Surprise! Your incessantly positive comments have worn us down :) We've decided to give you the ending of the book TODAY. We're so grateful for your kind comments and your excitement over the course of the last few months. We hope you enjoy the last few chapters and maybe you'll consider sharing our story with your Wattpad friends, posting the link to FB or tweeting about it. SILO will be entered into the Watty's and we'd love to see it do well!
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I was mid-way up my own front steps when Keith stopped me in my tracks, his tone so calm that it barely sounded like him. "You want me to go in first, take a look around?"
"No." I trusted Keith, knew he was trying to shield me from whatever was behind my warping front door; but the truth was I needed to see. If my family's bodies were in there, I wanted to be the one to pull them out, to give them a proper burial. And if I was wrong . . . if they were somehow alive, then I'd be damned if Keith's face was going to be the first one they saw.
Silently, I reached my hand out to Meredith, hoping she would come in with me, help me process whatever it was I was about to see. I hated dragging her in there. If that baseball bat I found in Tyler's silo was any indication, then she'd seen more than any of us. But I didn't want to go in alone, and I didn't want Evan or Keith there if I crumbled.
"Don't worry," she said. "I'm right next to you." A reassuring smile formed on her face as she tossed my own words back at me. Keith had been right about her being stronger than she looked.
The front door gave way easily, its wood cracked and buckled beneath month's of ash and neglect. The tiles inside our entryway splintered under my boots, the shards pulling away from the grout that once held them in place. Motioning to Keith and Evan to check the basement, I made my way toward the kitchen, the one place my mother always loved. I kept my knife handy as I turned up my lantern to brighten the room, keeping Meredith a safe distance behind me.
The kitchen was in no better than the rest of the town, and any shred of hope I had gave way to the unwelcome truth. This town . . . my family had fared no better than the place we'd left.
The table where I'd done my homework on, hosted numerous card games, and eaten every meal on, was gone. The cabinet's doors had been ripped off, several of the barren, wood frames hanging from the wall, and the floor was caked with a tacky film. I refused to let my mind dissect the source; the brown sludge was tinged in red, the smell stale and putrid.
Exposed wires jutted from the ceiling where our old light fixture had hung and a line of soot ringed the entire area. It must have been terrifying to see every light in the house explode as the world was thrust into darkness. I hoped Mom wasn't alone. She didn't even like scary movies, and . . . well the solar storm was a real life nightmare. There was no way she could have handled it by herself.
"Shit," I whispered, eyeing the line of mold traveling down the seeping kitchen window to the floor.
"Looks like no one's been here for a while," Meredith said, lifting an empty can of soup from the floor. "You think they left town . . . went someplace safer?"
I couldn't imagine a place safer than this town. There was one movie theatre, two restaurants, and post office that doubled as the local coffee shop. If they fled from here, then things had really gone wrong.
"I don't know. I can't imagine where they'd go."
I made a quick sweep of the kitchen just to be sure there was nothing the looters had left behind before moving into the living room. More destruction. I shook my head as Meredith stumbled over the remnants of our couch, the cushions gone, the metal spring jutting through the flame-scorched fabric.
I reached out and pushed the power button to the burnt out TV just . . . just because. Nothing happened.
"You okay?" Meredith asked.
"Yeah I'm good," I said as I closed my eyes, forced away the image of my family, cold and desperate.
It was freezing in here; the strips of fabric that were once curtains blowing in the breeze. I stared at the fireplace, wondering if it ever got used; if they tried to ride out the storm, the looting, and the chaos of this winter with only that brick hearth to keep them warm. I'd have killed for that fireplace countless times over the past year.
I bent down and shook the shattered glass from a broken picture frame onto the floor. The faces of my parents smiled back at me, Katie and me standing behind them. I remembered the day. Katie fussed with her hair for hours while I bitched about wearing a tie. Where the hell was that tie? Where the hell had they gone?
Without windows, the house had been unprotected from the elements. The hardwood floors were rotting and uneven, several areas still covered with an inch or more of slush. The few rugs we owned were gone and huge strips of carpet had been cut from the floor, leaving nothing but the sticky residue of glue.
"All's clear downstairs, Jake." Keith appeared in the basement doorway, his rifle still in hand. "You been upstairs yet?"
I shook my head, not wanting to see what was left of my room. "I'll take a quick look, just to make sure we haven't missed anything . . . or anyone."
I watched him take the steps two at a time, hoping he didn't find anyone . . . even Katie. Living like this was a fate worse than death.
Evan shrugged an apology, one he didn't need to make. We'd known this might happen, that we might make this journey home for nothing. But faced with the prospect of living in that silo forever, constantly looking over our shoulders for Tyler wasn't an option.
"Nothing," Keith called down from the top step, empty handed and somber.
It wasn't the look in his eyes or even the tone of voice that gave him away. It was the twitch of his fingers on the trigger, the way he ran his hand nervously up and down the barrel "What is it?" I asked, my voice rising as fear pulsed through my veins. "Did you see something?"
Keith glanced back toward my parent's room, while taking a step closer to me. "I think someone was camping out here after your parents left. They . . . ahh. . . died."
My head swiveled towards the stairs, struggling to comprehend what he was telling me. "There's a fucking body in my house? You're sure it isn't. . ."
"It's not any of them Jake, it's an old guy, and he's in pretty bad shape. Based on the way he looks, I'd say he's been dead for awhile."
I leaned against the wall, Keith's words reverberating in my mind. A random stranger is dead . . . upstairs . . . in my house. Cold and stiff. Dead for awhile. In my house. In my parent's room.
Oh Shit. What had I done? I dragged my only two friends in the world; I dragged Meredith away from a reasonably safe hole in the ground to . . . to this. My mind started racing with thoughts of heading back, calculating what supplies we had left and the probability of running into that band of men again. Sure Tyler was there, and he was out for blood. But we knew his pattern, knew what he wanted and why. Surely that gave us some advantage. We could take cover in the silo - defend ourselves.
"Jake?" Evan said, pulling me out of my thoughts. "You all right?"
I barely made it through the front door and into my yard before the vomiting started, my entire stomach seizing up. Meredith was at my side, rubbing my shoulders as the last of my morning can of fermented peaches covered the dead earth.
"We gotta go back," I said, as I ran the back of my sleeve across my mouth. "We can't stay here; there is no place safe to hide"
"Okay," she soothed. "We'll go back."
I stood up, grabbed the pack I'd thrown to the ground on my way out, and slung it over my shoulders. "If we leave now, we can get a few good miles in before dark. The weather is warming up so it won't be as . . ."
Keith put his hand on my arm, stopping me in place. "Wait. We aren't done searching. Just because they not here, doesn't mean they're dead. I say we check out Evan's house, then mine. If nobody's there, if it looks like this," he paused, glancing back towards the gutted interior of my house. "If it looks like this, then we'll leave."
Evan nodded, made his way down my driveway while I took a swig of water to rinse out my mouth. His house was diagonally across the street, and I wasn't holding out hope that is looked any different than mine.