Silo

Chapter 24

We walked in silence for the first few miles, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I had a general idea of what Keith and Evan were thinking about-what the hell we were walking into and whether or not we'd make it back. I'd been plagued by my own second thoughts, wondering if we were just borrowing trouble. But I wasn't going to spend another day like yesterday, sitting...waiting, wasting away for nothing. 

Evan and Keith's silence didn't bother me. We'd become so comfortable with each other that we frequently went days without uttering a single word, only to pick up in the middle of our last conversation as if no time had passed. It was the lack of any sound from Meredith that worried me, had my footsteps slowing to a crawl and my energy draining like a slow leak. 

"You okay?" I asked, falling into step beside her. 

She nodded ... not a word. 

"If you're tired, we can stop." 

Again, she just shook her head. 

I placed a hand on her arm, drawing her to a stop. "Meredith, wait." 

She stopped and looked at me, waiting for me to say something. Problem was, I had nothing to say. I wasn't sorry for dragging her out here. I had no idea what to make of her looting my stuff, and I wasn't turning around. I couldn't control the damn sleet and freezing rain that had been spitting down on us for the past hour, and I had no extra clothes to keep her warm. I had nothing to say and even less to offer. 

"Talk to me," I finally said. 

She yanked her arm free and kept walking. "About what? I'm cold, and wet, and scared. Is that what you want to hear?" 

"Yes. No. Shit, I don't know!"  

"Well that's helpful," she fired back, 

She started walking again, not even waiting to see if I would follow. I hurried to catch up with her, racking my brain for something less idiotic to say. "I already told you; you're completely safe," was what I eventually settled on. 

She laughed so loud that Keith stopped, turned around, and gestured for us to shut up. "You don't get it. I'm not worried about me, Jake. I got nothing left to lose." 

Nothing left to lose. What did that mean? She had her whole life ahead of her. And she had me. With the exception of Keith and Evan, I lost my entire team on that bus. I was God knows how far from home with no clue how to get back, and I doubted my hometown had fared better than this dead place. But given all that, I'd never felt hopeless, never once felt like there wasn't anything worth waking up for in the morning. 

"What the hell did they do to you?"  

I hadn't meant to ask it out loud, but I did, and she turned to me, that spark of life...of hope I'd seen earlier in her eyes replaced with darkness. "Not they, Jake. He. And the better question would be what didn't he do?" 

Meredith didn't give me a chance to respond, just hurried off and fell into step beside Keith. I didn't bother her for the remaining four miles; I gave her the distance and space she needed. Eventually, when things calmed down and she was quiet and warm, I'd ask her to explain, give me details to go along with the story I had already pieced together in my mind. And maybe in time, I could erase some of those harsh memories for her. 

We slowed to a crawl for the last quarter mile. The gray sky that we'd set out in was quickly fading to black, adding a nasty mixture of freezing rain to the already slush-covered ground. It made it all but impossible to determine how many sets of tracks were headed in the direction of our silo.  

We came to the same clearing we had over a week ago, each of us dropping to our haunches as we sought cover in the tree line. I didn't need Keith's binoculars to see the tracks. There were dozens of them going in every direction, crisscrossing across the wet ground. Their silo had been active, the kids living down there obviously coming topside multiple times a day.