Juliette turned to the others and tapped her helmet with her palm. She pointed to the black birds gliding on the air. Her father lifted a hand and asked her to wait. He understood what she was about to do. He reached for the latches of his own helmet instead.
Juliette felt the same fear he must’ve felt at the thought of a loved one going first, but agreed to let him. Raph helped with her father’s latches, which were nearly impossible to work with the thick gloves. Finally, the dome clicked free. Her father’s eyes widened as he took an exploratory breath. He smiled, took another, deeper one, his chest swelling, his hand relaxing, the helmet falling from his fingers and tumbling into the grass.
A frenzy broke, people groping at one another’s collars. Juliette set her heavy pack down in the grass and helped Raph, who helped her in turn. When her helmet clicked free, it was the sounds she noticed first. It was the laughter from her father and Bobby, the happy squeals from the children. The smells came next, the odor of the farms and the hydroponic gardens, the scent of healthy soil turned up to claim its seed. And the light, as bright and warm as the grow lights but at a diffused distance, wrapping all around them, an emptiness above her that stretched out into forever, nothing above their heads but far clouds.
Suit collars clanged together with hugs. The groups behind were scurrying faster now, people falling and being helped up, flashes of teeth through domes, wet eyes and trails of tears down cheeks, forgotten bottles of oxygen dragging at the end of taut hoses, one body being carried.
Gloves and suits were torn at, and Juliette realized they’d never hoped for any of this. There were no knives strapped to their chests to cut away at their suits. No plan of ever leaving those silver tombs. They had left the silo in cleaning suits as all cleaners do, because a life cooped up becomes intolerable, and to stagger over a hill, even to death, becomes a great longing.
Bobby managed to tear his glove with his teeth and get a hand free. Fitz did the same. Everyone was laughing and sweating as they managed to work zippers and velcro at each other’s backs, shake arms loose, work heads out of ringed collars, tug strenuously at boots. Barefoot and in a colorful array of grimy undersuits, the children squirmed free and tumbled in the grass after one another. Elise set down her dog – which she’d kept pinned to her chest like her own child – and squealed as the animal disappeared in the tall green fronds. She scooped him up again. Shaw laughed and dug her book out of his suit.
Juliette reached down and ran her hands through the grass. It was like weeds from the farms, but bunched together in a solid carpet. She thought of the fruits and vegetables some had packed away inside their suits. It would be important to save the seeds. Already, she was thinking they might last more than the day. More than the week. Her soul soared at the prospect.
Raph grabbed her once he was free of his suit and kissed her on the cheek.
“What the hell?” Bobby roared, spinning in circles with his great arms out and palms up. “What the hell!”
Her father stepped beside her and pointed down the slope, into the basin. “Do you see that?” he asked.
Juliette shielded her eyes and peered into the middle of the depression. There was a mound of green. No, not a mound; a tower. A tower with no antennas but rather some silvery flat roof jutting up and half covered in vines. Tall grass obscured much of the concrete.
The ridge grew crowded with people and laughter, and the grass was soon covered with boots and silver skins. Juliette studied this concrete tower, knowing what they would find inside. Here was the seed of a new beginning. She lifted her bag, heavy with dynamite. She weighed their salvation.
63
“No more than what we need,” Juliette cautioned. She saw how the ground outside the concrete tower would soon be littered with more than they could carry. There was clothing and tools, canned food, vacuum-sealed plastic bags of labeled seeds – many of them from plants she’d never heard of. Elise had consulted her book and had pages for only a few of them. Scattered among the supplies were blocks of concrete and rubble from blowing the door open, a door that was designed to be opened from within.
Away from the tower, Solo and Walker wrestled with some kind of fabric enclosure and a set of poles, sorting out how it was supposed to prop itself up. They scratched their beards and debated. Juliette was amazed at how much better Walker was doing. He hadn’t wanted out of his suit at first, had stayed in until the oxygen bottle went dry. And then he’d come out in a gasping hurry.