C James - Dome Six

“Do you hear that?” Owen said. “Maybe they’re leaving.”

Owen scrambled up the side of the rise, maybe 10 meters above the group.

“Watch your distance…” Elle warned.

He reached the crest and moved from side to side to see past the ocean of towering pines.

“Can you see what’s happening?” Greg asked.

“I’m not sure,” Owen replied. “They’re flying toward the far side of the Dome. The further the better. Let’s keep going.”

They couldn’t move as fast as Owen wanted, chiefly because of his mother. They had to stop every 10 or 15 minutes so she and Byron could rest, but each time, it helped them less and less so Owen took over carrying her. Right away, he recognized Byron’s efforts to that point as nearly superhuman.

Eventually, though, the sound of the circling aircraft faded to the point where their blankets seemed unnecessary. That was just as well since they kept getting hooked on branches. By the time they stopped to eat and drink something, it was nearing midday and Owen became curious about what was happening at the Dome.

They took their break atop a small ridge that afforded a relatively unobstructed view of the Dome, far enough away that it almost looked small. The first stirrings of sunlight glinted off the top of its weather-beaten frame. From their vantage point, they could also make out the faint outlines of a city, well to the northeast, that he presumed to be Pacifica.

His mother lay on a carpet of moss, curled up into a tight ball as she shook. He wished he could take her pain away, or at least that her body would let her slip into unconsciousness, but it seemed the pain was too insistent for that. He knelt beside her and lifted her bottle to her lips. She took a halfhearted sip.

“It hurts to move,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said. “As soon as we find a place to hide for a while, we’ll stop and rest.”

Just then, an explosion met their ears and everyone gasped. Owen’s head whirled toward the sound, which clearly came from Six. Indeed, a puff of white smoke appeared at the Apex.

“What just happened?” Aaron asked.

“I’m not sure,” Owen said. “Maybe they—”

Owen was interrupted by the pop-pop of charges, little flashes that began at the top of the support wall and traveled around the Dome in a rapid spiral. They saw them well before they heard them, which made it that much more surreal when the entire roof of the Dome collapsed inward, leaving only the concrete outer wall. The metal Towers now glinted in the sunlight.

“What happened?” Susan asked, panicked. “What just happened?”

Secondary charges in the Towers went off from the bottom up, so quickly that they’d already begun to fall before the sound reached their ears.

For a long moment, no one said anything, their jaws hanging open. None of them had the words for this.

As he fought back the tears, Owen looked at his mother and said, “They blew it up. They blew it up with everyone inside.”

He fell onto his back and wept.

Anguish seized them all. None of it seemed real. There would be time to grieve and process what happened, but that time wasn’t now. They were still in mortal danger. Cytocorp had done what it came to do, and now they would hunt them down.

But instead of feeling fear or even grief, another emotion had suddenly bloomed in Owen’s gut. Anger, hot and insistent. He’d been very careful to remain calm and rational to this point, but the feeling overwhelmed him. He wanted revenge, and he wanted it now.

“Give me the gun,” he said, and turned to Elle. “I’m going to Pacifica.”

“Is that right?” Elle said. “And what happens to the rest of us?”

He yanked the pendant from his neck and held it out to her. “Take it. I’ll figure something out.”

“Owen,” Elle said, grabbing him roughly by the shoulders. “Owen, look at me. We don’t even know where we are. We don’t know anything at all. Let’s be smart about this.”

Owen paused to consider this, then nodded. He took several deep breaths to calm himself. Elle was exactly right — they had to keep their wits about them. Her calm, cold logic seemed to jostle everyone out of their shocked state.

“They’re gone,” he muttered. “They’re all gone.”

She handed the pendant back to him and closed his hand around it. “All the more reason for us to press on.”

He nodded and slipped the necklace back on, tucking it back into his shirt, then took a final deep breath before he picked his mother back up and descended to the bottom of the ridge, with Elle now in the lead.

The going was difficult as they worked their way down, but the creek continued to grow in size and strength as more small creeks joined it. As it tumbled off ledge after ledge, it actually became hard to hear anything but a close conversation. No one had ever seen so much water.

The creek widened into a large pool then was split by an enormous black rock. They were on the wrong side of the creek to get around it so they had to wade across the knee-deep water. Owen had to carry his mother in his arms while they forded it. It was so cold it hurt, but so perfectly clear he could discern individual pebbles at the bottom.

Ahead, he thought he could discern a break in the trees that may have meant a meadow or some other open space. The closer they got, the larger that void appeared to be — virtually without end. The woods opened into a steep, rocky slope that fell away toward a cliff, beyond which they could only see the far side of what appeared to be a wide valley with a floor of solid blue, sparkling and shimmering in the full light of day.

“What is that?” Dee asked.

“It’s a river,” Owen said, setting Tosh down. “Mom, do you see?”

She saw it, but her addled brain could barely register what it was. It was so inconceivably large that it looked fake. There was enough water to have filled the entire Dome in minutes.

“A river…” she said, trailing off as a fresh wave of pain hit her. She groaned. One way or another, it had to stop.

“There’s got to be something we can do for her,” said Owen.

“There is one thing,” Elle said, expressionless.

“No,” Byron said, his eyes red and glassy. “You’re not touching her.”

“She’s right,” Tosh croaked, her voice so thin and insubstantial that it didn’t even sound like her own. “I’m on fire. And it’s only getting… worse.”

Byron said, “We’ll find help.”

Tosh howled in anguish and curled into the fetal position. “Take me to the river.”

She got on all fours and tried to stand but toppled over. Owen barely caught her and eased her back to the ground. He and Byron got down on either side of her, put her arms around their shoulders, and helped her to her feet.

“Can you walk?” Byron asked.

She took a tentative step but immediately retracted her foot and winced. “It’s like walking on knives.”

“Then we keep carrying you,” Owen said. He was about to pick her back up when Byron stepped in.

“I’ve got her,” he said, and then she was back over his shoulder.

The going was already slow, but it was an order of magnitude slower now that they were carrying Tosh down the steep pitch to the river. They had to veer well away from the ledge to find a way down, and even then it required some scrambling. Byron almost dropped her — not only because of the terrain but because she couldn’t stop convulsing.

After a very long hour and a half, the slope abruptly ended and tapered to a finger of rocks and sand that reached out into the mighty river. The current curled around the end of the finger in eddies as it flowed west.