I was happy that we were finally being honest with each other, but I felt self-conscious talking about my feelings so freely. “Of course. I don’t go around kissing just anybody, you know.”
“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 farther 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 doors 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.
Farther 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 walked 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.”