m_findlow

Summary: Holston wishes he could go back to before his wife began her questioning.

'I'm heading off shift,' Holston told his deputy Marnes. The man was too focused on the pile of reports in front of him to pay much attention to his boss. After all, if the sheriff said he was done for the day, then who was his deputy to argue?

As Holston exited his office, he passed the one tiny holding cell that adjoined it. He gave it a cursory glance, not because he expected to see someone in there, but more because there was no one in there. There hadn't been anyone there for ages. Not a single arrest of any sort, let alone one that might result in being sent out for cleaning. Five years since the last cleaning. That was supposed to be a good thing, but Holston could help but wonder when the next one might arrive. A peaceful silo was a good silo if you were the sheriff, but surely there must be someone down there. A hundred and forty four levels in the silo and not one person who'd earned themselves a trip to level one, a night in the sheriff's cell, followed by a cleaning.

He meandered past the level one canteen, seeing a handful of red overall-covered workers pausing for a late meal. Holton hadn't eaten since breakfast, but one look into the canteen put him off any thoughts of food. All he could see were the large digital screens encircling the walls of the canteen, displaying their images of the outside world. It was getting more and more grainy and black by the day. If someone didn't go out there and clean the sensors pretty soon, there'd be nothing left to look at. Just a black nothingness as the grit built up on the lenses, shutting them off from that last tiny glimpse of what the outside might have been like if only they could have ventured out there and seen it for themselves.

Holston's wife was out there somewhere, just near the horizon. When he watched the screens he imagined he could still see her out there. She'd gone out and cleaned the sensors of her own free will. No crime had been committed other than that of wanting to leave the silo. And so she had. He'd watched her along with hundreds of others go out there in her suit and wipe the sensors of their accumulated grime.

He read her body language and, even trapped inside the suit, he could tell she was happy. She'd always believed that the outside world wasn't toxic like IT had always insisted. She'd go out there and prove it. She'd cleaned, then wandered up towards the hill, just to see what lay on the other side, as if she were on a leisurely stroll, but she never made it. He watched with detached horror as she crumpled to the ground on that hillside and died. Even the best suits IT could devise were no match for how toxic it was out there. If that didn't prove it, nothing would, yet still people were sent for cleaning, and some, like his wife, went voluntarily. Not for ages now, but there must be someone soon.

He swiped his card and entered his quarters, making for the narrow bedroom. Over the last three years he'd gotten used to the smaller space, having given up the larger quarters allotted to married couples. He sat on the bed and reached into the drawer, pulling out a tiny square box. He tugged the lid gently off and stared into it, before poking the contents with his finger.

The gritty red sand felt strange against his skin. There was a certain guilt to touching it, rubbing the sand between his fingers carefully not to spill even a single grain. He shouldn't have it. It shouldn't even exist down here. Sand from outside the silo. That same sand that his wife had tread upon the day she'd died.
He'd stolen it from IT. Either it had swept into the airlock or IT had collected it from one of their test suits. He'd been down there for a meeting with IT's head Bernard when he spotted it and quickly pocketed the tiny sample. He was pretty sure they didn't know he had it. Even the sheriff wasn't above the law. It could have had him sent for a cleaning just for taking it. IT knew everything, but even they knew that there was no way anyone could live on the surface, outside the safety of the silo.

He raised the tiny box to his nose and inhaled. It was smokey and left a tang on the back of his tongue, transporting him to a time and a place before cleanings were needed; before even the silo was needed. Had there really been a time when they'd lived above the ground, able to breathe the air? His wife had believed they still could. Don't you wonder what lies beyond the hill? she'd asked him.

No. They'd been born inside the silo and that's where they were supposed to die. There was no fantastical world beyond the hill. The silo was simply all there'd ever been. What he really wanted was to have his wife back, how they'd been before she'd started questioning everything; before she asked to go outside and clean. These few grains of sand were all he had left, connecting him to those last few minutes of her life. The life she'd given up with him because she refused to believe what everyone else knew was fact. There was nothing out there.

He tipped the box upside down and watched the red grains slowly trickle out onto the floor. He wouldn't wonder anymore whether she'd been right or wrong about IT concealing what had really happened during the uprising. He'd go up there and demand to go outside and see it for himself. He'd go clean those sensors and then climb the hill to see what lay on the other side.