouds boil overhead as his fingernails were bent back and broken in his struggle for soot him to the flats, Donald was spent They carried hih the airlock whereHis helmet was tossed aside before the outer door fully shut Thurman stood in a far corner and watched as they undressed hi froht him with his boot

Erskine was there, Dr Henson as well, both of theot his suit off, Henson plunged a needle into Donald’s flesh Erskine held his hand and seeh Donald’s veins

"A bloody waste," so settled over him

"Look at this mess"

Erskine placed a hand on Donald’s cheek as Donald drifted deeper into the black His lids grew heavy and his hearing distant

"Be better if soe," he heard Erskine say

But it was Victor’s voice he heard It was a dreaht fro world of boots and angry voices was too busy being sed by theof dreams And this time--rather than with a fear of death--Donald went into that darkness gladly He e it would be eternal He ith a final thought of his sister, of those drones beneath their tarps, and all that he hoped would never be woken

Silo 18

Ring around the silo

No one knohat I know

Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!

•31•

Mission felt buried alive He fell into an unco hot and slick as it trapped his heat and exhalations Part of him feared he would pass out in there and Joel and Lyn would discover him dead Part of hi on one-seventeen, a landing below the blast that took Ca to repair the stairere on the lookout for a certain porter Their description was part Cam, part Mission Mission held deathly still while Joel co stopped with so sensitive and heavy a load It see be opened, but there were sos nearly as taboo as talk of the outside And so they were let free with a warning that the rail was out above and that one person had already fallen to their death

Mission fought off a coughing fit as the voices receded below He wiggled his shoulders and struggled to cover hiscleared Lyn hissed at him to be quiet In the distance, Mission could hear a woe froht of an entire landing torn free from the stairwell

Above Supply, they carried hi, and let him work the blood back into his arms Mission peed and took a few sips of water He assured the others that he was fine in there Yes, it was hot, he told them All three of theo Joel especially seemed weary fro the da up better but was anxious to get going again She fretted aloud for Rodny and seeet to the Nest as Mission

Mission looked at himself in the mirror with his white coveralls and his porter’s knife strapped to his waist He was the one they were looking for He drew his knife and held a handful of his hair Itinto celery, as he sawed through a clu and helped with her own knife It hurt in a good way and rabbed the trashcan froh job, but he looked less like the one they wanted Before putting his knife away, he cut a few slits in the black bag, right by the zipper He peeled off his undershirt and wiped the inside of the bag dry before throwing the shirt in the trashcan It reeked of s with the straps, they zipped him up and carried him back to the stairway to resu but worry

He ran over the events of a very long day Things had happened thatthat felt like theyup early to watch the clouds brighten over breakfast He had visited the Crow and delivered her note, had then lost a friend, and noas heading back to the Nest The exhaustion of it all caught up to hiht before or the gentle swaying of the bag Whatever the cause, he found hi into unconsciousness

He didn’t sleep sowithout him