Silo

Chapter 16

"That's impossible," Evan said, his eyes shifting between his map and my doorway as he looked for some secret, non-existent entry point. "The hatches are sealed, and the only tracks we saw topside were our own."

Meredith was cleaned up and settled into a stack of quilts on my mattress. She'd been staring at Evan and me for the better part of a half-hour, a glint of amusement in her eyes as we studied Evan's map. It was so foreign to see anything but fear and pain in her expression that she looked different, younger. I thought about asking her to explain the smirk, but she'd just started talking, and I wasn't about to risk her shutting down again.

Keith was still wandering around God knows where. I'd heard him slamming around in the supply room earlier, no doubt loading up on weapons. For some unknown reason, he'd decided this was his fight, not so poetically telling me and Evan to "stay the hell out of it". Fine by me; he could spend all night hunting these halls for all I cared. I'd rather sit here, meld my mind with Evan's, and figure out where our leak was.

Evan plucked his glasses from his face, fogged up his left lens with a puff of warm air, and then carefully rubbed them clean with his sweatshirt. His glasses trembled as he lifted them back to his mouth, breathed onto the fractured side, and repeated the process again.

"So you think we missed a tunnel, or a door, another hatch or something?" Evan asked, as he raked his hand through his hair and refocused on the map. "It's not like they're living down here with us. I mean, no way. They couldn't be. We would've noticed them. Right?"

Even I didn't want to entertain that thought. "I can't imagine they-" Meredith's laugh cut off my response, and I turned to meet her eyes, beyond happy to hear that sound and irritated as hell that she found this amusing. "What?"

"He thinks he's going crazy," she said, nodding her head in Evan's direction. "He's not. And his map is good, but mine is better."

Evan scowled, muttering his first curse word out loud since ... since ... well, since ever. He was definitely second guessing his drawing abilities, but crazy might have been a tad-bit harsh.

Meredith moved across the room, sifting through her ratty old clothes until she came up with her jeans. I watched as she rolled down the cuff, split the tacked in seam with her nail, and pulled out a piece of paper. It looked tiny at first glance, no bigger than a post-it note. But she carefully unfolded it, smoothing out each wrinkle until it was the size of a notebook page.

"Here," she said as she laid it in front of Evan. "This is how they're getting in."

Evan's jaw dropped when he saw what she had - a detailed schematic of our entire silo right down to furniture placement and light switches. This wasn't hand drawn or re-created from memory; it was computer generated, the measurements perfectly scaled.

"Where did you get this?" I asked as I picked the paper so I could better see the area she was pointing to.

"Better yet, why don't you tell me exactly how many times you've been in here with them?" Keith asked, announcing his presence.

I watched her fidget with her sleeve, fingering the fabric between her thumb and forefinger as her worried eyes settled on mine. She was nervous, and given what was at stake, she had every right to be. Keith's question may have sounded more like an interrogation than I wanted, but my mind was traveling that same uncomfortable path as his. Unfortunately for her, he'd just beat me to the punch.

"Answer him." I said.

The few seconds it took her to speak felt like an eternity, and I worried that perhaps I'd lose her again, that she'd draw back into herself and refuse to speak. "My dad ... he worked for the Department of Defense. He was supposed to keep the vacant silos in his territory secure, make sure no vandals got in or anything like that. He had detailed maps of them all," she said, pausing to stare at the one I still held in my hand. "The rest are still back at the other silo, but I don't need them. I spent hours every weekend with my father down here, snooping around and keeping him company."