Story so far
Jimmy Parker was sixteen and hoping to follow his father into IT when the last great Loud began. Separated from his mother in the crowded stairwell, he survived a fall into the crowd with painful injuries. His father gave him the silo key and hid him in rooms beneath the servers, then left to find his mother. Jimmy watched a guard threaten his father for the door code and saw his father shot on a monitor. His own attempts to enter the code failed through confusion and fear; another gunshot outside left him sobbing. Alone behind the door, he survived vapor from the vents and a shutdown, gradually learning that his home was silo number seventeen and that other silos existed. Canned food, the cameras, and books sustained him, but neither watching other survivors nor reading about loneliness could replace human company.
After a year of preparing to defend the refuge, Jimmy shot the intruders who finally found its code, then wept with a dying man still inside. Deteriorating supplies and failing sanitation eventually drove him out to scavenge. Other survivors frightened him, and revisiting his apartment and school brought guilt and longing. In his classroom he wrote a poem about solitude and replaced his declaration of being Jimmy with one of being Solo, knowing that his claim to be stronger alone was a lie. He explored farms and Supply, then followed crying into a flooded level and rescued the cat he named Shadow. Caring for Shadow relieved his loneliness and gave him reasons to venture out. Further intruders brought more violence: Jimmy killed a man who struck him with a pipe and shot toward a second voice, discovering a woman afterward. He learned to fish from Legacy and fished for the cat. Shadow's eventual burial left him missing that companionship. Over the decades, he stopped carrying his gun, came to believe nobody remained to threaten him, and still barricaded his door each night.
When Juliette reached his hiding place, Solo struck at her with a knife, cut her hand, and apologized. He said he had been alone for thirty-four years and believed he would turn fifty the following month. He had survived a few hours at a time, talking to objects, reading reference books, and venturing progressively farther from shelter. He wanted Juliette to stay, enjoyed their repair projects, and helped prepare and support her dive into the flooded depths. When her air failed, he did not answer; she subsequently found him bleeding from a head wound. He told her his name was Jimmy and said he no longer thought he had ever been alone. Despite his injury, he helped guide the surviving children toward food and later helped Juliette reach the suit lab, made her a heat-tape blanket, and helped her suit up again. With company restored, he decided to use Jimmy once more and shared Elise's optimism as the water receded.
Jimmy grew to love Elise as his own child, teaching her fishing and helping her preserve useful book pages. The prospect of rescue nevertheless frightened him: he associated crowds with danger and feared returning to a populated silo. He moved with the children to the lower farms, helped keep the pumps running and Mechanical dry, and carried Elise toward the visitors when the digger broke through. The tunnel crossing and relocation tested him, but he tried to stay strong for the children. He told Walker he preferred Jimmy and received a radio at Juliette's request. His unease deepened when Elise wandered away and when he saw equipment being removed from his silo despite Juliette's promise to rebuild it. He took the children home. During another search for Elise, he inadvertently told Terry Harlson that power came from level thirty-four. When Shaw reported that church members were holding her, Jimmy retrieved a hidden rifle, interrupted their gathering with gunfire, and threatened Mr. Rash, allowing Elise to escape his grip.
As violence continued, Solo urged the group to secure the door and hide, recalling the refuge his father had given him. He estimated his food would last him alone another three or four years and was visibly disturbed at the prospect of bringing two hundred people into the server room. Nevertheless, he supported Juliette's escape proposal. Outside, he helped Walker assemble a fabric enclosure and drew on his reading to discuss unfamiliar animals. He shot a deer to feed the camp, and Juliette regarded him as a leader better prepared for outdoor survival than the others. He has also given Elise her knife. Most recently, while rigging fishing bait on the beach, he is drawn into a new emergency: Juliette is shot, and Solo runs toward her.
Appearance
Solo has dark, shaggy hair hanging over his face and a thick, unkempt beard flecked with gray. He wears baggy gray overalls and oversized boots. When he met Juliette, he believed he was nearly fifty.
Role
A longtime survivor of Silo Seventeen and a protective father figure to Elise, Solo contributes fishing, practical repair skills, and hunting to the survivors outside. Juliette regards him as especially well prepared to lead in their new surroundings.
Relationships
Juliette — After their frightened first encounter, he became Juliette's repair partner and helped her survive and return home. He supported her later escape proposal and now runs toward her when she is shot.
Elise — He loves Elise as his own child, teaches her fishing and book repair, gives her a knife, and uses his rifle to free her from Mr. Rash's grip.
Shadow — The cat Shadow relieved his loneliness and encouraged him to venture out; he later buried the cat and continued to mourn its companionship.
Solo's Father — Solo's Father hid him beneath the servers and gave him the silo key. Jimmy witnessed his father being shot while men demanded the refuge's code.
Jimmy's Mother — Separated from Jimmy's Mother during the crowded descent, he blamed himself and eventually began to accept that neither parent would return.
Walker — He tells Walker that he prefers Jimmy and later works with him to assemble a fabric enclosure outside.
Sources — 440 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 44
- An unidentified runner’s footsteps sound on the stairwell below Juliette.
Chapter 46
- Solo has a thick, unkempt beard and wears gray overalls.
- Solo has dark, shaggy hair hanging over his face.
- Solo tries to drive Juliette’s hands away from the floor hatch with a knife.
- Solo apologizes after cutting Juliette’s hand.
- Solo initially says he has no name because he has no need of one.
- Solo indicates that he has been alone for years.
- Solo accepts Juliette’s explanation that she came from another silo without apparent surprise.
- Solo puts the knife down and asks whether the outside is safe.
Chapter 48
- Solo is unsure whether any other survivors remain in the silo.
- Solo suspects rats when tomatoes disappear.
- Solo sometimes mistakes his own movements of objects and use of grow lights for evidence of other people.
- Solo initially thought he himself had left the knife in the door.
- Solo says he has been alone for thirty-four years.
- Solo believes he will turn fifty next month.
- Solo talks to objects and whistles to occupy himself.
- Solo says he survived by trying to last a few hours at a time.
- Solo uses abandoned apartment bathrooms until their smell becomes unbearable.
- Solo credits fear with helping him survive the fighting.
- Solo says his father hid him in the secret rooms at the beginning of the fighting.
- Solo says he ventured out increasingly often and farther as time passed.
- Solo estimates that he has not found a body in about twenty years.
- Solo says the stored records contain everything that ever happened.
- Solo explains that silos originally stored surplus grain aboveground for bad times.
- Solo believes people were placed in the underground silos as seeds to survive bad times.
- Solo fears prolonged isolation underground has damaged people beyond recovery.
Chapter 50
- Solo says he has been reading the reference books from front to back even though he thinks they were not meant to be read that way.
- Solo describes the stored knowledge as a backup of everything known about the past.
- Solo says that Silo One called him a long time ago to check in.
- Solo says his conversation with Silo One was short because he did not know all the procedures and the callers were unhappy.
- Solo says he spoke to the other silo through a wire.
- Solo guesses that Juliette came from silo sixteen or eighteen.
- Solo rejects the idea of passages linking the silos because he believes separation protects them from a shared disaster.
- Solo wants Juliette to stay with him rather than return to the people who sent her away.
Chapter 56
- Solo has wild hair and a beard flecked with gray.
- Solo proposes adding another pump to speed up the drainage.
- Solo greets the prospect of two years of pumping as a short wait.
- Solo drinks floodwater after brushing aside its greasy surface film.
- Solo wears oversized boots and baggy gray overalls.
- Solo calls their repair work projects and says he loves doing it.
- Solo complains that Juliette spends too much time making calls.
Chapter 59
- Solo habitually turns lights to full brightness and leaves them on.
- Solo blocks the server room with a filing cabinet every night.
- Solo has been experimenting with bread recipes using flour tins that supported his canned-goods shelves.
- Solo brings Juliette freshly baked bread and sliced cucumbers.
- Juliette assigns Solo to monitor the air compressor while she works underwater.
- Solo says that he is not worried about the plan.
Chapter 62
- Solo helps zip and fasten Juliette’s suit.
- Solo lowers a rope weighted with a large wrench to the bottom of the stairwell.
- Solo is lucid and energetic while helping prepare the dive.
- Solo is responsible for feeding Juliette’s tubing and electrical wire down without snags.
- Solo starts the portable air compressor using the procedure Juliette taught him.
- Solo secures exercise weights below Juliette’s knees with heavy Velcro.
- Solo ties the electrical wire around Juliette’s wrist.
Chapter 64
- Solo stays above the flood and manages Juliette’s air hose and electrical wires.
- Solo tells Juliette to slow her descent before confirming that she can continue.
- Solo does not answer Juliette’s requests for help when her fresh air stops.
Chapter 65
- Juliette calls Solo over the radio and asks whether he can hear her.
Chapter 66
- Juliette has told Solo not to turn off the compressor when refueling it.
Chapter 68
- Solo is addressed by Juliette in the transmission heard by Walker and Shirly.
Chapter 69
- Juliette finds Solo lying on the landing with his eyes closed and blood on his face.
- Solo responds to Juliette shaking him by opening an eye and coughing blood.
- Solo continues bleeding from a head injury when Juliette reaches him.
- Solo tells Juliette that his name is Jimmy.
- Jimmy says he does not think he was ever alone.
Chapter 72
- Solo’s large wrench is missing.
- Solo has a deep cut and substantial swelling on his head.
- Solo regains consciousness after water touches his head wound.
- Solo thinks there was one attacker and remembers the attacker as male and his own age.
- Solo insists that the moving objects and lights were not his doing and that he is not crazy.
Chapter 74
- Solo has a bleeding head wound and difficulty walking after being attacked.
- Juliette hopes Solo’s injury is only a concussion.
- Solo rarely ventures into his silo’s down deep and knows it less well than Juliette.
- Solo insists that everyone else in his silo should be dead.
- Solo remembers thinking that his attacker was like himself.
- Solo stays at the farm entrance, holding the door open while Juliette fetches water.
Chapter 77
- Solo is supported on the climb by the person who injured him.
- Solo improves after fruit and water but weakens again during the climb.
- Juliette entrusts Solo with guiding the children to food on level fifty-six.
Chapter 79
- Solo reports that it is two in the morning on Friday.
- Solo says Juliette’s dive took place on Thursday.
- Solo helps the exhausted Juliette reach the Suit Lab.
- Solo makes a blanket by overlapping strips of heat tape and sealing the joins with a torch.
- Solo helps Juliette put on her suit again.
- Solo decides to use the name Jimmy again because he will no longer be alone.
Chapter 84
- Solo reaches for his radio to share the news of the falling water with Juliette.
- Solo shares Elise’s optimism about their future.
Chapter 147
- Jimmy Parker is in class when the last of the great Louds begins.
- Jimmy is sixteen years old.
- Jimmy needs another year of study before he can follow his father’s career.
- Jimmy has begun to find Sarah Jenkins attractive during the school year.
- Jimmy has grown as big as his father during the past year.
- Jimmy becomes frightened when he sees his mother’s distress.
Chapter 148
- Jimmy descends the crowded staircase with his mother to reach his father on level thirty-four.
- Jimmy becomes separated from his mother in the crush above level thirty-four.
- Jimmy climbs onto the inner railing and follows his mother along it.
- Jimmy is knocked off balance and falls onto the crowd.
- Jimmy catches the outer railing as he tumbles over it, painfully wrenching his shoulder.
- Jimmy loses his grip because his injured shoulder can no longer support him.
- Jimmy deliberately lets go while hanging above the crowded landing.
Chapter 149
- Jimmy survives his fall by landing on the crowd and pinning the man in the silver suit beneath him.
- Jimmy has pain in his ribs, knee, and shoulder after landing.
- Jimmy supplies 1218 as the memorable number his father enters into the security keypad.
- Jimmy receives the silo key from his father.
- Jimmy remembers his father disappearing for three months before becoming a shadow.
- Jimmy is left alone in the hidden rooms when his father departs.
Chapter 153
- Jimmy waits alone in a hidden room between silo levels after his father leaves him there.
- Jimmy has sore ribs following his fall.
- Jimmy’s thigh is developing a knot where he landed on another person.
- Jimmy’s shoulder hurts when he raises his arm.
- Jimmy learns to change the camera views between silo levels using the control dials.
- Jimmy intends to work in IT as his father does.
- Jimmy suspects his father shot the new body he sees near the steel door.
- Jimmy finds that pressing the computer’s power switch does nothing.
- Jimmy’s father addresses him as James.
- Jimmy agrees to stay in the hidden room while his father goes to get his mother.
Chapter 154
- Jimmy blames himself for being separated from his mother in the crowd on the stairs.
- Jimmy is afraid to touch the long gun left in the room.
- Jimmy starts toward the door when he sees his father on the monitor.
- A security guard demands the new door code from Jimmy while threatening his father.
- Jimmy begs the men holding his father not to hurt him.
- Jimmy watches his father being shot on the monitor.
Chapter 155
- Jimmy takes a second portable radio from the rack before trying to reach his mother.
- Jimmy climbs out through the grating despite pain in his shoulder and knee.
- Jimmy’s first attempt to enter the door code fails because he confuses the order of the numbers.
- Jimmy hesitates during his second attempt because he remembers his father’s warning that the men will kill him and his mother.
- Jimmy lets the second code attempt expire while paralyzed with fear.
- Jimmy cannot get the code out when the man orders him to say it over the radio.
- Jimmy hears a third failed code attempt consisting of four taps of the same number.
- Jimmy curls up sobbing on the floor after another gunshot outside the door.
Chapter 157
- Jimmy remains alone behind a locked door while people outside fight to get in.
- Jimmy finds that pressing a single digit on the keypad immediately produces a buzz.
- Jimmy connects the headset to the blinking socket marked 40, stopping the flashing overhead lights.
- Jimmy tells the caller on line 40 that people were hurt during the rush upstairs.
- Jimmy assumes the numbered sockets connect to levels within his own silo.
- Jimmy tells the caller on line 1 that his father let him into the room.
- Jimmy coughs after odorless vapor descends from the vents.
- Jimmy survives the shutdown and sees the lights come back on.
- Jimmy reconnects line 40 to stop the flashing lights but leaves the headset lying in the server and ignores the voice.
Chapter 158
- Jimmy cannot remember whether his last meal was one or two days ago.
- Jimmy becomes convinced that his father will never call him again.
- Jimmy unlocks the pantry with the key he carries against his chest.
- Jimmy takes a can of corn and a can of soup from the pantry.
- Jimmy uses a rusty can opener to open the soup.
- While heating soup, Jimmy feels an emotional pain that food cannot relieve.
- Jimmy does not understand why each circle on the wall drawing is labeled as a silo.
Chapter 159
- Jimmy watches people commit violence against one another on the cameras.
- Jimmy initially resolves to stop watching the cameras because the violence frightens him.
- Jimmy moves a mattress into the room with the computer and radio to feel less alone.
- Jimmy resumes watching the cameras while eating, seeking signs of other people.
- Jimmy feels that people are not meant to live alone.
- Jimmy conceals his access to weapons because he fears it would make the men outside try harder to reach him.
- On his sixth night alone, Jimmy searches the Order for guidance about being completely alone but finds no index entry.
- Jimmy opens the Li–Lo volume while searching for information about loneliness.
- Jimmy initially mistakes a vivid picture of a locust for a real insect.
- Jimmy regards Legacy’s descriptions and pictures as fiction about impossible things.
Chapter 161
- A young-sounding male in seventeen answered a later call and asked what was happening on level forty.
Chapter 163
- Jimmy learns that his silo is number 17 and that other silos exist.
- Jimmy has spent a year living in the half-level below the servers.
- Jimmy refuses to write notes even in the margins of the books he considers valuable.
- Jimmy estimates that his food could last at least twenty years if he remains alone.
- Jimmy feels that he will eventually have to leave his refuge to preserve his sanity.
- Jimmy has lost his camera views of the area outside the refuge.
- Jimmy decides against opening the door because he believes dangerous people outside want to enter.
- Jimmy tells the people outside that he is nobody when he dares to speak.
- Jimmy estimates that at least a hundred people remain outside his refuge in groups that fight and kill one another.
- Jimmy hears a woman call for help over the radio but feels unable to help her.
- Jimmy uses a computer clock to track time without the normal changes in the silo’s lighting.
- Jimmy has arranged three months of canned meals in the order he plans to eat them.
Chapter 164
- Jimmy discovers crates of weapons and ammunition after his father disappears with the loaded gun.
- Jimmy learns to load a rifle by taking rifles apart, imitating his father’s method of laying out electronics components.
- Jimmy figures out how the gun works weeks before finding its terminology in a reference book.
- Jimmy eats pineapple every day and is saddened by his dwindling supply.
- Jimmy learns about unfamiliar subjects by following related entries through the books in tins.
- Jimmy has learned not to eat canned food unless opening the can produces a pop of air.
- Jimmy’s toilets have stopped working.
- Jimmy waits with his gun ready to fire if the people trying his door succeed in opening it.
- Jimmy relies on the outsiders’ three daily attempts to enter as his only regular human contact.
- Jimmy calculates that intruders trying codes in ascending order from 0000 would reach his code on their second attempt on day 406, less than a month away.
- Jimmy fears that the intruders could reach his code sooner by skipping numbers, starting elsewhere, or guessing at random.
- Jimmy does not know how to change the door code because he did not watch his father do it.
- Jimmy fears dying but also does not want to kill anyone.
- Jimmy relaxes after the outsiders fail their third code attempt of the day.
Chapter 165
- Jimmy starts defecating in a far corner of the server room after the toilets stop flushing.
- Jimmy urinates in the sink until the tap runs dry and the smell becomes bad.
- Jimmy taps into the cistern by following instructions in the Order.
- Jimmy drinks as much canned juice as possible because the cistern’s water will eventually run out.
- Jimmy drinks a can of tomato soup each day despite disliking it.
- The outsiders find the door code two days earlier than Jimmy expects.
- Jimmy wonders whether illness or sleeping after reading caused him to lose track of days.
- Jimmy briefly considers the person entering as a potential companion who could share work.
- Jimmy has spent a year preparing to defend the door by shooting empty tomato cans and maintaining his gun.
- Jimmy shoots the first man who appears in the doorway.
- Jimmy fires three shots at a second man who rushes into the room, and the man collapses nearby.
- Jimmy finds a black pistol beside the fallen intruder inside the server room.
- Jimmy momentarily sees his father in the wounded man lying outside the door.
- Jimmy realizes that the retreating third man knows the door code.
- Jimmy sees the retreating man in green overalls disappear into an office.
- Jimmy waits with his rifle aimed at the office doorway while the wounded man crawls toward him.
- Jimmy partly recognizes that his mother and father are gone and will not return.
- Jimmy fires when the remaining man peeks out of the office, producing a burst of blood in the hallway.
- Jimmy pushes the refuge door shut after shooting the intruders.
- Jimmy drops his gun and weeps with a dying man still inside the server room.
Chapter 169
- Jimmy notices brown spots spreading across his stored food cans.
- Jimmy is increasingly sick to his stomach, although he is unsure whether the canned food tastes different.
- Jimmy delays leaving his refuge for two days by turning preparation into a project.
- Jimmy considers finding a can opener and flashlight batteries his highest priorities.
- Jimmy has experienced two power outages over the years, both of which terrified him.
- Jimmy packs two empty bottles in hopes of finding water outside his refuge.
- Jimmy has gradually restricted himself to a makeshift cot by the computer desk as more of his refuge has become frightening to him.
- Jimmy remembers killing three men at the steel door through which his father brought him.
- Jimmy fears the air beyond the door may be toxic but reasons that he probably already breathes the same air.
- Jimmy uses his school and home levels as the code to unlock the steel door.
- Jimmy wonders whether any of his school friends are still alive.
Chapter 170
- Jimmy finds a brown stain outside the steel door and remembers a man dying there.
- Jimmy tests his door code from outside and successfully reopens the door.
- Jimmy recognizes that repeatedly checking the door code will never satisfy his fear of being locked out.
- Jimmy leaves to find a can opener, a working toilet, replacement overalls, and more food and water.
- Jimmy passes the security gate and finds the stairwell landing empty.
- Jimmy finds a human bone on the landing.
- Jimmy experiences relief from confinement despite fearing that he will die outside his refuge.
Chapter 171
- Jimmy uses a toilet in an apartment but finds that the toilet, sink, and wash nozzle have no running water.
- Jimmy hides behind a landing door when he hears footsteps approaching from above.
- Jimmy sees two figures rush past, with the second chasing the first and shouting threats.
- Jimmy feels alone despite discovering other survivors, believing that company means pursuit or death.
- Jimmy searches the general store for batteries or a can opener.
- Jimmy avoids searching the goods trapped under the fallen shelves beside a body.
- Jimmy’s old apartment no longer feels like home to him.
- Jimmy feels that he has failed his parents when he visits his old apartment.
- Jimmy approaches his old school and longs to return to his classroom as though doing so could change the past.
Chapter 172
- Jimmy returns to his old classroom and finds his backpack still there.
- Jimmy remembers holding Barbara’s hand after a class trip to the livestock pens when he was fourteen.
- Jimmy transfers his belongings from his makeshift bag into his old backpack.
- Jimmy erases repeated obscenities from the classroom blackboard.
- Jimmy writes a poem about being alone on the classroom blackboard.
- Jimmy knows his poetic claim that solitude makes him stronger is a lie.
- Jimmy initially considers the poem’s claim that nobody calls him Jimmy untrue because he still thinks of himself by that name.
- Jimmy replaces his written declaration of being Jimmy with a declaration of being Solo.
Chapter 174
- Solo grows bolder in exploring the silo as encounters with other people’s fighting become rarer.
- Solo reaches the lower farms on level one-twenty, farther down than he has ever ventured.
- Solo scavenges carrots and beets from the overgrown lower farms.
- Solo goes to Supply hoping to find batteries and a can opener.
- Solo fires three rifle shots at the locked Supply doors.
- Solo forces open one of Supply’s shot-damaged doors after kicking it.
- Solo mentally records the locations of pipe fittings and pumps for possible projects.
- Solo finds wet tomato paste on a discarded can, suggesting it has not been there for many days.
- Solo explores Supply’s unlocked rooms with his rifle ready.
- Solo takes a brightly shining flashlight he finds switched on in a room beyond Supply’s shelves.
- Solo realizes a flashlight left switched on could last only a few days.
- Solo accidentally fires his rifle against the doorjamb as he turns to flee.
- Solo flees without realizing he has frightened people living in Supply and taken away their light.
Chapter 175
- Solo explores deeper after fleeing Supply with a second flashlight.
- Solo has found a second farm with food.
- Solo still lacks a can opener and plans to use a screwdriver and hammer instead.
- Solo visits the Deep for the first time.
- Solo obtains only half a jug of water from an emergency fire hose despite opening its valve fully.
- Solo suspects people might remain in Mechanical because power and air are still available.
- Solo is unsure whether he ever wants to see other people again.
- Solo remembers his mother telling him to continue without her on the crowded stairs.
- Solo falls to one knee in the floodwater and soaks his clothes.
- Solo cannot detect whether the floodwater is rising.
- Solo fears the flooding may eventually reach his home on level thirty-four.
- Solo realizes he is not alone when he hears crying from inside a flooded level.
Chapter 176
- Solo removes his boots and socks before entering the flooded level.
- Solo leaves his bag four steps above the floodwater.
- Solo is uncertain whether he is twenty-six or twenty-seven years old.
- Solo remembers believing that blowing out the family candle quickly would let him and his parents live forever.
- Solo has never previously been in more water than a tubful.
- Solo fears sinking if he falls over the landing railing into the floodwater.
- Solo’s feet lose feeling as he searches the flooded level.
- Solo connects the phrase hub and spoke with the Legacy entry on bicycles.
- Solo worries that losing flashlight power would leave him groping for the exit.
- Solo locates the source of the cries in a community kitchen.
Chapter 177
- Solo initially believes the cat will be harmless company.
- Solo wonders whether the cat survived the silo’s collapse or was born afterward.
- Solo finds human bones scattered underwater around his feet.
- Solo lures the cat out of its hiding place with pieces of a ration bar.
- Solo’s attempt to pick up the cat results in scratches that draw blood.
- Solo feeds the cat a second ration bar while holding it against his chest.
- Solo carries the cat toward what he thinks is the exit through the dark flooded room.
Chapter 180
- Caring for the cat makes Jimmy enjoy meals and venture out more often.
- After rescuing the cat, Jimmy feeds it beans from a can found beneath a mattress.
- Jimmy finds that the cat’s companionship relieves his loneliness.
- Jimmy names the cat Shadow after the darkness where he found it and its habit of following him.
- Jimmy fears that losing Shadow will return him to the isolated state he associates with being Solo.
- Jimmy explores the upper cafeteria in hopes of finding a working can opener.
- Jimmy follows Shadow to a closed cafeteria door and finds it unlocked despite remnants of rope around the handle.
- Jimmy discovers piles of bodies behind the cafeteria door.
- Jimmy barricades the door to the bodies with tables and chairs.
- Jimmy fears that opening the room may have released ghosts.
- Jimmy leaves the upper level after finding no useful food or tools.
Chapter 181
- Jimmy leaves the hatch open so Shadow can explore the server room.
- Jimmy sleeps with lights and radio static to ward off his fear of ghosts.
- Jimmy suffers blows to his shoulder and wrist from an intruder’s pipe.
- Jimmy kills the intruder in his room with his rifle.
- Jimmy suspects someone deliberately used the power outage to open the server-room door.
- Jimmy shoots toward a voice in the hallway calling for Hank.
- Jimmy discovers that the second person he shot is a woman.
- Jimmy believes the intruders came to steal his food.
Chapter 182
- Jimmy restores power by finding the breaker the intruders tampered with.
- Jimmy cannot repair the door despite two days of working on the keypad wiring.
- Jimmy goes fishing with Shadow because the unsecured door prevents him from sleeping peacefully.
- Jimmy digs for worms partly to distract himself from the people he hurt.
- Jimmy increasingly finds himself insisting that he is not crazy.
- Jimmy learned fishing techniques from the Legacy.
- Jimmy wonders whether someone emptied the fish tanks into the flooded stairwell.
- Jimmy kills a caught fish with his knife to stop its suffering.
- Jimmy has never tasted the fish he catches for Shadow.
- Jimmy decides that he would spare the last remaining fish.
Chapter 186
- Solo has learned to estimate how long someone has been dead by looking at the body.
- Solo recalls moving the stiff bodies of people he killed years earlier.
- Solo once moved bodies blocking the stairs and found that their flesh came apart.
- Solo observes that bodies generally leave clothes, bones, and hair within a year.
- Solo observes that most bodies have been reduced mainly to bones after ten years.
- Solo has lived more than twenty years since being shown the secret lair beneath the servers.
- Solo initially assumed the bodies behind the cafeteria door had died recently when he and Shadow discovered them.
- Solo avoided the bodies near the outside door because their intact faces frightened him.
- Solo waits in vain for the bodies behind the cafeteria door to become bones.
- Solo releases a paper parachute from the third-level railing.
- Solo delays his planned task by tearing another page from the book and trying not to think about another carcass.
Chapter 187
- Solo once found a bin of usable razors in a doctor’s office after he had already accepted having a beard.
- Solo took a machete from beneath a recently dead man so that nobody else could use it.
- The sight of a still-warm body once frightened Solo into hiding below the server room for three days.
- Solo has stopped carrying his gun because he no longer finds it useful.
- Solo releases his last paper parachute and leaves the torn book behind because he has run out of washers.
- Solo chooses a cool, dark corner of the farm away from his regular food-gathering route for Shadow’s burial.
- Solo digs a grave for Shadow with a shovel he finds among abandoned tools.
- Solo misses Shadow rubbing against his shin while he worked and coming when he whistled.
Chapter 189
- Solo has put his key away because he believes nobody remains to threaten him.
- Solo still barricades the server-room door with a filing cabinet despite believing the silo empty.
- Solo believes the rising water will reach his home only after he is gone.
- Solo throws two bags of empty cans onto the landing at forty-two.
- Solo heads upstairs for tomatoes, cucumbers and squash because the crops below require more cooking.
- Solo repaired a leaking pump himself years earlier.
- Solo discovers a door unexpectedly open at the landing on twelve.
- Solo drops a pipe containing odd-smelling water over the railing by accident.
- Solo discovers an unfamiliar knife wedged through the grating to hold the farm door open.
- Solo concludes that a person or a powerful ghost must have left the knife holding the door open.
- Solo flees toward his hiding place carrying the unfamiliar knife and abandons his jugs when their rope snags.
- Solo barricades the outer doors with a broom while fleeing the sounds behind him.
- Solo slides a filing cabinet against the metal door before retreating through the servers.
- Solo swipes at his pursuer with a knife while trying to close the grate above his hiding place.
- Solo discovers that his pursuer is a woman who is happy to find him and asks his name.
- Meeting the woman makes Solo think that he, too, can be something worth finding.
Chapter 194
- Juliette worries about Solo remaining isolated with the children.
Chapter 195
- Juliette wants to radio Solo about the machine discovered beyond the wall.
Chapter 196
- Solo and the children are Juliette’s friends whom Fitz believes the apparent failure of the digger will hurt.
Chapter 197
- Juliette believes the man she wants to rescue is half mad from years of isolation.
Chapter 198
- Jimmy sits alone on lifeless soil in the grow pits remembering Shadow.
- Jimmy once dreamed of Shadow as a black-furred boy who could speak.
- Jimmy understands that Juliette intends his departure to be temporary.
- Jimmy fears returning to a crowded silo more than leaving or living in the Deep.
- Jimmy associates the silo’s depopulation with safety and remembers being attacked when people returned.
- Jimmy does not know how long Juliette’s rescue will take.
- Jimmy tells Elise that the rescuers must tunnel through solid rock.
- Jimmy expects hundreds or even thousands of people to come to the silo.
- Jimmy loves Elise as though she were his own child.
- Jimmy lets Elise cut pages from the books in the tin cans and helps her select pages useful for survival.
- Jimmy reluctantly urges Elise to adopt some of Rickson’s distrust of people.
- Jimmy hides his tears from Elise as they descend.
Chapter 199
- Jimmy agrees to move down to the lower farms with the children.
- Jimmy teaches Elise to catch fish in the receding floodwater.
- Jimmy salvages the plastic dome of Juliette’s helmet from the flood debris.
- Jimmy stops the nearly dry pump by cutting one of its electrical wires.
- Jimmy plans to take turns with the children operating the pump until Juliette returns.
Chapter 201
- Solo reports to Juliette that Mechanical is dry.
Chapter 203
- Juliette feels an unusually strong bond with Solo after the weeks they spent together under strain.
Chapter 211
- Jimmy and the others have spent two weeks keeping the pump running and Mechanical dry.
- Jimmy repeatedly orders the children back as the digger breaks into their silo.
- Jimmy fears the digger will keep boring through the silo without stopping.
- Jimmy runs toward the arriving visitors with Elise in his arms.
- Jimmy asks Courtnee where Juliette is.
Chapter 213
- Juliette remembers that Solo made the heat-tape blanket she used during her earlier return.
- Juliette is relieved for Solo and the children when she learns the dig has broken through.
Chapter 214
- Jimmy receives visiting workers who call him Solo and bring greetings from Jules.
- Jimmy feels defensive when Courtnee treats his home as unsafe.
- Jimmy finds walking straight along the tunnel more frightening than its darkness.
- Jimmy carries Elise through part of the tunnel when she becomes frightened.
- Jimmy worries that his silo is unprotected as people stream into it.
- Jimmy feels responsible for remaining strong for the frightened children.
- Jimmy fears the move to the other silo is a grave mistake.
Chapter 215
- Jimmy tries to show courage during his medical examination because the children are watching him.
- Jimmy asks to accompany Courtnee so that he can speak with Juliette.
- Jimmy tells Elise that they will live in the new silo at least until their old home is improved.
- Jimmy recognizes the new silo’s Mechanical layout as identical to the area he recently explored in his own silo.
- Jimmy initially mistakes a puppy for a giant rat and panics.
- Jimmy has seen adult dogs before but has never seen a puppy.
Chapter 216
- Jimmy tells Walker that he prefers to be called Jimmy.
- Jimmy knows that Juliette has been pursuing a project she would not discuss over the radio because of possible listeners.
- Jimmy urges Juliette to visit him soon.
- Jimmy panics when he cannot find Elise among the unfamiliar workshop surroundings.
- Jimmy receives a radio to keep with him at Juliette’s request.
Chapter 217
- Juliette has received news that Solo and the children are safe.
Chapter 220
- Jimmy goes looking for the missing Elise.
- Juliette’s father tells Jimmy to bring Elise back to Supply when he finds her.
Chapter 221
- Solo finds Elise in the bazaar and grabs Shaw, apparently believing Shaw has taken her property.
- Solo tells Elise they are heading home.
Chapter 222
- Solo confirms that Elise took Puppy from a box in Mechanical.
- Jimmy reports seeing people carry pipe and equipment from his silo into Juliette’s.
- Jimmy challenges the removal of equipment because Juliette promised to rebuild his home.
- Solo expresses dissatisfaction with Juliette’s repeated assurances that everything will be all right.
Chapter 227
- Solo previously told Juliette that his silo fell as people rushed upward and spilled into the open air.
Chapter 228
- Juliette remembers that Solo survived for decades on canned food.
Chapter 233
- Solo has taken the children away, saying he is taking them home.
Chapter 234
- Juliette says Solo remembers the destruction of his silo.
Chapter 235
- Solo told Elise to stay close to him.
Chapter 241
- Juliette expects Solo to be with the children at their old home in the lower farms.
Chapter 242
- Jimmy searches the stairs for Elise.
- Jimmy realizes he had not worried about Elise wandering when the silo was empty.
- Jimmy meets Terry Harlson at level one-twenty-two.
- Jimmy tells Terry that his name is Jimmy and most people call him Solo.
- Jimmy and Juliette had attached rubber hoses to the wall to drain floodwater.
- Jimmy acknowledges doing some of the electrical work, while some wiring already carried power.
- Jimmy inadvertently supplies level thirty-four when Terry prompts him about the source of power.
Chapter 243
- Solo became angry when he learned that Elise was removing pages from books.
- Solo subsequently taught Elise how to stitch pages in and out of books.
- Solo and Elise fished together.
Chapter 246
- Hank confirms seeing Solo’s group at the farms and says they left a few hours earlier.
Chapter 247
- Jimmy suspects he has passed Elise during his search and that she may already be back at the farms.
- Jimmy retrieves a hidden rifle after Shaw tells him Elise is being held by church members.
- Jimmy remembers teaching himself to shoot a rifle as a boy and using it against people.
- Solo interrupts the gathering with gunfire and demands to take Elise away.
- Solo threatens Mr. Rash with the rifle, allowing Elise to escape his grip.
Chapter 248
- Solo previously lived in a hiding place beneath the servers.
Chapter 251
- Solo carries a rifle and urges the group to secure the door and hide until the violence ends.
- Solo says his father hid him away and that he stayed there for a long time because it was safer.
- Solo estimates that his remaining food would feed him alone for three or four years.
- Solo is visibly disturbed by the idea of bringing two hundred people into the server room.
Chapter 252
- Solo opens the food cans with an electric can opener plugged into the floor.
- Solo raises his hand in support of Juliette’s escape proposal.
Chapter 253
- Juliette says Solo told her he discovered the bodies years earlier.
- Juliette’s father reports that Jimmy has no cavities and cannot remember his last illness.
Chapter 256
- Solo works with Walker to assemble a fabric enclosure using poles.
- Elise says Solo knows how to put worms on hooks.
Chapter 257
- Solo recounts animal breeds he learned about in the Legacy as the campers try to identify an unfamiliar animal sound.
- Solo shoots a deer with his rifle, supplying meat for the camp.
- Juliette regards Solo as a leader better prepared for survival outside than the other survivors.
Chapter 262
- Solo gave Elise her knife.
- Solo rigs fishing bait on the beach.
- Solo runs toward Juliette after she is shot.