went from the controls to switches and back again.
‘Engine two is out,’ she said. ‘I’m in a glide. Altitude oh-two-hundred.’
It looked like far less on the screen. They were beyond the last of the hills now. The clouds had thinned. There was a scar in the earth, a trench that may have been a river, black sticks like charred bones that stuck up in sharp points like pencil lead – all that remained of ancient trees, perhaps. Or the steel girders of a large security fence, eaten away by time.
‘Go, go,’ he whispered. Every second aloft provided a new sight, a new vista. Here was a breath of freedom. Here was an escape from hell.
‘Camera’s going. Altitude oh-one-fifty.’
There was a bright flash on the screen like the shock of dying electrics. A purplish cast followed from the frying sensors, then a wash of blue where once there was nothing but browns and greys.
‘Altitude fifty feet. Gonna touch down hard.’
Donald blinked away tears as the drone plummeted and the earth rushed up to meet the machine. He blinked away tears at the sight on the monitor, nothing wrong with the camera at all.
‘Blue—’ he said.
It was an utterance of confirmation just before a vivid green landscape swallowed the dying drone. The monitor faded from colour to darkness. Charlotte released the controls and cursed. She slapped the console with her palm. But as she turned and apologised to Donald, he was already wrapping his arms around her, squeezing her, kissing her cheek.
‘Did you see it?’ he asked, his voice a breathless whisper. ‘Did you see?’
‘See what?’ Charlotte pulled away, her face a hardened mask of disappointment. ‘Every gauge was toast there at the end. Blasted drone. Probably been sitting too long—’
‘No, no,’ Donald said. He pointed to the screen, which was now dark and lifeless. ‘You did it,’ he said. ‘I saw it. There were blue skies and green grass out there, Charla! I saw it!’
95
2331 – Year Twenty
• Silo 17 •
WITHOUT WANTING TO, Solo became an expert in how things broke down. Day by day, he watched steel and iron crumble to rust, watched paint peel and orange flecks curl up, saw the black dust gather as metal eroded to powder. He learned what rubber hoses felt like as they hardened, dried up and cracked. He learned how adhesives failed, things appearing on the floor that once were affixed to walls and ceilings, objects moved suddenly and violently by the twin gods of gravity and dilapidation. Most of all, he learned how bodies rot. They didn’t always go in a flash – like a mother pushed upward by a jostling crowd or a father sliding into the shadows of a darkened corridor. Instead, they were often chewed up and carried off in invisible pieces. Time and maggots alike grew wings; they flew and flew and took all things with them.
Solo tore a page from one of the boring articles in the Ri–Ro book and folded it into a tent. The silo, he thought, belonged to the insects in many ways. Wherever the bodies were gathered, the insects swarmed in dark clouds. He had read up on them in the books. Somehow, maggots turned into flies. White and writhing became black and buzzing. Things broke down and changed.
He threaded lengths of string into the folded piece of paper to give something to hang the weight on. This was when Shadow would normally get in the way, would come and arch his back against Solo’s arm, step on whatever he was doing, make him annoyed and make him laugh at the same time. But Shadow didn’t interrupt.
Solo made small knots in the string to keep them from pulling through. The paper was doubled over across the holes so it wouldn’t tear. He knew well how things broke down. He was an expert in things he wished he could unlearn. Solo could tell at a glance how long it’d been since someone had died.
The people he’d killed years back had been stiff when he moved them, but this only lasted a while. People soon swelled up and stank. Their bodies let off gasses and the flies swarmed. The flies swarmed and the maggots feasted.
The stench would make his eyes water and his throat burn. And the bodies would soon grow soft. Solo had to move some bodies on the stairs once, tangled where they lay and difficult to step over, and the flesh came right apart. It became like cottage cheese he’d had back