Wool by Hugh Howey Read Free Book Online Page A

of needles. She always chose carefully, for proper gauge was critical. Too small a needle, and the knitting would prove difficult, the resulting sweater too tight and constricting. Too large a needle, on the other hand, would create a garment full of large holes. The knitting would remain loose. One would be able to see straight through it.
    Her choice made, the wooden bones removed from their leather wrist, Jahns reached for the large ball of cotton yarn. It was hard to believe, weighing that knot of twisted fibers, that her hands could make of it something ordered, something useful. She fished for the end of the yarn, dwelling on how things came to be. Right now, her sweater was little more than a tangle and a thought. Going back, it had once been bright fibers of cotton blooming in the dirt farms, pulled, cleaned, and twisted into long strands. Even further, and the very substance of the cotton plant itself could be traced to those souls who had been laid to rest in its soil, feeding the roots with their own leather while the air above baked under the full glory of powerful grow lights.
    Jahns shook her head at her own morbidity. The older she got, the quicker her mind went to death. Always, in the end, the thoughts of death.
    With practiced care, she looped the end of the yarn around the point of one needle and crafted a triangle-shaped web with her fingers. The tip of the needle danced through this triangle, casting the yarn on. This was her favorite part, casting on. She liked beginnings. The first row. Out of nothing comes something. Since her hands knew what to do, she was free to glance up and watch a gust of morning wind chase pockets of dust down the slope of the hill. The clouds were low and ominous today. They loomed like worried parents over these smaller darting eddies of windswept soil, which tumbled like laughing children, twirling and spilling, following the dips and valleys as they flowed toward a great crease where two hills collided to become one. Here, Jahns watched as the puffs of dust splashed against a pair of dead bodies, the frolicking twins of dirt evaporating into ghosts, solid playful children returning once more to dreams and scattered mist.
    Mayor Jahns settled back in her faded plastic chair and watched the fickle winds play across the forbidding world outside. Her hands worked the yarn into rows, requiring only occasional glances to keep her place. Often, the dust flew toward the silo’s sensors in sheets, each wave causing her to cringe as if a physical blow were about to land. This assault of blurring grime was difficult to watch at any time, but especially brutal the day after a cleaning. Each touch of dust on the clouding lenses was a violation, a dirty man touching something pure. Jahns remembered what that felt like. And sixty years later, she sometimes wondered if the misting of grime on those lenses, if the bodily sacrifice needed to keep them clean, wasn’t even more painful for her to abide.
    “Ma’am?”
    Mayor Jahns turned away from the sight of the dead hills cradling her recently deceased sheriff. She turned to find Deputy Marnes standing by her side.
    “Yes, Marnes?”
    “You asked for these.”
    Marnes placed three manila folders on the cafeteria table and slid them toward her through the scattered crumbs and juice stains of last night’s cleaning celebration. Jahns set her knitting aside and reluctantly reached for the folders. What she really wanted was to be left alone a little longer to watch rows of knots become something. She wanted to enjoy the peace and quiet of this unspoiled sunrise before the grime and the years dulled it, before the rest of the upper silo awoke, rubbed the sleep from their eyes and the stains from their consciences, and came up to crowd around her in their own plastic chairs and take it all in.
    But duty beckoned: she was mayor by choice, and the silo needed a sheriff. So Jahns put aside her own wants and desires and weighed the folders in