Third Shift - Pact

•7•

The box on the wall was unrelenting with its awful sounds. His father had called it a radio. The noise it made was like a person hissing and spitting. Even the steel cage surrounding it looked like a mouth with its lips peeled back and iron bars for teeth.

Jimmy wanted to silence the radio but was scared to touch it or adjust anything. He waited to hear from his father, who had left him in a strange room, a hidden warren between the silo’s levels.

How many more of these secret places were there? He glanced through an open door at the other room his dad had shown him, the one like a small apartment with its stove, table, and chairs. When his parents got back, would they all stay here overnight? How long before the madness cleared from the stairs and he could see his friends again? He hoped it wouldn’t be long.

He glared at the black box with its spitting sounds, patted his chest, felt for the key there. His ribs were sore from the fall, and he could feel a knot forming in his thigh from where he’d landed on someone. His shoulder hurt when he lifted his arm. He turned to the monitor to search for his mother again, but she was no longer on the screen. A jostling crowd moved in jerks and fits. A stairwell writhed with more traffic than it was meant to hold.

Jimmy reached for the box with the controls his father had used. He twisted one of the knobs, and the view changed. It was an empty hall. A faint number 33 stood in the lower left corner of the screen. Jimmy turned the dial once more and got a different hallway. There was a trail of clothes on the ground, like someone had walked by with a leaking laundry bag. Nothing moved.

He tried a different dial, and the number on the bottom changed to 32. He was going up the levels. Jimmy spun the first dial until he found the stairwell again. Something flashed down and off the bottom of the screen. There were people leaning over the railing with their arms outstretched, mouths open in silent horror. There was no sound from the little windows that allowed him to see the world, but Jimmy remembered the screams from the woman who fell earlier. This was too far up to be his mother, he consoled himself. His dad would find her and bring her back. His dad had a gun.

Jimmy spun the dials and tried to locate either of his parents, but it seemed that not every angle was covered. And he couldn’t figure out how to make the windows multiply. He was decent on a computer—he was going to work for IT like his father someday—but the little box was unintuitive as the deeps. He dialed it back down to 34 and found the main hallway. He could see a shiny steel door at the far end of a long corridor. Sprawled in the foreground was Yani. Yani hadn’t moved, was surely dead. The men standing over him were gone, and there was a new body at the end of the hall, near the door. The color of his coveralls assured Jimmy that it wasn’t his father. His father probably put that man there on his way out. Jimmy wished he hadn’t been left alone.

Overhead, the lights continued to blink angry and red, and nothing happened on the screen. Jimmy grew restless and paced in circles. He went to the small wooden desk on the opposite wall and flipped through the thick book. It was a fortune in paper, perfectly cut, and eerily smooth to the touch. The desk and chair were both made of real wood, not painted to look like that. He could tell by scratching it with his fingernail.

He closed the book and checked the cover. The word ORDER was embossed in shiny letters across the front. He reopened it, and realized he’d lost someone’s place. The radio nearby continued to hiss noisily. Jimmy turned and checked the computer screen, but nothing was happening in the hallway. That noise was getting on his nerves. He thought about adjusting the volume, but was scared he might accidentally turn it off. His dad wouldn’t be able to get through to him if he messed something up.

He paced some more. There was a shelf of metal containers in one corner that went from floor to ceiling. Pulling one out, Jimmy felt how heavy they were. He played with the latch until he figured out how to open it. There was a soft sigh as the lid came loose, and he found a book inside. Looking at all the containers filling the shelves, Jimmy saw what a pile of chits was there. He returned the book, assuming it was full of nothing but boring words like the one on the desk.

Back at the other desk, he examined the computer underneath and saw that it wasn’t turned on. All the lights were dim. He traced the wire from the black box with all the switches and found a different wire led from the monitor to the computer. The machine that made the windows—that could see far distances and around corners—was controlled by something else. The power switch on the computer did nothing. There was a place for a key. Jimmy bent down to inspect the connections on the back, to make sure everything was plugged in, when the radio crackled.

“—need you to report in. Hello—?”

Jimmy knocked his head on the underside of the desk. He ran to the radio, which was back to hissing. Grabbing the device at the end of the stretchy cord—the thing his dad had named Mike—he squeezed the button.

“Dad? Dad, is that you?”

He let go and looked to the ceiling. He listened for footsteps and waited for the lights to stop flashing. The monitor showed a quiet hallway. Maybe he should go to the door and wait.

The radio crackled with a voice: “Sheriff? Who is this?”

Jimmy squeezed the button. “This is Jimmy. Jimmy Parker. Who—” The button slipped out of his hand, the static returning. His palms were sweaty. He wiped them on his coveralls and got the device under control. “Who is this?” he asked.

“Russ’s boy?” There was a pause. “Son, where are you?”

He didn’t want to say. So he didn’t. The radio continued to hiss.

“Jimmy, this is Deputy Hines,” the voice said. “Put your father on.”

Jimmy started to squeeze the button and say that his father wasn’t there, but another voice chimed in. He recognized it at once.

“Mitch, this is Russ.”

Dad! There was a lot of noise in the background, people screaming. Jimmy held the device in both hands. “Dad! Come back, please!”

The radio popped with his father’s voice. “James, be quiet. Mitch, I need you to—” Something was lost to the background noise. “—and stop the traffic. People are getting crushed up here.”

“Copy.”

That was his father talking to the deputy. The deputy was acting like his old man was in charge. Nothing made sense in the world.

“We’ve got a breach up-top,” his father said, “so I don’t know how long you’ve got, but you’re probably the sheriff until the end.”

“Copy,” Mitch said again. The radio made his voice sound shaky.

“Son—” His father was yelling, now, fighting to be heard over some obnoxious din of screams and shouts. “I’m going to get your mother, okay? Just stay there, James. Don’t move.”

Jimmy turned to the monitor. “Okay,” he said. He hung the Mike back on its hook, his hands trembling, and returned to the black box with all the controls. He felt helpless and alone. He should be out there, lending a hand. He thought about Nick and Seth and Sarah Jenkins. How long before he could see his friends again? He hoped it wouldn’t be long.

•8•

Hours passed, and Jimmy wanted to be anywhere but that place. He crept down the dark passage to the ladder and peered up at the grating, listening. There was a faint buzzing sound coming and going that he couldn’t place. The hiss of the radio could barely be heard from the end of the corridor. He didn’t want to be too far away from the radio, but he worried his dad might need him by the door as well. He wanted to be in two places at once.

He went back to the room with the desks. Another of the long guns like his father had used to kill Yani was propped against the wall. Jimmy was afraid to touch it. He wished his father hadn’t left. It was all Jimmy’s fault for being separated from his mom. They should’ve made it down together. But then he remembered the crush of people on the stairs. If only he’d been faster, they wouldn’t have gotten caught up in the crowds. And it occurred to Jimmy that the only reason his mother was there at all was because she had come for him. If it weren’t for that, his parents would be down in that room, safe and together.

He tried not to think of that. Jimmy glared at the throbbing red lights overhead. The hissing from the radio was getting on his nerves. He hissed back at the thing like Mrs. Pearson shushed the kids in the back row. The small room was strange and bewildering. On one desk, a book unlike any other. On another desk, windows into the whole of the silo. Drawings hung on the wall in the next room the size of blankets, and a gun rested idly, a big pistol that could kick men from a distance.

“James—”

Jimmy spun around. His father’s voice was there in the room with him. It took a moment to realize the static from the radio was gone.

“—Son, are you there?”

He lunged for the radio, grabbed the Mike at the end of the cord. It had been hours without voices. Too long. As he squeezed the button, a flash of movement caught his eye. Someone was moving on the monitor.

“Dad?” He stretched the cord across the small room and looked closer. His father was outside the steel door, standing at the end of the hall. Yani was still in the foreground, unmoving. The other body was gone. His father had his back to the camera, the portable radio in his hand. “I’m coming!” Jimmy yelled into the radio. He dropped the Mike and dashed for the corridor and the ladder.

“Son! No—!”

His father’s shouts were cut off by a grunt. Jimmy wheeled around, his boots squeaking. He clutched the desk for balance. On the screen, another man had emerged from around the corner. His father was doubled over in pain. This man held the long pistol, stooped to pick up something from the ground, held it to his mouth. It was the portable his father had taken from the room.

“Is this Russ’s boy?”

Jimmy stared at the man on the screen. “Yes,” he said out loud. “Don’t hurt my dad.”

The room was full of static. The lights overhead continued to throb red.

Jimmy cursed himself, pushed away from the desk, and grabbed the dangling Mike. “Please don’t hurt him,” he said, squeezing the button.

The man turned and looked directly at the camera. It was one of the security guards. There was a bit of movement peeking out from around the corner of the hall, more people out of sight.

“James, is it?”

Jimmy nodded. He watched his dad regain his composure and stand. His father made a gesture to someone out of sight. He patted the air with his palm as if to calm them.

“What’s the new code?” the man with the radio asked.

Jimmy didn’t want to tell him. But he wanted his father back inside. He wasn’t sure what to do.

“The code,” the man said. He aimed the gun at Jimmy’s dad. Jimmy watched his father say something, then gesture for the portable. The security guard hesitated a moment before handing it over. His father lifted the unit to his mouth.

“They’ll kill you,” his father said, calm as if he were telling his son to tie his boots. The man with the gun waved an arm, and someone rushed into view to wrestle with his father. “They’ll kill us all anyway,” his father shouted, struggling to keep hold of the radio. “And they’ll kill you the moment you open this door!”

Jimmy screamed as one of the men punched his father. His dad fought back, but they punched him again. And then the man with the gun waved the other guy away. And the room was full of static, so he couldn’t hear the long pistol bark, but Jimmy could see the flashes of flame leap out, could see the way his father jerked as he was hit, watched him slump to the ground and become as still as Yani.

Jimmy dropped the Mike and grabbed the edges of the monitor. He yelled at this cruel window on the world while the guards in the silver coveralls surveyed the man who had been his father. And then more men appeared from around the corner. They dragged Jimmy’s mom behind them, kicking and silently screaming.

•9•

“No, no, no, no—”

The room was static and pulse. The two men wrestled with Jimmy’s mother, who lifted herself off the ground and writhed in their jerking grasps. Her feet kicked and whirled. Jimmy’s father lay still as stone beneath her.

“Open this goddamn door!” the man with the portable yelled. The radio on the wall was deafening. Jimmy hated the radio. He ran to it, reached for the dangling cord, then thought better and grabbed the other portable from the rack. One of the knobs said “power.” He twisted it until it made the hissing sound, turned to the screen, and held the radio to his mouth.

“Don’t,” he said, and Jimmy realized he was crying. Tears splashed his coveralls. “I’m coming.”

It was hard to tear himself away from the view of his mother. Harder still to be far from her, to not be there for her or his father. As he rushed down the dark corridor, he continued to see her kicking and screaming, her boots in the air. He could hear her yelling in the background as the man radioed again: “Tell me the code!”

Jimmy held the portable’s wrist strap between his teeth and attacked the ladder. His hands rang out like dull bells as he slapped his way up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and knee. He found the release for the grating and threw it aside with a clang. Tossing the portable out, he scrambled after it on his knees. The lights above were on fire. His chest was on fire. His father was as dead as Yani.

“Coming, coming,” he said into the radio.

The man yelled something back. All Jimmy could hear was his mother screaming and his pulse ringing in his ears. He ran beneath the angry lights and between the dark machines. The laces on one of his boots had come undone. They whipped about while he ran, and he thought of his mother’s legs, up in the air like that, kicking and fighting.

Jimmy crashed into the door. He could hear muffled shouts on the other side. They came through the radio as well. His mother’s screams could be heard both places at once, crackling and hissing in one ear and dull and distant in the other.

Jimmy slapped the door with his palm and shouted into his portable. “I’m here, I’m here!”

“The code!” the man screamed.

Jimmy went to the control pad. His hands were shaking, his vision blurred. He imagined his mother on the other side, the gun aimed at her. He could feel his father lying a few feet away, just on the other side of that wall of steel. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He put in the first two numbers, the level of his school, and hesitated. That wasn’t right. It was twelve-eighteen, not eighteen-twelve. Or was it? He put in the other two numbers, and the keypad flashed red. The door didn’t open.

“What did you do?” the man yelled through the radio. “Just tell me the code!”

Jimmy fumbled with the portable, brought it to his lips. “Please don’t hurt her—” he said.

The radio squawked. “If you don’t do as I say, she’s dead. We’ll all be dead. Do you understand?”

The man sounded terrified. Maybe he was just as scared as Jimmy. Jimmy nodded and reached for the keypad. He entered the first two numbers correctly, then thought about what his father had said. They would kill him. They would kill him and his mother both if he let these men inside. But it was his mom—

The keypad blinked impatiently. The man on the other side of the door yelled for him to hurry, yelled something about three wrong tries in a row and having to wait another day. Jimmy did nothing, paralyzed with fear. The keypad flashed red and fell silent.

There was a bang on the other side of the door, a muffled pop, a blast from a gun. Jimmy squeezed the radio and screamed. When he let go, he could hear his mom shrieking on the other side.

“The next one won’t be a warning,” the man said. “Now don’t touch that pad. Don’t touch it again. Just tell me the code. Hurry, boy.”

The man was panicked, and Jimmy blubbered. He tried to form the sounds, to tell the numbers in the right order, but nothing came out. With his forehead pressed against the wall, he could hear his mother struggling and fighting on the other side.

“The code,” the man said, calmer now.

Jimmy heard a distant grunt. He heard someone yell “Bitch,” heard his mother scream for Jimmy not to do it, and then a slap on the other side of the wall, someone pressed up against it, his mother inches away. And then the muffled beeps of numbers being entered, four quick taps of the same number, and an angry buzz from the keypad as a third attempt failed.

More shouts. And then the roar of a gun, louder and angrier with his head pressed to the door. Jimmy screamed and beat his fists against the cold steel. The men were yelling at him through the radio. There were a lot of screams coming through the portable, screams leaking through the heavy steel door, but none of them came from his mother.

Jimmy slid to the floor. The angry yells bled through the wall. They bled and bled. They crackled from the radio in hissing bursts, and Jimmy buried the portable against his belly and curled into a ball. His body quivered with sobs and strange sounds, the floor grating rough against his cheek. And while the violence so very close raged impotently, the lights overhead continued to throb at him. They throbbed steady. They weren’t like a pulse at all.