M Banner - Silo - Summer's End

Right then is when a new revelation rose up and sucker-punched Krista in the gut, reminding her that she’d forgotten something important. Something that explained the professor’s sudden need to revisit the pain associated with his dead wife. “I’m sorry, sir. I totally forgot. Today is the anniversary, right? Please forgive me. I should have remembered.”

“It’s okay, Krista. We’re all a little busy these days.”

“Still, sir. No excuse. My deepest apologies. I know how important today is.”

His eyes dropped to the desk, his tone low and full of emotion. “I still miss her as much as I did the day it happened.”

Krista didn’t respond. None of the words in her mind sounded appropriate, not after disappointing the one man she admired the most above all, even if he tended to always see the bright side of everything.

Her thoughts turned to the metal necklace under her clothes. She could feel it dangling with a purpose as the infinity symbol swayed back and forth, brushing against her skin with every movement.

It was a copy of the original necklace made by June’s own hands right before she died. Edison had one made for every member of Nirvana. It was to be a constant reminder of the woman whose death had become the catalyst for the silo and all it stood for. Somehow Krista had forgotten all about it. Shit.

If she didn’t have her hands full, she would have taken it out from below her camo-colored muscle shirt and kissed it as a sign of respect.

Edison’s look of grief vanished as he brought his eyes to Krista. “Your father must have used those classic car rebuilds as a therapy of sorts.”

“Yeah, probably,” she said, realizing something she hadn’t thought of before. She held the stack of signs higher in her hands to draw attention to them. “Like your new signs.”

His tone changed again, this time sounding convinced his words were true and on the mark. “Different patients require different therapy. Sometimes that means it must come in a form nobody expects.”

“I’m sure you’re right, sir,” she said, even though she wasn’t convinced the trite sayings would help with morale. Despite her doubts, she wasn’t about to argue with the man she’d just disappointed. “I’ll get them to Zimmer right away.”

Edison raised an eyebrow. “You said you needed to speak to me about something.”

Krista hesitated to choose the proper words, then let the words rip. “It’s Summer, boss.”

“Don’t tell me she’s late again?”

“Roger that. Third time in a row. This can’t continue. We have rules and they apply to everyone. Even her. It’s time for disciplinary action, sir. And hard. Otherwise, she’ll never learn. We simply cannot continue to let her keep putting all our lives at risk.”

Summer turned sideways and squeezed her lean frame between a brick wall and the side panel of an abandoned delivery truck. She inched along until she made it past the rear bumper of the vehicle and into an open recess not visible from the other side of the truck. A door stood in front of her, one she knew well. It guarded the rear entrance of her favorite destination in the world—a store called INFINITE READS.

The door appeared to be in worse shape than the last time she visited. The two dents near the bottom hinge looked recent, but she couldn’t be sure. Haste and hunger can cause memory to become unreliable, even unstable.

The sudden twinge in her stomach acted as a trigger, sending her mind into search and recovery mode. A vision of the metal door flashed from her memories, showing her the previous state of its surface.

The answer was yes—the dents were new. Of course, there was no way to know what had smacked into the door. The routine gusts of wind could have driven something heavy into it.

She hesitated, thinking it through as her eyes began to scan the area around the back of the truck and her feet. There didn’t appear to be anything that might have caused the damage, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. The wind could have blown the evidence away.

Summer wedged the door open with her arm and slipped through the opening and headed inside, where a cascade of smashed glass, torn boxes, and soiled clothes stood in her way. It was evidence of a break-in, though not a recent one. She’d seen this same disarray before—each time she’d broken the treaty to cross the No-Go Zone and enter Frost’s territory.

The first time was years earlier, during one of her routine Seeker Missions. A pile of human popsicles in an old schoolyard sent her into a panic, the sudden fright fueling an unplanned sprint across the No-Go Zone.

That was when she stumbled onto this place—a used book store that doubled as a clothing and food donation center for the homeless. Of course, the store’s charity work vanished along with the population, the displaced perishing first after the sky filled with ash and the sun went into hiding.

Had she not lived it herself, she may not have believed it. But it was true. All of it. Her own history had proved everything she’d read in her fiction books correct.

When the world ends and society faces imminent death, the less fortunate are the first to be abandoned. Or sacrificed, depending on the author’s viewpoint.

Those authors way back when were correct. Social causes may have been in vogue before The Event, but when the end came, social justice warriors and their moral outrage became extinct like everything else.

Summer continued past the clutter, then changed course, avoiding eye contact with the broken-down counter that used to contain a cashier and a register. The blood stain along that wall behind it was her primary worry, not wanting to bring up an old wound.

The splatter belonged to her one and only Seeker partner, Avery. He was one of the initial victims of the Scabs when they first showed up, focusing their attention on the stocky twenty-two-year-old while she ran for safety.

Her knees went weak, but she pushed on, ignoring the pain in her heart. Avery wasn’t the only Seeker to die that day. Eleven more of her friends met the same fate—all of them in the same area of town, less than a block apart from each other. Nobody was prepared for what happened, decimating the silo numbers.

Summer knew from her readings that mass tragedy often leads to kneejerk decisions by those in charge, causing swift and radical changes, usually in the name of safety, or to address some misplaced agenda. Sometimes the reactionary changes were for the better. Often they were not.

The massacre that took Avery was no different. The Council acted quickly, decreeing that Seekers would no longer be sent out in pairs, nor would they be assigned to the same sector of the city. Risk had to be mitigated, they ruled, even if that meant making any one Seeker expendable in order to protect the majority.

In truth, Summer didn’t mind the risk. It was worth it—anything to get out of the silo and do her own thing for a few hours. It wasn’t easy living in cramped quarters, where everyone watches everything you do and does so every minute of every day.

She imagined silo life was akin to being confined to a prison cell, the time between seconds growing longer with each new day. For some reason, Tuesdays were the worst. She didn’t know why, but it didn’t change the fact—she hated Terrible Tuesdays. They simply felt wrong in some way. Not for any particular reason. They just did.

Yet, the slowness of time wasn’t the worst problem. It was the utter lack of privacy, and the fact that she was forced to wear the same damned clothes over and over.

Both can make a girl crazy. Or desperate, willing to take chances she wouldn’t normally take. Like wearing a bright red bandana during a Seeker Mission for food and supplies. Anything to change things up.