part 1 holston

7

holston was a dozen paces up the hill, still marveling at the bright grass at his feet and the brilliant

sky above, when the first pang lurched in his stomach. it was a writhing cramp, something like

intense hunger. at first, he worried he was going too fast, first with the cleaning and now with his

impatient shuffling in that cumbersome suit. he didn’t want to take it off until he was over the hill,

out of sight, maintaining whatever illusion the walls in the cafeteria held. he focused on the tops of

the skyscrapers and resigned himself to slowing down, to calming down. one step at a time. years

and years of running up and down thirty flights of stairs should have made this nothing.

another cramp, stronger this time. holston winced and stopped walking, waiting for it to pass.

when did he eat last? not at all yesterday. stupid. when did he last use the bathroom? again, he

couldn’t remember. he might need to get the suit off earlier than he’d hoped. once the wave of

nausea passed, he took a few more steps, hoping to reach the top of the hill before the next bout of

pain. he only got another dozen steps in before it hit him, more severe this time, worse than anything

he’d ever felt. holston retched from the intensity of it, and now his dry stomach was a blessing. he

clutched his abdomen as his knees gave out in a shiver of weakness. he crashed to the ground and

groaned. his stomach was burning, his chest on fire. he managed to crawl forward a few feet, sweat

dripping from his forehead and splashing on the inside of his helmet. he saw sparks in his vision; the

entire world went bright white, several times, like lightning strikes. confused and senseless, he

crawled ever upward, moving laboriously, his startled mind still focused on his last clear goal:

cresting that hill.

again and again, his view shimmered, his visor letting in a solid bright light before it flickered

away. it became difficult to see. holston ran into something before him, and his arm folded, his

shoulder crashing to the ground. he blinked and gazed forward, up the hill, waiting for a clear sight

of what lay ahead, but saw only infrequent strobes of green grass.

and then his vision completely disappeared. all was black. holston clawed at his face, even as his

stomach tangled in a new torturous knot. there was a glow, a blinking in his vision, so he knew he

wasn’t blind. but the blinking seemed to be coming from inside his helmet. it was his visor that had

become suddenly blind, not him.

holston felt for the latches on the back of the helmet. he wondered if he’d used up all his air. was

he asphyxiating? being poisoned by his own exhalations? of course! why would they give him more

air than he needed for the cleaning? he fumbled for the latches with his bulky gloves. they weren’t

meant for this. the gloves were part of his suit, his suit a single piece zipped up twice at the back and

velcroed over. it wasn’t meant to come off, not without help. holston was going to die in it, poison

himself, choke on his own gases, and now he knew true fear of containment, a true sense of being

closed in. the silo was nothing to this as he scrambled for release, as he writhed in pain inside his

tailored coffin. he squirmed and pounded at the latches, but his padded fingers were too big. and the

blindness made it worse, made him feel smothered and trapped. holston retched again in pain. he

bent at the waist, hands spread in the dirt, and felt something sharp through his glove.

he fumbled for the object and found it: a jagged rock. a tool. holston tried to calm himself. his

years of enforcing calm, of soothing others, of bringing stability to chaos, came back to him. he

gripped the rock carefully, terrified of losing it to his blindness, and brought it up to his helmet. there

was a brief thought of cutting away his gloves with the rock, but he wasn’t sure his sanity or air

would last that long. he jabbed the point of the rock at his armored neck, right where the latch should

have been. he heard the crack as it landed. crack. crack. pausing to probe with his padded finger,

retching again, holston took more careful aim. there was a click instead of a crack. a sliver of light

intruded as one side of the helmet came free. holston was choking on his exhalations, on the stale

and used air around him. he moved the rock to his other hand and aimed for the second latch. two

more cracks before it landed, and the helmet popped free.

holston could see. his eyes burned from the effort, from not being able to breathe, but he could

see. he blinked the tears away and tried to suck in a deep, crisp, revitalizing lungful of blue air.

what he got instead was like a punch to the chest. holston gagged. he threw up spittle and

stomach acid, the very lining of him trying to flee. the world around him had gone brown. brown

grass and gray skies. no green. no blue. no life.

he collapsed to one side, landing on his shoulder. his helmet lay open before him, the visor black

and lifeless. there was no looking through the visor. holston reached for it, confused. the outside of

the visor was coated silver, the other side was nothing. no glass. a rough surface. wires leading in

and out of it. a display gone dark. dead pixels.

he threw up again. wiping his mouth feebly, looking down the hill, he saw the world with his

naked eyes as it was, as he’d always known it to be. desolate and bleak. he let go of the helmet,

dropping the lie he had carried out of the silo with him. he was dying. the toxins were eating him

from the inside. he blinked up at the black clouds overhead, roaming like beasts. he turned to see

how far he had gotten, how far it was to the crest of the hill, and he saw the thing he had stumbled

into while crawling. a boulder, sleeping. it hadn’t been there in his visor, hadn’t been a part of the lie

on that little screen, running one of the programs allison had discovered.

holston reached out and touched the object before him, the white suit flaking away like brittle

rock, and he could no longer support his head. he curled up in pain from the slow death overtaking

him, holding what remained of his wife, and thought, with his last agonizing breath, what this death

of his must look like to those who could see, this curling and dying in the black crack of a lifeless

brown hill, a rotting city standing silent and forlorn over him.

what would they see, anyone who had chosen to watch?