Third Shift - Pact

Jimmy prepared to shoulder the door shut, when the thought of tomorrow, or that night, or the next hour occurred to him.

The retreating man now knew the number. He was taking it with him.

“Twelve-eighteen,” Jimmy whispered.

He poked his head out the door for a quick look. There was a brief glimpse of a man disappearing into an office. Just a flash of green coveralls, and then an empty hall, impossibly long and bright.

The dying man outside the door groaned and writhed. Jimmy ignored him. He pulled the gun against his arm and braced it like he’d practiced how. The little notches lined up with each other and pointed toward the edge of the office door. Jimmy imagined a can of soup out there, hovering in the hall. He breathed and waited. The groaning man on the other side of the threshold crawled closer, bloody palms slapping a spot of floor that made Jimmy feel funny to look at. There was that ache in the center of his skull, an ancient scar across his memories. Jimmy aimed at the nothingness in the hallway and thought of his mother and father. Some part of him knew they were gone, that they had left somewhere and would never return, and the notches became unaligned as his barrel trembled.

The man by his feet drew closer. Groans had turned to a hissing. Jimmy glanced down and saw red bubbles frothing on the man’s lips. His beard was fuller than Jimmy’s and soaked in blood. Jimmy looked away before his father’s face appeared on the man again. He watched the spot in the hall and counted.

He was at thirty-two when he felt fingers pawing weakly at his boots.

It was on fifty-one that a head peeked out like a sneaky soup can.

Jimmy’s finger squeezed. There was a kick to his shoulder and a blossom of bright red down the hall.

He waited a moment, took a deep breath, then pulled his boot away from the hand reaching up his ankle. He placed his shoulder against a door hanging dangerously open and pushed. Locks whirred and made thunking sounds deep within the walls. He only heard them dimly. He dropped his gun and covered his face with his palms while nearby, a man lay dying in the server room. Inside the server room. Jimmy wept, and the keypad chirped happily before falling silent, patiently waiting for yet another day.

Silo 1

•20•

A row of familiar clipboards hung on the wall in Dr. Wilson’s office. Donald remembered scratching his name on them with mock ceremony. He remembered signing off on himself once, authorizing his own deep freeze. There was a twinge of unease at the thought of signing those forms right then. What would he write? His hand would shake as he scribbled someone else’s name, and it would strike midnight at the masquerade ball.

In the middle of the office, an empty gurney brought back bad memories. A fresh sheet had been tucked military crisp on top of it, ready for the next body. Dr. Wilson checked his computer to find that next body while his two assistants prepped. One of them stirred two scoops of green powder into a container of warm water. Donald could smell the concoction across the room. It made his cheeks pucker, but he took careful note of which cabinet the powder came from, how much was spooned in, and asked any question that came to mind.

The other assistant folded a clean blanket and draped it over the back of a wheelchair. There was a paper gown. An emergency medical kit was unpacked and repacked. Gloves, meds, gauze, bandages, tape. It was all done with a quiet efficiency. Donald was reminded of the men behind the serving counter who laid out breakfast with the same habitual care.

A number was read aloud to confirm who they were waking. This reactor tech, like Donald’s sister, had been reduced to a number, a place within a grid, a cell in a spreadsheet. As if made-up names were any better. Suddenly, Donald saw how easily his switch could’ve taken place. He watched as paperwork was filled out—his signature not needed—and dropped into a box. This was a part of the process he could ignore. There would be no trace of what he had planned.

Dr. Wilson led them out the door. The wheelchair full of supplies followed, with Donald trailing behind.

The tech they were waking was two levels down, which meant taking the lift. One of the assistants idly remarked that he had only three days left on his shift.

“Lucky you,” the other assistant said.

“Yeah, so be easy with my catheter,” he joked, and even Dr. Wilson laughed.

Donald didn’t. He was busy wondering what the final shift would be like. Nobody seemed to think much past the next shift. They looked forward to one ending and dreaded seeing another. It reminded him of Washington, where everyone he worked alongside hoped to make it to the next term even as they loathed running for another. Donald had fallen into that same trap.

The lift doors opened on another chilled hall. Here were rooms full of shift workers, the majority of the silo’s population-in-waiting spread out across two identical levels. Dr. Wilson led them down the hall and coded them through the third door on the right. A hall of sleeping bodies angled off into the distance until it met the concrete skin of the silo. “Twenty down and four over,” he said, pointing.

They made their way to the pod. It was the first time Donald had seen this part of the procedure. He had helped put others under, but had never helped wake anyone up. Storing Victor’s body away was something altogether different. That had been a funeral.

The assistants busied themselves around the pod. Dr. Wilson knelt by the control panel, paused, glanced up at Donald, waiting.

“Right,” Donald said. He knelt and watched over the doctor’s shoulder.

“Most of the process is automated,” the doctor admitted sheepishly. “Frankly, they could replace me with a trained monkey and nobody would know the difference.” He glanced back at Donald as he keyed in his code and pressed a red button. “I’m like you, Shepherd. Only here in case something goes wrong.”

The doctor smiled. Donald didn’t.

“It’ll be a few minutes before the hatch pops.” He tapped the display. “The temperature here will get up to thirty-one Celsius. The bloodstream is getting an injection when this light is flashing.”

The light was flashing.

“An injection of what?” Donald asked.

“The good little doctors. This procedure would kill a normal human being, which I suppose is why it was outlawed.”

A normal human being. Donald wondered what the hell that made him. He lifted his palm and studied the red splotchiness. He remembered a glove tumbling down a hill.

“Twenty-eight,” Dr. Wilson said. “When it hits thirty, the lid will release. Now’s when I like to go ahead and dial the pod back down, rather than wait until the end. Just so I don’t forget.” He twisted the dial below the temp readout. “It doesn’t stop the process. It only runs one direction once it starts.”

“What if something goes wrong?” Donald asked.

Dr. Wilson frowned. “I told you. That’s why I’m here.”

“But what if something happened to you? Or you got called away?”

Dr. Wilson tugged his earlobe, thinking. “I would advise putting them back under until I could get to them.” He laughed. “Of course, the little doctors might just fix what’s wrong before I could. As long as you dial it back down, all you have to do is close the lid. But I don’t see how that could come up.”

Donald did. He watched the temperature tick up to twenty-nine. The two assistants prepped while they waited for the pod to open. One had a towel set aside along with the blanket and the paper gown. The medical kit sat in the wheelchair, the top open. Both men wore blue rubber gloves. One of them peeled off strips of tape and hung them from the handle of the wheelchair. A packet of gauze was preemptively torn open, the bitter drink given a vigorous shake.

“And my code will start the procedure?” Donald asked, thinking of anything he might be missing.