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.”
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.
