Tiny claws clenched into little fists and punctured a photo of a corn snake, and Jimmy guided the animal toward the floor. Shadow lay on his back with his feet in the air, watching Jimmy carefully. It was a trap. Jimmy could rub his belly for only a moment before the cat would suddenly decide it hated this and attack his wrist. Jimmy didn’t understand cats that well, but he’d read the entry on them a dozen times. One thing he hated to learn was that they didn’t live as long as humans. He tried not to think of that day. On that day he would go back to being Solo, and he much preferred being Jimmy. Jimmy talked more. Solo was the one with the wild thoughts, the one who gazed over the rails, who spat toward the Deep and watched as his spit trembled and tore itself apart from the wild speeds of its racing fall.
“Are you bored?” Jimmy asked Shadow.
Shadow looked at him like he was bored. It was similar to the look that said he was hungry.
“Wanna go explore?”
The cat’s ear twitched, which was enough of a sign.
Jimmy decided to check the Top again. He had only been once since the days went dark, and just for a peek. If there was a working can opener in the silo, it would be there. An end to crusty screwdrivers and slicing his hands on roughly opened lids.
They set out after lunch with a short break at the farms. When they got to the cafeteria, they found it perfectly silent and glowing in the green cast from the stairwell. Shadow scampered up the last steps alone, intrepid as usual. Jimmy headed straight for the kitchen and found it a looted wreck.
“Who took all the openers?” he called out to Shadow.
But Shadow wasn’t there. Shadow was off to the far wall, acting agitated.
Jimmy ranged behind the serving line and sorted through the forks, eager to replace his usual one, when he noticed the mewing. He peered across the wide cafeteria hall and saw Shadow rubbing back and forth against a closed door.
“Keep it down,” Jimmy yelled to Shadow. Didn’t the cat know he’d only bring trouble making such a racket? But Shadow wasn’t in a listening mood. He mewed and mewed and scratched his claws at the door and stretched until Jimmy relented. He hurried through the maze of upturned chairs and crooked tables to see what the fuss was about.
“Is it food?” he asked. With Shadow, it was almost always food. His companion was drawn to meals like a magnet, which Jimmy had come to find quite handy. Approaching the door, he saw the remnants of a rope looped around the handle, the years reducing it to tatters. Jimmy tried the handle and found it unlocked. He eased it open.
The room beyond was dark, none of the emergency lights like at the top of the stairwell. Jimmy fumbled for his flashlight while Shadow disappeared through the cracked door, his tail swishing into the void.
There was a startled hiss just as the flashlight came on. Jimmy paused, a boot nearly through the door, as the cone of his flashlight fell upon a face staring up at him with open and lifeless eyes. Bodies shifted against the door, and an arm flopped out against his foot.
Jimmy screamed and fell backward. He kicked at the pale and fleshy hand and called for Shadow, who came screeching out the door, fur standing on end. There was the taste of metal on Jimmy’s tongue, a rush of adrenaline as he scrambled to get the door shut. He lifted the limp arm and shoved it back inside, the clothes disintegrating at his touch, the flesh beneath whole and spongy.
Open mouths and curled fingers were the last things he saw. Piles of bodies, as fresh as the morning dead, frozen where they’d crawled over one another, hands reaching for the door.
Once it clicked shut, Jimmy began sliding tables and chairs against the door. He created a huge tangle of them, tossing more chairs on top of the pile, shivering and cursing beneath his beard while Shadow spun in circles.
“Gross, gross, gross,” he told Shadow, whose hair had not yet settled. He studied his barricade against the piles of dead and hoped it would be adequate, that he hadn’t let out too many ghosts. The remnants of old rope swayed on the door’s handle, and Jimmy thanked whomever had kept these people at bay.
“Let’s go,” he said, and Shadow swished against his leg for comfort. There was no view on the wallscreen to see, no food or tools of any use. He’d had quite enough of the Top, which suddenly felt crowded to the walls with the dead.
•36•
Besides food, Shadow had a nose for trouble. A nose for causing it. Jimmy woke one morning to an awful screeching sound, a pathetic and plaintive hiss spilling down the corridor. Jimmy had climbed the ladder half-asleep to find Shadow stuck near the top rung. He didn’t know how the cat had got there, and the cat didn’t know how to get down. Jimmy released the hatch over their heads and threw it aside. He watched as Shadow clawed up the metal mesh behind the ladder, his back pressed against the rungs, and scampered over the top.
Two mornings later, the same thing happened, and that’s when Jimmy decided to leave the hatch open all the time. He was sick of opening and closing as he came and went, and Shadow liked being able to explore the server room whenever he liked. There hadn’t been any fighting in a long time, and the great steel door still winked red.
Shadow loved the servers. Most times, Jimmy would find him up on server number 40, where the metal was so hot Jimmy could hardly touch. But Shadow didn’t mind. He slept up there or peered over the edge at the ground far below, watching for bugs and mice on which to pounce.
Other times, Jimmy found him standing in the corner where that man he’d shot forever ago had wasted away. Shadow liked to sniff the rust stains and touch his tongue to the grating, divining what had happened there. It was for these freedoms that the hatch remained off. And this was how, when the power went out big-time, the bad men got inside. This was how Jimmy woke up one morning with a stranger standing over his bed.
The outage had woken him in the middle of the night. Jimmy slept with the lights full-on, keeping the ghosts at bay. He even liked a little of the radio static to fill the room, so he couldn’t hear any whisperings. When the silence and darkness hit at once with a loud thump, Jimmy had startled awake and scrambled for his flashlight, stepping on Shadow’s tail in the process. He waited for the lights to come on, but they never did. Too tired to think what to do, he went back to sleep, both hands wrapped around his torch, Shadow curling up warily against his neck.
The noise of someone coming down the ladder was likely what stirred him later. Jimmy was dimly aware of a presence in the room. It was a sensation often felt, but this presence seemed to change the way the silence bounced around, the way even the noise of his breathing echoed. He opened his eyes to find a flashlight shining down on him, a man standing at the foot of his bed.
Jimmy screamed, and the man pounced with half a mind to silence him. A bearded snarl of yellowed teeth caught the beam of light, and then the arc of a steel rod—
There was a flash of pain in Jimmy’s shoulder. The man hauled back to hit him again with his length of pipe. Jimmy got his arms up to protect his head. The pipe cracked him on the wrist. There was a screech and a hiss by his head, and then a darting piece of black amid the shadows.
The man with the pipe screamed and dropped his flashlight, which doused itself in the bedsheets. Jimmy scrambled away, his mind unable to come to grips with a person in his home. A person in his home. The fear of years and years came true in an instant. All his precautions had loosened. All the venturing out. Slack, slack, he told himself, crawling on his hands and knees.
Shadow screeched an awful sound, the noise he made when his tail got stepped on. A howl of pain followed. Jimmy felt anger rise up and mix with fear, a potent brew. He crawled toward the corner, banged into the desk, reached for where it should be propped—