Gated (30 page)

Once I’m in the stairwell, it dawns on me that the Silo is too quiet. Why are my parents the only people I’ve run into so far? I linger on the landing for a moment. If Pioneer’s already put things in motion, do I really have time to get the sheriff down here? I need someone else to go with me. I can’t do this alone, despite what my dad thinks.

If I can just talk to Will and show him Marie, he’ll help me. Even angry, he’s not deluded enough to keep following Pioneer after this … at least I don’t think that he is. And Brian. Once he knows, he’ll help me for sure. I need to at least get them and then they can go with me above ground to get help. Instead of going down the stairs, I go up. I’ll check some of the other floors first and then go to the emergency tunnel. Will will be in the medical rooms, especially if there are already some wounded there after the gunfight. He’s been training with Mr. Kincaid for the last few years.

I open the door to the second level of personal
compartments on my way up. All of the doors here are shut tight as well. It’s just as eerily quiet as the other floor. Then I run up to the next level, where the medical rooms are. When I crack open the door, I finally see people. They’re gathered outside of the medical rooms’ double doors. I’d forgotten that some family members would gather here too and wait for word. I’m not sure I want to know who’s hurt. I can’t keep losing people.

It won’t be easy to get to Will now. But I do see Brian milling around with the others. I’ll talk to him first—except now that he’s in front of me, I don’t know what I should say, how to braroeak the news about Marie. His mom is huddled with Mrs. Whitcomb and some other ladies. She’s crying.

Pioneer is nowhere in sight, so I walk into the midst of them. The ladies notice me at about the same time and their faces settle into identical glares.

“You! This is all your fault. How dare you be anywhere near here right now! He’s dead because of you. You killed my husband!” Brian’s mom screams at me. Brian goes to stand beside her; his hand settles on her shoulder. He looks awful. I swallow hard. He doesn’t even know about Marie yet. He’s lost two of the people he loves most in one day.

“Your dad?” I ask Brian.

“Was shot out there … during the fight.” Brian looks shrunken, defeated.

“You shouldn’t be in here with us. You should be
outside with Them.” Brian’s mom points a shaky finger at me. I start to back away.

“She doesn’t deserve salvation. She should be dead, not my Steven.” She’s wailing and the others rally around her, comforting her.

I was wrong to try to talk to anyone else. I should’ve realized. They won’t listen to me. The only way I can help any of them now is to leave. I have no choice but to do this on my own.

Before they can move toward me, I turn and throw myself back into the stairwell and down the stairs. I manage to make it to the supply room door before I hear their voices on the stairs. They’re coming for me. I rush into the supply room and flick on the light. I begin moving the closest set of shelves in front of the door. I have to knock off half of the canned goods on it before I make any real progress. Then I take a set of two-by-fours from a stack of lumber in the corner and wedge them between the door and the thick steel bar at the bottom of my cell. It should buy me some time. I move farther into the room and trip over Marie. I didn’t have time to explain what happened to her to Brian or the rest of them. What if, when they manage to get in, they think it was me, that I killed her? I have to leave quickly.

I begin searching the enormous back wall, my dad’s plans in my hand. I pull bags of flour away off of the shelves there and upend baskets full of onions and potatoes. Behind me I hear the supply room door jiggle.

“She’s locked herself in somehow,” someone yells.

“Door’s jammed,” someone else yells back.

I think Mr. Brown is the one talking, but I can’t be sure. His voice is garbled like it’s underwater, either because the door is so thick or because panic roars in my ears. I work faster, pulling boxes of rice and pasta away from the shelves. One bursts open and rice spills out on the cement. I clamber over the slippery grains, trying to get to the next set of shelves.

The door begins jumping in its frame. They’re trying to kick it in. I don’t have much time. My teeth start chattering. I’m more afraid than I’ve ever been. It’s strange, what I fear most right now isn’t the outside world, but my own friends and neighbors, people I’ve trusted.

When I sweep a long line of canned goods onto the floor, the escape hatch materializes from behind them. It’s round and large like a manhole cover, with a latch and padlock on one side. I jiggle the shelving unit in front of it as much as I can without stopping to take any more supplies off it. It’s heavy, but still I manage to inch it forward enough to getenough t behind it. I pick up the padlock and begin working it back and forth, entering in Pioneer’s end date. I pull down and nothing happens. The combination’s wrong. The supply door shudders behind me again. Loudly. I’m about out of time and I have no idea what numbers to try next. I wipe my forehead. My shirt is damp and sticking to me. The heat is becoming unbearable. My breaths are starting to feel shallow.

Think. Come on, think, think, THINK!

I roll through another set of numbers, Pioneer’s birthday. It’s wrong.

I hit the hatch with the flat of my hand in frustration. What good is an emergency hatch if you can’t use it in an actual emergency?

One of the two-by-fours holding the door closed bounces, then shifts out of place. The other one looks dangerously close to doing the same. I turn back to the lock and begin trying every combination I can think of. None of them work.

“Open this door, Lyla!” It’s Pioneer. If I don’t figure the lock out soon, I’m as good as dead.

I don’t answer. I rack my brains for some set of numbers with meaning. If he used significant numbers before, chances are he’s done it this time too. He probably changed the lock in the last few days, after he knew we would be inside the Silo for good.

It hits me then.

The first combination was the day we were originally supposed to be sealed in here. So maybe … I try today’s date. It doesn’t work. But then maybe we’ve already been in here for a day. It’s hard to tell. I try the dates for every day this week.
Come on, come on, come on
. I start to shake as I try the last one. I’m out of ideas. It’s all over. My fingers struggle to line each number up with the arrow, but when I reach the last one, the lock hangs open. It worked!

I throw the lock on the ground just as the other
two-by-four shifts away from the door. The only thing keeping the people in the stairwell out now is a shelving unit, and since I was able to move it across the door alone, it won’t be long before the men on the other side of the door get it moved back out of the way.

I swing open the emergency hatch, throw my flashlight and Dad’s map out in front of me, and dive into the black space beyond the door. It’s dank and smells of dirt and worms.

I switch on my flashlight. I’m at the bottom of a long cement cylinder. There are iron rungs on one side of it. They form a narrow ladder to the top. I can’t see where the cylinder ends, but I’m guessing it’s as tall as the Silo itself, which means I’ll be climbing for a while.

I put the flashlight in my waistband and the map back in my pocket and start making my way up.

I try not to think of how high up I’ll be at the top or that there’s obviously something blocking the exit up there since it’s so dark—something Dad neglected to mention before. I just climb.

Hand over hand.

One foot and then the other.

My hands are sweaty. They keep slipping as I move upward by degrees. The air here is worse than the air inside the rest of the Silo. I’m practically smothering. And my head is pounding again. It feels tender and achy. Between the concussion and the lack of breathable air, I have to battle to keep the flurry of black dots that swarm
just outside of my sight line from blinding me completely. I’m not sure if I have enoug I have h air to make the climb, but I don’t have any choice. I have to keep going up.

I’ve made decent progress by the time I hear people yelling down below me. I look down in time for a large, bright round beam of light to block out my vision. I startle and have to hook an arm around one ladder rung to keep from falling. I can’t see anything but the light.

“Come back down, Lyla.” Pioneer’s voice echoes off the walls.

I don’t answer. I turn my face toward the cement wall again and focus on the rungs above me.

Hand over hand.

One foot and then another. I am close to the top. I have to be.

Below me a shadow falls over the light. Someone is beginning to climb. I can’t see who it is, but it doesn’t matter. Whoever it is is coming fast. His silhouette scrambles up the cement tube like a giant spider. My stomach clenches. I try to speed up, but my limbs are stiff with panic. I feel as if I’m actually slowing down.

“You won’t be able to get out now,” Pioneer yells up. “I can’t have you endangering us anymore.”

My flashlight’s sending jumpy streams of light up ahead of me as I climb. I can see something up ahead—the top of the tube, but there’s no door. There’s only a thickish-looking fabric that reminds me of spider webbing. It makes me feel like I’m in a trap. Now the spider
person’s coming to finish me off. I reach up and touch the mesh fabric. There’s something heavy behind it. I knock my hand against it. It makes a solid thudding sound, but the board manages to move upward a teensy bit. I test the fabric, try to pull it down, but it’s taut and holds fast. I need something to cut it with.

“Your parents are waiting for you, Little Owl,” Pioneer calls up.

There’s a threat in his voice that makes me falter, but I don’t stop. I can’t. I pick at the fabric, try to poke a hole through it with my fingers, but it holds.

Below me the spider person becomes visible. It’s Mr. Whitcomb. His jaw’s clenched shut and his face is beet red. The climb up is starting to catch up with him. I can see it in his eyes, but he’s still coming.

I have to get through the fabric now. I grab for the only tool I have, my flashlight. It’s a heavy-duty kind—large and encased in steel. I unscrew the top and the tunnel gets darker. I can still see because of the light below, but not enough to work quickly.

I feel the edge of the tubular part and hope that it’s rough enough to cut the fabric. Then I loop one arm around the rung beside me and brace my feet—one against the ladder and one on the opposite side of the wall. I move the flashlight casing’s edge across the material above me.

I run the flashlight casing back and forth, over and over, in as close to the same spot as possible. I feel some of the nylon threads give way under my assault. I go faster.

Once the tear is big enough to grab onto, I slip my hand inside and tug. The tear grows larger until it runs the length of the space above me. I push at the board beyond it. It moves again, but only a little, not enough to dislodge it.

I move upward as far as I can go, curling my back against it and pushing up with my legs. The board groans against the cement, and bits of sand and dirt trickle down the sides of it.

“Too late,” Mr. Whitcomb says below b says bme. He huffs out a breath and lunges upward. His outstretched hand grazes my shoe.

I readjust and kick his hand away. Then I move the board with my back one more time. This time it slants upward. It’s really just a sheet of plywood, which seems like an absurd barrier against the outside world, but I guess anything thicker would make upending it from the inside impossible.

More sandy dirt rains down on us. It gets in my eyes and I can’t see.

Mr. Whitcomb makes one more grab for my feet and I surge upward. The board slides up and over my back. All at once, dirt covers my head, my mouth, my body. It slips under my shirt and down into my pants and shoes.

Mr. Whitcomb makes a startled sound and I open my eyes. He’s fallen down a few rungs. His feet dangle downward, bicycling to get a foothold on one of the rungs or the wall. Daylight streams into the space, lighting the entire tunnel all the way to the bottom. The flashlight and
Pioneer are no longer below us. The dirt has settled at the bottom of the tunnel and the air is starting to clear.

Suddenly Pioneer pokes his head back out of the hatch down there and looks up at me. “I won’t let you leave. You belong down here.”

A few more feet and he won’t have a say. I’m almost there.

I look down one last time. Mr. Whitcomb has regained his footing. He reaches into the back of his waistband and pulls out a gun. He aims it at me.

I cry out and start climbing again, but the rungs are coated in dirt now and treacherous. My feet slip out from under me. I struggle to keep my hands on the rungs.

I’ve almost made it.