Third Shift: Pact (Silo #2C)(32)

That seemed several ages ago. Eons. Lives weren’t supposed to drag on so long. But Donald remembered like it was yesterday the sound of Anna breathing that night. He remembered from their last shift, sharing a cot, her head on his chest as she slept. And then he heard her, right then in that moment as she took in one last sudden, trembling lungful. A gasp. Her body stiffened for a moment, and then cold and trembling fingernails sank into his shoulder. And Donald held her as that grip slowly relaxed, as Anna Thurman breathed her very last.





Silo 17



Year Seven





23


Something bad was happening with the cans. Jimmy couldn’t be sure at first. He had noticed little brown spots on a can of beets months ago and hadn’t thought anything of it. Now, there were more and more cans getting like that. And some of the contents tasted a little different, too. That part may’ve been his imagination, but he was for sure getting sick to his stomach more often, which was making the server room smell awful. He didn’t like getting anywhere near the poop corner—the flies were getting bad over there—which meant going number two farther and farther out. Eventually he would be going everywhere, and the flies didn’t carry his poop as fast as he made it. Especially not once he discovered that hidden cache of beef stew in the back of the soup shelves.

And so it was decided that he needed to go out. He hadn’t heard any activity in the halls of late, no one trying the door. But what had once felt like a prison now felt like the only safe place to be. And the idea of leaving, once desirable, now turned his insides to water. The sameness, the routines, were all he knew. Doing something different seemed insane.

He put it off for two days by making a Project out of preparing. He took his favorite rifle apart and oiled all the pieces before putting it back together. There was a box of lucky ammo where very few had failed or jammed during games of Kick the Can, so he emptied two clips and filled them with only these magic bullets. A spare set of coveralls was turned into a backpack by knotting the arms to the legs for loops and cinching up the neck. The zipper down the front made for a nice enclosure. He filled this with two cans of sausage, two of pineapple, and two of tomato juice. He didn’t think he’d be gone that long, but one never knew.

Patting his chest, he made sure he had his key around his neck. It never came off, but he habitually patted his chest anyway to make sure it was there. A purple bruise on his sternum hinted that he did this too often. A fork and a rusty screwdriver went in his breast pocket, the latter for jabbing open the cans. Jimmy really needed to find a can opener. That and batteries for his flashlight were the highest of priorities. The power had only gone out twice over the years, but both times had left him terrified of the dark. And checking to make sure his flashlight worked all the time tended to wear down the batteries.

Scratching his beard, he thought of what else. He didn’t have much water left in the cistern, but maybe he’d find some out there, so he threw in two empty bottles from years prior. These took some digging. He had to rummage behind the hill of empty cans in one corner of the storeroom, the flies pestering him and yelling at him to leave them alone.

“I see you, I see you,” he told them. “Buzz off.”

Jimmy laughed at his own joke.

In the kitchen, he grabbed the large knife, the one he hadn’t broken the tip off of. He put that in his pack as well. By the time he worked up his nerve to leave on the second day, he decided it was too late to get started. So he took his gun apart and oiled it up one more time and promised himself that he would leave in the morning.

Jimmy didn’t sleep well that night. He left the radio on in case there was any chatter, and the hissing made him dream of the air from the outside leaking in through the great steel door. The air hissed and hissed and filled his home with poison. He woke up more than once gasping for a breath and found it difficult to get back to sleep.

In the morning, he checked the cameras, but they were still broken. He wished he had the one of the hallway. All it showed was black. He told himself there was no one there. But soon, he would be. He was about to go outside. Outside. Was it okay to think that?

“It’s okay,” he told himself. He grabbed his rifle, which reeked of oil, and lifted his homemade pack, which he thought suddenly he could wear as clothes in a pinch, if he had to. He laughed some more and headed for the ladder.

“C’mon, c’mon,” he said, urging himself as he climbed up. He tried to whistle, was normally a very good whistler, but his mouth was too dry. He hummed, instead.

The pack and the gun were heavy. Dangling from the crook of his elbow, they made it difficult to unlock the hatch at the top of the ladder. But he finally managed. He stuck his head out and he paused to admire the gentle hum of the machines. Some of them made little clicking sounds as if their innards were busy. He’d taken most of the backs off over the years to peer inside and see if any contained secrets, but they all looked like the guts of the computers his dad used to build.

The stench of his own waste greeted him as he moved between the tall towers. That wasn’t how you were supposed to greet someone, he thought. His poop was rude. And the black boxes radiated an awful heat, which only made the smell worse.

He stood in front of the great steel door and hesitated. Jimmy’s world had been shrinking every day. It had been these two levels, the room with the black machines and the labyrinth beneath. And then he’d only been comfortable below. And then even the dark passageway and the tall ladder had frightened him. And soon it was the back room with all the beds and the storerooms with their funny smells, until the only place he felt safe was on his makeshift cot by the computer desk, the sound of the empty radio crackling in the background.