Sunset Rising (34 page)

“And now that you’re married, you better not start.”
Jack pulled me to him and kissed me again. Any awkwardness I had been feeling melted away as his kiss became deeper. I wrapped myself around him, wanting to get closer. Everything about him was suddenly intoxicating.

“Damn vest!” he muttered.

I was about to offer
to take the vest off when a hot, piercing pain exploded into my side. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. I couldn’t catch my breath.

Jack looked at me in surprise. “Sunny?”

I heard another bullet whip past our head.

My rifle was still slung across my back
, and Jack reached behind me, aimed it, and pulled the trigger. The gun fired, jolting me against him. I heard a thud somewhere behind me. He picked me up and ran for the forest.

“Can you breathe?” he whispered.
My breath was starting to return, but I was still gasping. “Where did it hit?” He set me down and pulled at my shirt.

I grabbed his arm and sucked in a breath.
“It hit the vest.”

Jack nodded.
“There’s another shooter. Stay out of sight.”

I was actually able to breathe
, though my back screamed with each breath I took. I ducked my head when I heard another shot.

“We
have to move!” Jack whispered, pulling me up with him. He had his rifle in one hand and took aim at the area the shot had come from.

“I’m okay,” I said, ignoring the pain.

We moved fa
rther away from the beach and into lusher foliage. I listened intently for any sounds. The animals had become eerily quiet, so it wasn’t difficult to hear the twig snapping about twenty feet away from us. I looked in the direction of the sound and clearly saw a Domer moving through the forest with his rifle raised. If only I knew how to use the rifle I carried, I would have shot him. Instead, I tapped Jack on the arm and pointed. He peered into the dark forest and shrugged. I pointed again, not wanting to talk or make any sound. How he could he not see him? Jack looked again, but still didn’t see him. The guard was now a scant ten feet from us and still advancing. Jack finally saw him, took aim, and pulled the trigger. The guard dropped.

I heard the doo
rs to the rainforest opening, followed by the sound of footfalls coming into the room. I didn’t know if they were here for us, or just responding to all the gunfire. Jack motioned for me to follow him. We stayed low, keeping to the bushes and away from the footpaths. We didn’t travel far before we came up against a stone wall.

Fa
rther along the wall I could see the shadow of a doorway. I pulled Jack in that direction, and he shook his head. I pointed to the door. He looked, but I could tell he couldn’t see the shadow. I wondered how he could be so blind when the moonlight was so bright in here. I firmly took him by the hand and pulled him toward the door. Reluctantly he followed.

There was a scanning device on the door itself
. I was about to wave my hand in front of it when Jack grabbed it and shook his head. He took out his computer and tapped away on the screen, which seemed to take forever. I could hear footsteps getting closer to us. I looked for any figures coming through the darkness, but didn’t see anything yet. Finally, the door unlocked.

We went through and silently closed the door behind us.
We were in another section of the bio-dome. This section was a lot more open than the rainforest we had just left. There were a few trees and bushes, but no dense foliage to hide in. I could see several corrals with animals in them. Some of the animals were becoming restless with our arrival. I wondered if this was the prairie section Jack had told me about earlier.

We moved into the room, using the corrals as cover.
The animals really didn’t like our presence. The horses were the first to start whinnying, moving about their enclosure as if to get away from us. I didn’t like being here at all.

“Someone there?” a Domer called out.
Of course this section would be guarded, too.

Jack grabbed my
hand, and we ran from behind the horse enclosure to the cows. They weren’t any happier to see us. The guard on duty was alerted and used his communicator to call his partner for backup. I desperately looked around for another door and found one on the opposite side from where we were hiding. I pointed it out to Jack. Not surprisingly, he couldn’t see it. I took him by the hand and headed in that direction. With each enclosure we left we had to run and hide behind another one. We were more than halfway across the room when one of the guards saw us. A shot rang out, and we dove behind a pigpen. I heard them running toward us. Jack took out his computer and tapped on the screen.

“Run
,” he said in a low voice once he had the door unlocked.

We both stood up and made a run for the door.
The guards stopped running in order to take aim and shoot at us. We ducked as low as we could, still running at full speed to make it to the door. A bullet whizzed by my head so close I felt my hair move. I resisted the urge to panic and kept going.

I heard more Domers filing into the room
, and they shouted for us to stop. We didn’t. Jack was the first to reach the door, and he yanked it wide open for me to run through. We shut it quickly, and he reprogrammed the lock.

“That should hold them for a while,” he said.

We were standing in some kind of utility room. The door leading out wasn’t locked, so we just went through. We were presented with three different hallways to choose from: left, right, or straight ahead. Jack pulled up a map of the Dome on his computer and figured out where we were. He went left, and I followed. We had just reached the end of the hall and were going through a door when I heard the utility room door burst open and guards come pouring out. Jack quickened his pace, and I kept up. He was following the map he had in his palm. I wondered where in the Dome we could run and not be found. We were out of places to hide.

He led me through a maze of hallways and doors
, and it seemed to me that this part of the Dome was dirty and smelled bad. We finally turned down a dead-end hall dominated by a huge steel door.

“Where are we?” I whispered, afraid of giving our position away.

“Garbage chute. This is how we get out. It’s one way.”

Jack began to do his magic on his computer
, and I kept glancing nervously over my shoulder, expecting an army of Domers to come crashing down on us at any second. I decided that if that happened, I would make them shoot me right there, right then. I wasn’t going to allow my death to be put on display as some kind of fear-mongering tactic by a crazy president.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the
garbage chute door open. It didn’t open out toward us like the steel doors at the reception area of the Dome. This door retracted into the left side of the doorway. It was the thickest metal door I had ever seen.

“Not the nicest way to leave the Dome, but any other exit we take will set off an alarm,” Jack said.

We wa
lked in together. A lot of garbage already filled the room. Most of it was mining debris, but there were barrels of chemical waste, among other things. I was thankful there was nothing organic rotting in here, otherwise the smell would be unbearable. All organics in the Dome were composted and used again. Jack tapped on his computer again, and the huge steel door closed, sealing us inside. It was so dark once the door shut that even I couldn’t see. Jack illuminated his computer and used it like a flashlight.

He touched my back
, and I flinched in pain. “Ouch!”

“Those vests are good for stopping bullets from ripping through you, but they still leave their mark.
You were lucky you were wearing it.”

“So this leads outside?” I asked.

Jack nodded.

“Is there air from outside in here now?”
I asked hesitantly. I wondered if I was already breathing in toxic air.

“No.
I’ll show you.” Still using the light from his tablet, he took my hand and led me to the back wall. “This is another door reinforced with lead that divides this chamber from an outer one. The floor we’re standing on is actually a conveyer belt. When it’s activated, this door opens, the garbage from this room is advanced into the next chamber, and the door closes. The weight of the garbage triggers a high-powered air current to turn on, an outer door opens, and the conveyer belt dumps the garbage outside. The air current is used to prevent air from outside coming into the chamber, so it doesn’t shut off until the outer door is sealed shut again. Then a ventilator comes on and sucks out any poisonous air that may have come into the room. The ventilator runs for at least twelve hours to ensure there is no radiation before the next load of garbage is moved forward. You can hear the hum of it now.”

“So if the ventilator is on, that means garbage has been dumped within the last twelve hours?”

“Yes. It won’t activate again until it’s done the twelve-hour cycle,” Jack said, raking a hand through his hair. I noticed almost all of the coal was gone. “You sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure
.” I lied. I was scared to death. Even the thought that I could be breathing poisonous air right then was terrifying to me.

“We’re both exhausted.
We should try and get some rest. We’ll need all our strength soon,” Jack said.

He led me to a corner of the dump and pulled me down beside him.
I laid my head on his shoulder, positioning myself so nothing touched my bruised back. He wrapped his arms around me and held me against him.

It felt good to rest.

It felt safe in his arms.

T
he sound of a door opening and the floor moving startled me awake.

“Jack!” I screamed
.

I felt his whole body jerk awake beside me.
I tried to stand, but the moving floor was throwing me off balance. I took hold of a nearby barrel and pulled myself up.

“Take my hand
!” I said.

He pulled himself up, and then gripped the barrel tight with both hands.
The conveyer belt was far from being a smooth ride. It jerked and lurched and threw us both off balance more than once.

We passed
through into the next chamber.

“This is it,” he yelled over the din of the machinery.
“There’s no turning back.”

He took my arm and tried to hold it.
I didn’t want to get separated from him so I clutched at his hand.

“Don’t let go!” I wanted to be brave, but I could feel the panic rising up.

The conveyor belt took us farther into the next chamber, and the ride got rougher. The barrel we were using for support fell over and rolled on the floor. Without its support, we both lost our balance and fell, too.

“Stay down.
I’ll crawl to you,” Jack yelled, but another barrel came rolling at him, and he had to dive out of the way. We were getting farther apart.

I got to my hands and knees and tried crawling toward him, but the pitching of the floor kept throwing me
from side to side. The more we advanced into the next chamber, the more vibration rattled the floor.

I heard the sound of the steel door shutting behind us.
In a few seconds we would be completely cut off from the Dome. My whole body started to shake with fear. When the door shut, the floor stopped moving. Jack got up and ran to me.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

I shook my head.
I couldn’t find my voice. The terror had stolen it.

The
high-powered air current Jack had told me about clicked on, and he held my hands as tight as he could. The force of the current was so strong it pushed us along with the garbage in the direction of the door. The big steel door that led to the outside world started opening up.

Jack and I clung to each other.

“Still think this was a good idea?” he screamed over the hum of the machinery.

I
grasped the lapels of his uniform and hung on tightly, but we were sharply torn apart by the conveyor belt jerking back to life. I tried to make my way back to him, but between the conveyor belt and the air current, that was impossible. The doors were halfway open now, and the brilliant light beaming into the room struck me. My eyes rolled up into the back of my head.

The conveyor belt continued to move me forward
, but I was blind. I had no idea when I would be dumped out into the waiting world.

I think I screamed for Jack.
I didn’t even know if he was still in the room or outside already. I heard garbage thud and clunk as it hit the ground, and then I was falling. It must have been only for a second or two, but it felt like an eternity before my body touched down on something. The pain from the bruise on my left side was excruciating, and I bit down on my lip.

I forced my eye
s open, but I could only keep them open long enough to catch glimpses of the world around me. I didn’t see Jack. I screamed his name again, but the noise from the high-powered fan was too loud for me to hear even my own voice. Did he make it? Was he alive?

“Sunny!” I heard Jack yelling when the doors finally shut and the sound was gone.
He was close by.

“I’m here!” I heard him making his way toward me.

“Are you okay?” he asked, feeling my arms and legs. “Did you break anything?”

“I
’m fine. I just can’t open my eyes. The light is so strong.”

“I know.
The sun is strong for me, too. Do you believe it? We’re seeing the sun!”

“Well, if I could open my eyes I could see it.
It feels warm on my skin,” I said in wonder.

“I’ll get you off this slag heap and into some shade.
That might help. Put your hands on my shoulders and follow in my footsteps.”

The terrain of the mound was jagged and unsta
ble, and our progress was slow. As we worked our way through the heap, we discovered the sun’s rays weren’t just bright, they were hot, too. We finally reached the edge of the mound, and I opened my eyes long enough to catch a glimpse below.

I think I saw trees, which didn’t make any sense.
We were always taught that the nuclear winter had destroyed every bit of life on earth. I opened my eyes again and peeked at the ground. It was a long way down.

“This should be easy for someone who’s used to climbing a dark and scary mineshaft,” Jack said.

“But I could see in the mineshaft. I’m blind right now.”

“I was blind in the shaft
, and you made me do it.” He tugged at my hands, pulling me closer to the back of him. “Just hang on to me and follow my every move.”

I clung to him as we began our descent.
The sides of the heap were even more unstable than the top, and every step we took had us sliding a few feet. Then the slag weakened at one point, and we slid a good fifteen feet. I forced my eyes open, bearing the pain of the sun on my eyes. I lost my grip on Jack, and he ended up sliding farther down the mound than I did.

“Just slide down to me,” Jack said.

I did as he instructed and found it a lot easier than trying to walk. After that, I opened my eyes more frequently, scared I might miss a step and send myself careening off the man-made hill. It seemed to take forever, but finally we reached the bottom.

“Not far now,” Jack said.
He took my hand and led me into some trees. “Try opening your eyes.”

I did
, and the shade provided some relief from the glaring sun, but my eyes were still extremely sensitive.

“Are we in the woods?” I asked in amazement.

“We are.” Jack was smiling. “This isn’t what I expected at all.”

“I thought everything on earth died wi
th the nuclear winter, but… ” My voice trailed off as I looked in wonder at the world around me.

Trees taller than I could imagine were bursting with green leaves.
I looked up at their canopies through narrowed eyes, trying to tolerate the pain of the bright sun. I caught glimpses of blue sky and white fluffy clouds floating past. A breeze blew against my face, bringing with it the foreign smells of earth and water. A screech that almost sounded human startled both of us, but when I found the source of the noise I saw a bird sitting in a tree looking at us curiously.

“A bird,” I said in astonishment.

Jack offered his hand to me. “Let’s go explore.”

“First I want to take this uniform off.
I’m so hot.” We both stripped down to our clothes, and then I turned my back to him and took off the vest.

“That is a nasty bruise,” Jack said when he saw my naked back.
“Does it hurt to breathe?”

“I’m getting used to it. I don’t think I broke any ribs
.” I let the vest fall. It hit the ground with a thud. “I’ll never put that on again.” I pulled on my t-shirt.

“
I won’t argue,” he said, letting his eyes rove up and down my body. “At least while we’re out here. But when we go back inside, it goes back on.”

He gathered up
the uniforms and the vest and stashed them in the base of a tree.

I looked back from where we
’d come. The huge mound of garbage that had accumulated over the past two hundred and eighty-three years was the only eyesore in what was otherwise paradise. I turned my back on the ugly mound and focused on the beauty of the woods.

“It’s amazing
! I never thought I would ever see this.”

Jack breathed in deeply.
“The air is so different out here. It’s so much… richer.”

I knew what he meant
, and it wasn’t just the different smells. The air itself was almost inebriating. Breathing it in made me feel more alive, like all of my senses were suddenly put into overdrive.

“Is it just me or can I hear better?” I asked.

“I know what you mean. It’s as if my ears just opened up. Sounds are so much sharper out here.”

I forced my eyes to open wider and took in the sight around me.
Every detail of the forest came into focus: shadowy areas dappled in sunlight, some areas dense while others were open. Then I realized the open area was a path, not unlike the footpaths we had followed in the rainforest.

“Come on,” I said to Jack excitedly.

The path was narrow
, and we had to walk in single file. I could see depressions in the soil, and I knew I was looking at animal tracks. Animal tracks! Things were living out here. But it didn’t make sense. Radiation was toxic, which was the whole reason why we all lived in the safety of the Dome. But this paradise didn’t seem like a place that would kill us. It was warm and welcoming.

“I wonder what kind of animals made these
tracks,” Jack said.

“I don’t know, but a few of them are huge
.” I pointed to one large print that was surrounded by claw marks.

Jack gripped his rifle a little tighter.
“Hopefully we don’t meet up with it.”

“Maybe it’s friendly
.”

He didn’t look convinced.

I heard a distant trickling that sounded a lot like running water, and as we followed the path it became louder. We came upon a stream of water rushing past us in a hurry to get to the bottom of the mountain.

“A rive
r!” I exclaimed.

I looked upstream and saw an animal drinking from it.
It was a small and gentle- looking creature. I tapped Jack on the shoulder and pointed, not wanting to scare the animal away. He looked in astonishment.

Slowly he moved toward the river’s edge, careful not to startle the animal.
He bent down, scooped water into his hand, and drank it. “It tastes fine.”

I tried some
myself. It tasted sweet and refreshing. Better than the water we had in the Pit.

We both stood up, smiling at each other.
I threw my arms around him, laughing at our discovery. The earth was fine!

“You know what this means?” I
asked, hugging him close.

“We can save them
.”

“We have to find a way back.
We might even be able to get everyone out by tonight!” My mind whirled with the possibility of setting everyone free.

“Slow down
,” Jack said gently. “Finding a way back in isn’t going to be easy. The Dome is a fortress.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the Dome was built to be impenetrable. I told you getting back in was going to be a problem.”

“Can’t we go back in the way we came out?”
But even I knew that was going to be impossible.

“Not even you could climb up against that air current with deb
ris falling down on you.” He gave me a dry look. “I have maps of the Dome on my computer, and I’ll study them to find a weak point. In the meantime, my military survival training has taught me that our first order of business should be to find food, water, and shelter. Water we’ve found. Shelter is next.”

“C
an’t we explore first?”

“We can explore while we look for shelter.
I don’t know what time of day it is, but I don’t think it’s in sync with the Dome.”

We walked along the edge of the meandering river and saw several more animals along its shore.
I was surprised by the amount of wildlife there was considering I had been taught to believe everything out here was dead. I couldn’t believe we had been living inside the Dome all this time when we could have been out here, free.

“Head down that path,” Jack said from behind me. “There are too many animals by the river to make camp here.”

I saw a path leading away from the river and followed it. As we walked through the forest, the sound of rushing water became fainter, and once again we could hear birds cawing and whistling at each other. Large rocks jutted out of the ground in places, speckled with bits of foliage growing in their crevices. It looked like something out of a movie.

“Wait,” Jack said.
Something in the tone of his voice put me on edge. He bent down to examine something on the ground. “Look at this.”

I went back to take a look and saw long tracks dug deep into the ground.
My eyes followed the length of the track, and I realized it stretched far behind us and far in front of us. It was one long continuous track.

“What are they?
” I asked. The tracks didn’t belong to an animal.

“They’re tire
tracks.”