Wool

In present time, Holston looks back on the three years since Allison went to cleaning, which he spent grieving, going through her computer files until he was “half mad” (31) and considering going out to cleaning himself.

Holston goes into the airlock chamber, which will shortly be engulfed in a cleansing fire, and leaves the silo. He walks up a ramp outside its exit. At the top, he sees a lush “heaven” (33) of green hills and bright blue sky instead of the toxic wasteland he was led to expect. Excited, he goes to clean the cameras and realizes why the other cleaners have gone through with the cleaning—pity for those left behind in the silo. Holston keeps his helmet on because he saw the other cleaners before him do so. He decides they are keeping the secret of the alive outside world.

Holston is walking up the hill when he starts to feel cramps in his stomach. The pain worsens, and he collapses to the ground, retching. His vision starts to blink and then goes black. Holston realizes that it is not his vision but the visor of his helmet that has gone black. Feeling that his own exhalations are asphyxiating him, he cracks the latch of the helmet open with a sharp rock he finds on the ground.

When he takes the helmet off, he sees “brown grass and gray skies” (38). The earth is as desolate as it appears on the screens in the silo. Holston reaches for the helmet and sees that the visor is not glass, but a display screen. He vomits. Next to him, he sees that what he thought was a boulder but is actually the body of his wife Allison. He collapses next to her and wonders what his death looks like to anyone who might be watching in the silo.