Silo

Chapter 16

"Where is your family now?" Evan asked.

She shook her head, but didn't answer. She didn't have to; the haze of grief that covered her eyes said it all. My guess was her father had moved them into the silo shortly after the storm, thought they'd be safer locked away underground. Judging from the shape Meredith was in when I found her, her father had been wrong. Dead wrong.

I glanced back at her, the shaking of her shoulders telling me that what she'd seen, what she'd lived through, had been worse than I'd thought. "Why only you? Why did they keep only you alive?" I asked, not sure I really wanted to know the answer.

"Mom and Dad tried to...." she trailed off, her eyes glossing over. "Without Dad, I was the only one left with knowledge of the tunnels. They ... he needed me in order to get around."

Son of a bitch! They'd kept her alive, probably even taken good care of her while they drained her knowledge. Once they were satisfied, once they knew everything Meredith did, they let her waste away. Agreed to use her for their own twisted needs until she eventually died.

"You've been here before," Keith said as he tore the map from my hands, pushed past Meredith to flatten it against the wall. "How many times?"

"Twice."

I could see her closing in on herself, her fear of Keith over-riding her trust of me. I wedged myself in between her and Keith and smiled reassuringly, hoping she'd feel protected, that her sense of security when I was around would be enough to get her through this. Of course it didn't help that those bastards had come in right under my nose and left her a bleeding mess in my own room.

Keith may be pissed, perhaps a wee-bit paranoid, but he wasn't like them. He wouldn't harm her. I didn't particularly like Keith and his suspicious, conspiracy-theory mentality was quickly becoming intolerable, but I'd lived with him long enough to know that his bark was worse than his bite.

"Twice?" Keith fired back.

Meredith stiffened beside me and faced Keith with a confidence I knew was nonexistent. "It's not like I had a choice. That first month he dragged me to every single one of them, made me show them all the entry points, both hidden and not. Yours was the second one we came to."

I quickly ran through the months in my head, trying hard to remember the first time something went missing. It was the third week we'd moved in. It had rained for two days straight. Evan had spent all night collecting water in buckets, boiling it down and putting it in jugs. Evan and I had gone out to check the perimeter; Keith was sound asleep. Half of the jugs were gone when we came back. I'd blamed it on Keith, given him a quick jab to his left cheek in my flash of anger.

"The water," I mumbled. "They were running low on supplies," she said. "They had already raided most of the farmhouses and the other silos were all empty."

"The second time?" Keith pressed.

Meredith shrugged. "We didn't take anything. He just wanted to come and see what you had because he could. They've been coming back at least twice a month since then, but they haven't taken anything. Not since that first time, or at least not until last week."

"When we took you," I said, not for a second regretting my decision. They could've Keith's crossbow and Evan's stat book for all I cared. They could take every last ounce of water I owned. I'd take any punishment they wanted to dole out, but there was no way in hell I was letting them take Meredith back.

"Where?" Keith demanded, his voice cracking with anger as he tossed the map in her direction. "I want to know exactly how they're getting in, and I want to know now!"

I stood up and mad my way over to the map Evan and I had been studying earlier, then tossed my hand back. "Show me," I said.

Keith peered over my shoulder as Meredith scanned the map. It took her no time to pinpoint the spot, her finger hesitating over what appeared to be the ceiling of a vacant passageway.

"That's a ceiling," Keith growled.

Evan pushed him aside, looking to me for permission before he came closer to Meredith. His fingers tracked the same path as hers. "Ventilation shaft," he said, and she nodded, a small smile creasing her lips.

"Kid's a genius," Keith laughed. "When somebody breaks in you immediately go for the doors and the windows. Shit, you even check under your bed. But you never, never think to look up."

My mathematical brain was nowhere near as big as Evan's but from what I could see, this particular passageway went nowhere. The ventilation shaft Meredith was referring to was well outside the parameter we regularly maintained. No wonder we hadn't seen tracks; we hadn't gone far enough out.

Keith muttered something inaudible, moved to the far corner of the room, and started tossing things about, swearing before he moved onto something else. "I want to see the rest of your journal! Where the hell did you hide it?"

Keith came upon Meredith's pile of old clothes, and from the look of sheer rage covering Meredith's face, he'd hit the jackpot.

"No!" she screamed and lunged for what few belongings she had. She landed on top of the clothes, the journal buried safely beneath her small body. Keith had two choices: let her keep that journal private or pry her body off of it. The twitch of his jaw and the widening of his stance made his decision clear.

"Don't. Touch. Her." I took a step closer, my hand flexing around the hilt of the knife I still had tucked into my jeans. Keith had had my back for almost a year, and I'd trusted him with my life more than I wanted to, but I'd be damned if I was going to let him hurt Meredith.

"Are you kidding me? She just admitted to stealing from us. She gave them the damn map to get in, Jake, and yet you still want to protect her? Who knows what other secrets she has written in there!"

"I don't care." That was the truth. Somehow I knew Meredith wasn't hiding anything important, that what was in that journal had nothing to do with the missing stats, or Keith's bow. Whatever was in there was personal and not something she wanted to share with him ... or even me.

"You don't care. You. Don't. Care! Have you lost your mind? Are you willing to stake mine and Evan's lives on the fact that this bitch isn't hiding anything?"

It was a rhetorical question, but I answered anyway. "Absolutely!"

Keith laughed as he watched Meredith dig her journal out from the clothes pile and tuck it up underneath her shirt. "Well then, maybe I was wrong about you, Jake. Maybe you aren't blind about whose playing on your team and who isn't. Maybe you just don't want to know."