“You’re alive,” she says. She stops and watches as we reach the landing. There are tears coming down her face, and the half of it that can move is twisted up in what might be a smile, and the other half is a grimace of shiny red scarring. “I… we… we thought you were dead.”
“Sweetheart,” I say, reaching out to her. She doesn’t respond. “We were down on… thirty-four.”
“On the IT floor?”
I want nothing but to throw my arms around her, but she is strangely still. I don’t know what to say.
“You were in IT.” Her face is hard. “You were just taking some time out.” Her hands are on her hips as she stares at us. “Down there… doing what, taking care of the fucking computers? While they attacked us… with guns, and knives, and bombs? While people died?”
“Athena—”
Her voice gets harsher. “We didn’t have enough to eat… your granddaughter went hungry! They threw people off the stairway….” She puts her hands over her face and makes a sound that is half bark and half sob.
“And you, Dad,” she says, and she moves toward us. “You’re supposed to be in charge.” Her tone is even more intense. “You abandoned us.”
“We were locked in, Athena,” I say, my voice like sandpaper. I step between her and Rick. “We couldn’t get out. There were guns and knives down there, too.”
I wrap my arms around myself instead of her. I feel sick. What can I say to this?
Athena turns and walks away from us, her face hard, her posture stiff. She walks away and doesn’t look back.
My daughter.
My baby.
7
Rick and I head back to our apartment. I am more tired than I can remember being.
We see words scrawled on the walls of the Silo in garish paint. Red, orange, and purple splashed in huge letters taller than a man.
Cleaning = Murder
Death to the Wrenchers
Rise up!
As we walk down the hall we pass a few other people carrying bundles. They scurry by, averting their eyes. They don’t look familiar.
We see doors smashed open; apartments where all the furniture is overturned. Cabinets are torn off hinges, mattresses are shredded, trash is strewn on the floor.
One open door has singed corners and black soot on the floor inside. In another apartment we see blood stains. As we turn a corner to get to our own home, I hear a child crying. It is a forlorn sound, and echoes down the hall until finally there is a shout. Then quiet.
What has happened while we were locked away?
8
Athena and her family knock on our door. I am very surprised to see her. Dylan must have persuaded her to make peace. And Erica probably wanted to see grandma and grandpa.
Rick and I have had an hour to wash and change. I tried to sleep, but it was impossible. I feel terrible, but less terrible than I did down below.
I am trying to get used to the tragedy that is Athena’s face.
“Go to Grandma, honey,” Athena says. She won’t look at me.
Little Erica obediently comes and sits in my lap, quieter than she used to be.
Athena has put food on the table, but it is meager. Her manner is distant. Dylan sits across from me, smiling, though he looks haggard. He seems unfazed by his wife’s anger, and quite used to her altered appearance.
“How is Ruth doing?” I ask, suddenly realizing that we’ve heard nothing about the young woman from the Down Deep who married my son on the day of the explosion… and hasn’t seen him since.
“She’s fine, Mrs. Brewer,” Dylan says. He reaches out his arms to Erica, and she decamps from my lap to his, snuggling into his embrace. “Her leg was a bad for a while, but she’s healing, and she’s been helping with the other wounded.”
I want to hear what happened to everyone, but I don’t want to discuss it in front of Erica. She’s now acting more like her old self, looking up mischievously at her mother while she grabs a cookie. She shrugs out of her dad’s arms and slides to the floor.
“Can I go see Leah?” she asks, already heading for the door, but walking backwards with the cookie in her hand as she faces her parents.
Athena slowly nods yes. “Go straight to her door, though, okay honey? She’s just down the hall?”
“Yes, Mom.” Erica takes a bite of the cookie. “I told you. She’s No. 57. Only four doors from Grandma. I counted!” She turns and scampers out the door, the strap of her overalls falling off her shoulder.
“Dylan, will you make sure—” Athena begins.
Before she finishes her sentence, Dylan is out of his chair and standing at the door making sure that Erica arrives at the next apartment. After a moment, he nods. “She’s there,” he says. “Leah’s Mom waved.”
With Erica out of the room, all pretense of normalcy is gone. “So tell us about the last three months,” I say. “And what happened…” I hesitate, not wanting to hurt my daughter.
“To my face?” Athena completes my sentence, her right hand going up to the disturbing pink scars that cover half her cheek and extend down her chin.
Dylan walks over and stands beside her, taking her other hand. I watch as tears seep out of Athena’s eyes and slide down the two contrasting sides of her face.
“There was a fire. It was on the classroom level, with the kids—”
Rick, who has been mostly silent, interrupts. “Was it set?”
“We think so,” Dylan says. “But not right in the classroom. In another room, and it spread—”
“I thought she was in there—Erica—and other kids. I didn’t know they had gone out, down the hall…. There was so much chaos, at the beginning, after you went down and left…”
She trails off, and I see her struggling not to cry. I move to Athena and take her by the arms until she stands. “Sweetheart—I am so sorry. We never meant to disappear without telling you—everything happened so quickly—Jeff, your Dad’s security guy from IT, was in our apartment with a gun, and they threatened to kill your Dad…”
Athena is weeping now, and I embrace her, feeling her body wracked with the sobs she is trying to suppress. She mumbles into my shoulder. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose…”
We stand there, holding each other, the pain not gone but assuaged by the hugs and the simple act of touching.
“So tell us,” I say, bracing myself for what we may hear. “What happened?”
Athena sits down, facing me, her hand in Dylan’s as he stands behind her. The room is crowded.
Athena looks up at Dylan, and he speaks in a low voice.
“It was very bad, Mrs. Brewer. I think we lost… easily two hundred or so people, and that’s just in the Up Top.”
I gasp. “How?” Rick, beside me, crosses his arms, and I see his jaw clench.
Dylan looks down at the floor. “Direct fighting, of course. Gunshot wounds—lots of injuries, even among those who didn’t die. Handmade bombs. You probably saw the gap in the railing—”
I nod quickly. “We passed it.”
“Fires, secondary to the bombs. I never imagined something with concrete walls and metal stairs could burn much, but there were fires…”
“And some of them were set,” Athena says. Her eyes are hard. “Like the one near the classroom. By someone who had paper…”
I look for a moment at Rick. His eyes meet mine. Paper means IT… or the Sheriff’s office. We don’t say it.
“It was very strange,” Dylan says, his gaze directed at me. “After a few days, we couldn’t figure out exactly where the fighting was coming from. All the gossip said it was the folks in Mechanical—the Wrenchers—who were stirring up the trouble, but I saw hardly any of them up here. I saw random people, in red, blue, green coveralls—fighting—and there were guns….” He stops. “Eventually, there were retaliatory killings. Stabbings, hangings. Some of them were supposedly suicides.”
Athena stands up, her hand going to her ruined face again. “We just hunkered down, and tried to stay
inside. Neighbors shared what food we had. Like a siege. Explosions, gunfire, people running up and down the stairs.” She paces and then comes to a standstill, facing me and Rick. “After the bomb that took out part of the railing—the one you saw—people were afraid to travel between floors for a month. They were…” she trails off, and looks at Dylan.
“The people who went down the stairs between those levels never came back.”
“What happened to them?” I ask.
“They were pushed.” Athena’s voice is a near whisper. “Right out the hole in the railing.”
“Straight down until they hit bottom,” Dylan finishes.
9
Athena and I stand in the kitchen washing up dishes. I am still reeling from the news about how many lives were lost. It’s hard to tell what was a true rebellion from the Down Deep and what was the interference from Jeff and his followers. In the end, it was the same. A lot of death, a lot of injuries, and great agony for the survivors.
Athena turns to me. “So how bad is it, Mom?”
For a moment I am blank. How bad is what? Her Dad’s peculiar personality change? The state of the Silo?
“My face. I mean, how bad is my face, really? I can feel it, but I can’t see myself, of course.” She gives a crooked smile, as though that’s an absurdity, and I realize once again that conveniences I once took for granted—things like mirrors, which I still miss—have never existed in her world. To think that people in here never know what their faces look like except for the occasional ID photo taken by IT is still a surprise to me.
I smile at Athena. “It’s nothing, honey. Nothing at all. You still look beautiful to me.”
She looks at me with an expression of doubt. “Thanks.” A tear slides down her face on the scarred side. I’m not sure if she’s crying or this is the way her eye will be from now on. Before we came into the Silo, a burn like that would have been treated with plastic surgery and expert repair. In here, that scar is forever.
“I am so sorry, Athena, that we couldn’t get word to you.”
She pulls back. “I understand.” And then she stops and looks at me. “And what went on down there? Dad is… different.”
“He had a fever,” I say. “There must have been an infection.”
“But he’ll be okay, right, Mom?” She looks at me with hopeful eyes. “I mean, after he rests up…”
“Well—”
The door to the tiny kitchen swings open and Ruth appears, a big grin on her face. “Karma! You’re back!”
She bounds in and reaches for me, still a sprightly thing, though it’s clear she has a limp.
“Where is my husband? Where is Mars?” Along with the joy and anticipation, there is a slight blush in her cheeks. It hits me, then as it has before, that these young people growing up in the Silo come to marriage with an innocence I could not have imagined in my own youth. With no privacy and powerful taboos keeping them away from sex before marriage, many are true virgins on their wedding nights.
And she has been waiting three months to be with Mars.
“He’s still down in IT, but he’ll be back tonight,” I say.
Ruth is beaming. “They’ve lifted the lottery. Because of the uprising. “ She turns to look at Athena and puts her hands out to touch both of us on the arms. “I know it’s awful, and I’m not happy about all the deaths… but I’m so happy that Mars and I are going to be allowed to make a baby!”
10
Athena and I are determined to give the newlywed couple the wedding night they never had. I walk down the hall to borrow some pillows from my neighbor Griffin, a widower who lives in the apartment occupied long ago by my dear friend Grace, the woman who sacrificed her life for mine. I always feel there is still some of her sweet spirit around the place whenever I visit him, despite the fact that he is alone after losing his wife five years ago. The place is always immaculate, and he has nice touches like woven hangings on his walls.
“Hi Griffin,” I say when he opens the door. “I wonder if you can spare a couple of pillows on a temporary basis? My son is finally getting to spend some time with his new wife.”
“Lucky man,” he says, smiling. “I’m sure I have some I can loan you, especially for such a good cause.” He walks into his bedroom and comes out quickly with two square pillows. “Please give them my congratulations. Young love is a thing to celebrate.”
“Definitely.” I smile. “But it’s not only the young who find love. You could get married again, Griffin.”
As soon as I say it I feel I’ve gotten too personal, but Griffin just smiles and shakes his head. “Why would I do that?”
“Well, there will be a lot of available women after the recent fighting… sad as that is. A handsome man like you could have your pick.”
He gives me a quizzical look. “Karma, my wife and I were more friends than lovers. I guess I thought… you knew that.”
I pause and absorb his meaning. I feel foolish. Though everyone is presumed heterosexual in the Silo, obviously not everyone could be. Griffin is in his forties, and I know him as a neighbor… but not well.
He watches me for a moment. “My wife was very unhappy—our arrangement, which was meant to shield us from suspicion—meant that both of us were living a lie.”
“I… see.” Slowly it dawns on me that he must be saying that she took her own life. Another secret that didn’t make its way down the hallway.
“Everyone in the Silo is hiding something, aren’t they?” Griffin’s eyes are moist. “Danni just couldn’t carry that lie around any longer.”
After I leave his apartment, the conversation stays with me. People in the Silo are indeed hiding many things—especially whatever they know about themselves that doesn’t fit the mold. You don’t hear about anyone being gay in here—because, officially, no one is. Officially, we are all just the way the designers of this place wanted us to be.
The denizens of the Silo—this Silo, I remind myself—are a starkly homogenous lot as compared to the diversity of people I knew when I was growing up. Everyone down here is white, or just the slightest shade of golden. Maybe there is a bit of Asian, native American, or Latin influence somewhere in the background of some folks, but it’s pretty rare.
You also never see anyone with significant physical anomalies, or mental retardation. You don’t see anything even as common as a cleft palate. It’s impossible that these things never occur in newborns. So what is happening to these babies when they are born?
I shiver as another layer of horror settles over me. After living this way for so long, there are new realizations still to be absorbed about what goes on beneath the earth. I try to push it out of my mind for the time being. This is the place and the time we live in, and if we are to pull any joy at all out of our brief existence, we must continue to love and raise our children… and, naturally, conceive more children.
Mars and Ruth want a baby, and they now have permission to have one. Another child to grow up obedient to the Pact and the rules of the Silo. Another individual to live his or her life out in this eternal tomb under the earth.
And yet, would I deny my son a child? I shake my head to clear it of these heavy thoughts, and concentrate on the task at hand.
I pull the best sheets I have out of my tiny closet and head down the hallway to connect with Athena. Another result of the recent deaths is that there is a lot of living space suddenly available. Mars and Ruth, who were on a waiting list for their own place, are now the proud owners of a brand new apartment on eighteen.
I am startled when I realize that the woman coming toward me down the hall, the one with the scarred face, is my daughter. I quickly arrange my mouth into a smile, and wonder how long before I will get used to her disturbing appearance.
She is alive, and that is all that matters, I tell myself.
Athena has something in a cloth bag that she looks happy about. “Guess what I got?”
Without waiting for my answer, she pulls it out. A lacy nothing of a
nightgown, which is far sexier than most of what gets worn in the Silo, emerges, as she giggles. “She says she wants a baby… well, this should do the trick.”
Raising my eyebrows and realizing again how straitlaced life underground is for the young people, I laugh and nod. “Well, I’m certain he will be very happy to see his bride tonight.”
At that moment Ruth comes around the corner, finding the two of us grinning. Athena stuffs the negligee back into her bag.
“What?” Ruth says, looking around at us in curiosity.
We each take an arm and lead her back toward the stairs to walk down one level to her new home.
“A wedding gift for you,” Athena says. “Mars will like it, too.”
11
I lie beside Rick listening to the sounds of his even, peaceful breathing. It is good to be home.
Tomorrow I will go and speak to Sheriff Aponte about Jeff’s death. For just a moment I picture the scene, and feel once again the sickening, satisfying push of the knife into his gut. I smell the blood. I hear his shocked intake of air, his grunt, and his heavy fall that plunges the blade even deeper.
It stuns me to know that I killed a man.
I must have made some sound, because now Rick stirs and turns toward me.
“Karma. Are you all right?”
“I’m…” I don’t know what to say to that question. Am I all right? Is anything ever all right in here? I roll onto my side to face him, realizing that we have complete privacy for the first time in months.
I feel his hand touch my face, and then he reaches out and wraps his arms around me. “Karma,” he says.
His lips are gentle as they kiss my mouth. They move down my neck with sweet passion. Is this Rick? He has never touched me like this before.
I pull him closer and my fingers brush the scar from where I extracted the bullet. It seems like another life, our months down in IT, where we were caged together for so long. I sigh as his lips meet my breast and his tongue caresses me.
How long has it been since we have made love?
Karma of the Silo: The Collection Page 15