Slow Burn (Book 8): Grind (17 page)

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 the 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.

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.

Somewhere outside my pie slice-shaped dormitory room, the residents of the silo fort were making muted noises, doing whatever they did in the morning. The sound of Murphy’s deep breathing wasn’t in the room. He had to have gotten up before me and gone outside.

The smell of bacon and maybe eggs, coffee, and something baking crept through the pillow’s thick foam innards and tempted me to give up on extra sleep. An odor, a terribly familiar one, a scent I’d have preferred never to smell again, seeped in with the smoky bacon aroma.

Burning flesh.

Too many gruesome images were connected to that smell in my recollections. I shuddered and tried to cram all of that into the part of my memory that I liked to pretend didn’t exist.

That was interrupted when I got the feeling that I wasn’t alone.

I jerked up to a sitting position, knife in hand, feet on the floor.

Two blonde girls, kids, one maybe twelve, the other six, stood watching me.

Kids?

Even if they hadn’t been strangely observing me while I slept, I’d still have been surprised. Children were no longer a common sight in the world.

I settled my gaze on the tall one and asked, “What?”

The little one squirmed and grinned. “We need to know your name.”

My name? That was unexpected.

The little one said, “For the book.” She giggled and squirmed some more.

“The book?” I asked.

The tall one held up a hardbound journal wrapped in flower-printed cloth, with gold edges on the pages and a tiny lock. Not entirely enthusiastic, maybe a little bit embarrassed, she said, “It’s our job.”

“Roll call?” It was a guess that seemed bad even as I said it.

The little one giggled. The tall one smiled and rolled her eyes.

“We’re historians,” said the little one, taking time to sound out each syllable as though she was getting comfortable with a new, big word.

“Historians?” I asked, smiling to indulge what I guessed was a fantasy game.

"We have to add your name, or you won't be in history," she told me.

“I’m Zed Zane. What are your names?”

The tall one said, “I’m Khyla, and this is Kinsley."

“Write it down,” Kinsley urged Khyla. She looked at me and giggled again. “We’re sisters.”

“Ah.” I nodded, feeling like I should have guessed, but with a three or four year age difference, kids that size don’t tend to look a lot alike.

Khyla opened her book and put pen to paper.

Kinsley proudly said, “I write in the book, too. We take turns.”

“Really.” What else was I supposed to say? Good job? I wasn’t used to dealing with kids.

“Are you staying for Thanksgiving dinner?” Kinsley asked. “If you are, we have to write it down.”

“Thanksgiving?” I asked. “When’s that?”

“Today.” Khyla waggled her pencil in the direction of the door. “Isaac went turkey hunting but couldn’t find any. We’re having chicken.”

“You’re kidding me.” The morning was turning surreal. Was it possible I was still dreaming? “Is today really Thanksgiving?”

“Yep.” Kinsley nodded her head with too much emphasis. Her corn-silk hair flopped around her ears and she folded her arms across her chest.

Khyla nodded. “We keep the calendar, too.” She leaned forward with her journal and showed me a page. It displayed the month, day, and year, as well as a pretty little horn of plenty for the holiday. Khyla had already written a good deal on the two facing pages.

“Busy day?” I asked.

“
They
came last night.” She half smiled and said. “You know.”

I nodded.
‘They’
had to have been the Whites chasing Murphy and me.

Khyla said, “They’re still down there.”

I tensed. “The Whites?”

“The infected.” Her face turned sad for a brief second.

“How many? A lot?” I worried that more had come during the night.

“No,” she said.

I relaxed. Billy and his people seemed more than able to handle the ones that had come the night before. “You put that kind of information in your book?”

Khyla looked at Kinsley. Kinsley grinned widely and said, “Whatever we think is important.”

“I see.”

“And anything they tell us to put in the history,” added Khyla.

“They?” I asked.

“The adults,” answered Khyla. “My dad said one day people will read it and it will be their history.”

“We’ll be famous.” Kinsley grinned proudly.

With shy enthusiasm, Khyla said, “It’s our contribution.”

“I think it’s important,” I replied. I guess I even believed it.

After putting my name in their book, the girls hurried out of the room, leaving me feeling a little bit shortchanged. I thought they might ask me about some of the things that I’d done and seen. I’d have deferred the question to Murphy, but still, it would have been nice to have been asked. Instead, I felt left out, one of nearly seven billion forgotten infected, an insignificant remnant of a lost civilization.

I put on my boots, tucked my knife beside my calf, and slid my machete into my belt. I had no sheath for it. That was with my clothes and bag in the Mustang that I presumed was in College Station.

I looked out the window over my bed and saw a layer of low, gray clouds hanging over miles of fields and farms. I spotted movement, too. A troop of Whites running along one of their snaking paths was coming toward the silos. A wisp of black smoke floated by the window. All of those infected at the bottom of the ladder were still burning from the night before. That explained the smell that was tainting the tantalizing aroma of cooking bacon. 

The sounds of people moving around in nearby rooms brought a familiar comfort that turned almost immediately to trepidation.

That casual commotion had no place in the post-virus world.

Murphy and I had developed quiet habits. When we walked we did it in a way that kept our steps silent. When we moved things or opened doors, we did it while making as little noise as possible. And when we spoke, we mostly talked in low tones that could only be heard between us and wouldn’t carry.

The people outside my door were making the kind of noise that pre-virus people blared as they chattered their way through a world brimming with a cacophony of machines—grinding, chugging, humming, squealing, and blasting.

Did they have it so good up here on the silos they didn’t need to sneak through life on quiet mouse feet?

Had Murphy and I stumbled upon a pocket of old normalcy?

I was jealous.

I took another long scan across the miles of fields and turned to leave my quarters. I followed my nose into a common area at the center of a ring of dorm rooms that had been constructed around the perimeter of the silo’s flat roof. As had been explained the night before, boards from disassembled houses in Creepy Town down below had been used to construct the dwellings on top of the silos.

The roof of one silo was dedicated for sleeping quarters. On the roof of the next silo were large common areas, a library, a kitchen, and dining room. One held chicken coops, and a section had been set aside for some pigs. They had a smokehouse next to the pigpen—kind of morbid for the pigs. The structures on the roof of yet another silo was still under construction.

At over fifty feet in diameter, the flat silo roofs provided a lot of safe space from marauding Whites.

A catwalk across the top of all five silos served as a hallway, terminating at the fortification across the silo at the end—the one with the ladder Murphy and I had climbed. Behind the wall on that silo, rooms had been built to store weapons and there was a workshop with metal and woodworking tools, storage for canned foods and other things the silo dwellers had scrounged.

A few people passed through the hall toward the construction area, looking every bit like they were on their way to work. Each greeted me with a nod and a “Good morning.”

When I walked into the kitchen and common area, I saw a teenage boy, a man, and a woman preparing the meal. The woman looked at me, and said, “Breakfast will be ready in about ten minutes, so don’t wander too far.” The three chuckled. I smiled, guessing that was silo humor.

More people were congregated in a lounge area, sitting on couches, talking intently about some papers laying on a coffee table between them. A couple of them glanced at me, but didn’t seem disturbed by my white skin and bald head.

I went outside and passed between the storage buildings and through a gate in the steel wall. On the top level of the tower structure on the far side of the rampart silo, I spotted Murphy, Billy, and Isaac. They were talking and pointing at things far enough away that I could only guess what they might be.

From down on the ground at the foot of the silo, I heard other sounds—Whites. They were feeding and squabbling. Nobody on the tower appeared to be concerned about the Whites.

“Mornin'," Isaac called down to me.

“Mornin'," said Billy.

“Hey, dude.” Murphy waved me to come up to the platform where the three of them were having their conference.

The tower stood three stories above the top of the silo. On each story was a platform with an expanded metal mesh floor on a steel framework, big enough for eight or nine people to stand comfortably around. I could only make rudimentary guesses as to the original purpose that the platforms served for the silos, but large pipes—I assumed for moving grain—ran up and angled through the platforms. Intermixed with the pipes were machines that, again, did things about which I could only guess. The sides of the platforms had been fortified with welded sheet metal and steel plates, much like the rest of the first silo.

Also built into the tower was a swiveling boom with a block and tackle hanging on loops of steel cable, wound back to a large spool on the tower’s second level. That explained how the silo clan had been able to hoist everything up.

If nothing else, this band of survivors was industrious.

I climbed the zigzagging stairs until I reached the top.

Billy was pointing to a water tower that had to be at least seven or eight miles away. To Murphy, he said, “You can just make out the outpost we built atop that tower.”

Murphy shrugged. “Maybe I see a rusty spot but I can’t tell. It’s too far away.”

“We got two people there, too,” said Billy. “All three towers got radio and solar chargers for the batteries.”

“Lasers, too,” added Isaac in his deep drawl.

“Zombie lasers?” Murphy laughed.

“To signal,” said Billy. “Just in case.” He reached into a small metal cabinet and showed Murphy some high-powered laser pointers they’d scavenged from somewhere.

Murphy looked at me and said, “They’re trying to convince us to stay.” He grinned. “Mostly me, probably. I told ‘em you had a stick up your ass about Mark and had to knock him off before you could resolve your existential crisis.”

Isaac laughed. “Whatever that means.”

I leaned over the top edge of the wall around the platform so I could get a look at the ladder at the base of the silo. Dead Whites lay mangled and burned, some still smoldering. Among them, noisy Whites fed. I figured it had to be said, just in case, “You guys know you’ve got Whites down there, right?”

“Course,” said Billy. “Got some more headed this way.” He pointed east. “Back that way. A pretty large group of ‘em.”

"How many?" I squinted at the horizon, wondering if it was the small group I’d spotted from my room, or if it was the large group that had chased Murphy and me the day before.

“A hundred, maybe,” said Isaac.

Billy pointed at the smoke trickling into the sky from the smoldering bodies below. “That’s probably why they’re coming.”

“Do we need to do something?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Don’t seem like the ones down at the bottom have any interest in us up here.”

“They don’t remember long,” said Isaac. “Ones still alive prolly forgot us.”

Shaking my head, I said, “I’m not sure that’s completely true.”

“Least ways,” said Isaac, “we ain’t gonna do nuthin’.”

“Nope,” Billy agreed. “We’ll sit tight up here. The healthy ones will clean up the mess down there and save us the trouble. We’ll haul the bones away later when things settle down.”

“They won’t try to come back up the ladder?” I asked.

“Prolly not,” said Billy. “If they do…” He pointed at the bin of bowling balls.

Isaac chuckled. “Long as they don’t see us, they don’t know we’re up here. We drop a bowling ball on whoever tries to climb the ladder. Ones at the bottom are too dumb to know it ain’t rainin’ bowlin’ balls. Far as they know, that kinda stuff just happens. They don’t think nuthin’ of it.”