ust (Silo, #3)(52)
“I’m sorry about all of this,” Juliette told him.
The two of them walked in silence for a turn of the staircase.
“The people in the tunnel, I saw some of them taking what’s not theirs,” Jimmy said. “It was dark when they brought us over, but I saw people carrying pipe and equipment from my silo back to this one. Like it was the plan the whole time. But then you said we were going to rebuild my home. Not use it for spares.”
“I did. I do. I do mean to rebuild it. As soon as we get down there, I’ll talk to them. They aren’t taking spares.”
“So you didn’t tell them it was okay?”
“No. I … I may have told them it made sense to come get you and the kids, that the extra silo would mean certain … redundancies—”
“That’s what a spare is.”
“I’ll talk to them. I promise. Everything will be all right in the end.”
They walked in silence for a while.
“Yeah,” Solo finally said. “You keep saying that.”
Silo 1
30
Charlotte awoke in darkness, damp with sweat. Cold. The metal decking was cold. Her face was sore from it resting so long on the steel. She worked a half-dead arm from beneath her and rubbed her face, felt the marks there from the diamond plating.
The attack on Donny returned like a dimly remembered dream. She had curled up and waited. Had somehow held back her tears. And whether exhausted from the effort or terrified of moving, she had eventually succumbed to sleep.
She listened for footsteps or voices before cracking the tarp. It was pitch black outside. As black there as under the drone. Like a chick from a nest, she crawled out from beneath the metal bird, her joints stiff, a weight on her chest, a terrible solitude all around her.
Her worklight was somewhere beneath the tarp. She uncovered the drone and patted around, felt some tools, knocked over and noisily scattered a ratchet set. Remembering the drone’s headlamp, she felt inside an open access panel, found the test switch, and pressed it. A golden carpet was thrown out in front of the bird’s beak. It was enough to find her worklight.
She grabbed this and a large wrench as well. She was no longer safe. A mortar had flown into camp and had leveled a tent, had taken a bunkmate. Another could come whistling down at any time.
She aimed her flashlight toward the elevators, afraid of what they could disgorge without warning. In the silence, she could hear her heartbeat. Charlotte turned and headed for the conference room, for the last place she’d seen him.
There was no sign of struggle on the floor. Inside the conference room, the table was still scattered with notes. Maybe not as many as before. And the several bins scattered among the chairs were gone. Someone had done a poor job of cleaning up. Someone would be back.
Charlotte doused the lights and turned to go. Stepping through the place where he’d been attacked, she saw this time the splattered blood on the wall. She felt the sobs she’d wrestled down before falling asleep rise up to seize her throat, constricting it, wondered if her brother was still alive. She could see the man with the white hair standing there, kicking and kicking, an unholy rage in him. And now she had no one. She hurried through the dark warehouse toward the glowing drone. Pulled from sleep, shown a frightening world, and now she’d been left alone.
The light from the drone’s beak spilled across the floor and illuminated a door.
Not quite alone.
Charlotte gathered her wits. She reached into the access panel and turned the drone’s headlamp off. She carefully rearranged the tarp. It would no longer do to leave things amiss – she must always assume she might have visitors. With her worklight bobbing, she made for the door, stopped, went back for her tool bag. The drone was now a distant priority. With her tools and light, she hurried past the barracks and to the end of the hall, into the flight room. The workbench on the far wall held a radio pieced together over the weeks. It worked. She and her brother had listened to the chatter from distant worlds. Maybe there was a way to make it transmit. She pawed through the spare parts he had left for her, searching. If nothing else, she could listen. Maybe she could find out what they’d done to him. Maybe she could hear from him – or reach out to another soul.
31
With every cough, Donald’s ribs exploded into a thousand splinters. This shrapnel pierced his lungs and his heart and sent a tidal wave up his spinal column. He was convinced this was taking place inside his body, these bombs of bone and nerve. Already, he missed the simple torture of burning lungs and searing throat. His bruised and cracked ribs now made a mockery of old torments. Yesterday’s misery had become nostalgic fondness.
He lay on his cot, bleeding and bruised, having given up on escape. The door was sound, and the space above the ceiling panels led nowhere. He didn’t think he was on the admin levels. Maybe Security. Perhaps residential. Or someplace he wasn’t familiar with. The hallway outside remained eerily quiet. It could be the middle of the night. Banging on the door was brutal on his aching ribs, and shouting hurt his throat. But the worst pain was imagining what he’d dragged his sister into, what would become of her. When the guards or Thurman came back, he should tell them she was down there, beg for them to be merciful. She had been like a daughter to Thurman, and Donald was the only one to blame for waking her up. Thurman would see that. He would put her back under where she might sleep until the end came for them all. It would be for the best.