Silo

Chapter 13

One deep breath and I reached for the handle of the hatch. If the other band of kids hadn't found our shelter, they surely would now. As soon as I broke the seal, whatever snow had fallen would be displaced, a perfectly symmetrical concrete circle left in its place.  

I took one last look down the ladder to make sure Keith had his weapon loaded and ready. Evan was still on the ground with weapons in both hands, ready to shove them up to us at a second's notice. 

"Ready?" I asked, part of me hoping one of them would fess up to taking the stuff. I'd be pissed, and there'd certainly be a flying fist or two, but even that was a better alternative than heading topside.  

"Open it," Keith replied. 

I wrapped my hand around the cold steel, my fingers tensing with anticipation as I released the lever and shoved. Gritting my teeth, I strained to open a door. It felt ten times heavier than it had when I'd sealed it shut.  

The first rays of light sliced through the tunnel, and instinctively I cowered back, waiting for the barrel of a gun to meet my forehead. Nothing happened. No wind, no noise, not even a damn snowflake floated my direction. I inched my head up, groaning as the blinding sunlight seared my eyes. Damn it was bright. The snow's reflection magnified the glare tenfold.  

Keith nudged me from behind. "What do you see?" 

I blinked twice, willing my eyes to stay open despite the pain. We'd had a fresh coating of snow sometime in the past few days, and it still clung to the trees. Save for a few fallen branches, I didn't see a track anywhere.  

"Give me your binoculars," I called back. 

Keith ignored my request and shoved his body through the small space next to me. His eyes met the same glaring sun, his mouth responding with a not so soft curse. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw exactly the same thing I did. Nothing! 

"Impossible." He stepped out into the unmarred snow and turned a full circle in search of some form of life. "You know what this means," he shouted down to Evan. "It means you took my bow, and now I'm going to beat the crap out of you." 

Keith handed me his binoculars to me and took a few steps forward, hopefully to walk off his rage. I turned the same circle he had, my eyes protesting as I squinted into the distance in search of something ... anything that would suggest my only two friends hadn't turned on each other. That we hadn't become so bored, so desperate that we'd started playing with each other's minds. 

Evan popped his head out of the hatch just in time to see one pissed off Keith walking away. "You see anything?" 

I shook my head. "Not a damn thing." 

"Let's take a walk around," Evan suggested as he handed me an extra rifle and climbed through the opening. "There are three other entrance points to this silo; maybe they're coming in another way." 

I nodded and followed his lead, making sure to keep a safe distance between us and Keith. 

We walked the half-mile perimeter of our silo, following the line of rusted snow where pieces of the government-issued fence had toppled over. I'd traced this same path two days ago, making sure everything was secure before I sealed us in. It looked exactly the same, minus some perfectly smooth snow.  

We came across the second entry point to our silo and scanned the horizon for any sign of life. We'd never used this escape hatch, but we knew it was here, had triple checked its seal from the inside. I doubted anyone had tampered with it. If they had, there'd be some form of visible evidence - a boot print, disturbed snow, a glove left behind. Something. 

"Give me a hand," Keith said as he squatted down and cleared the snow from the door. It'd been locked from the inside, a twenty pound steel bar slammed into place. That didn't stop Keith from yanking it hard, making me put all my strength into tying to pry open door as well. It didn't move, and Keith fell back on his haunches, tired and pissed. 

We went through the same grueling and useless exercise at the third and final entrance. Didn't budge either. In fact, the only thing we had done was provide a fresh set of footprints for the pricks to follow in. Tempers flaring, we headed back to our main entrance, doing the best we could to disperse our tracks. It was useless, but maybe, just maybe if we split up and crisscrossed the area, we'd confuse them enough to buy us some warning time.  

Keith was the first back. He waited until me and Evan came into view, then opened the door and hummed his slingshot down the hatch. I didn't have to be within earshot to gather the context of his ramblings. He still blamed Evan.  

I closed the door behind us, wedging the steel bar back into place. It was dark, but I'd climbed this ladder countless times in the past year, knew every rung, could skip a few and still maintain my balance.  

"I didn't take his cross-bow, Jake. I swear to you I didn't take it," Evan said as I cleared the last rung. 

"I know." And that was the problem. I knew, without a doubt, Evan hadn't taken Keith's bow. He may have been irritated enough with Keith to fire back a few mean words, but he wasn't stupid enough to take his weapon. Being a small guy, Evan had learned real quick who he could mess with, and Keith wasn't one of them. That only left one option, one that neither me nor Evan wanted to entertain. Whoever was screwing with us was already in. Which mean our steel-reinforced, cold war missile, the one built to withstand a nuclear blast, couldn't even keep us safe.