Chapter 3: Two Hundred and Eleven Days

Wren Holloway had a system, and the system was the only reason she was still okay.

Wake up when the red light turns on. Wash your face with the cold water, even though it hurts. Eat one thing from the green shelf and one thing from the blue shelf, never two from the same one. Check the air gauge. Check the door. Do your reading. Do your writing. Do your radio.

Then do it all again.

She was eleven years old, and she'd been doing it for a really, really long time.

The vault was cold, even deep in the mountain, and the walls were the color of old pennies. Long metal hallways ran off in every direction, with numbers painted on the floor in white. There were shelves in the big rooms, rows and rows, full of little sealed boxes with labels she could mostly read now. Wheat, Triticum aestivum. Barley. Sorghum. Potato, Andean. She knew the names the way other kids knew the names of cartoon characters. Her dad would've laughed about that.

She stopped herself. She didn't think about her dad too early in the day. That was one of the rules.

Wren sat cross-legged on a metal chair in the control room, with a blanket around her shoulders and a flashlight clipped to her collar. In front of her was a wall of old screens, most of them dead, and one big desk covered in switches. She'd figured out most of them. Not all. There was one red switch in the corner she'd been told never to touch, and she hadn't. She was good at rules.

In her lap sat a notebook.

It was a little battered thing, green once, now mostly gray, with a cracked spine and a rubber band holding the cover closed. She'd found it on the second day, in the supply closet, with half the pages blank. It was the best thing she owned. She'd written in it every single day since.

She didn't write about the vault. She wrote about before.

She opened to a page near the middle and ran her finger down it, her lips moving as she read.

Dad's laugh sounds like a door that needs oil. Mom hums when she thinks nobody's listening, always the same song, the one with the moon in it. Finn's favorite color was green, not blue, even though he told everyone it was blue. Dad is allergic to cats and loves them anyway. Mom hates tomatoes but grows them. Nobody knows why.

She flipped to the next page. And the next. The handwriting got neater the further back she went, because she'd been trying harder back then. Hundreds of little facts. A whole family, written down small enough to carry.

She wasn't sure why she did it. Mr. Okafor had told her once, early on, that people forget things in places like this. Not on purpose. It just happens, like water leaking out of a cracked cup. The mind makes room by throwing things out, he'd said. You hold on to what you can. He had a soft voice and big gentle hands, and he'd been the only grown-up left who knew all the kids' names.

He was gone now. Since September.

There'd been eleven of them at the start. The bus had made it, barely, with the windows blown out and the driver crying. Eleven kids, two teachers, and a tunnel that smelled like wet stone. The teachers had gone out the hatch in the first month, to look for help. They'd promised to come back. The older kids had gone in the spring, in a group, holding hands. And the little ones got sick that summer. It was a quiet, gray kind of sick. A cough that wouldn't quit.

Wren didn't write about that part. Not yet. She'd told herself she'd do it someday, when it stopped feeling like a stone in her chest.

She closed the notebook gently and set it on the desk.

"Okay," she said to the empty room. "Radio."

Her voice sounded small in the big space. She hated that. So she sat up straighter and said it again, louder, the way her mom did when she was pretending to be fine.

"Radio time."

The radio was the last thing she'd figured out, and she was prouder of it than almost anything. It had taken two hundred and eleven days. Two hundred and eleven. She had them all counted, little tally marks on the underside of the desk where nobody could see them. For most of those days she hadn't known there was a radio at all. Then she'd found the binder.

It was in a drawer, wrapped in a plastic bag. Cradle Valley Emergency Systems, Operator's Manual, it said on the front, and on the first page, in blue pen, there was a note in handwriting she'd have known anywhere.

If you're reading this, something went wrong. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Chapter 9 is the radio. Start there. Love, Dad.

She'd cried so hard she got the hiccups. Then she'd read Chapter 9, and then she'd read it again, and then she'd gotten up and started to work.

It wasn't easy. The antenna was outside, up a service shaft with a ladder that went on forever, and she'd had to climb it three times to reconnect a cable that had come loose in the quakes. She'd skinned both knees. She'd lost a glove down the shaft. At one point she'd sat at the top, shaking and furious, with ice in her hair, and said out loud to nobody, "I hate this. I hate this so much." And then she'd gone back down and kept going, because the other choice was to stop.

She turned the big dial now, slow, the way the manual said. The screens flickered. A hum rose in the walls, low and steady, like some big animal waking up. She flipped three switches in order. Then she leaned toward the microphone, and she took a breath.

She'd practiced this part more than the rest. She wasn't sure anyone could hear her. She didn't even know if anything was out there to hear. But she'd decided a long time ago that it didn't matter. You said it anyway.

"This is Wren Holloway at the Cradle Valley seed vault," she said. Her voice shook, just a little, on the word vault. She frowned and tried again. "This is Wren Holloway at the Cradle Valley seed vault. If anyone can hear me, the doors open at midnight. Only once. I'm still here."

She waited.

The speakers hissed.

"The doors open at midnight," she said again, a little quieter. "Tonight. It's Christmas Eve. I know that because I counted. I'm eleven. I'm okay. I have food. I'm waiting for my dad. And my mom, if she's still, if she can. If anyone knows where they are. Please."

Her throat hurt. She swallowed hard.

Hiss. Hiss. Nothing.

"Okay," she whispered. "That's okay. I'll do it again."

So she did. She said it once. Then twice. Then three times, her voice cracking on the last one. She said it so many times that the words went smooth in her mouth, like stones in a river, and she could say them without thinking. Which was kind of the point.

When she finished, she pressed a button on the side, and the message started to loop. Her own voice, tinny and far away, came out of the speaker and into the dark. This is Wren Holloway. This is Wren Holloway. If anyone can hear me.

She slid down in her chair and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

There was a little pocket sewn into the inside of the blanket, and in it she kept a folded square of paper. She took it out now, even though she knew what it said. It was a drawing, done in red crayon, a long time ago. A kitchen with a paper chain across the window, crooked on purpose. Four stick people holding hands. One of them was a little taller than the others and wore a big red scarf. One had a bird on his shoulder.

Somewhere under it, in a six-year-old's wobbly letters, it said MY FAMILY.

She didn't cry. She was too tired and too cold and she'd run out of crying a long time ago. She just held the drawing against her chest and listened to her own voice go out into the mountain, over and over, small and steady and brave.

"Please," she said to the speaker, quietly, so only the walls could hear. "Please. Just this once."

And then, because Mr. Okafor had taught her this, and because her mom had always done it, she started to hum. It was the same song every time. The one with the moon in it. She hadn't gotten all the words yet. She had the tune, though. She had that.

She hummed it into the dark, and she waited for midnight.