Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

bleeding or broken. His head throbbed. His hand came away from his nose wet with blood.

“What happened?” he groaned.

Peter crouched by his side. Bernard saw Lukas standing just behind the sheriff, rifle on his shoulder, peering toward the stairwell. There was shouting in the distance, and then the patter of gunfire.

“We’ve got three men dead,” Peter said. “A few wounded. Sims led a half dozen into the stairwell. They got it a lot worse than us. A lot worse.”

Bernard nodded. He checked his ears, was surprised they weren’t bleeding as well. He dotted his sleeve with blood from his nose and patted Peter on the arm. He nodded over his shoulder. “Get Lukas,” he said.

Peter frowned but nodded. He spoke with Lukas, and the young man knelt by Bernard.

“Are you okay?” Lukas asked.

Bernard nodded. “Stupid,” he said. “Didn’t know they’d have guns. Should’ve guessed about the bombs.”

“Take it easy.”

He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have had you here. Dumb. Could have been us both—”

“Well it was neither of us, sir. We’ve got ‘em running down the stairwell. I think it’s over.”

Bernard patted his arm. “Get me to the server,” he said. “We’ll need to report this.”

Lukas nodded. He seemed to know just the server Bernard meant. He helped Bernard to his feet, an arm around his back, Peter Billings frowning as the two of them staggered down the smoky hallway together.

“Not good,” Bernard told Lukas, once they were away from the others.

“But we won, right?”

“Not yet. The damage won’t be contained here. Not today. You’ll have to stay below a while.” Bernard grimaced and tried to walk alone. “Can’t risk something happening to us both.”

Lukas seemed unhappy about this. He entered his code into the great door, pulled out his ID, wiped someone else’s blood off it and his hand, then swiped it through the reader.

“I understand,” he finally said.

Bernard knew he’d picked the right man. He left Lukas to close the heavy door while he made his way to the rearmost server. He staggered once and fell against number eight, catching himself and resting a moment until the wooziness went away. Lukas caught up before he got to the back of the room, was pulling his copy of the master key out of his coveralls.

Bernard rested against the wall while Lukas opened the server. He was still too shaken up to notice the flashing code on the server’s front panel. His ears were too full of a false ringing to notice the real one.

“What’s that mean?” Lukas asked. “That noise?”

Bernard looked at him quizzically.

“Fire alarm?” Lukas pointed up at the ceiling. Bernard finally heard it as well. He swam toward the back of the server as Lukas opened the last lock, pushed the young man out of the way.

What were the chances? Did they already know? Bernard’s life had become unhinged in two short days. He reached inside the cloth pouch, grabbed the headset, and pulled it over his tender ears. He pushed the jack into the slot labeled “1” and was surprised to hear a beep. The line was ringing. He was making a call.

He pulled the jack out hurriedly, canceling the call, and saw that the light above “1” wasn’t blinking. The light above “17” was.

Bernard felt the room spin. A dead silo was calling him. A survivor? After all these years? With access to the servers? His hand trembled as he guided the jack into the slot. Lukas was asking something behind him, but Bernard couldn’t hear anything through the headphones.

“Hello?” he croaked. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

“Hello,” a voice said.

Bernard adjusted his headphones. He waved for Lukas to shut the fuck up. His ears were still ringing, his nose bleeding into his mouth.

“Who is this?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” the voice said. “Is this who I think it is?”

“Who the fuck is this?” Bernard sputtered. “How do you have access to—?”

“You sent me out,” the voice said. “Is this Bernard? You sent me to die—”

Bernard slumped down, his legs numb. The cord on the headphones uncoiled and nearly pulled the cups from his head. He clutched the phones and fought to place this voice. Lukas was holding him by the armpits, keeping him from collapsing to his back.

“Are you there?” the voice asked. “Do you know who this is?”

“No,” he said. But he knew. It was impossible, but he knew.

“You sent me to die, you fuck.”

“You knew the rules—!” Bernard cried, yelling at a ghost. “You knew—!”

“Shut up and listen, Bernard. Just shut the fuck up and listen to me very carefully.”

Bernard waited. He could taste the copper of his own blood in his mouth.

“I’m coming for you. I’m coming home, and I’m coming to clean.”

•

“The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law.
Villain and he be many miles asunder.
And all these woes shall serve
for sweet discourses in our time to come.
He that is strucken blind cannot forget
the precious treasure of his eyesight lost.
One fire burns out another’s burning,
one pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish.”

— The Tragic Historye of Romeus and Juliet.

WOOL 5 — THE STRANDED

1

• Silo 18 •

Marck stumbled down the great stairway, his hand sliding against the cool railing, a rifle tucked under his arm, his boots slipping in blood. He could barely hear the screams all around him: the wails from the wounded as they were half-dragged down the steps, the horrified cries from the curious crowds on every landing who witnessed their passage, or the shouts of promised violence from the men chasing him and the rest of his mechanics from level to level.

The ringing in his ears drowned out most of the noise. It was the blast, the god-awful blast. Not the one that had peeled open the doors of IT—he had been ready for that one, had hunkered down with the rest. And it wasn’t the second bomb, the one Knox had lobbed deep into the heart of their enemy’s den. It was the last one, the one he didn’t see coming, the one that spilled from the hands of that small