Free Creatures of Appetite by Todd Travis Page B

elevator, that’s what we called it,” Gilday said, “grain elevator.”
    They all trudged along silently for a bit, the flashing lights and sirens fading in the distance. Thorne reached the foot of the grain silo and stopped, staring up at it. It was a large, round, cement building, rising up almost three hundred feet in the air. A dark forbidding granite presence that stood large in the night. Kane felt small before it.
    “Big bastard, isn’t it? I’ve been seeing these buildings all over the place and wondered what they were.”
    “You’re in Nebraska, Thorne,” Kane said, snippy. “That’s what they do here. That’s why they have all those things called farms that we saw when we flew over. What are you doing?”
    “I’m seeing the sights, this is my first time in Nebraska,” Thorne pointed to a ladder going up the side of it. “You climb that ladder, all the way to the top, you could see for miles, right?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t do it when it was this cold and icy,” Scroggins replied. “But yeah, you could.”
    “And who gives a shit?” Kane said. “What are we going to do now?”
    “What’s your problem?” Thorne asked.
    “My problem?”
    “Your time of the month, is that the problem? You riding the cotton pony this week or what?” he asked.
    “Fuck you, Thorne, I tend to get a little cranky whenever a little girl gets killed!”
    Gilday and Scroggins looked at each other, uncomfortable. Thorne was untouched by her outburst.
    “You want to know what’s really interesting?” Thorne asked after a moment.
    “What?” Gilday asked.
    “That,” Thorne pointed his finger. “What’s that there?”
    They all turned and looked in the direction he was pointing. About twenty feet away, mostly hidden from view, was a steel trapdoor not far from the foot of the silo.
    “That goes under the silo, to the gallery,” Scroggins said.
    “Gallery?” Thorne asked.
    “Gallery, it’s uh,” Scroggins fumbled, “it’s like a network of support tunnels underneath the silo.”
    “I never knew they were called that,” Gilday said, “we just called them the tunnels.”
    “I spent a summer working on silos in high school,” Scroggins said. “I know a lot more about them than I’d like to.”
    Thorne threw the steel trapdoor open all the way and descended the ladder to the depths below.
    “Well, you know what they say,” Thorne winked at Scroggins before he disappeared into the dark.
    “What’s that?”
    “Knowledge is power, young Jedi,” Thorne said.

Chapter Fifteen

    A t the foot of the ladder, down inside the gallery, everyone turned their flashlights on and splashed the light around. The cement walls were pitted and covered with obscene graffiti. Old empty beer cans and cigarette butts littered the floor. The tunnels seemed to go on and on into the ground. Thorne almost slipped on the snow under the ladder, catching himself just in time.
    “Fuck! This fucking snow.”
    “You better get some good snow boots,” Gilday said, “otherwise you’re going to be sliding all over the place.”
    “I am not planning on being here long enough to need snow boots.”
    “How far does it go?” Kane asked as she walked down the tunnel, disappearing into the shadows.
    “Long ways, it’s like a maze, there’s different stairs and levels, bunch of different exits,” Scroggins said.
    “That trapdoor up there, it’s never padlocked?” Thorne asked.
    “Can’t, fire code or something,” Scroggins answered. “Kids come down here all the time to, you know, drink or make out, least we did in our town.”
    “Bunch of us used to go down and play Dungeons and Dragons in the tunnels underneath our elevator when we were kids,” Gilday said.
    “Yeah, D & D, that and Empire Strikes Back, remember that, Jeff?” Scroggins added. “That was fun.”
    “So what, you two were geeks, is that what you’re saying?” Thorne asked. “I had you pegged as jocks.”
    “A little bit of both, I guess,”