Gated (8 page)

“Let us in! Please, let us in! Don’t do this!”

She screams and pounds and none of us say a word. They can’t hear her. To the people beyond the door, we are already dead.

Once Marie gives up and stops pounding, the world settles into an eerie quiet, holding its breath. I’m not breathing either. I don’t think any of us are. I look up at the sky, search for some sign of smoke or fire or both. What’ll happen first? Solar flares? Pioneer’s never been very specific about what exactly will kick things off. Maybe it’ll be the earth. It could shake and crumble and erupt all at once like a bomb that folds in on itself rather than out. A minute goes by. I clench my fists and try to be still so I can listen.

No one talks.

No one moves.

Two minutes.

Still nothing happens.

I’m sweaty and chilled and panicked to the point of immobility. What do we do? There’s no place to hide out here that’ll be safe. Our only option is sealed off and just beneath us. It’s maddening that we’re this close, but we might as well be one hundred miles away for all the good it
does us. I need to move, run out into the field, to do something, but I can’t. There’s nothing we can do now. Nothing.

“Please God, please God, please God.” I’ve been muttering these words under my breath without really realizing that I’m doing it. They startle me. I’m praying and it isn’t to the Brethren. It’s like a reflex reaction that I didn’t know that I had. In my panic, am I hoping Noah’s god will take pity on me, since I’m pretty sure that Pioneer won’t? But don’t I already know how Noah’s god answered the prayers of those left outside the ark, those wicked unbelievers? He let them drown. And it makes sense. They disobeyed his command. If Noah’s god exists, why would he take pity on us?

My pleas should be to the Brethren. We’re their chosen people. At least we were before today. But maybe we aren’t anymore.

“What d-d-d-do we d-d-d-do now?” Marie stutters in between wails, her face contorted with fear.

“I don’t know. I … I tried, but … I don’t know,” Will says, more to himself than to her. He sinks down onto his knees and puts his face in his hands.
“Why?”
he hollers at the ground.
“Why?”

“I can’t die. Not like this. We’re supposed to be inside. They left us. They just left us,” I mumble, but no one’s listening.

Marie’s crying gets louder and she starts shaking. Her tears collect along her chin before they drip onto her shirt. She looks up at the sky and opens her mouth to say
something more, but she can’t get the words out, she’s hiccupping and cryin V di9;the sg too hard.

“They have to know that we’d be close by. Why couldn’t they’ve waited a few more minutes? Nothing’s even happening yet. They could’ve let us in.” Brian glances at the entrance to the Silo, but there’s no hope in his face. He knows that his questions don’t matter anymore. We all want a different answer than the one we’ve got. We want a way to make things okay.

Will lets out a hard laugh. “You think so? What’s Pioneer’s first rule? Huh? When that door shuts, it doesn’t open again for five years until the Brethren come for us. For any reason. We all knew that.”

I can’t look at any of them. I want to blame each of them for this. Marie convinced me to break the rules. Will and Brian made that stupid ladder. I didn’t even want to go in the first place. If we’d been where we should’ve been—in bed—we’d be safe right now. These thoughts settle into my chest and expand until I’m afraid that I can’t keep them to myself. But what good will it do to start yelling at them now?

Marie is sniffling loudly. She’s cried herself out for now. She’s leaning into Brian and he’s holding her arms with his hands as if he can keep her from falling to pieces this way. Will isn’t holding me and I don’t want him to. What I want is to run, or grab Indy and race out onto the prairie, try to get ahead of the destruction, but I don’t know which way it’ll come from. So I stand still and wait.

Bang!

Every other minute or two, Will kicks or pounds at the door. There’s no rhyme or reason to what sets him off, but each time he starts back up, the rest of us jump.

“Could you quit doing that?” I finally snap, because if he doesn’t stop soon, I might go crazy.

Will shoots me a look and I stiffen because now I’ve managed to direct all of his anger at me instead of at the door. He shouts, “What should I do? Give up? Just stand here and look stupid like the rest of you?”

“Ease up, Will,” Brian warns.

“No, I’m not gonna ease up. Unless you have a better idea—in which case, I’m all ears. Tell me what you think we should do.” He glares at Brian and then at me. When his eyes meet mine, his face softens just a little.

“All right, look, I just can’t … stop … I mean … They locked us out. They left us to die.” He takes a few steps away from the door and yells, “
Nothing’s
happening! Open the door!”

“They don’t know that,” Brian says quietly. “They have no way of knowing from down there—or of hearing us. And you said it yourself, even if they did, they wouldn’t open it.”

“Well, then we have to make them hear, make them change their minds,” Will shouts before turning to rush past us and away from the orchard.

“Where’s he going?” Marie wails, and Brian closes his eyes like he’s about a half second shy of losing his patience.
“Pull it together, babe, please? Look at Lyla. She’s not freaking out.”

I’m not?

I haven’t given any thought to how I seem to everyone else, because I feel like my insides have gone all loose and jiggly inside my skin [nsi">I hav. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I still can’t quite believe that it has. We’re supposed to be in the Silo. We’re supposed to be part of the future, not still-breathing relics of the past. I wrap my arms around my body to try to physically hold myself together.

Marie is just beginning to quiet down as Will charges back down the path toward us with an ax, his eyes targeting the shelter door. He raises the ax over his head and we all duck as if somehow he’ll hit us by mistake even though we’re nowhere near him. He swings the ax at the door. It connects with the iron and makes an impressive sound before it bounces off. The ax handle vibrates in Will’s hands and he curses as he almost drops it. But then he’s swinging it at the sides of the door, striking at the cement walls on either side. He’s grunting and yelling and swinging over and over again, but making very little progress. He sort of reminds me of one of those Looney Tunes characters—Yosemite Sam, maybe, when something isn’t going his way and he throws a massive fit. Then Marie winds up again, wailing and crying louder than ever as the ax hits the wall and the door … and I just can’t stop the crazy laughter building up inside of me. I start giggling because the whole thing is just too surreal.

And then I’m smack in the middle of a full-body laugh, the kind I get when I’m really nervous. I clutch at my stomach. My eyes are leaking and my nose is running. My sides ache, but I can’t stop the waves of hysterics that keep crashing over me. It’s enough to stop Will from hacking at the door and Marie from weeping. Brian is actually holding her closer now, like he’s afraid of me or something. They’re all looking at me like I’ve gone ahead and totally lost it, which only makes my laughter worse. Pretty soon Will has to come up behind me and pat me hard on the back to make sure that I’m managing to breathe between laughing seizures.

“Um, Lyla, are you okay?” Brian says. He looks more frightened now than he has the last half hour.

I gasp and try to calm down. “Yeah, I’m sorry, but watching Will hit that door and then Marie with the wailing … and the orchard is so quiet, everything else is just so normal … This whole thing feels impossible. I mean, are we wrong? Maybe they’re just in the clubhouse. It’s not like we checked. Maybe the alarm stopped ringing because it was just a
false
alarm. This whole thing could be a really big mistake. Couldn’t it? Please, this can’t be happening right now. Not when it’s all our faults that we didn’t make it.” Now I’m crying in the midst of laughing, which is really terrifying because it makes me realize just how close I am to losing it completely.

Will lets out a long, slow breath. “Okay, so it’s our fault we’re out here. So what? What’s crying about it gonna do? We need to figure out what comes next.”

“What do you mean ‘what comes next’? Like we have options? We’re gonna die,” Marie shrieks, and Brian pushes her off of his lap and shakes her shoulders.

“Shut up!” he shouts, and we all startle because he hasn’t really flipped out at all up until now. He’s been eerily calm, actually, but I guess since the rest of us have freaked out, maybe it’s his turn.

“We’re stuck out here.” He stands up and kicks at the ground, uprooting a small patch of grass with the edge of his shoe. “We can’t do anything about that part. But we can st [But groundop feeling sorry for ourselves and figure out how to survive for as long as possible. I’m not gonna just sit here and wait to die. We either find a way to get them to let us in or we start figuring out what the next step is. So what do you guys want to do?”

Will paces back and forth a few times before he looks at me and then back to Brian. “We need to find out how much time we have. Then we can decide.”

Marie wipes her hand across her nose and exhales shakily. “We need, like, a phone or a radio or something.”

Brian nods and looks at the ground. “Pioneer keeps a radio and computer in his room, right? We need to get them and start seeing if there’s any news about the end yet, if things are already starting.”

“But we’re not allowed in his room.
Ever
,” Marie says with something like awe. Pioneer lives alone in two small rooms at the back of the clubhouse, but no one’s ever
even seen them, because they’re strictly off-limits. I can’t remember hearing of anyone actually being invited inside of them.

“Like he’ll even know. He’s in the shelter. Whatever’s left in his rooms can’t be forbidden anymore,” Brian says.

“Then let’s go,” I say. Staying in the orchard is becoming unbearable. I can’t keep still knowing that my family is just beneath my feet, safe within the Silo. I’m never going to see them again. I didn’t get to say goodbye. None of us did. Will finally shrugs and takes my hand. Brian takes Marie’s and together we start down the path toward the clubhouse and Pioneer’s rooms.

At first when we hear the lock clicking, we can’t track where it’s coming from. I jump because the sound doesn’t belong with the other, more natural ones around us. Without really thinking about it, we all huddle closer together. In the space of half an hour, we’ve become completely dependent on one another. Turns out impending death will do that. I’m shaking and Will’s grip tightens on my hand.
Did we just imagine the sounds?

The Silo’s door groans and slowly swings out into the orchard. For a moment everything seems to freeze; even the crickets around us have quieted. And then we see Pioneer filling up the space behind the door.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.” Marie throws herself at Pioneer. He doesn’t return her hug. His face is solemn. “You weren’t where you were supposed to be
tonight,” he says quietly, his eyes resting on each of us in turn. His expression is unreadable. I can’t help shivering. I’d feel better if he’d yell. His calm is spooky.

“Hurry up,” he says as he motions us inside.

Brian and Marie rush into the space before he’s even stopped talking. Will lets go of my hand and moves toward them. I follow, but I’m moving more slowly.
Why did he open the door?
It goes against everything he’s taught us up until now. Why now after letting us pound for so long? I’m glad for the sudden safety, but I can’t help wondering what’s really going on. We don’t deserve to be let in. We broke the rules.

I look at Pioneer. He stares into my eyes and smiles softly. “It’ll be okay, Little Owl. I’m here. You’re safe. Come inside now.” He puts his arm around my shoulders and gently moves me into the Silo. Then he shuts the shelter door and locks it behind us. When the lock snaps into place, [ inound my I can feel my panic start to fade a little. Pioneer gives my arm one more pat before he moves to the front of our group. “Okay, my wayward flock, follow me.”

Suddenly I know why he did what he did. He let us in because he cares for us, because he wants us to have a second chance, even if it means breaking his own rules. Of course that’s why. He’s always done everything he could to keep us safe. This is just one more example of his devotion to us. And my questioning is just one more example of how undeserving of it I am.

He doesn’t speak another word as he leads us forward,
and his quiet rubs off on all of us—either that or everyone else is drowning in guilt over our ill-timed trip outside Mandrodage Meadows right along with me.

We follow him down the first flight of steps, through the radiation-showering area, and past the armory. I’m dizzy with the sudden change of fate we’ve been dealt. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that we’ve been spared when Pioneer’s always vowed to keep the Silo’s door sealed once we reached the last day. His timing was so odd. Just as we were about to give up trying to get in, he opened the door. Why then and not right away? Wasn’t waiting far more risky? I keep stealing glances at everyone else to see if they are wondering about the same things, but Marie is grinning like an idiot and Brian and Will are staring blankly ahead, their faces giving nothing away.