Silo

Chapter 38

"Jake, you okay?" Meredith slid her hand into mine and tugged gently to bring me back from the daze I'd slipped into.

I nodded, choked out a yes, but it wasn't true. I'd been waiting for this moment for over thirty eight weeks, thirty eight damn weeks; but, in the space of the last ten seconds I'd begun to second guess my decision to come here. Part of me knew exactly what we would find, figured that everyone and everything I'd ever known had been leveled by the storm. But there was always that spot in my mind, that fraction of insanity that clung to the hope that I was wrong.

Sweeping the area, my eyes found nothing but more of the same. Charred buildings, busted out windows, and smoke tinged air that had me wishing for our silo again, for the safety and security of the place that may have been cold and dank, but at least it was safe. Instead, I'd dragged Meredith here, convinced Keith and Evan this was the only choice we had. Looking around the ruined, ashy pile that used to be my hometown, I realized we'd accomplished nothing. All we'd done was traded one corner of hell for another.

"Holy shit. This place is completely destroyed." Keith gestured toward the school, its windows nothing more than gaping black holes. Dropping his pack to the ground, he rubbed his shoulders, the pain of our past four days finally setting in.

Stopping at the long, t-shaped sidewalk that wound its way to the front doors of my high school, I stared up. The roof of the building was caving in, long since burned by the mess of power lines that probably fell on it when the storm hit. The field house was gone, literally gone. Nothing but a concrete floor marking where it once was. I didn't dare search for the baseball diamond. I caught a glimpse of the scoreboard on our way in - a twisted mangle of wires and shattered glass. No point in confirming the obvious - it was destroyed as well.

I thought back to what the school used to look like, remembered how we tried to avoid the power lines when we set off bottle rockets my Sophomore year. No doubt they'd become a tangle of electric snakes, dropping down and bursting into flames, all in the same thirty seconds our bus was crashing. I hoped everyone was gone by then, had left with the last bell and not stayed for extra-help. At least then they would have been at home with their families when the really bad stuff happened.

"Yup, nothing left," I said, following Keith's eyes to a window on the second floor. Room 114. That was my first period. The class I sat in every morning for an hour next to Tyler, chewing gum I wasn't supposed to have and planning weekends that neither of us appreciated enough.

Evan came up to my right and set his pack down by my feet. "You want to go in? Maybe there are kids in there hiding out . . . someone we used to know."

His eyes were excited, his expression so hopeful that I couldn't bear to tell him no, to tell him that he was completely insane if he thought we were going to find anybody alive in that pile of crumbling brick.

"Sure, we can check it out. There's got to be survivors somewhere, right?" I forced a smile to my face as I glanced at Meredith. She knew damn well what I was thinking; she'd seen it firsthand. Her entire town had been destroyed, looted, and left to rot. Doubt she expected much different here.

Pulling her closer to me, I approached the building. I shifted my pack onto my right shoulder and pulled my knife out, praying to any God that might be listening that we would come back through those double-doors alive.

Keith grasped the rusted-out handle of the front door. Giving it a hard tug, he fell backwards as it came loose in his hand. "Shit!" He yelled, tossing the useless metal aside and cradling his hand.

"Bleeding?" Evan asked, peering around Keith's shoulder to get a look at hand. He was already fumbling with his pack, a sure sign that he'd packed what little first-aid materials we had in addition to his impressive supply of belts and rope.