Silo 49: Going Dark

You Might Want to Sit Down

“Okay,” Wallis answered, eyeing the bucket of corn. “Can it wait till after we eat? I’m not joking about being starving, you know.” He sucked in his gut dramatically and slapped at his belly, but his smile belied his words. He was just cheerful and couldn’t seem to stop himself.

“Not that kind of help,” Graham answered, trying to figure out exactly how he was going to do this and not get punched. He would deserve a punch or two. “We can eat while you help me.”

Wallis rubbed his hands together and said, “Right! Tea. And napkins. Get comfortable, why don’t you.”

Graham took the bucket and scooted some junk around on the low living room table to make room for it while Wallis busied himself with the business of making tea, humming a little tune as he did. He was glad to see that his friend was using the containers of farm water to make the tea.

He had already done all that he could to keep Wallis safe and with his wits intact without telling forbidden truths. He had ensured that Wallis received water tapped before it was processed through the dosing machines. Graham and Wallis were both drinking straight farm water now. The water they were drinking came from the upper water treatment plant—the one that brought the highest levels of contamination to those that drank from it—but Graham could see no help for that. He tried not to imagine what poison leeched into his body whenever he drank. When Wallis had asked why Graham wanted him to drink only from the big containers he hated hauling, he had lied and his lie was just believable enough for his friend.

Graham hadn’t been able to face the idea of being alone in his memory. It was bad enough seeing the dullness come over everyone else but he wouldn’t have been able to survive without at least one other undimmed person. Wallis was getting some dosing, of course, and there was nothing Graham could do about that. The tea in communal spaces, a quick drink of water at some handy faucet during the day or even the water left on vegetables washed before being served meant he couldn’t escape it entirely. But that little bit hadn’t dulled Wallis and he was almost as quick as ever. Graham was getting that much as well. There was simply no way to avoid it completely, but these small amounts seemed to have no real effect on either man.

Wallis waved him over to grab the tea while he carried in the other necessaries. Once they had settled and Wallis dug into the fragrant, but rapidly cooling, ears of corn, Graham decided it was now or never.

“So, Wallis, you know I don’t have a shadow anymore, right?”

Without a pause in his rapid nibble along the ear of corn, Wallis nodded and grunted something that sounded vaguely like a yes. The way his eyebrows drew together told Graham he didn’t understand the point of the question.

“Well, a big part of my job involves stuff no one except my shadow and myself are supposed to know about,” he said by way of explanation and then trailed off, trying to work everything out in his mind.

Wallis finished his first ear and dropped the gnawed cob into a smelly—and overfull—bin meant for compost material. He grabbed another in hands already dripping with juice and asked, “You want me to be your shadow or something? Because, if that is what you’re after, I gotta tell you I’m fully employed already.”

That actually wasn’t a bad thought. In a way, he was enlisting Wallis as a shadow of sorts. Unlike his uncle, Graham had no shadow to take over for him should the worst happen. And if anything happened to him right now, before he could do what he needed, the silo would be lost. And the only shadow he could handle after what had happened to the boy he had thought of as a son was Wallis.

His shadow had died before his thirtieth birthday. He had wasted away until the doctor gave him that single big dose of concentrated poppy extract that he gave to all those whose pain grew too great. There was not enough of the extract to manage the pain of a long decline. Even when crops were displaced to increase the space for the flowers, there was no way to tend and process as much as they would need. There just weren’t enough farmers or chemists.

So, people like his shadow suffered until the suffering was too great and then their suffering ended. That was it. A medic was called and with him came his little bottle of painless death. Graham had cared for his shadow as best he could but eventually the young man had called for the bottle. He had cried and held his bony hand as the lines of pain eased away and he regained his youth, even if only briefly and in death.

Graham shook those dark thoughts of the past away and grabbed one of the ears of corn and said, “Okay. You know how you’ve always thought we were the only silo?”