Read Wool for Free Online

by the actions of others. Better to go out, to see the world one time with his own eyes, than to be burned alive with the plastic curtains. Better to survive a few moments more.
    As soon as the opening was wide enough, Holston squeezed through, his suit catching and rubbing at the doors. There was a veil of fog all around him as the argon condensed in the less pressurized air. He stumbled forward blindly, pawing through the soft cloud.
    While he was still in that mist, the outer doors groaned and began closing. The klaxon howls behind were swallowed by the press of thick steel against thick steel, locking him and the toxins out while cleansing fires began to rage inside the airlock, destroying any contamination that had leaked its way inside.
    Holston found himself at the bottom of a concrete ramp, a ramp that led up . His time felt short—there was a constant reminder thrumming in the back of his skull— hurry! Hurry! His life was ticking away. He lumbered up the ramp, confused that he wasn’t already aboveground, so used as he was to seeing the world and the horizon from the cafeteria and lounge, which were on the same level as the airlock.
    He shuffled up the narrow ramp, walls of chipped concrete to either side, his visor full of a confusing, brilliant light. At the top of the ramp, Holston saw the heaven into which he’d been condemned for his simple sin of hope. He whirled around, scanning the horizon, his head dizzy from the sight of so much green!
    Green hills, green grass, green carpet beneath his feet. Holston whooped in his helmet. His mind buzzed with the sight. Hanging over all the green, there was the exact hue of blue from the children’s books, the white clouds untainted, the movement of living things flapping in the air.
    Holston turned around and around, taking it in. He had a sudden memory of his wife doing the same; he had watched her awkwardly, slowly turning, almost as if she were lost or confused or considering whether to do the cleaning at all.
    The cleaning!
    Holston reached down and pulled a wool pad from his chest. The cleaning! He knew, in a dizzying rush, a torrent of awareness, why, why. Why!
    He looked where he always assumed the tall circular wall of the uppermost silo floor would be, but of course that wall was buried. All that stood behind him was a small mound of concrete, a tower no more than eight or nine feet tall. A metal ladder ran up one side; antennae bristled from the top. And on the side facing him—on all the sides he saw as he approached—were the wide, curving, fish-eye lenses of the silo’s powerful cameras.
    Holston held out his wool and approached the first. He imagined the view of himself from inside the cafeteria, staggering forward, becoming impossibly large. He had watched his wife do the same thing three years ago. He remembered her waving, he had thought at the time for balance, but had she been telling him something? Had she been grinning like a fool, as wide as he was grinning now, while she remained hidden behind that silver visor? Had her heart been pounding with foolish hope while she sprayed, scrubbed, wiped, applied? Holston knew the cafeteria would be empty; there was no one left who loved him enough to watch, but he waved anyway. And for him, it wasn’t the raw anger he imagined many might have cleaned with. It wasn’t the knowledge that they in the silo were condemned and the condemned set free; it wasn’t the feeling of betrayal that guided the wool in his hand in small, circular motions. It was pity. It was raw pity and unconstrained joy.
    The world blurred, but in a good way, as tears came to Holston’s eyes. His wife had been right: the view from inside was a lie. The hills were the same—he’d recognize them at a glance after so many years of living with them—but the colors were all wrong. The screens inside the silo, the programs his wife had found, they somehow made the vibrant greens look gray, they somehow removed all signs of life.