Silo 49: Going Dark Read Online Free PDF

she had been the last one to clean and Graham wouldn’t hear anything more on the subject when Silo One brought it up. They weren’t insistent, even though the sensors that showed the population their view of the blasted lands outside were caked with dust. Nothing in this silo even hinted at an uprising so why bother. With his population dropping like it was, such a thing would be as stupid as it was unnecessary. Almost no one even went up to Level 1 that didn’t actually have to go there. Even the sheriff and his deputy had moved their main offices to Level 5.
    As he shuffled cards for yet another game of solitaire, the cards soft and worn with use, he thought he really should get out and try to get some work done. It was just hard to bring himself to open the door and walk out of his compartment again. Inside, he felt like all his insides were having a party and dancing about inside his chest without a care for the one that held them safely inside.
    More than once he felt a lurch in his chest so strong that his breath caught and he feared the stress of holding his secrets would kill him. Still, he did his best to reserve his shakes and hand-wringing for when he was sure he was alone and in a place unlikely to be observed, like the shower or here, playing cards all alone.
    Graham slapped the deck of cards down on the table. Enough of this moping around, he decided. With a fresh kerchief pulled from the clean laundry pile—or what he thought was the clean pile—he stepped out into the hallway. A little socializing, a little face time with workers and a little movement would be good for him and make the time till Silo One forgot about him go faster. As he walked down the hallway toward the landing, he felt good, almost to the point of smiling.
    Before he reached the landing door, he met up with a neighbor from a couple of doors down. Maribelle gave him one of her charming smiles and stopped to discuss housekeeping on their level. Drugged or not, Maribelle was a whirlwind of organization and seemed to be the constant driving force behind maintaining their level in some semblance of order. She marshalled her kids around the level, picking up debris, on a regular basis and made the rest of them feel guilty in the doing. It always made people help. She was good.
    “Oh, Graham, you’re just the man I wanted to see. Got a minute?” she asked, plucking an invisible bit of lint from her immaculate pink coveralls as she pulled up next to him.
    “Sure,” he responded, trying to smile.
    She saw the pained look and asked, “You okay?”
    “Always, Maribelle. Always,” he answered. “I’ve just been busy. You know how it is.”
    She nodded, a look of commiseration on her face. Graham knew that she understood all too well. They were all busy.
    “Well,” she said, her tone returning to a business-like one. “We need to get a more regular schedule for cleaning up this level than we have. It’s getting disgusting and staying that way longer between clean-up days. Don’t you think?”
    Graham looked around and saw she was right. The truth was that he had become used to it and only really saw it when it started to become really rank. Burlap bags of vegetable material ready to be taken to composting littered the hallway. Crowded in amongst those were bags of other recycling or just plain trash, some of them weeping dark stains onto the floor. The big brown bags meant for dirty laundry stood sentry beside each compartment door, some with their contents spilling out into the walkway between. Burned out or flickering lights gave the entire hallway the disused look of someplace soon to be abandoned.
    “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” It was a lame response and he knew it.
    “I’ve tried to talk to Wallis about it but he’s always busy, too. Besides, I don’t think we should need the mayor just to get people to clean up their own level. We should be able to do it ourselves.” It was a reasonable thing to say but Graham could