Wool - Part One by Howey Hugh

Author:Howey, Hugh [Howey, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Publisher: Broad Reach
Published: 2011-07-29T21:00:00+00:00

5

Three Years Earlier

“I want to go out. I want to go out. Iwanttogoout.”

Holston arrived at the cafeteria in a sprint. His radio was still squawking, Deputy Marnes yelling something about Allison. Holston hadn’t even taken the time to respond, had just bolted up three flights of stairs toward the scene.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He swam through the crowd by the door and found his wife writhing on the cafeteria floor, held down by Connor and two other food staff employees. “Let her go!” He slapped their hands off his wife’s shins and nearly got one of her boots to his chin. “Settle down,” he said. He reached for her wrists, which were twisting this way and that to get out of the desperate grips of grown men. “Baby, what the hell is going on?”

“She was running for the airlock,” Conner said through grunts of exertion. Percy corralled her kicking feet, and Holston didn’t stop him. He saw now why three men were needed. He leaned close to Allison, making sure she saw him. Her eyes were wild, peeking through a curtain of disheveled hair.

“Allison, baby, you’ve gotta settle down.”

“I want to go out. I want to go out.”

Her voice had quieted, but the words kept tumbling out.

“Don’t say that,” Holston told her. Chills ran through his body at the sound of the grave utterances. He held her cheeks. “Baby, don’t say that!”

But some part of him knew, in a jolting flash, what it meant. He knew it was too late. The others had heard. Everyone had heard. His wife had signed her death certificate, and right before him. The room spun around Holston as he begged Allison to be quiet. It was like he had arrived at the scene of some horrible accident—some mishap in the machine shop—to find a person he loved wounded. Arrived to find them alive and kicking, but knowing at a glance that the injury was a mortal one.

Holston felt warm tears streak down his cheeks as he tried to wipe the hair from her face. Her eyes finally met his, stopped their fevered swirling and locked onto his with awareness. And for a moment, just a second, before he could wonder if she’d been drugged or abused in any way, a spark of calm clarity registered there, a flash of sanity, of cool calculation. And then it was blinked away and her eyes went wild again as she begged to be let out, over and over.

“Lift her up,” Holston said. His husband eyes swam behind tears while he allowed his dutiful, sheriff-self to intervene. There was nothing for it but to lock her up, even as he wanted nothing else but room enough to scream. “That way,” he told Connor, who had both hands under her twisting shoulders. He nodded toward his office and the holding cell beyond. Just past that, down at the end of the hall, the bright yellow paint on the great airlock door stood out, serene and menacing, silent and waiting.

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