“If these people don’t want to leave, you can’t make them,” Reno said, confirming what she knew was the truth. “This is about us now. About Laura and Aiden. You did what you could for these people, and now they’re responsible for themselves.”
You’re right.
Maya brushed her hair from her face and nodded. She held Reno’s hand as they walked to the other side of the culvert and up the concrete incline to ground level. She turned and looked one last time at the others, who were choosing to stay. As much as Maya wanted to try one last time to convince them otherwise, she didn’t. Instead, she turned and helped Reno out of the culvert and onto the sidewalk.
They crossed the sidewalk and continued down the road on their quest to find a way out of the dome. Turning down a side street, she saw the deep, black wall of the dome. Now that the creatures controlling it had blackened the surface and prevented light from coming through, it was no longer a mystery where the dome stood. Fires raged throughout the city, casting an orange haze overhead and providing limited visibility. Maya felt as though she was trapped inside of a furnace.
Maya alternated between a walk and a light jog, trying to keep her eyes on the dome as they passed houses. It cut straight through buildings, cars, and presumably anything else that had been on the edge when it had come down. The dome remained like a black, velvet curtain.
There must be a way out of here.
She’d been walking for ten minutes when Maya realized Reno wasn’t beside her. She looked back to see him thirty feet behind, stumbling along on his injured ankle and wincing with each step. She jogged back to him and hung his arm around her neck.
“Sorry. I got ahead of myself.”
“Look, I need to sit down. I can’t put any weight on my damned ankle.”
Maya thought again about the alien and the way it had turned to face her. When the hatch on the ship had opened, hundreds—possibly thousands—of those things had flown out. Where had they gone, and what were they doing? The questions made her shiver.
Ahead on the right stood a house with a front door that had been ripped from its hinges. She scanned the yard, seeing car parts, old tires, and dilapidated furniture scattered across the front lawn. Someone had put a 90s Buick sedan up on blocks, and a rusted short bus sat at the end of the driveway; the name of a church had been painted on the side, but was now worn and faded, leaving only the word “Baptist” fully legible.
Maya pointed to the bus and led Reno to it. She pushed on the doors, and they opened.
“Wait here.”
Maya stepped into the bus slowly. She looked down the aisle, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark. Children’s toys and balding car tires filled the back third of the bus, but otherwise, the remaining seats sat empty, and nobody had been hiding on the floor.
She reached down to take Reno’s hand and he shook his head, opting to use the rails to pull himself up and into the bus. He sat down in the third row. Maya shut and locked the door behind them. She then took a seat on a bench across the aisle from Reno, allowing him to stretch out and elevate his leg on the bench he’d reclined on.
“Do you need anything?”
Reno shook his head. “Not unless you’ve been hiding an ice pack in your pants. I just need to elevate it for a while.”
Maya leaned over and gently rotated his injured ankle to get a better look. It had swollen to the size of a baseball, and she knew it would blow up to twice that size the second he took his shoe off.
“You keep this elevated. I’ll check the house and see if there’s any ice in the freezer.”
“Maya,” he said, ignoring her need to treat him as a patient. “I need you to tell me what you saw back there. Why did you freak out?”
And, after a moment, she explained—the rounds the men had fired and the way the alien had risen, looked directly into her eyes, and disappeared back into the darkness. Then, she kept going, to say that if what she’d seen had in fact been one of those things flying out of the spaceship, there had to be thousands of those creatures walking the streets.
“It looked right at me, Reno. That thing saw me.”
Reno shook his head, his eyes darting around the bus as his brain undoubtedly processed what Maya had told him she’d observed.
“Do you think it healed itself?”
“Only two possibilities: it healed itself or the bullets never touched it. Those guys pumped shotgun shells and semi-auto rounds at it. They couldn’t have missed at that range. It’s not possible.”
Reno leaned back against the window and closed his eyes. “Jesus.”
“We have to stick with our game plan. We’ll stay near the edge of the dome and try to find a way out. If we can—”
“No,” Reno said, cutting her off.
Maya grimaced. “What?”
“I can’t walk on this ankle.”
Maya looked down again. “The swelling will go down if you keep it elevated. We can hang here until it does. I’ll try to find some ice and in an hour or so, we’ll—”
“No,” Reno said again, this time in a whisper.
Tears flowed from Maya’s eyes. She was a paramedic. She knew the truth—he couldn’t go on. They would both die moving at the pace they’d need to even if Reno was able to keep his ankle elevated and iced for another twelve hours.
“I can’t do this without you,” she said.
“You can. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. And your kids need you for that very reason. I’ll only slow you down and put both of our lives in jeopardy.”
She sniffled and then put her head on Reno’s chest, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“This isn’t the last time you’ll see me,” he said. “I promise.”
Maya lifted her head and looked into his light brown eyes. She ran her palm across his cheek, up into his hair, and pulled his lips toward hers.
She kissed him, and this time Maya leaned into Reno instead of pulling away. He kissed her back before holding her face in his hands and gazing into her eyes.
“Get to your children.”
Maya nodded, stood up, and swept her hair behind her ears. She walked to the doors and opened them before stopping. She glanced at Reno one last time and wiped her eyes.
“I’ll be back.”
37
She’d left Reno. The fact sank in as she looked around, trying to decide where to go next.
As paramedics, they had vowed never to leave each other behind. Reno had been there for her since the dome had come down. He’d made Maya’s priorities his own, putting his life at risk to try and get her out of the dome—to her children. He’d killed someone for her.
And she’d abandoned him.
She choked on her tears. Sometimes life presented an unfair choice—choose your children over your friends—blood thicker than water. Every parent in the world would have done the same thing. She knew it. Reno knew it.
This isn’t the last time you’ll see me. I promise.
She hoped he would be right about that.
But now, she had to focus on finding Laura and Aiden, on saving her children. If she couldn’t do that, Reno’s friendship, love, and sacrifice would simply be in vain.
To her left, a group of people came running and screaming out of a cloud of smoke. Her eyes fell upon a woman running barefoot, wearing a pencil skirt and a sleeveless blouse. She had been a young, beautiful professional before. Well, before all of this. Her wild hair matched her beet-red face now. She screamed, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Maya watched as a ray of light shot through the smoke and hit the girl square in the back. The punishing beam instantly silenced her scream and incinerated her body. Ashes floated where she’d been standing.