by Adair, Bobby
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.”
“Except last night,” I said, “They were chasing me and Murphy. That’s why they didn’t give up.”
“That’s right,” said Isaac. “They was chasin’ you, not climbing a ladder for no reason.”
“Got it.” Not wanting to get into an argument about infected behavior with the nice folks who’d probably saved my life the night before, I figured I’d find a better way to talk about it at a later time. “So you guys are good up here? You can stay a while?”
“You saw how much grain we got in these silos,” said Billy. “We don’t never need to go down if we don’t want to.”
“What about water?” Murphy asked.
Billy pointed at a row of three windmills, the kind spread across the ranches in Texas to pump water out of the aquifers and into the stock ponds. “We got ‘em piping water up here. We got everything we need. For stuff we want, we take a chance and go down.” Billy swung his finger across the horizon, pausing at each lookout. “When we’re clear, we go down and search for luxuries and such. Plenty of feral pigs around and plenty of cattle, too. No shortage of meat.”
I felt jealous again. My attempt to set up a post-apocalyptic commune of survivors at Sarah Mansfield’s mansion had failed. Billy, Isaac, and the other people on the silos were thriving.
Still, I was getting bored with hearing about how well the silo people had set themselves up. I had things to do. I spun around and looked for water towers and other silos on the horizon. I pointed northwest. “You have lookouts that way?”
Billy
leaned close to my side and pointed so that I could see down the length of his arm, to where his finger landed on a couple of fat tanks with streaks of rust on weathered paint. He said, “See there, on top of that one on the left?”
I saw a brownish speck, but I couldn’t tell what it was. “Oil tanks?”
“Liquid fertilizer,” said Billy. “We got two fellas in that observation tower on top.” He turned to the south and pointed at a water tower taller and closer than the fertilizer tanks. “Got a couple there, too.”
“Did you guys see that big horde of naked Whites that went through that way over the past few days?”
Murphy groaned.
Billy nodded. “Ate a good many cattle when they passed. Most of ‘em I ‘spect.”
“Do your lookouts know where they are?” I asked.
Billy pointed northwest. “Seen ‘em out that way when they settled down last night. They were gone when the sun came up this morning. Moved on.”
Isaac cocked his head toward the ladder running down the side of the tower. “’cept stragglers. Still plenty of ‘em ‘round.” He pointed northwest. “Headed that way, mostly. Lookin’ to catch up, I guess.”
I took another peek at the Whites down below. Habit. “You guys have a pretty good idea where all the Whites are in the area, as well as which direction they’re moving? You certainly seem to have the infrastructure in place for it.”
“Got to,” said Billy, “If we want to stay safe when we send folks out to scrounge or work the gardens.”
“Is that where all the stuff came from in the houses down below?” Murphy asked.
“We store stuff there,” Billy told him. “Right now we got all we need. But with rodents, scavengers, infected, and the weather, it won’t be too many years from now when a good pair of jeans ‘ll be worth its weight in gold.”
“Or steaks,” laughed Isaac.
“You probably saw,” said Billy, “we got blankets, housewares, tools, pretty much anything you could think of. ‘Cept food. None of that down there. The infected would eat that right up. We store our food up here. We only keep things down there the infected won’t be interested in.”
“Mostly,” Isaac laughed in his deep rumble. “Some comes through and take anything they can find that’s shiny. Sometimes they take knives. Ya never can tell.”
“Makes sense,” said Murphy. “We saw some of that back in Austin. Right, Zed?”
I nodded but didn’t tell about my experiences with Nancy and Bubbles. Instead I asked, “Maps?”
Isaac laughed again.
“What?” I asked.
Looking at Billy, Isaac said, “Told ya.”
“Told him what?” I looked from Isaac to Billy and back again.
"I cleaned out a couple o' convenience stores." Isaac leveled an old calloused finger at Billy. "He told me I was wastin’ my time. Everybody here knows what’s ‘round. Most of us lived our whole lives here.”
“Could we get a map of the area?” I asked. “If you could show me on it where the Whites are and where they’re going, it’d sure make it a lot safer for Murphy and me to get out of here today.” I assumed Murphy was going to tag along. I looked at him. “How’s the hand?”
Murphy held it up for me to see. It looked much better. “Benadryl’s my new favorite drug.”
“Can you use it?”
“Stiff,” Murphy flexed his hand. “But it won’t slow me down.”
“You can have a map,” said Billy. “We don’t use ‘em.” He pointed at a gray-colored house at the edge of town. “Got ‘em stored down there. A stack of ‘em in a china hutch.”
That made me think of the clothes I’d stolen from their warehouse. I reached up and tugged at the collar on my jacket, deciding whether I should ask for what I’d already taken.
Billy looked me up and down. “You needed somethin’ to wear so don’t sweat it. We probably got more than we’re ever gonna need.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Now about these maps.”
Chapter 42
The ladder on which we’d battled the Whites stood at one end of the row of silos. The surprise that neither Murphy nor I had guessed was that the silo on the other end was empty. A service hatch at the bottom of the silo was accessible via an internal ladder. The silo dwellers of Creepy Town had a hidden back door.
Good for Murphy and me. And probably them, too.
We’d retrieved a map from the gray house without the cannibal Whites at the bottom of the ladder even looking away from their meals. Once we got back to the top of the silo, Billy showed us on the map where both we and the visible groups of Whites currently were. The silo dwellers fed us breakfast the likes of which we hadn’t even dreamed of since before the virus. They gave us enough food and water to get us through a few days. No ammunition, though. At least, not until Murphy traded his spare silencer for a hundred and fifty rounds.
I told him he could have bargained for a lot more, but he was satisfied with the deal. He was probably right. The silo dwellers had been kind, and kindness was a rarity in the post-virus world.
When we left, Billy told us we were welcome to come back and join them.
It was tempting.
Really tempting. They were good people in a good situation, good considering how the rest of the world was doing.
When we left Creepy Town, we walked down the center of the road, because it was less tiring than trudging through the mud and weeds. It was also a risk. It made us visible to Whites who might be lurking in the trees or inside any house we passed along the way.
And they were there.
Despite the lookout towers spread over part of the county, unseen Whites were always there.
Scanning back and forth after a couple of miles of walking in silence, Murphy asked, “Do you think something is wrong with us?”
I laughed. “Besides what the virus did to us?”
“Sort of.”
I glanced at Murphy. He seemed bothered. “What do you mean?”
“Before all this, you said you worked at Starbucks.”
I nodded, not wanting to confirm that truth out loud. I guess I felt weird over my choice to work there. I felt like I should have done something more significant with my education.
“Not an exciting job, is it?”
I shook my head and got a little bit defensive. “It paid the bills.” Most of the time. Well, maybe not even most. “And I got free food and coffee. What are you getting at?”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad.”
“What?”
“Look, man,” said Murphy. “You get that little attitude thing. I’ve been around you enough to see it. I’m not trying to bust your balls.”
“Sorry.” I took a hard look at the ditches beside the road up ahead. Whites could be anywhere.
“What I’m asking is, were you like this before?”
“Like what?”
Murphy took a second to find the right words. “Action junkie.”
“Were you?” It was natural deflection. An old habit.
He nodded. “But not like this.”
“You mean running around doing some of the crazy shit we do and getting off on it?” I asked. “You think you’d never have done this kind of stuff before?”
Murphy shook his head. “Some. I guess. But not this risky.”
"Do you think it's because you didn't have the opportunity back then?” I asked. “Maybe the crazy shit we do now seems so much crazier because the world we live in is that way. Maybe it’s all relative."
“Crazy. That’s a good word for it.” Murphy laughed. “I think about it a lot. I used to get in fights, you know. A lot, I guess. It wasn’t because I was angry. Like I told you about those dudes I killed behind that convenience store, I had to get that out of my system. Later on, I think I got in fights because it was exciting.”
“So you were always an action junkie?” I asked.
“A little bit,” said Murphy. "I think it's worse now. I think something in my brain c
hanged. I think the virus changed me."
That was something to think about. I constantly worried about a deterioration of my mind, whether there was such a thing as virus dementia. I didn’t want to wake up one morning as a monster. I often thought about how much of the Whites’ minds were left when they started chasing normals and eating their flesh. Did they have the capacity to understand what they were doing, while at the same time being unable to control it? That had to be worse than being a simple killing machine.
I wondered if, in my way, I was becoming like the other Whites. I wondered if what suffered most when the virus ate away at a human brain was impulse control.
Looking over at Murphy and seeing that he was still thinking about it as well, I said, “I think the virus changed me too.”
He said nothing, waiting for me to continue.
“I wasn’t like this before, either. Well, like you, I was, a little. I did some crazy shit. I used to race my motorcycle on 2222 without a helmet.”
“That is nuts,” said Murphy.
“Nearly got me killed when I wrecked my bike,” I said.
“You weren’t one of those dudes that used to ride wheelies down the interstate, were you?”
“No.” I shook my head. It was a significant question. “No. I always thought those dudes were insane.”
Picking up on the tone in my voice, Murphy asked, “But you’d do it now. Wouldn’t you?”
I looked at my feet, feeling embarrassed, but not sure why. “I probably would. I probably wouldn’t give it a second thought.” I looked over at Murphy. “You’ve seen some of the crazy shit I’ve done, we’ve both done.”
“Yeah,” said Murphy. “That’s what I mean. I do things now that I wouldn’t have done before.”
“Do you worry where it’ll end up?” I asked.
“Probably with us getting killed.” Murphy laughed.
“No,” I said. “Not that. Do you wonder if the virus will change you more than it already has?”
Murphy's face turned sad and he nodded.
“Me, too,” I admitted.
“I’m afraid of what I’ll become,” said Murphy.