羊毛战记 Part 4 The Unraveling 44

　　44,　　Death’s pale flag is not advanced there.,　　The dirt farm below filled the stairwell with the rich smell of fresh rot. Juliette was still waking up asshe descended another level and began noticing the scent. She had no idea how long she’d slept—ithad felt like days but could’ve been hours. She had woken with her face pressed to the grating, apattern of red lines marking her cheek, and had gotten under way immediately. Her stomach wasgnawing at her, the odor from the farm hurrying her along. By twenty-eight, the pungency hung inthe air so thick it felt like she was swimming through the scents. It was the smell of death, shedecided. Of funerals. Of loamy soil turned over, releasing all those tangy molecules into the air.,　　She stopped on thirty—the hydroponic farms—and tried the doors. It was dark inside. There was asound down the hallway, the whir of a fan or a motor. It was a strange encounter, this small noise.,　　For over a day, she had heard nothing but the sounds she made herself. The green glow of theemergency lights was no company; it was like the heat of a dying body, of batteries draining with theleak of photons. But this was something moving, some sound beyond her own breathing and footfalls,and it lurked deep in the dark corridors of the hydroponic farms.,　　Once again, she left her only tool and defense behind as a doorstop to allow in a trickle of light.,　　There was no blinking light on the turnstile, and she had no card or chit to feed it. She placed herhands on the supports and vaulted over, this small act of defiance somehow powerful, as though shehad come to accept the lawlessness of this dead place, the complete lack of civilization, of rules.,　　The light spilling from the stairwell barely reached the first of the growing rooms. She waitedwhile her eyes adjusted, thankful for this ability honed by the down deep of Mechanical and the darkinteriors of broken machines. What she saw, barely, when she was finally able, did not inspire her.,　　The hydroponic gardens had rotted away. Thick stalks, like ropes, hung here and there from anetwork of suspended pipes. It gave her an idea of how long ago these farms had succumbed, if notthe silo. It hadn’t been hundreds of years, and it hadn’t been days. Even a window that wide felt likea treasure of information, the first clue toward an answer to this mysterious place.,　　She rapped one of the pipes with her knuckles and heard the solid thud of fullness.,　　No plants, but water! Her mouth seemed to dry out with just the prospect. Juliette leaned over therailing and into the growing room. She pressed her mouth to one of the holes in the top of a pipewhere the stalk of a plant should have been growing. She created a tight seal and sucked. The fluidthat met her tongue was brackish and foul—but wet. And the taste was not of anything chemical ortoxic, but stale organics. Dirt. It was only slightly more distasteful than the grease and oil she hadpractically been drenched in for two decades.,