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The Silo

A piece of dystopian fiction

By Paul FeyPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 10 min read
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The Silo
Photo by Melanie Stander on Unsplash

The first rays of sun excavated the caves and cracks of the golden red canyon upon his arrival. He rolled his motorcycle the final few yards to the bottom of her refurbished metal silo and spotted her on the cylindrical roof. She came down and he showed her the letter and the seal through reams of the barbed wire. In the kitchen, the kettle steamed over her fire, and they watched the smoke on the hazy horizon grow like a sapling through soil. By the time they’d emptied a full kettle of a lone tea bag, there was no mistaking that it was not only growing but getting closer.

“Scavengers,” she said. He already knew. She rested her empty fist on the flotsam of a downed billboard. It’d been a while since he’d seen anything hung up on walls. These were tiled with field-green metallic diamond cut-outs, the sides of letters just visible on the edges of some. The curve of a capital S, he guessed once signified Salt Lake City. How many miles away, how many years ago, he could no longer say. She continued, “I’ll guess it’s the gravediggers. They came from the west a few weeks back.”

“I didn’t see them on the road. What are they like?”

“They disrespect the dead. God knows what they do with them.”

He looked out the window. She put her empty cup down, retrieved a fur coat from a locked door, and pulled its collar toward her jaw. She picked the cup back up and traced the cursive letters: Dave’s Lodge. He pulled a metal comb from his breast pocket and ran it through his beard. He watched her reaction from the corner of his eye. When he was done, she leaned over an aluminum square on the wall and painted her mouth with a crumb of crimson lipstick.

“Going out?”

“Ha-ha.” She reformed her heart-shaped mouth into a circle. She wiped the rest of it into her lips. “What’s your name?”

“Noah.”

He finished his tea and retrieved his black rifle from a canvas bag. Inside a smaller bag, he pulled out a cleaning solution, a rod, a jag, and a cloth.

“Mine is Diana.” She had nothing left to put on. She sat down on the chair in the corner. He put the rifle between his legs and looked at her with care. She touched an imaginary pendant around her neck with her fingers and stared at the ceiling.

He finished cleaning his rifle and screwed a scope on top of it. He loaded it. Diane leaned out the window. “It’s them alright. What are you going to do? Kill them all?”

“Is there any chance they don’t come for a visit?”

“Stop that,” she said. He put the gun down, and she continued, “They hound every living thing from the range to the gulf.”

“Then I’ll have to kill them all.”

She searched his body for what could be that valuable. He felt the gold heart-shaped locket against him, its lacing protrusions interlocking with the grooves of his skin.

The smoke arrived with a cloud of noise, the growling and churning and whining of truck engines, wheels, and machinery. It all passed the window. The operation began on the other side of the encampment. The rumbling of trucks continued over there, while the drilling of raw, cracked voices moved toward them, demanding anything of value. They moved in groups of ten, a procession of four roaming scavengers who gathered, rummaged, and intimidated the inhabitants while another six like pallbearers carried a box into which the goods were deposited. They never communicated with names. They just pointed at each other and grunted, “you.”

Finally, a group approached the silo. Diane peeled down a steel panel and pulled out a knife. She went to the mirror and touched up the corner of her lips. He balanced the tip of his rifle out the window. Through the scope, the man in the silo could see their faces were bright with red clay and the box filled with sticks, stones, plastic and weeds. He fired four times and spilled their contents over the dusty rock. The rest of the procession froze and were taken down. ‘You’ repeated like the second hands of a clock. They fell into a new formation like ants. They raced from boulder to boulder. When nothing else availed them, they hid behind bushes. The survivors regrouped at a small ledge, the last shelter the land afforded them. Suddenly, dozens burst like fruit flies from rotten fruit. He shot down half. The remaining circled the silo and found footholds. They gripped the barbed wire to aid their climb.

“Noah!” Diane shouted.

He took his pistol from his hip and shot the crawlers. He gripped the top of the window and, launching himself off her table, swung up onto the top of the silo. He located the cylindrical crowns of his assailants and fired.

He returned to his nest. Diane brushed her fur coat and watched as the stragglers ran off. He sat at the table and wiped his face with a rag. There was again much youing. The rumbling changed course and something crashed like a giant mechanical elephant had stomped the earth. A wave of dust blew into the window. The source appeared in view: a truck twice as long as the silo with a shield made of steel and layers of bone, bleached brilliant by the sun. The gravediggers crouched behind it as it moved onward. Sometimes one would stumble and get caught up and crushed by a wheel. The man in the silo moved his hand to shelter his brow. He looked at the absence of dust in the shape of his arm.

Diane licked the last drop of tea. “Every man dies in isolation,” she said, squeezing the bag. She blew imaginary steam from the top of the cup. She looked out the window and shouted, “Dear God.”

There were rotting corpses drooped across the bones, growing closer. Diane crossed herself over and over. It reached the ledge and a voice cried out, “You!” Hundreds of them swarmed from behind the shield. Diane shrieked and the man fired into the beige cloud of bodies. There were too many and soon their hands hit the silo like hail. The man fired from the top of the silo, picking them off before another filled its place. One of his prey rushed him from behind, but didn’t push him off the edge. He tried to line up the shot. The assailant caught his wrist first, bent it until the pistol fell from it, then grabbed the rifle and tip-toed toward the edge, dangling the man off it. The gravedigger held the inside of the window swung him back into the room and lowered himself inside. They both gripped the rifle and pushed it to each other’s necks. The animal strength overpowered him. Instead of choking him, the gravedigger ripped the rifle from his hands and tossed it out the window.

The gravedigger saw his reflection in the aluminum mirror. He puckered his lips, admired his jawline, and laughed. He lowered his gaze to the man, “Who are you?”

Diane shielded herself with the fur. “My sister told me it was Jonah.”

A pair of gravediggers climbed through the window. One said, “Big-you, the pulley is ready for them.” He told them to proceed, cautioning them about the knife Diane was likely hiding. They pat down both. One restrained the man by arms while Big-you held the heart-shaped locket in his hand. He opened it.

“Finally,” he cried. He held the man by the shoulders. He touched his comrades and Diane on the shoulder.

They only confiscated the knife before lowering them one at a time in a large steel cauldron. They were bound by the hands and shuttled in a small truck to the hill. Here, they witnessed the gravediggers carry out their eponymous activity. There was no need to shout ‘you.' They shoveled the earth at the cemetery they’d uncovered and sorted the bones from the scraps of cloth from the gold teeth from the pearl necklaces, all without shame or greed in their faces.

Big-you appeared by their side. He gave the man a knowing look and said, “We’ve disturbed these underground silos enough.” The dusty smoke covered the sunset. Big-you retrieved a pile of sticks from a massive bin in the center of the cemetery and made a fire next to their truck. He heated water in a make-shift steel kettle and lowered a metal ball into it, yielding a fresh weedy smell. He served the tea in animal skulls and signaled with his hand they should all drink together. Big-you sang a song:

Man stands in a silo, time in a sieve. One goes out, the other one gives. It runs a mile-o-minute, nowhere-to-live

He sipped his tea and looked at the smoke. “It’s funny how they used to romanticize the end, even as there were too many bodies for graves. And they started shutting us out. They told us it would take 500 people to repopulate the world, while 500 died every hour.” Big-you looked to the man as a conspirator. He wiped his lips. “We would name the world after you. I could take the locket, but what good would that do? Dressed for war and sit atop the compound for eternity. Or send one of us in to unlock it, only to be killed upon arrival? Just to waste a life.”

He dropped dust from his hands like a sand-timer. He handed his skull to a passing comrade. “They must have promised you a seat at the right hand of the richest man. Or you can bring heaven to earth.”

The journey to the underground silo began as soon as they finished their tea, swept past the last remaining road signs along the dusty, desert floor on their caravan of trucks and motorcycles. In the middle of the night, Big-you nudged his new journeymen to make sure they were awake. He said, “They call us gravediggers, but this is our crowning achievement.” The tires sped over ribbed strips on the road, each section emitting its own note. He leaned his head out the window and let the wind blow through his hair. He looked at them. “Music!”

“Swing low sweet chariot…coming forth to carry me home,” Diane sang along.

“Those are the words? I could kiss you!”

The man opened his heart-shaped locket at his chest and stared at its dim contents. He repeated his name in his mind, 500, 500, 500. He thought, I’m not just any man.

“It’s empty?” Diane murmured, peering over his shoulder.

It was morning when they stopped. Big-you wheeled 500’s motorcycle to him. He held him by the shoulders like a master craftsman with his tool, not tight, but securely. He reached down and gathered dust in his palm. With his fingers, he wiped it across 500’s chest. “You, leave the door open behind you.” Behind him, the gravediggers stripped down and put on earth-colored suits. They lay against the ground and began crawling. “Whatever you must sacrifice for the true humanity.”

500 mounted his motorcycle and sped off. A mile later, he stopped at a blank headstone. He dismounted and wiped the dust off a door to the ground. He lifted the locket from his shoulders, opened it, and pressed it into the two open heart shapes. It unlocked and he pulled the door up. He chose a rock to act as a wedge and peered into the blackness. The smell of sap, and grains, and smoked sage greeted him. Weighing the rock in his palm and holding the locket like a teabag, he stepped into the refurbished missile silo.

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About the Creator

Paul Fey

I just want to be the best writer you know.

https://paulfeywritings.cargo.site/

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