by Ann Christy
Six
Outside became so much better with someone to share it. Greg’s package expanded as soon as they pierced it as the air fluffed up the contents. Sheets of suit fabric from the big rolls, a pair of coveralls for each of them and woven sandals made her feel instantly better. A single pot and a host of dehydrated foods almost made her cry from happiness. Greg nervously started a fire coached by someone inside the silo. She gathered rocks for it while Greg gathered the plentiful dead wood, careful to stay only at the edge of the woods.
When it was done, they stood away from it, nervous about open flames after a lifetime of dreading them inside the silo. The crackling sounds and warmth worked to overcome their natural fear as the light faded and the temperature dropped. The light the fire provided, fed by a pile of dry branches as tall as Lillian’s knees, somehow made the night seem less frightening. Her nest had a makeover with the fabric and when she laid her head into the crook of Greg’s arm, her stomach full and all her needs taken care of, she decided the outside wasn’t so bad after all.
The work they needed to do, even if they were only going to stay for a while, was staggering. As a farmer, Greg knew how to do most of it and Lillian had a strong back and was willing to learn. Her favorite activity turned out to be one that Greg didn’t like, using the saw to shorten dead limbs. Greg’s face twisted in regret whenever she cut wood, even though he knew it was dead. Lillian felt bad, too, but the light of the fire in the dark was too good to remain upset about cutting wood that had already fallen.
Her face and back healed with remarkable speed. Greg had brought a small medical kit and he dutifully dotted her scabs with salve, but after a few days the edges of the scabs were already flaking off to expose bright pink scars. The red on her back faded with barely an itch. Within the silo, the medics were amazed at the speed of her recovery and questioned her closely on every aspect of her health. All she could tell them was that she felt great. It was true. She woke each day full of energy and went to bed each night tired and happy. Being with Greg out here may have had something to do with it, though he was careful not to encourage her when she looked at him with a certain gleam in her eyes.
The welcoming green light in the camera ball flickered out after a week. Greg pulled out the little camera without a ball and installed the batteries so that they could still be seen. The extra battery packs for the helmet kept them in communications until a few days later when they got no response from the silo. They dutifully kept checking, but it was another four days before a tiny voice beckoned them during a break. Leo had dropped the ball and was safely inside the silo.
They had enough food for a month of rehydrated stew, but no way to grow more. Greg found some things he recognized but it was early in the growing season and there was nothing to eat that he felt sure of. Aside from animals, that is. Rabbits and the horned creatures were plentiful, but they had no way to capture and process them. They ran whenever either of the people approached. Soon enough, they would either need to return or receive a re-supply. And there was no spare suit for her. Runner’s from previous years were being prepared for the trip and Lillian found herself excited about the prospect of more people, almost as if she were hosting guests at a party.
Before that happened, they were given one more directive to complete. The council wanted them to explore beyond their field, perhaps even map the border of the dead line. Greg nodded and asked smart questions as their instructions were relayed, but Lillian felt only the tightening of her stomach from nervousness. She was only just becoming adjusted to the idea of this field and she felt possessive of it in a strange way. The idea of going beyond it frightened her.
She helped Greg with the preparations automatically and he sensed her nervousness, patiently explaining and encouraging by turns. He used the frames from their suits as the foundation for packs. They weren’t comfortable, but they weren’t terrible either. Both had been shaped for their body shapes so fit wasn’t a problem. It was merely the weight of it that felt odd.
They set out after the sun fully rose on a beautiful morning that promised warmth. Lillian paused at their nest, now nothing more than a jumble of fading branches, and took Greg’s offered hand. They set off that way, camera ball swinging between them, into the unknown.
Epilogue – Six Months Later
The heat of a sweltering summer, though they didn’t truly understand the concept, was upon them before they discovered the Seed. At first, the group that found it assumed it was another silo, perhaps one inhabited by Others, and had run away as fast as their feet could carry them. It didn’t take long to understand what it truly was and they explored the contents with fascination and relief.
And they learned they weren’t the first. Inside there was a jumble of disorder where some of the stores had been rifled through and taken. Others found shreds of suit material threaded through bird nests or trapped by stones and worn into shreds. Debris had been scattered about the strange silo full of gear, some half buried and decayed away. Whoever had been here had come and gone long ago and had not been back in recent times.
Lillian picked up bit of suit glove, falling apart with age and exposure, and laid it over her own hand. It was so small it barely reached the first knuckles of her hand. A child. She looked back at the dust and wondered how a child could have braved that or gone as fast as they would have needed to. There was not much left of the glove for her to examine but it didn’t look that much different than her version. It must be better, though, if a child could brave it and survive. She gave a bitter laugh and dropped the glove. If figured that as hard as they had worked to get here, someone else had suits so well built that even a child could reach safety.
The others were methodically searching, piecing out what the silo meant, so she was left on her own to wander. Greg was with another group, putting up yet another building to house those who kept on joining them. Suddenly, the relative quiet was broken by a shrill squeal that wasn’t quite a scream and Zara came running out of the silo. She was carrying something in her arms and her face looked more excited than Lillian had ever seen her save the day she had arrived and climbed out of the water.
“What is it, Zara?” she hollered, running over to the woman who had become a fast friend.
Rather than answer the many curious looks, Zara held up what she cradled in her arms. Lillian recognized it instantly. It was a book exactly like the one they had in the silo. The one that covered all the wonders between Sh and St. She edged closer through the half dozen others in their group and tilted her head to read the spine. ‘Ca-Co’.
“Are there more?” she asked, her fingers itching to reach out and grab the book.
Zara nodded, her grin wide and infectious. Best as I can tell, all of them are there. Every letter in the alphabet on the tin boxes was there.” Her grin widened, if that was possible. “I checked.”
The implications were almost too much to take in. For so long it was just accepted that they would be left with only the knowledge they could glean from the single Legacy volume they had. But it was an understood and accepted loss that was now reversed. It was a gift beyond price.
Zara passed the book off to another of their group, who immediately plopped down and opened it up to a random page.
“Be careful with that,” Zara warned and received a solemn nod in return. Then she jerked her head toward Lillian so she would follow.
Once they were out of earshot Zara’s face turned serious. “There’s more than one copy of those books down there and the silo is full of enough stuff to basically build another silo out here. Except, well, above ground, I suppose. Everything we could possibly need to build a whole new life is down there.” She emphasized it with a finger pointed below their feet. “Machinery, farm stuff, electronics, you name it.”
Lillian turned around to look at the dust that seemed always to loom at her back then turned back to Zara. “If we want to live here next to that forever, we have what we need.”
“There is that
.”
“We aren’t the first ones here, Zara. I found part of a glove and it was fit for a child, not an adult.”
That took her aback and she gaped at Lillian like a fish. She looked around at all bits of litter that had survived and back at Lillian. “Another silo.”
Lillian nodded.
One Year Later
Finding the tracks was a turning point for them all. They led to a cluster of crumbling buildings and a field of things that must have been metal once, but were now only dangerous shards of rust amongst trees. Greg puzzled out the purpose of the tracks without success until they found the great heap of tilted metal bracing them near the buildings. Underneath it all there peeked wheels with deep indentations still resting on top of the tracks.
He poked and looked and ran back to their communications gear without a word, looking so excited he might have jumped out of his coveralls. She watched him race by, shrugged and leaned her bulky frame against Zara. Her belly was getting big fast and the medic they had out here said he thought it was probably twins. Either that or she was going to give birth to a toddler. Lillian would prefer twins if those were her choices.
When he returned, his face was aglow. He looked happy like that all the time, but this time it had an extra dimension. He sat down near her next to the fire where she lazily stirred a pot. She leaned over for a kiss and asked, “So, did you solve the problems of the whole world today?”
It was a joke between them, but instead of laughing and telling her he planned to tomorrow, he nodded and smiled. “One of them.”
She dropped the spoon, beautifully carved by Leo, and then scrambled to get it away from the glowing coals of the fire. “Really? What did those metal rails help you do?”
He turned to her, his hand on her belly. “It helped me remember something and that helped me figure out something else that might let us get everyone out of the silo. Everyone.” He threw his hands up in the air and shouted, “Everyone!”
She laughed at his joy and shushed him. “How?”
“Those rails reminded me of something I saw when I was young and took a tour of mining. They use these carts to bring things up from below and the carts ride on rails.” He motioned with his hands to mimic something riding along. “Do you see?”
She didn’t really, but that didn’t matter. As the days had grown longer they had also grown hotter and the water level in their little stream had dwindled. It was no deeper than her calf even at the deepest and that made it no good for bringing more people out. The last few to come out had reported the lake was also lower and the water murkier and harder to see through. The line laid out by two brave runners—or rather, swimmers—that everyone afterward used to pull themselves along hand over hand was now in water no more than a one or two feet deep.
Even if that route hadn’t dried up, literally, there was the ongoing and increasing problem of how to get everyone out. For a while, the silo sent people out so quickly they were hard pressed to be ready for them when they arrived. Groups of up to four came at once, pulling themselves slowly through the water to safety. Greg had even made trips back to bring empty air bottles, which were one of the resources limited inside the silo. It was safe, but only if the person could get to the water and then through it in the time the air bottles provided.
But not everyone could do that. A baby couldn’t make that trip any more than an old person could. And what of the animals and the plants? The trees that fed them couldn’t swim and were too big to carry, even if they were pruned to half dead before being dug up. If Greg had come up with a solution, then there were thousands of people and animals who would love him for it.
“I can see you’re about to burst, so explain it to me and leave out no detail.” Greg liked details and an invitation to indulge in them was his favorite thing.
“Ah, you are the perfect woman, aren’t you?” he quipped and kissed her nose and the fading remnants of her scars. As always, he looked at her eye and that distracted him for a moment. “It looks bluer today.”
Her white eye was healing along with her other scars but it was turning blue instead of returning to her normal amber. It was a strange pale color and she really didn’t like to see it when she saw her reflection in a helmet or water. It just wasn’t a color eyes should be. “You ask me every day! I don’t know but I think I’m seeing more. When I close my good eye, I used to just see fog, but now I can see shapes and tell if it is a person or a tree in front of me.”
He chucked her chin. “I think it looks sexy. Joe’s burns are healing fast, too. I think it must be something about the outside.” Joe, one of the last to come out, had not caught on to how much care was needed when tending a fire and his arm had been burned from wrist to elbow.
“Proof we were meant to be here, is what I say,” she answered. “Now, tell me all about your rail thingies.”
“If we take the rails from the mines and lay them outside—make more to go over the hills—then we can use the carts to bring people and animals and anything else we want outside. They won’t need suits, we can put a cap on the carts.” He paused, worrying at his lip and then said, “We should use suits anyway, just in case. Not the animals, of course.”
While he spoke, drawing the picture for her with his words and gestures, she started to see it. The old or young or infirm could be pushed along in the carts by those that were fit. But that was still too far to push a heavy load. “How would we push them?”
“That’s just it. They have motors that push them all by themselves, even when full of ore. We’d just have to figure out a way to keep the motor running in that mess over there.”
Lillian could picture it fully now. What she wouldn’t do for a glass of goat’s milk and a decent egg sandwich. And she’d been craving a bowl of olives so badly it almost made her toes curl. More than that, everyone and everything they loved could come out. No matter their age, their health or anything else, everyone could come. Everything that was good inside would be able to come outside into this new sort of goodness.
Lillian turned her head and looked out toward the territory they hadn’t yet explored, beyond the little huts of woven branches that were their temporary homes. There was so much she couldn’t imagine still to see. She rubbed the swell of her belly and thought about her babies. They would be born out here under the sun, in the fresh air. They would need to grow some, but it would happen with time. When the day finally came, then they could go further, beyond the sight of the dust and see what they could see. The world was waiting.
Table of Contents
Part One
The Race – Year One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Part Two
Race Year 89
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Part Three
The 89th Run
Greg
Lillian
Greg
Lillian
Greg
Lillian
Greg
Lillian
Greg
Part Four
Paradise or Something Like It
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Epilogue – Six Months Later
One Year Later
Thank You
Thank You
You have my sincerest thanks for reading my work
and I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please take the time to write a review on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be long, just 20 words. Without such reviews, those who publish direct to the reader would never have even the slimmest hope of reaching people. Plus, you can believe me when I tell you that without those nice words, there is no way I’d be able to force myself to muddle through and keep writing.
I love to hear from readers, even the ones who didn’t like something I did. Readers do change the way I write and what you say might even impact a future character. You never know. You can reach me via email at [email protected] or on Google+ under Ann Christy.
You can also give me a shout out on the series webpage at http://Silo49.blogspot.com. Go on, click it!
Is this the end? I don’t like to think of it ending, just starting in a new way. Might I pick up and show what happens long after? It’s possible. A tie in novella that delves into the story of Greg and Elizabeth the Other is in the works and will make an appearance sometime.
The next book I’m slated to get out is called Lulu 394, a science fiction adventure that involves cloning, self-replicating machines, space travel and all sorts of goodness. If you want to keep up with my work, go to the Silo 49 website and contact me to get on the release list. No spam, just a rare heads up on a new release and any giveaways I might do.
Until next time, Ann
Table of Contents
Part One
The Race – Year One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Part Two
Race Year 89
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
