Silo 17
Year Sixteen
35
Jimmy wasn’t sure how the math worked, but feeding two mouths was more than just twice the work. And yet—it felt like less than half the chore. The addition didn’t add up, but he suspected it had to do with how nice it felt to provide for something besides himself. It was the satisfaction of seeing the cat eat and of it growing used to his presence that made him relish meals more and travel outside more often.
It had been a rough start, though. The cat had been skittish after its rescue. Jimmy had dried himself off with a towel scavenged two levels up, and the cat had acted insane as he dried it off after. It seemed to both love and hate the process, rolling around one minute and batting at Jimmy’s hands the next. Once dry, the animal had blossomed to twice its wet size. And yet, he was still pathetic and hungry.
Jimmy found a can of beans beneath a mattress (always the first place he looked, though it was often useless chits he found there). The can wasn’t too rusty. He opened it with his screwdriver and fed the slick pods to the cat one at a time while his own feet went from blue to normal, tingling like electricity the entire time.
After the beans, the cat had taken to following him wherever he went to see what he might find next. It made the hunt for food fun, rather than a never ending war against his own growling stomach. Fun, but lots of work. Up the staircase they went, him back in his boots, the cat silently pawing behind and sometimes ahead.
Jimmy had learned early on to trust the thing’s balance. The first few times it rubbed itself against the outer stanchions, even twisting itself beyond them and back through as it ascended the steps, Jimmy nearly had a heart attack. The cat seemed to have a death wish, or just an ignorance of what it meant to fall. But he soon learned to trust the cat even as the cat began to trust him.
And that first night, as he lay huddled under his tarp in the lower farms, listening to pumps and lights click on and off and noises he mistook for hiding others, the cat tucked itself under his arm and curled against the crook his belly made when his legs were bent and began to rattle like a pump on loose mounts.
“You were lonely, huh?” Jimmy had whispered. He had grown uncomfortable but was unwilling to move. A cramp had formed in his neck while a different tightness disappeared from deep in his gut, a tightness he didn’t know was there until it was gone.
“I was lonely, too,” he had told the cat softly, fascinated by how much more he talked with the animal around. It was better than talking to his shadow and pretending it was a person.
“That’s a good name,” Jimmy had whispered. He didn’t know what people named cats, but Shadow would work. Like the shadows in which he’d found the thing, another spot of blackness to follow Jimmy around. And that night, years back, the two of them had fallen asleep amid the clicking pumps, the dripping water, the buzzing insects, and all the stranger sounds deep within the farms that Jimmy preferred not to name.
****
That was years ago. Now, cat hair and beard hair gathered together in the spines of the Legacy books. Jimmy trimmed his beard while he read about snakes. The scissors made crunching noises as he pinched a load of hair, held it away from his chin, and hacked it off with the dull shears. He sprinkled most of the hair in an empty can. The rest drifted down among the words, large swoops of meddling punctuation to mingle with the cat’s hair, who kept walking back and forth under his arms, arching his back, and stepping across his sentences.
“I’m trying to read,” Jimmy complained. But he put down the scissors and dutifully stroked the animal from neck to tail, Shadow pressing his spine up into Jimmy’s palm as he got to the end of each pet. The animal lost its mind when Jimmy did this. He meowed and made that grumbling sound like his heart was going to burst and begged for more.
Tiny claws clenched into little fists and punctured a photo of a corn snake, and Jimmy guided the animal toward the floor. Shadow lay on his back with his feet in the air, watching Jimmy carefully. It was a trap. Jimmy could rub his belly for only a moment before the cat would suddenly decide it hated this and attack his wrist. Jimmy didn’t understand cats that well, but he’d read the entry on them a dozen times. One thing he hated to learn was that they didn’t live as long as humans. He tried not to think of that day. On that day he would go back to being Solo, and he much preferred being Jimmy. Jimmy talked more. Solo was the one with the wild thoughts, the one who gazed over the rails, who spat toward the Deep and watched as his spit trembled and tore itself apart from the wild speeds of its racing fall.
“Are you bored?” Jimmy asked Shadow.
Shadow looked at him like he was bored. It was similar to the look that said he was hungry.
“Wanna go explore?”
The cat’s ear twitched, which was enough of a sign.
Jimmy decided to check the Top again. He had only been once since the days went dark, and just for a peek. If there was a working can opener in the silo, it would be there. An end to crusty screwdrivers and slicing his hands on roughly opened lids.
They set out after lunch with a short break at the farms. When they got to the cafeteria, they found it perfectly silent and glowing in the green cast from the stairwell. Shadow scampered up the last steps alone, intrepid as usual. Jimmy headed straight for the kitchen and found it a looted wreck.
“Who took all the openers?” he called out to Shadow.
But Shadow wasn’t there. Shadow was off to the far wall, acting agitated.
Jimmy ranged behind the serving line and sorted through the forks, eager to replace his usual one, when he noticed the mewing. He peered across the wide cafeteria hall and saw Shadow rubbing back and forth against a closed door.
“Keep it down,” Jimmy yelled to Shadow. Didn’t the cat know he’d only bring trouble making such a racket? But Shadow wasn’t in a listening mood. He mewed and mewed and scratched his claws at the door and stretched until Jimmy relented. He hurried through the maze of upturned chairs and crooked tables to see what the fuss was about.
“Is it food?” he asked. With Shadow, it was almost always food. His companion was drawn to meals like a magnet, which Jimmy had come to find quite handy. Approaching the door, he saw the remnants of a rope looped around the handle, the years reducing it to tatters. Jimmy tried the handle and found it unlocked. He eased it open.
The room beyond was dark, none of the emergency lights like at the top of the stairwell. Jimmy fumbled for his flashlight while Shadow disappeared through the cracked door, his tail swishing into the void.
There was a startled hiss just as the flashlight came on. Jimmy paused, a boot nearly through the door, as the cone of his flashlight fell upon a face staring up at him with open and lifeless eyes. Bodies shifted against the door, and an arm flopped out against his foot.
Jimmy screamed and fell backward. He kicked at the pale and fleshy hand and called for Shadow, who came screeching out the door, fur standing on end. There was the taste of metal on Jimmy’s tongue, a rush of adrenaline as he scrambled to get the door shut. He lifted the limp arm and shoved it back inside, the clothes disintegrating at his touch, the flesh beneath whole and spongy.
Open mouths and curled fingers were the last things he saw. Piles of bodies, as fresh as the morning dead, frozen where they’d crawled over one another, hands reaching for the door.
Once it clicked shut, Jimmy began sliding tables and chairs against the door. He created a huge tangle of them, tossing more chairs on top of the pile, shivering and cursing beneath his beard while Shadow spun in circles.
“Gross, gross, gross,” he told Shadow, whose hair had not yet settled. He studied his barricade against the piles of dead and hoped it would be adequate, that he hadn’t let out too many ghosts. The remnants of old rope swayed on the door’s handle, and Jimmy thanked whomever had kept these people at bay.
“Let’s go,” he said, and Shadow swished against his leg for comfort. There was no view on the wallscreen to see, no food or tools of any use. He’d had quite enough of the Top, which suddenly felt crowded to the walls with the dead.