Wool by Hugh Howey EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Hugh Howey
- Language: English
- Formats: PDF / EPUB
- Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
- Price: Free
- File Size: 2 MB
- Publish Date: March 12, 2013
The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death; he could hear
them squealing as only happy children do. While they thundered about
frantically above, Holston took his time, each step methodical and ponderous,
as he wound his way around and around the spiral staircase, old boots ringing
out on metal treads.
The treads, like his father’s boots, showed signs of wear. Paint clung to
them in feeble chips, mostly in the corners and undersides, where they were
safe. Traffic elsewhere on the staircase sent dust shivering off in small
clouds. Holston could feel the vibrations in the railing, which was worn down
to the gleaming metal. That always amazed him: how centuries of bare palms
and shuffling feet could wear down solid steel. One molecule at a time, he
supposed. Each life might wear away a single layer, even as the silo wore
away that life.
Each step was slightly bowed from generations of traffic, the edge rounded
down like a pouting lip. In the center, there was almost no trace of the small
diamonds that once gave the treads their grip. Their absence could only be
inferred by the pattern to either side, the small pyramidal bumps rising from
the flat steel with their crisp edges and flecks of paint.
Holston lifted an old boot to an old step, pressed down, and did it again.
He lost himself in what the untold years had done, the ablation of molecules
and lives, layers and layers ground to fine dust. And he thought, not for the
first time, that neither life nor staircase had been meant for such an existence.
The tight confines of that long spiral, threading through the buried silo like a
straw in a glass, had not been built for such abuse. Like much of their
cylindrical home, it seemed to have been made for other purposes, for
functions long since forgotten. What was now used as a thoroughfare for
thousands of people, moving up and down in repetitious, daily cycles,
seemed more apt in Holston’s view to be used only in emergencies and
perhaps by dozens.
Another floor went by—a pie-shaped division of dormitories. As Holston
ascended the last few levels, the last steps of his life, the sounds of childlike
delight rained down even louder from above. This was the laughter of youth,
of souls who had not yet come to grips with where they lived, who did not yet
feel the press of the earth on all sides, who in their minds were not buried at
all, but alive. Alive and unworn, dripping happy sounds down the stairwell,
trills that were incongruous with Holston’s actions, his decision and
determination to die.
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