第一部分：出去

04

•现在•

霍斯顿坐在气闸室里的一条铁凳上。由于昨天晚上没睡，而且即将面对死亡，所以，他脑

海中一片空白，意识模糊。尼尔森跪在他面前，拿着一件白色防护衣要从他的脚开始套进去。

他是“镜头清洗实验室”的负责人。

“我们一直在研究接缝处的密封效果，现在我们用一种喷涂的材质，在防护衣外面加了第二

层保护。”尼尔森说，“这会帮你争取到更多时间，让你可以比从前的人撑得更久。”

这句话惊醒了霍斯顿。他忽然想起当年那一幕：看着他太太走出去清洗镜头。地堡最上面

那层楼有巨大的荧屏，可以看到外面世界的影像，然而，每当有人出去清洗镜头那一天，整层

楼会变得空荡荡的没半个人。那大概是因为地堡里的人不忍心看一个人怎么被送出去面对死

亡，不过，也有可能是因为他们只喜欢上来看漂亮的风景，可是却不想看到那风景背后必须付

出什么代价。然而，霍斯顿看过。毫无疑问，他一定会看。艾莉森的头盔前面是一片银色面

罩，不透明，看不见她的脸，而她身上穿着防护衣，看起来很臃肿，所以她拿着羊毛布擦镜头

的时候，根本看不出她的手臂很细瘦。不过，他认得她走路的模样，她的习惯动作。他看着她

慢条斯理地擦着镜头，擦得干干净净，然后往后退了一步，朝镜头看了最后一眼，跟他挥挥

手，然后就转身走开了。就像先前那些人一样，她踩着沉重的步伐，慢慢走向一座距离最近的

小沙丘，然后开始往上爬，慢慢走向远处地平线那高耸残破的高楼，那座废弃的古老城市。在

那过程中，霍斯顿一动也不动，目不转睛地看着她，一直到后来她终于倒在山坡上，两手紧紧

掐住头盔，浑身抽搐扭曲。空气中的毒酸一开始先侵蚀了外面的喷涂保护层，接着，里面的防

护衣也开始腐蚀，然后是她的身体。过程中，他一动也不动地看着。

“来，换脚。”

尼尔森拍拍他的脚踝。霍斯顿抬起脚，让这个技术员把防护衣拉到他的小腿上。霍斯顿看

着他的手，看着自己身上那套黑色的碳纤维贴身衣，脑海中开始浮现出一些画面，仿佛看得到

那件贴身衣在自己皮肤上渐渐溶解，仿佛发电机线路上那些干掉的油泥一样，渐渐龟裂、粉

碎、剥落。然后，他的毛细孔开始冒出鲜血，他的防护衣上开始汇聚一摊摊的血，而他的身体

已经不再有生命气息。

“抓住吊杆，站起来——”

尼尔森要陪他走完出去前的流程。这个流程，霍斯顿从前已经看过两次。第一次是在杰克•

布兰特被送出去的时候。那一次，杰克从头到尾都很凶悍，一直挑衅，而他身为保安官，不得

不站在铁凳旁边押着他。第二次是他太太。他全程看着她穿好防护衣，走出气闸室那小小的闸

门。霍斯顿看过别人进行流程，所以他知道自己该做什么，可是现在，他还是需要别人提醒

他。他的心思飘到很远的地方。他面前有一根从上面悬垂下来的吊杆，看起来有点像马戏团的

高空秋千。他抬起双手抓住那根吊杆，然后用力一拉，站起来。尼尔森抓住防护衣旁边，用力

往上拉，拉过霍斯顿的腰部，两条空荡荡的袖子在旁边摆荡。

“左手穿进来。”

霍斯顿愣愣地把手穿进去。从前他是旁观者，看别人进行这个例行公事走向死亡的过程，

而现在，他自己身在其中，忽然感到这一切看起来很虚幻，很不真实。从前，霍斯顿常常觉得

很奇怪，为什么他们肯乖乖听话完成动作。就拿杰克•布兰特来说，那个人满嘴脏话，连声咒

骂，可是却还是乖乖完成了所有的动作。至于艾莉森，整个过程，她都很安静，就像此刻的自

己。霍斯顿一手伸进袖子里，然后再伸进另一手，边穿边想这个问题。为什么他们都会变得这

么顺服？防护衣拉到胸口的时候，霍斯顿忽然想到，或许是因为他们都不相信眼前这一切是真

的，所以才会乖乖任人摆布。太虚幻了，所以根本连反抗的念头都没有了。他内心有野性凶悍

的一面，照理说，明知道出去就会死，他应该不会这么顺从，这么平静，这么迫不及待地走向

死亡。

“好了，转过来。”

他乖乖转过去。

他感觉到背后腰部有一个力量在拉扯，然后听到一阵“沙沙”声，拉链被往上拉到颈后。接

着又一次拉扯，另一条拉链也拉上了。双层保护，可惜都是白费功夫。接着，领口的魔鬼毡也

黏上了。尼尔森在他身上拍了几下，再检查一次防护衣穿着是否正确。然后，霍斯顿开始戴上

手套，这时候，他听到一阵“嘎吱”声，看到尼尔森把头盔从架子上拿下来，检查内部。

“来，我们再演练一次流程。”

“不用了。”霍斯顿淡淡地说。

尼尔森转头看看那扇衔接地堡的闸门。霍斯顿心里明白，里面有人在监督他们。“请多包

涵。”尼尔森说，“我必须按照手册的规定做。”

霍斯顿点点头，不过他心里明白，根本没有所谓的“手册”。地堡里有很多神秘的传统，都

是一代代口耳相传，不过，最神秘的莫过于负责制造防护衣和清洗镜头的部门。那个部门很像

某种秘密组织。那个部门的技术人员，在地堡里备受尊崇。尽管实际上出去清洗镜头的不是他

们，不过，要是没有他们，根本没有人有办法出去清洗镜头。地堡犹如一具令人窒息的棺材，

大家都需要外面世界的辽阔景观，而他们负责维护那种景观。

尼尔森把头盔放在铁凳上。“羊毛布放在这里。”他拍拍防护衣前面的口袋，里面塞了几条

羊毛布。

霍斯顿抽出一条羊毛布，仔细打量。羊毛布表面粗糙，蜷曲的羊毛纤维呈现出一种螺旋纹

路。他看了一会儿，然后塞回口袋里。

“记得，清洁剂要先喷两下，然后再用羊毛布擦镜头，擦完之后再用这条毛巾擦干，最后再

贴上防蚀膜。”防护衣上有好几个口袋，分别装着他提到的每一种东西。每个口袋颜色都不一

样，上面都有编号，而且标签贴得清清楚楚，文字上下颠倒，方便霍斯顿低头看。但尽管如

此，尼尔森还是逐一拍拍每个口袋，以示郑重。

霍斯顿点点头，然后看着尼尔森的眼睛。这是他第一次正眼看他。没想到，他发现尼尔森

眼中露出恐惧的神色。他干了一辈子保安官，看过太多那种恐惧的眼神。他本来想问尼尔森怎

么回事，但还没开口就忽然想到：这个人担心的是，刚刚交代了那么多，会不会是白费功夫，

因为，霍斯顿等一下走出去之后，说不定根本不肯去擦镜头。其实，全地堡的人都担心同样的

问题。地堡的人制定了这种法律，禁止大家梦想一个更美好的世界，导致他面对死亡，那么，

他又何必帮他们把镜头擦干净，让他们称心如意？不过，也有可能尼尔森担心的是这套昂贵的

防护衣会白白浪费。制造这种装备的机密技术，历史悠久，从暴动之前的年代流传至今，而且

非常昂贵。尼尔森和他的同事耗费了无数时间心力，好不容易才做出一套，然而，会不会就这

样白白被毒酸空气腐蚀掉，却得不到任何效果？

“穿起来感觉怎么样？”尼尔森问，“会不会太紧？”

霍斯顿转头看看气闸室四周。他本来想说，我的人生被地堡的墙壁包围，包得太紧，我的

灵魂被皮肉包围，包得太紧，紧得令人窒息。

然而，他终究没有说出口，只是摇摇头。

“我准备好了。”他喃喃嘀咕了一句。

这是真的。霍斯顿真的准备好了，他真的迫不及待准备好要出去了。

那一刹那他忽然想到，他太太当时一定也和他一样，真的准备好了，迫不及待。

Part 1 Holston 5

Part 1 Holston

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 was nearly rewarded by 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,” Connor 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 own death certificate.

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 fatal.

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 on to 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 no more than

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.

Once in the holding cell, Allison immediately calmed. She sat on the bench, no longer struggling

or blabbering, as if she’d only stopped by to rest and enjoy the view. Holston was now the writhing

wreck. He paced outside the bars and blubbered unanswered questions while Deputy Marnes and the

mayor handled his procedural work. The two of them were treating Holston and his wife both like

patients. And even as Holston’s mind spun with the horror of the past half hour, in the back of his

sheriff brain, where he was always alert for the rising tensions in the silo, he was dimly aware of the

shock and rumors trembling through walls of concrete and rebar. The enormous pent-up pressure of

the place was now hissing through the seams in whispers.

“Sweetheart, you’ve gotta talk to me,” he pleaded again and again. He stopped his pacing and

twisted the bars in his hands. Allison kept her back to him. She gazed at the wallscreen, at the brown

hills and gray sky and dark clouds. Now and then a hand came up to brush hair out of her face, but

otherwise she didn’t move or speak. Only when Holston’s key had gone into the lock, not long after

they had wrestled her in and shut the door, did she utter a single don’t that had convinced him to

remove it.

While he pleaded and she ignored, the machinations of the looming cleaning gyred through the

silo. Techs rumbled down the hallway as a suit was sized and readied. Cleaning tools were prepped in

the airlock. A canister hissed somewhere as argon was loaded into the flushing chambers. The

commotion of it sporadically rumbled past the holding cell where Holston stood gazing at his wife.

Chattering techs went dreadfully silent as they squeezed past; they didn’t even seem to breathe in his

presence.

Hours passed and Allison refused to talk—behavior that created its own stir in the silo. Holston

spent the entire day blubbering through the bars, his brain on fire with confusion and agony. It had

happened in a single moment, the destruction of all that he knew. He tried to wrap his brain around it

while Allison sat in the cell, gazing out at the dismal land, seemingly pleased with her far worse

status as a cleaner.

It was after dark when she finally spoke, after her last meal had been silently refused for the final

time, after the techs had finished in the airlock, closing the yellow door and retiring for a sleepless

night. It was after his deputy had gone for the night, patting Holston on the shoulder twice. What felt

like many hours after that, when Holston was near to passing out in fatigue from his crying and

hoarse remonstrations, long after the hazy sun had settled over the hills visible from the cafeteria and

lounge—the hills that hid the rest of that distant, crumbling city—in the near-dark left in the holding

cell, Allison whispered something almost inaudible: “It’s not real.”

That’s what Holston thought he heard. He stirred.

“Baby?” He gripped the bars and pulled himself up to his knees. “Honey,” he whispered, wiping

the crust from his cheeks.

She turned. It was like the sun changing its mind and rising back over the hills. That she’d

acknowledged him gave him hope. It choked him up, causing him to think this had all been a

sickness, a fever, something they could have Doc write up to excuse her for everything she’d uttered.

She’d never meant it. She was saved just by snapping out of it, and Holston was saved just by seeing

her turn to him.

“Nothing you see is real,” she said quietly. She seemed calm of body even as her craziness

continued, condemning her with forbidden words.

“Come talk to me,” Holston said. He waved her to the bars.

Allison shook her head. She patted the cot’s thin mattress beside her.

Holston checked the time. It was long past visiting hours. He could be sent to cleaning just for

doing what he was about to do.

The key went into the lock without hesitation.

A metallic click rang out impossibly loud.

Holston stepped inside with his wife and sat beside her. It killed him to not touch her, to not wrap

her up or drag her out to some safe place, back to their bed, where they could pretend it had all been a

bad dream.

But he didn’t dare move. He sat and twisted his hands together while she whispered:

“It doesn’t have to be real. Any of this. None of this.” She looked to the screen.

Holston leaned so close he could smell the dried sweat from the day’s struggle. “Baby, what’s

going on?”

Her hair stirred with the breath from his words. She reached out and rubbed the darkening display,

feeling the pixels.

“It could be morning right now and we’d never know. There could be people outside.” She turned

and looked at him. “They could be watching us,” she said with a sinister grin.

Holston held her gaze. She didn’t seem crazy at all, not like earlier. Her words were crazy, but she

didn’t seem to be. “Where did you get that idea?” he asked. He thought he knew, but he asked

anyway. “Did you find something on the hard drives?” He’d heard that she had run straight from her

lab toward the airlock, already barking her madness. Something had happened while she was at work.

“What did you find?”

“There’s more deleted than just from the uprising,” she whispered. “Of course there would be.

Everything is deleted. All the recent stuff, too.” She laughed. Her voice got suddenly loud and her

eyes lost focus. “E-mails you never sent me, I bet!”

“Honey.” Holston dared to reach for her hands, and she didn’t pull away. He held them. “What

did you find? Was it an e-mail? Who was it from?”

She shook her head. “No. I found the programs they use. The ones that make pictures on the

screens that look so real.” She looked back to the quickening dusk. “IT,” she said. “Eye. Tee.

They’re the ones. They know. It’s a secret that only they know.” She shook her head.

“What secret?” Holston couldn’t tell if this was nonsense or important. He only knew that she was

talking.

“But now I know. And you will too. I’ll come back for you, I swear. This’ll be different. We’ll

break the cycle, you and me. I’ll come back and we’ll go over that hill together.” She laughed. “If it’s

there,” she said loudly. “If that hill is there and it’s green, we’ll go over it together.”

She turned to him.

“There is no uprising, not really, there’s just a gradual leak. Just the people who know, who want

out.” She smiled. “They get to go out,” she said. “They get just what they ask for. I know why they

clean, why they say they won’t but why they do. I know. I know. And they never come back, they

wait and wait and wait, but I won’t. I’ll come right back. This’ll be different.”

Holston squeezed her hands. Tears were dripping off his cheeks. “Baby, why are you doing this?”

He felt like she wanted to explain herself now that the silo was dark and they were all alone.

“I know about the uprisings,” she said.

Holston nodded. “I know. You told me. There were others—”

“No.” Allison pulled away from him, but it was only to make space so she could look him in the

eyes. Hers were no longer wild, as before.

“Holston, I know why the uprisings took place. I know why.”

Allison bit her lower lip. Holston waited, his body tense.

“It was always over the doubt, the suspicion, that things weren’t as bad out there as they seemed.

You’ve felt that, right? That we could be anywhere, living a lie?”

Holston knew better than to answer, to even twitch. Broaching this subject led to cleaning. He sat

frozen and waited.

“It was probably the younger generations,” Allison said. “Every twenty years or so. They wanted

to push further, to explore, I think. Don’t you ever feel that urge? Didn’t you when you were

younger?” Her eyes lost focus. “Or maybe it was the couples, newly married, who were driven to

madness when they were told they couldn’t have kids in this damned limited world of ours. Maybe

they were willing to risk everything for that chance …”

Her eyes focused on something far away. Perhaps she was seeing that lottery ticket they had yet to

redeem and now never would. She looked back at Holston. He wondered if he could be sent to

cleaning even for his silence, for not yelling her down as she uttered every one of the great forbidden

words.

“It could even have been the elderly residents,” she said, “cooped up too long, no longer afraid in

their final years, maybe wanting to move out and make room for the others, for the few precious

grandchildren. Whoever it was, whoever, every uprising took place because of this doubt, this

feeling, that we’re in the bad place right here.” She looked around the cell.

“You can’t say that,” Holston whispered. “That’s the great offense—”

Allison nodded. “Expressing any desire to leave. Yes. The great offense. Don’t you see why? Why

is that so forbidden? Because all the uprisings started with that desire, that’s why.”

“You get what you ask for,” Holston recited, those words drilled into his head since youth. His

parents had warned him—their only precious child—never to want out of the silo. Never even to

think it. Don’t let it cross your mind. It was instant death, that thought, and it would be the

destruction of their one and only.

He looked back at his wife. He still didn’t understand her madness, this decision. So she had

found deleted programs that could make worlds on computer screens look real. What did that mean?

Why do this?

“Why?” he asked her. “Why do it this way? Why didn’t you come to me? There has to be a better

way to find out what’s going on. We could start by telling people what you’re finding on those drives

—”

“And be the ones who start the next great uprising?” Allison laughed. Some of the madness was

still there, or maybe it was just an intense frustration and boiling anger. Perhaps a great,

multigenerational betrayal had pushed her to the edge. “No thanks,” she said, her laughter subsiding.

“Damn them if they stay here. I’m only coming back for you.”

“You don’t come back from this,” Holston said angrily. “You think the banished are still out

there? You think they choose not to come back because they feel betrayed by us?”

“Why do you think they do the cleaning?” Allison asked. “Why do they pick up their wool and set

to work without hesitation?”

Holston sighed. He felt the anger in him draining away. “No one knows why,” he said.

“But why do you think?”

“We’ve talked about this,” he said. “How many times have we discussed this?” He was sure all

couples whispered their theories when they were alone. He looked past Allison as he remembered

those times. He looked to the wall and saw the moon’s position and read in it the night’s hour. Their

time was limited. His wife would be gone tomorrow. That simple thought came often, like lightning

from stormy clouds.

“Everyone has theories,” he said. “We’ve shared ours countless times. Let’s just—”

“But now you know something new,” Allison told him. She let go of his hand and brushed the

hair from her face. “You and I know something new, and now it all makes sense. It makes perfect