ust (Silo, #3)(97)

“What’s your name?”

“Shaw.”

“Good work, Shaw.” Jimmy hurried to the stairwell and started down.

“I said up from here,” the boy said.

“I need to grab something,” Jimmy told him. “It’s not far.”

Shaw hurried after him. “Okay. And look, mister, I want you to know how hungry I was. But that I wasn’t going to eat the dog.”

Jimmy paused and allowed the boy to catch up. “I didn’t think you would,” he said.

Shaw nodded. “Just so Elise knows,” he said. “I want to make sure she knows I would never do that.”

“I’ll make sure she knows,” Jimmy said. “Now c’mon. Let’s hurry.”

Two levels down, Jimmy peeked inside a dark hallway; he played his flashlight across the walls, then turned guiltily to Shaw, who crowded behind him. “Went too far,” Jimmy admitted.

He turned and began climbing back up a level, frustrated with himself. So hard to remember where he put everything. Such a long time ago. He used to have mnemonics for recalling his stashes. He had hidden a rifle way up on level fifty-one. He remembered that because it took a hand to hold the rifle and another finger to pull the trigger. Five and one. That rifle was wrapped in a quilt and buried in the bottom of an old trunk. But he’d left one down here as well. He had carried it down to Supply a lifetime ago; it would’ve been the trip when he found Shadow. Hadn’t carried it all the way back up – not enough hands. One-eighteen. That was it. Not one-nineteen. He hurried up to the landing, his legs getting sore, and went inside the hallway he and Shaw had passed moments prior.

This was it. Apartments. He had left things in lots of them. Poop, mostly. He didn’t know you could go in the farms, right in the dirt. The kids taught him that late in life. Elise taught him. Jimmy thought of people doing something bad to Elise, and he remembered what he’d done to people when he was a boy. He’d been young when he’d taught himself to fire a rifle. He remembered the noise it made. He remembered what it did to empty soup cans and people. It made things jump and fall still. Third apartment down on the left.

“Hold this,” he told Shaw, stepping inside the apartment. He handed his flashlight to the boy, who kept it trained in the center of the room. Jimmy grabbed the metal dresser shoved against one wall and pulled it out a ways. Just like yesterday. Except for the thick dust on the top of the dresser. His old bootprints were gone. He climbed up to the top and pushed the ceiling panel up and to the side, asked for the flashlight. A rat squeaked and scattered as he shined the light in there. The black rifle was waiting on him. Jimmy took it down and blew the dust off.

????

Elise didn’t like her new clothes. They had taken her coveralls from her, saying the color was all wrong, and had wrapped her in a blanket that was sewn up the front and scratchy. She’d asked to leave several times, but Mr. Rash said she had to stay. There were rooms up and down the halls with old beds, and everything smelled awful, but there were people trying to clean it up and make it better. But Elise just wanted Puppy and Hannah and Solo. She was shown a room and was told it would be her new home, but Elise lived beyond the Wilds and never wanted to live anyplace else.

They took her back to the big room where she’d signed her name and had her sit on the bench some more. If she tried to go, Mr. Rash squeezed her wrist. When she cried, he squeezed even harder. They made her sit on a bench they called something else while a man read from a book. The man with the white robes and the bald patch had left, and a new man had taken his place to read from a book. There was a woman off to the side with two other men, and she didn’t look happy. A lot of people on the benches spent time watching this woman instead of the man reading.

Elise was both sleepy and restless. What she wanted to do was get away and nap somewhere else. And then the man was done reading, and he lifted the book up into the air, and everyone around her said the same thing, which was really strange, as if they all knew they were going to say it beforehand, and their voices were funny and hollow like they knew the words but didn’t know what they meant.

The man with the book waved the men and the woman up, and it seemed almost like they carried her. There were two tables pushed together back near the colored window with the light shining through it. The woman made a noise as they lifted her to the tables. She had a blanket on like Elise’s but bigger, making it easy for the men to expose her bare leg. The people on the benches strained to see better. Elise felt less sleepy than she had before. She whispered to Mr. Rash to find out what they were doing, and he told her to be quiet, not to talk.

The man with the book brought a knife out of his robes. It was long and flashed like a bright fish.

“Be ye fruitful and multiply,” he said. He faced the audience, and the woman moved about on the tables, but she couldn’t go anywhere. Elise wanted to tell them not to hold her wrists so tight.

“Behold,” the man said, reading from the book, “I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you.” And Elise wondered if they were going to plant something. And he went on and said, “Neither shall all flesh be cut off anymore. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the blade shall be seen in the cloud.”

He held the knife even higher, and the people on the benches mumbled something. Even a boy younger than Elise knew the words. His lips moved like the others’.