Maya looked to the sky. Based on the sun’s height, she believed it to be early morning. A slight breeze rustled the leaves on the trees, and she inhaled while closing her eyes, the smell of ammonia and raw sewage beginning to fade.
“Any idea where we are?” Reno asked.
Maya looked around. “Trying to figure that out now.”
They stood on a sidewalk with weeds growing through the cracks. A faded beer can and blue plastic bag sat beneath a tree. Trees surrounded them, many of them at least fifty or sixty feet tall. They had to have come up somewhere in the city, but not in a place that people visited often. Wherever they were, though, Maya could only hope they now stood on the other side of the dome. She stepped to where she had a clear view through some of the trees and saw a familiar sight.
“I can see the Opry over there to the east,” Maya said, pointing. “It’s probably a couple of miles away. That puts us a good ten or fifteen miles away from downtown.”
“Can you see the dome, any indication of where it might be?”
“No. But we should head away from the Opry and downtown. Hopefully, we came up on the other side. You going to be able to do that?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. We need to leave in case those assholes decide to chase us out of the tunnels. We wouldn’t be tough to find. Or catch.”
Maya went to help lift Reno to his feet, but he waved her off. He stood on his own and shifted off his injured ankle, then gingerly put a little weight on it.
“It’s feeling better. I think I’ll be all right.”
They walked east, away from the Opry. The empty sidewalk gave Maya hope that they’d made it to the other side of the dome. But was that logical? If they were now on the other side of the dome, wouldn’t they see news crews and other first responders or police officers? Maya pushed the doubts aside. They had to be on the other side of the dome.
She couldn’t get the image of young Cassie out of her mind, though. As a parent, it angered Maya that Janine had been so reckless as to bring her daughter down into the tunnels to live. Everyone had a right to raise their children however they saw fit, but living in the sewer system beneath Nashville seemed more like child endangerment or neglect. While Janine hadn’t been directly responsible for Cassie’s appendicitis, it was possible that the woman’s daughter would have survived had they been living in a house like normal people—or she would have been less likely to get the infection in the first place. Now both were dead, and the tragedy was also senseless.
Maya heard Reno groan, and she turned around. She’d gotten lost in her thoughts and hadn’t realized that he had been struggling to keep up, and was now thirty feet behind her. She cracked a smile as she walked back towards him.
“Sorry. I was thinking about things. Not paying attention.”
“It’s all right. I don’t expect you to hang back with me.”
“No, I will. I’m not going to leave you behind and make you walk by yourself.”
Reno offered a forced smile. “Thanks.”
Maya glanced at his bloody hand, then back up to his eyes. They didn’t have the same spark in them she was used to seeing.
“Are you doing all right?”
“Yeah, I told you it doesn’t hurt that bad. Now that we’re moving, it’s starting to—”
“I’m not talking about your ankle.”
Reno looked at her before quickly looking down at the ground.
“All I’ve ever done is tried to help people,” Reno said. “When my old man split, I basically raised my little brother and sister while my mom worked two, sometimes three, jobs just to try and keep us afloat. All I’ve ever wanted to do was to make people’s lives better. That was the main reason I became a paramedic.” He raised the hand he’d used to wield the knife, displaying Janine’s dried blood. “But this? What the hell is this? This isn’t helping people.”
Maya grabbed his hand and lowered it. “You did what you had to do, the same way I did. Jack might have said a bunch of crazy stuff, but one thing I think is true is that this world isn’t the same anymore. It’s changed. And if we don’t change with it, then we’re going to end up lying dead in a tunnel ourselves.
“You want to save people? That woman was going to kill me. That wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to do, given the situation. And you saved me. Because of you, I’ve still got the chance to get to my kids.”
Reno wiped his wet eyes, choking back tears until he couldn’t anymore. Sensing this, Maya wrapped her arms around him. She gripped him tighter as he began to cry.
When they pulled away from each other, they were inches from each other’s face, staring into one another’s eyes. Maya leaned her forehead against Reno’s and ran her hand down his cheek. She closed her eyes and felt his lips touch hers, and she opened her mouth and kissed him back.
Reno kissed her for another moment, and then slowly pulled away. He cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“We should, uh, probably keep moving,” he said.
“Yeah,” Maya said, averting her eyes from his. “You’re right.”
Maya took her time to allow Reno to keep pace. He continued to limp along despite saying that his ankle wasn’t bothering him. The two hadn’t said much to each other after their kiss, and Maya tried to stay focused on their top priority right now—the dome.
Reno’s injured ankle allowed Maya to walk cautiously, her hands out as if she was moving through a dark basement to the fuse box during a blackout. Each step she took, Maya held her breath, hoping her hands wouldn’t meet the invisible barrier while telling herself that they were free, that the dome was behind them. She thought again of Laura and Aiden, desperately wanting to see them or hear their voices. It had been days since they had spoken, all cell service apparently disabled by the dome. Maya hoped the kids were still safe with her mother, but she couldn’t forget about the voicemails she’d received from Gerald.
The hair on the back of Maya’s neck stood up suddenly, and she felt a flutter in her stomach. She stopped and waited while Reno caught up and then walked a few paces past her before he stopped, as well.
“What is it?” Reno asked, turning around to face Maya.
“I don’t know. I just got this strange feeling.”
“What kind of feeling?”
Maya ignored his question and raised her hands. She walked forward at an even slower pace than she had been moving at before, passing Reno only slightly. Her hands touched something. Slight beams of light spread up her wrists and to her shoulders as she touched an invisible wall—as she placed her palms on the dome.
Maya pushed harder against the transparent structure that had trapped them inside the city and kept her separated from her children. She leaned forward, letting her head rest against the dome and sending more spiderwebs of light over and through her body. Taking a step back, she dropped her arms to her sides and felt the tears welling up and spilling down her cheeks.
“Damn it, Reno. I don’t know what else to do…”
“I’m so sorry, Maya. I know you were hoping we got far enough into the tunnels to have made it under this thing. But this doesn’t mean we can’t—”
Maya looked into the sky then, and screamed. Her muscles tensed, and she balled her hands into fists. She punched the dome. Light exploded from the points of impact as she hit it again and again.
When her arms felt like rubber, she fell to her knees. Maya had been determined to get under the dome and to her children. She had been able to keep her emotions in check and take rational, logical steps toward achieving her goal, as she had been taught to do as a trained paramedic. But now, the futility of everything she’d endured came to a head. Her body went limp as she sank all the way to her knees, sobbing silently.