Silo

Chapter 5

I'm not sure why I did it, but I stuck that picture in my back pocket and carried it all the way back to our Silo. Now, I was sitting in the substitute room I carved out for myself, staring at this family. The dead man's family. My eyes had been locked on them for hours, the enormous golden crucifix hanging in the background a symbol of faith I'd lost long ago. Of a God who had been too cruel to have killed us already.  

The man's face was full, healthy, his right positioned around the waist of an attractive blonde-presumably his wife. I avoided looking downward, knowing that the bright, blue eyes of the little girl perched just below them would be my demise.  

Hazy memories of my girlfriend, Beth, flooded my mind as I ran the pad of my thumb over the photo. This girl had the exact same color hair, same bright smile, same spark of life I knew I'd never see again.  

The little girl stood in front of the dead man, her eyes tearing into my soul. Her blue sweater matched her eyes, and the elastic she had in her hair did little to tame the mess of brown curls. Beth and I had only been out three times, but I couldn't help but wonder if there would have been a fourth date, if I would've taken her to prom, if we would've... 

I shook off the thought as I shoved the picture between the pages of a chemistry book I found a few weeks ago-a stupid, useless reminder of my life before the accident. A life that no longer existed. I hadn't cried since the day the storm hit, and I'd be damned if I was going to start now.  

"That's not Beth," Evan said as he took the book from my hand and placed it inside my apple-crate bookcase.  

"You know I don't even know what the name of her dog was. She had this stupid, fluffy, drop-kick type of thing, and I never once asked what its name was." I said. 

Evan reached for my shoulder, squeezing it. "Does it matter? I mean it was just a dog." 

I laughed. He was right, in the grand scheme of things, who the hell cared about some dogs name anyway. But even I knew this wasn't about the dog. I was beginning to forget things, stupid little things like how my mom liked her coffee, or what I got on my last chemistry exam. Even the memories of my sister, Katie, were fading. The nuances of her face, the giggle in her voice, the way she annoyed the crap out of me...begging me to introduce her to Tyler. Those memories felt so surreal now, so inconceivable. Hunkered down inside these seeping, cement walls with the devil himself on our doorstep at every turn, I had no one but Evan to keep me from forgetting who I was. Who I still am. 

"You ever think of them?" 

"Who? Beth?" Evan asked. 

I shook my head. "No, your family." 

"I used to. At first, I wondered what our sisters were doing, how they've adjusted to life without school. Not anymore though. Don't really see the point," Evan said, and I nodded in agreement. Remembering your old life didn't put food in your mouth or keep you clothed. All it did was distract you from your daily fight for survival.  

Over the years, our sisters had become best friends. They didn't have much choice really. With the amount of forced babysitting hours Evan and I had imposed on us by our working parents, our sisters pretty much went where we did. 

"I wonder what Tyler would be doing right now," I said, rubbing my index finger across a callous on the palm of my hand. Our last weekend together, he dragged his brother Dustin, Katie, and me to the Cineplex, spent a fortune on a horror film marathon and enough candy to last us for weeks. I wished I could just rewind to that afternoon, replay it in slow motion.  

"Thinking about it isn't going to change anything, Jake. Just let it go," Evan said and I did, swore under my breath as I shook off those spotty memories 

With my mind free of the haunted hope of ever going home, my mind filled with images of that girl, the one we'd left broken and sitting in a pile of filth sixty feet below the ground.  

"What the hell have I done?" I asked, seeking no answer in response. For the second time since the storm, I'd turned my back on someone who needed me. First Tyler and now here. 

I reached out for one of my backup knives, my mind flashing to the one I left clutched in the girl's trembling grip. I'd seen a lot of injured people. Shit, I left that old guy to die on the side of the road yesterday, more concerned with getting supplies than wasting time on a man I knew for a fact I couldn't save. But, this girl was different. This girl had hijacked my mind, and that was starting to piss me off.  

"I can't get her eyes out of my head," I groaned. 

"What'd you expect? It's not like we've seen a girl in a while." 

"What?" I thought about the calendar Evan had scratched out on his bedroom wall, the crude rows of X's that signified the number of days we'd survived beneath the surface. My mind ticked back the months, wondering if he was right.  

Seven days after the storm, when Keith was finally strong enough to move, we crawled out of that sewage pipe and wandered around, dazed and terrified just like everybody else. There were men and women, entire families roaming the streets in packs, searching for food and information. But somewhere along the way, between the chaos ensuing above and us hunkering down in this pit of the earth, they all seemed to have vanished. Lately, the only people we saw topside were men...angry, vile men strapped down with weapons and struggling to survive like us. 

I could never have prepared myself for how foreign she looked, how small and defenseless her body seemed surrounded by the brutal darkness. I guess I'd always assumed the girls were hidden, kept safe and protected by their fathers and brothers. Until now.