by Bobby Adair
I pointed in the general direction of the ladder. “Infected.”
They all understood. Infected was the name floating around in the media when everything was going to shit. I suppose we all had slang we developed along the way, but infected was our common word.
“Have you guys seen these naked ones before?” I asked.
“They’ve been ‘round fer ‘bout a week,” said Bill. “We can see fer a good ways up here.” He pointed to something I couldn’t see on the dark horizon. “Got some outposts, too. Them nekked ‘fecteds been running ‘round in bunches, killin’ cattle, ransacking houses. A big mess of ‘em moved out yonder a few days back.”
By the time he finished, I felt like I’d heard about twice as many words as I needed to get the point, but that was Billy’s way, or so I figured. I said, “They’re oddly intelligent, more so than most infected. In the group, they’ve got some pretty smart ones mixed in, just as smart as you and me.”
Billy held his white-skinned hand up next to mine. “Like us?”
I nodded, changed my mind, and then shook my head. “Kind of. But when these guys got the disease, lost their pigment, and kept their intellectual capacities, they lost any sense of humanity, I guess. They’re like the criminally insane.”
Isaac asked, “What ‘er you gittin’ at?”
“They work together, like ants,” I told him. “They figure shit out in a hurry.”
Billy’s face looked skeptical. He turned to where Holly was peeking through her little door to view the ladder again. “The shield?” Billy asked.
“I’m guessing you haven’t had any try to climb up with a shield yet,” I said.
“Them bowling balls roll through that pipe, right nice,” said Billy. “Later, we go down, pick ‘em up and reuse ‘em. Been all we needed.”
“Pretty much,” Isaac added, laying a hand on a long-barreled rifle strapped across his back. “Pretty much.”
I pointed at the barrels of diesel. “What about that?”
“Last resort,” said Billy. “We ain’t had to use it yet.”
“They’re more than halfway up,” announced Holly, in high-pitched, quick words.
Billy looked at Isaac and cocked his head at the diesel. “Can’t see’s we got a choice.”
Isaac shook his head and then bounded over to the drums. “Travis, give me a hand.”
“What’s the risk?” I asked Billy, understanding he had reservations about putting the Whites to the flame.
“Couple,” said Billy, walking quickly over to the wall. He tapped Holly on the shoulder. “Ya mind?”
Holly stepped aside. Billy took off his cowboy hat and took a look through the hole in the wall. He pulled his head back, shaking it. He looked at me. “If we drop the diesel on ‘em, light ‘em up, this silo will look like a Roman candle for ten miles in every direction.” He looked around at the night. “Every infected with an eyeball left ‘ll see it. They’ll come.”
“Might come,” I corrected.
Billy shook his head. “Maybe ‘nough thangs burned up in the city that them infecteds you got over there ignore it. Out here, fire draws ‘em like nothing else. Unless you was down there hollerin’ at ‘em, I s’pose.”
“What about the grain?” Holly asked. “We talked about that last time.”
“We almost used the fire once before,” Billy told me. “Before we thought to get them bowlin’ balls.”
“And?” I asked.
“Ended up shooting a bunch of ‘em,” said Billy. “They fell off the ladder. The ones at the bottom, well, they ate the dead ones. You seen ‘em do that?”
I nodded.
“Stayed down there a couple days, I guess,” he said. “Then one morning, the sun come up and they was gone. Nothing but bones left down there.”
“The grain,” Holly reminded us.
Shaking my head, I said, “I’m not following. What’s the grain got to do with anything?”
Billy stomped his foot on the concrete roof. “This one’s about half full of dried corn kernel. They’ll burn. Hell, they’ll burn for a month maybe, probably even blow up if the gases inside mix up just right.”
“What?” I didn’t believe it. Grain, blowing up.
“It ain’t uncommon,” said Billy. “If we torch them ‘fecteds comin’ up the side, I don’t think the fire ‘ll burn hot enough to warm the concrete walls of the silo enough to catch the grain inside on fire, but you never know.”
Isaac called over, “I don’t see’s we got a choice on this one, Billy.” He pointed a bony finger at me. “If it’s like he says, and they smarter than most ‘fecteds, we can’t take a chance on them gittin’ up here. They already using a damn shield.”
“No.” Billy shook his head as he peeked out the window again. “No, we haven’t.” He stood back up and looked me in the eye. “You sure ‘bout this?”
“I’m sure they’re a lot smarter than any you’ve dealt with yet,” I told him. “They’re a lot more dangerous. I could tell you a hundred stories to make you a believer, but you know as well as I do that we don’t have time. You gotta make the call, buddy, or let me know if you’ve got a secret escape hatch, because we may need to get out in a hurry.”
That created a silence that seemed weird. Not because I thought I frightened them, but because I felt like they were choosing to keep something from me.
That was worrisome. I didn’t want to distrust my new friends.
Billy looked at his boots for a long, awkward time, while the others kept quiet. He looked up and drilled me with his bright blue eyes. “We got a way out. Maybe. But we’ll use it as a last resort.” He stomped his boot on the concrete again. “If this thang catches fire, it won’t all happen at once. We’ll have plenty of time to get through the wall, pack up, and leave. These things don’t happen like in the movies—”
I laughed.
“What’s funny?” Billy asked.
“Nothing,” I said, as I shook my head. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that. I mean, now that I have to live in the real world.”
Billy nodded and smiled. “Anyways, this thang won’t blow up all of a sudden. Hell, it might not even do that. All I can tell you is, if it starts to burn, the other silos eventually will, too. We’ll have plenty of time. Days, weeks. Hell, maybe months.”
“Ya’ll need to stop yackin’ and do somethin’,” Holly told us.
“Yes ma’am,” said Billy.
Travis brought the first two Molotov cocktails over. One was a mayonnaise jar, the other a pickle jar, each containing about a quart of diesel.
“If we’re doin’ this, we need to do it now,” said Holly. “They’ll be here ‘fore you know it.”
“You tossin’?” Billy asked.
Holly unlatched and swung the larger of the two metal doors open. She picked up the mayonnaise jar and held it out to Billy, who already had a lighter with a flame on it.
I took a quick glance through the door. The Whites were less than twenty feet down. The one on top held a roughly circular piece of metal over his head. Holly nudged me over, singeing my eyebrows as she brought the burning Molotov through the door. She leaned out. She aimed.
I put a hand on her shoulder to bring her to a stop. “If you drop it right on top of that shield, I’m afraid it all might splash out to the sides, and not burn any of them off the ladder.”
She huffed, looked down again, turned to me, and said, “Yup.” She leaned way out into the ladder cage and tossed the jar. “Give me another!” she shouted. It fell as she came back through the hole.
The flaming Molotov hit the ladder just above the White carrying the shield. Because of the angle at which Holly threw it, the diesel splattered down the side of the silo as it burst into flames. Smoke and heat rose up. Whites screamed. The guy with the shield kept coming.
“Higher,” I said to Holly, as she got the next flaming jar of fuel from Bill. “Hit the rungs above him. Make him have to climb into the fire.”
Ho
lly leaned out, threw, and pulled herself quickly back inside to get another firebomb.
I peeked out.
The pickle jar burst on the ladder four rungs above the lead climber and just a dozen feet below us. Diesel spread down the wall and onto the shield. Everything burst into flames.
Billy shouted, “Ain’t got nothing to lose. The ladder’s already burnin’ with diesel stuck to it.” A second later, more Molotovs dropped off the silo and into the mob of Whites crowded near the ladder, waiting their turn to go up.
The climber with the metal shield seemed to have stopped. Holly leaned out, looked down, then at me, “Where do you want this one?”
“Same place as before,” I guessed, having no better answer with which to fulfill my new role as Chief Targeting Officer. “On the rungs, just above him. Keep it on fire.”
Holy shit, she hit the same spot. Damn, she had a talent for it.
The shield fell away and apparently the White holding it did, too. Through all the fire and rising heat, it was hard to tell.
Suddenly excited, Holly announced to everyone, “The ladder is clear.” She looked at me for confirmation.
I nodded. “I think it worked.”
“Close it up?” She asked of anyone willing to answer.
At the side of the steel wall, Travis looked down at the ladder. He had a better angle to see the length of it. “They’re all off, fer sure.” He tossed another Molotov into a crowd of Whites on the ground at the bottom.
Billy looked at Holly, then Isaac, “Y’all keep an eye on things.” He thumbed toward the wall. “Tell Todd and the others to git out here.” He walked over and knelt beside a rusty, man-sized hatch in the roof I hadn’t noticed until that moment. He pointed at me, “C’mon. We’re going inside.”
Chapter 40
The only light inside the silo came from the dim moonlight shining through the round hatch above our heads. We stood on a metal grate attached to the inside wall as we looked into the darkness. Billy selected a couple of big flashlights from a box they’d apparently left on the platform.
Billy turned on his light and shined it on the corn far below. “’Bout half full, like I said.”
I nodded. He pointed to a harness with a twenty-foot tether on it, something like a bungee cord. “Put that on. Clip the other end to the ladder as you go down.”
“Okay.” I was apprehensive. “I know we dropped the firebombs down the side of the silo but I don’t think there’s any chance the fire burned hot enough or long enough to warm the concrete let alone ignite the grain in here. I don’t think we need to go down and check it.”
“Don’t know what ya’ll been doin’,” said Billy, “but we like to be over careful ‘round here. It’s worked out fer us.”
I looked down the ladder, not anxious to climb up and down another.
“I’m too old to git up an’ down these ladders, lessen you want to be in here all night.”
Nodding, I picked up the harness and stepped in through the leg holes. “I got it.” I pulled it over my shoulders.
Billy helped with the adjustments as I said, “I’ve done shit a lot more dangerous than this without a harness.”
“Yup,” said Billy. “No sense in takin’ chances when ya don’t need to.”
I nodded. It was good advice. I guess. Still, it seemed to me that if I fell, I’d land in a mound of corn that, at least in my imagination, would be as soft as water, or maybe snow. It’d splash. I’d sink in. I wouldn’t get hurt.
Oh, the wonders of an active imagination and unrealistic expectations.
A few moments later, with a shining flashlight dangling from a strap around my wrist, I worked my way down the ladder on the inside of the silo wall. Rust from the rungs flaked off into my hands. A few of the rungs flexed under my weight, they were so thin from corrosion.
“Tell me if you see any smoke or smell any popcorn,” hollered Billy.
“Popcorn,” I chuckled, as I tested my weight on a rung below my right foot.
“What do you think it’s gonna smell like before it starts burning?”
I didn’t have a response for that. I focused on climbing down, testing my weight while trying to keep my grip on rungs that sloughed off layers in my hands.
Instead of the relief I’d expected to feel when I stepped off the final rung, I felt surprise instead. The grain was solid underfoot. My feet didn’t sink in at all. Rather it felt like I was standing on asphalt.
I looked around for marks to indicate from the inside how full the silo was. Not entirely sure why, I figured it’d help me with my bearings. No mark existed. Nothing, just the ladder and the concrete walls.
“Over there,” Billy pointed.
Doing a little geometry in my head, I realized the inside ladder was ninety degrees around the arc from the outside ladder. I unclipped my tether and took a step in the direction Billy had pointed.
“Leave it on,” he called. “You got ‘nuff line to go over there.”
Starting to feel a bit like a child under Billy’s direction I muttered, “Whatever.”
“What’s that?” He called down.
“Nothing,” I answered. I re-clipped my tether to the ladder.
When I got to the spot in the silo where I figured the exterior ladder was attached, I laid my palm on the wall.
“A couple steps to yer right!” hollered Billy.
“You sure?” I asked, looking around inside the silo, realizing I couldn’t really tell if I was at three o’clock, two o’clock, or four. I stepped a little further around the circle before Billy told me to stop.
I ran my hands over the curved wall. It felt cool to the touch. I stepped to the right and put my hands on other spots. All felt the same temperature.
“Yer missing it,” Billy told me.
“Looking for comparison spots,” I called back.
No spot on the wall felt remotely warm. I guessed most of the heat dissipated into the air rather than into the massive silo. But could there be hot spots below the level of the corn? I knelt down on the hard crust and laid my hands on the kernels.
“Anything?”
“No.” I aimed the flashlight at the surface to look for anything that might indicate fire.
“Smell anything yet?”
I stood and sucked in a few long breaths. “Just corn.”
I shined my light around and noticed a peculiar gray shading on the corn at the center of the silo. Could that be from the fire outside? Could some layer of the corn fifty feet below me be smoldering with the smoke filtering up through the kernels to rise through the center?
I walked toward the powdery discoloration, sniffing, but smelling nothing different.
“Careful.” Billy had worry in his voice. Maybe he saw the discoloration, too. Maybe he suspected the same thing as me.
At the center, I knelt down on the powder and touched it. I didn’t smell smoke. I looked at my palm, now gray with the dust. I rubbed grayed fingers under my nose. It didn’t smell like ash.
A swoosh of grains and a crackle beneath me startled me to jump as I imagined in a panic that Whites were burrowing up through the grain.
The crust beneath me collapsed.
I fell.
Before I understood that I wasn’t being attacked by Whites from below, I was at the bottom of a collapsing, funnel-shaped hole in the grain that was filling in around my knees and my waist, and I knew I only had a few seconds before I was totally fucked.
Billy was hollering.
I probably was too, but not listening to either of us as I swam and kicked, knowing with innate desperation that I needed to keep my head above the collapsing kernels if I wanted to live.
I was in full panic.
A spark of rationality reminded me of the tether to which I was attached. The other end of the tether was attached to a ladder rung corroded thin by time.
Who knew hope had a diameter?
I grabbed the tether and pulled, one hand over the other, taking up the slack as th
e grain filled in around my chest, making breathing difficult. I struggled to move my legs but they were already constrained.
The tether resisted, and then stretched.
The corn was at my armpits and would easily cover my head in moments.
The tether stopped giving way. I gripped two hands full and pulled as hard as I could.
Slowly, my body came along, but the grain was still caving in on me.
When I shifted my grip, I lost some ground. The grain was filling in over my shoulders.
I heaved again, barely able to catch half a breath.
The sound around me changed.
Fewer kernels rolled over one another.
Billy was frantic and still hollering.
The grain stopped filling in.
I was at the bottom of a big—but shallow—divot in the grain.
I pulled, and with difficulty, dragged myself out.
When I was able to take a full breath, I felt like I’d won.
Around me in the loose grain were chunks of kernels fused together like broken pieces of asphalt.
“You okay?” Billy called, his voice starting to calm. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I called. “I think maybe some of this corn is gonna taste funny now.”
Billy laughed, coughed up some phlegm, and laughed some more.
I dragged myself slowly out of the corn. Keeping the tether tight in my hands, I proceeded back to the ladder. “Thanks for making me wear the harness.”
“Sometimes when they’re offloadin’, the grain ‘ll form an air pocket underneath, like a cave.”
“That’s what happened?” I asked.
“Ain’t uncommon, ‘specially if the grain ain’t dry.”
“You want me to check anything else while I’m down here?”
Billy waved me up.
Chapter 41
I woke the next morning nestled under a layer of blankets plenty thick to keep me warm, but I was working hard to kick them off, as I’d been having a nightmare of being swallowed by a hungry corn monster. What a surprise. Gray-filtered sunlight shone in through the windows and glowed red through my eyelids. I wasn’t ready to get up. I pulled the pillow over my head.
