Silo

Chapter 39

Surprise! Your incessantly positive comments have worn us down :) We've decided to give you the ending of the book TODAY. We're so grateful for your kind comments and your excitement over the course of the last few months. We hope you enjoy the last few chapters and maybe you'll consider sharing our story with your Wattpad friends, posting the link to FB or tweeting about it. SILO will be entered into the Watty's and we'd love to see it do well!

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I was mid-way up my own front steps when Keith stopped me in my tracks, his tone so calm that it barely sounded like him. "You want me to go in first, take a look around?"

"No." I trusted Keith, knew he was trying to shield me from whatever was behind my warping front door; but the truth was I needed to see. If my family's bodies were in there, I wanted to be the one to pull them out, to give them a proper burial. And if I was wrong . . . if they were somehow alive, then I'd be damned if Keith's face was going to be the first one they saw.

Silently, I reached my hand out to Meredith, hoping she would come in with me, help me process whatever it was I was about to see. I hated dragging her in there. If that baseball bat I found in Tyler's silo was any indication, then she'd seen more than any of us. But I didn't want to go in alone, and I didn't want Evan or Keith there if I crumbled.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm right next to you." A reassuring smile formed on her face as she tossed my own words back at me. Keith had been right about her being stronger than she looked.

The front door gave way easily, its wood cracked and buckled beneath month's of ash and neglect. The tiles inside our entryway splintered under my boots, the shards pulling away from the grout that once held them in place. Motioning to Keith and Evan to check the basement, I made my way toward the kitchen, the one place my mother always loved. I kept my knife handy as I turned up my lantern to brighten the room, keeping Meredith a safe distance behind me.

The kitchen was in no better than the rest of the town, and any shred of hope I had gave way to the unwelcome truth. This town . . . my family had fared no better than the place we'd left.

The table where I'd done my homework on, hosted numerous card games, and eaten every meal on, was gone. The cabinet's doors had been ripped off, several of the barren, wood frames hanging from the wall, and the floor was caked with a tacky film. I refused to let my mind dissect the source; the brown sludge was tinged in red, the smell stale and putrid.

Exposed wires jutted from the ceiling where our old light fixture had hung and a line of soot ringed the entire area. It must have been terrifying to see every light in the house explode as the world was thrust into darkness. I hoped Mom wasn't alone. She didn't even like scary movies, and . . . well the solar storm was a real life nightmare. There was no way she could have handled it by herself.

"Shit," I whispered, eyeing the line of mold traveling down the seeping kitchen window to the floor.

"Looks like no one's been here for a while," Meredith said, lifting an empty can of soup from the floor. "You think they left town . . . went someplace safer?"

I couldn't imagine a place safer than this town. There was one movie theatre, two restaurants, and post office that doubled as the local coffee shop. If they fled from here, then things had really gone wrong.

"I don't know. I can't imagine where they'd go."

I made a quick sweep of the kitchen just to be sure there was nothing the looters had left behind before moving into the living room. More destruction. I shook my head as Meredith stumbled over the remnants of our couch, the cushions gone, the metal spring jutting through the flame-scorched fabric.