Silo 17
Day One
7
The box on the wall was unrelenting with its awful sounds. His father had called it a radio. The noise it made was like a person hissing and spitting. Even the steel cage surrounding it looked like a mouth with its lips peeled back and iron bars for teeth.
Jimmy wanted to silence the radio but was scared to touch it or adjust anything. He waited to hear from his father, who had left him in a strange room, a hidden warren between the silo’s levels.
How many more of these secret places were there? He glanced through an open door at the other room his dad had shown him, the one like a small apartment with its stove, table, and chairs. When his parents got back, would they all stay here overnight? How long before the madness cleared from the stairs and he could see his friends again? He hoped it wouldn’t be long.
He glared at the black box with its spitting sounds, patted his chest, felt for the key there. His ribs were sore from the fall, and he could feel a knot forming in his thigh from where he’d landed on someone. His shoulder hurt when he lifted his arm. He turned to the monitor to search for his mother again, but she was no longer on the screen. A jostling crowd moved in jerks and fits. A stairwell writhed with more traffic than it was meant to hold.
Jimmy reached for the box with the controls his father had used. He twisted one of the knobs, and the view changed. It was an empty hall. A faint number 33 stood in the lower left corner of the screen. Jimmy turned the dial once more and got a different hallway. There was a trail of clothes on the ground, like someone had walked by with a leaking laundry bag. Nothing moved.
He tried a different dial, and the number on the bottom changed to 32. He was going up the levels. Jimmy spun the first dial until he found the stairwell again. Something flashed down and off the bottom of the screen. There were people leaning over the railing with their arms outstretched, mouths open in silent horror. There was no sound from the little windows that allowed him to see the world, but Jimmy remembered the screams from the woman who fell earlier. This was too far up to be his mother, he consoled himself. His dad would find her and bring her back. His dad had a gun.
Jimmy spun the dials and tried to locate either of his parents, but it seemed that not every angle was covered. And he couldn’t figure out how to make the windows multiply. He was decent on a computer—he was going to work for IT like his father someday—but the little box was unintuitive as the deeps. He dialed it back down to 34 and found the main hallway. He could see a shiny steel door at the far end of a long corridor. Sprawled in the foreground was Yani. Yani hadn’t moved, was surely dead. The men standing over him were gone, and there was a new body at the end of the hall, near the door. The color of his coveralls assured Jimmy that it wasn’t his father. His father probably put that man there on his way out. Jimmy wished he hadn’t been left alone.
Overhead, the lights continued to blink angry and red, and nothing happened on the screen. Jimmy grew restless and paced in circles. He went to the small wooden desk on the opposite wall and flipped through the thick book. It was a fortune in paper, perfectly cut, and eerily smooth to the touch. The desk and chair were both made of real wood, not painted to look like that. He could tell by scratching it with his fingernail.
He closed the book and checked the cover. The word ORDER was embossed in shiny letters across the front. He reopened it, and realized he’d lost someone’s place. The radio nearby continued to hiss noisily. Jimmy turned and checked the computer screen, but nothing was happening in the hallway. That noise was getting on his nerves. He thought about adjusting the volume, but was scared he might accidentally turn it off. His dad wouldn’t be able to get through to him if he messed something up.
He paced some more. There was a shelf of metal containers in one corner that went from floor to ceiling. Pulling one out, Jimmy felt how heavy they were. He played with the latch until he figured out how to open it. There was a soft sigh as the lid came loose, and he found a book inside. Looking at all the containers filling the shelves, Jimmy saw what a pile of chits was there. He returned the book, assuming it was full of nothing but boring words like the one on the desk.
Back at the other desk, he examined the computer underneath and saw that it wasn’t turned on. All the lights were dim. He traced the wire from the black box with all the switches and found a different wire led from the monitor to the computer. The machine that made the windows—that could see far distances and around corners—was controlled by something else. The power switch on the computer did nothing. There was a place for a key. Jimmy bent down to inspect the connections on the back, to make sure everything was plugged in, when the radio crackled.
“—need you to report in. Hello—?”
Jimmy knocked his head on the underside of the desk. He ran to the radio, which was back to hissing. Grabbing the device at the end of the stretchy cord—the thing his dad had named Mike—he squeezed the button.
“Dad? Dad, is that you?”
He let go and looked to the ceiling. He listened for footsteps and waited for the lights to stop flashing. The monitor showed a quiet hallway. Maybe he should go to the door and wait.
The radio crackled with a voice: “Sheriff? Who is this?”
Jimmy squeezed the button. “This is Jimmy. Jimmy Parker. Who—” The button slipped out of his hand, the static returning. His palms were sweaty. He wiped them on his coveralls and got the device under control. “Who is this?” he asked.
“Russ’s boy?” There was a pause. “Son, where are you?”
He didn’t want to say. So he didn’t. The radio continued to hiss.
“Jimmy, this is Deputy Hines,” the voice said. “Put your father on.”
Jimmy started to squeeze the button and say that his father wasn’t there, but another voice chimed in. He recognized it at once.
“Mitch, this is Russ.”
Dad! There was a lot of noise in the background, people screaming. Jimmy held the device in both hands. “Dad! Come back, please!”
The radio popped with his father’s voice. “James, be quiet. Mitch, I need you to—” Something was lost to the background noise. “—and stop the traffic. People are getting crushed up here.”
“Copy.”
That was his father talking to the deputy. The deputy was acting like his old man was in charge. Nothing made sense in the world.
“We’ve got a breach up-top,” his father said, “so I don’t know how long you’ve got, but you’re probably the sheriff until the end.”
“Copy,” Mitch said again. The radio made his voice sound shaky.
“Son—” His father was yelling, now, fighting to be heard over some obnoxious din of screams and shouts. “I’m going to get your mother, okay? Just stay there, James. Don’t move.”
Jimmy turned to the monitor. “Okay,” he said. He hung the Mike back on its hook, his hands trembling, and returned to the black box with all the controls. He felt helpless and alone. He should be out there, lending a hand. He thought about Nick and Seth and Sarah Jenkins. How long before he could see his friends again? He hoped it wouldn’t be long.