Chapter 11: The Silo

We drove into the Narrows with the headlights off.

The orchard was a wall of flame, and the camp's tents were ash.

The only thing left standing was the grain silo, a tall steel cylinder at the end of the lane.

Every person in the camp was inside it.

The old man ran up from the dark with his beard singed.

"They sealed the door," he yelled. "Haskell's men welded it. Sixty people in there, and the fire's all around it."

"The captain?"

"Gone. Somebody cut him loose."

I looked at the silo.

The steel walls glowed dull red already, and I could hear screaming through the metal.

"Tova, the riders," I said. "Hallie, with me. Bria, stay back."

"No," Bria said. "I'm the only one who can read the door."

I didn't have time to argue.

Tova vanished into the dark with her rifle.

I ran across the burning lane with my arm raised.

The blue light threw a wall of cold air in front of me that parted the flames.

The heat pressed on my face.

My chest drew tight.

I reached the silo and laid my palm flat against the door.

It was a plate of steel a foot thick, welded shut along every seam.

"Behind you!" Hallie shouted.

I spun.

Three Tax riders had come out of the orchard with rifles.

I flung out a wall that took all three off their feet.

The effort went through me.

Behind me, Bria cried out.

I heard her fall.

"Keep going," Hallie said, close to my ear. Her voice was strange and thin. "Don't look. Get the door."

I put both hands on the steel.

I closed my eyes and sent the blue light into the metal, into every weld.

I could feel the seams.

Then I pulled.

The door tore off its hinges with a scream and flew twenty feet into the dark.

Sixty people poured out of the silo coughing, children in their arms, hair smoking.

I held the flames back with my other hand, a shield of nothing, while they filed past me one by one.

It felt like holding up a wall with my bare back.

The pull behind my ribs turned into something wild, as though the cuff was taking from a well far deeper than I knew.

"Hurry," I said through my teeth.

The last woman out was the old man's wife, carrying a toddler.

I let the shield go.

The fire rushed in and I staggered and went down on one knee in the ash.

The Tax riders broke and ran.

Tova came up out of the smoke, bleeding from one ear, and put an arm under my shoulder.

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