The Narrows(110)

When she pulled her face away from his chest, she looked over toward the burning silo. The rain was reduced to a fine mist now and the fire burned the entire base of the silo so that it looked like a rocket about to blast off into space.

“I didn’t see him in there,” she said in a small voice.

“He wasn’t,” Ben said, knowing she was talking about her brother.

“Do you—” she began, and that was when a low moan escaped the confines of the burning structure. Brandy whimpered softly and clung to Ben, fearful that he might run and leave her there by herself.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her. “I need your help.”

She nodded numbly but she wasn’t looking at him and he didn’t think she truly heard him.

“Brandy! I need you!”

She jerked her head back in his direction. Her eyes were wide, lucid. “Yes. Whatever it is…”

“Unless it dies from smoke inhalation or the fire itself, it’s going to try to get out,” he told her, already digging in his pants pockets for more slugs. “I’m going to keep an eye on the door. I’ll shoot it if it tries to come out. I need you to go to the other side of the silo and make sure it doesn’t get out another way.”

She nodded but he wasn’t sure she was getting it all. He gripped her forearm in one tight fist. “Honey, do you hear what I’m saying?”

She blinked. Rainwater cascaded in torrents down her face. “Yes,” she said. “You want me to go around to the other side in case it tries to escape from there.”

“Very good. Now go!”

She ran, steadier than he would have thought possible at the moment.

Ben turned and crouched in the cold mud, facing the closed door of the silo. The flames had blackened the wood around the base but the storm was keeping it from burning out of control. He proceeded to reload the shotgun, filing the shells systematically into the body of the gun while keeping his eyes trained on the silo’s door. He supposed he had struck it with at least one blast from the shotgun as it descended the throat of the silo, but if it had done any damage, he couldn’t tell.

This is where we die, he thought with bitter finality. We die now.

Something slammed against the other side of the silo’s door. Ben could hear it like a cannon blast and he could see the door itself rattle in its frame. Fiery bits of sheathing rained down as a second strike shook the entire structure.

This is where—

And then the silo collapsed.

11



The bottom of the structure gave out first, the old wood—coupled with the guano as an accelerant—consumed by the fire despite the soft patter of rain. The silo appeared to telescope straight down at first, releasing a noxious black cloud from its base that rose up like a death shroud to cover the entire structure. Rows of staves blew outward in a shower of splintered wood, iron rivets, and steel bands. As it did so, great scores of bats burst forth and whirled up into the atmosphere in a dizzying black flurry, their numbers so great they temporarily darkened the sky. Their shrill cries, unified in an orchestra of hackle-raising discord, resonated in Ben’s molars like fingers down a chalkboard.

Then the silo canted to one side, the remaining staves coming apart as the flames licked up from the foundation. The cupola collapsed in on itself and a mushroom cloud of black smoke billowed out of the hole at the top like the smokestack of a steamship. The silo then appeared to sway like a house of cards before the whole thing came crashing down. It struck the earth in a belch of black smoke and fire.



12



It seemed to take forever for the fall to end. Debris rained down. Dead bats missiled earthward from the sky and exploded in shallow, muddy puddles. Circular bands of iron struck the ground and rolled like hula hoops until their momentum ceased. Filaments glided and wafted and slowly fell.

Trembling, Ben stood on quaking knees, his entire body shaking so horribly that he did not trust his finger resting on the trigger of the shotgun. Only vaguely was he aware of Brandy running back toward him through the commotion, his eyes locked on the fallen structure, as bits of wood still showered the ground. The air itself was acrid with the stench of smoke.

Brandy arrived at his side, breathing heavily. “Is it dead?”

Ben tightened his grip on the shotgun. “I’m going to find out.”

He tramped across the sodden earth until he arrived at the wreckage. Brandy was a step or two behind him. She said, “Look,” and pointed at the wreckage—at the steaming, buckled boards and the whitish smoke that corkscrewed up from them. Dead bats littered the ground and some flapped their mangled wings futilely while drowning in puddles of mud.

“What?” Ben asked…but then he saw what had attracted Brandy’s attention—a section of boards bucked and heaved. There was something underneath struggling to liberate itself. “Stay here,” he instructed.

The smoke-scarred boards were unstable beneath his feet. He trod upon them with the discipline and heed of a tightrope walker, avoiding the sections of wood that still burned or looked weak enough to surrender beneath him and cause him to break an ankle. The stench that engulfed him was one of burning wood, shit, and hair…with an underlying medicinal odor. Ben stepped atop the charred boards and walked to the place where the boards bucked. The wood here was shattered and splintered and blackened, like the remains of a house fire, and the thing that moved beneath this sharp and indelicate shrapnel did so with the lassitude and fast-fading resolve of a deer fatally wounded after being struck by a car on the highway.