by Jim Miesner
It only took her a minute to slide her feet into it, pull it over her shoulders and go to another locker where she grabbed a helmet and clicked it into the collar of the suit. She was greeted with a hiss as the clear containment suit sealed. Brushing her hand over a panel on her arm, it tightened to fit her body. Then she brushed her hand over it a second time as it disappeared around her.
Taking a deep breath, she walked out of the room and turned the hallway corner to quarantine. There should have been at least one guard or maybe a small army, but instead she found an open empty room where Jenny should have been. She was too late. They had already taken her. She stood there in shock as a rush of guilt flooded over her. How long had she missed her by? Footsteps behind her, interrupted her train of thought.
“What are you doing here?” a voice asked.
Sam turned to see a man in a red bio-suit standing there with an illuminated blue wand in his hand. She knew what it did. She was ready for him to use it on her and send thousands of volts coursing through her body but he just stared at her like she had two heads.
“Get back to your quarters.”
“What’s going on?” she found herself asking.
“A chewer escaped. You need to get back to your quarters before you’re infected.”
“A chewer?” Sam asked.
The man took two steps toward her and stopped. “Are you hard of hearing? Can't you hear the alarms?”
Of course, why hadn't she realized that?
“Was it a girl?” she asked.
“Reynolds, down here,” someone shouted, and the man turned his head toward the end of the hall where two more men in suits stood.
They motioned him to follow them, and he looked at Sam one last time before he turned, and began to run toward them.
“Get in your quarters if you know what’s good for you,” he yelled and disappeared around the corner.
Sam looked back at the empty room. If Jenny had escaped where would she have gone? She couldn’t get out of here on her own. Sam turned back around the corner and she swore she heard something fall in the room she had just come from. Sliding her card through the reader again the door hissed open and she peered inside. Then her foot crunched down on a green tube that hadn’t just been there a minute ago. She walked past the lockers until she came to another row of cabinets. These were open, and littered on the ground next to them were a host of bottles and injectors. She looked up just in time to see a blur rush past her and almost knock her off her feet.
Sam rounded the corner after the blur, only to find Jenny crouched on the floor, her pockets stuffed to the brim with bottles and injectors as she slipped into an open-air vent. Sam grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her out as she screamed. If anyone was close enough to have heard it, they would no doubt come running.
“Let go. Get away from me."
Sam put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Jenny, stop. I came to help you.” She positioned herself between Jenny and the grate, as the girl eyed the door.
“Stay back, I’m warning you,” Jenny said and pulled an orange injector tube from her pocket. She held it out at Sam as she backed away from her.
“Jenny, that doesn’t do what you think it does. I want to help you.”
“Stay back. You’re a liar, just like all the others. You don’t care about me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t. You think I’m bad and my parents are bad, just because we’re from outside the Shell.”
“Please Jenny, I’m sorry. We don’t have time for this.”
Right on cue the door hissed open and the man in the bio-suit with the glowing blue wand returned. He held it out at Sam first then jerked it toward Jenny.
“You found her,” he said, amazed.
“Get away from me,” Jenny said as she backed away.
The man inched toward Jenny holding out the wand and she looked up at Sam with tears in her eyes.
Sam didn’t hesitate, she screamed and rushed toward the man. His head turned, but not his body as Sam careened into him and knocked him into the wall.
Jenny rolled out of the way at the last second. He tried to catch himself but he was too close to the wall, and his body convulsed as he smacked into the blue wand. A moment later he dropped to the ground. He rolled around trying to get up before Jenny grabbed the wand and hit him a second time. The man shook for several seconds while she held it there before Sam ripped it out of her hand.
They both stared down at him, the only sign that he was still alive was the gentle rhythm of his chest moving up and down and the drool running down his chin.
“We have to go,” Sam said before she looked down at Jenny’s overflowing pockets. “What are you doing with all of this?”
Jenny stared at the man.
“My mom is sick.”
Sam looked at her as the alarm continued to blare in the hallway. It was a miracle they hadn’t caught her already and the longer they stayed here the less chance they had of escape. Every second wasted was a lost opportunity, still she couldn’t do nothing. She brushed past Jenny, pulled open her locker and grabbed a gray backpack from inside. Then she turned back toward the cabinets where she began to brush as many injectors and bottles as she could into it, along with a portable med-tech.
“What’s that?” Jenny asked.
“It will tell us what's wrong with your mom and what she needs,” Sam said. “Now let’s go.”
Jenny didn’t move.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “You told me that this place was good. That everything here was better than it is beyond the Shell.”
“I know. Something happened Jenny. It isn’t safe anymore. We have to go.”
Jenny stared at Sam like a dog trying to figure out a new command.
“It isn’t a trick. I promise.”
Sam unzipped the backpack and pulled a full white tube out before she stepped forward with it in hand. Jenny flinched away in fear instinctively until she realized the tip was pointed back toward Sam. Her eyes narrowed in confusion.
“Take it,” said Sam. “I know there's no reason for you to trust me but if I do anything you don’t like then use it on me. We can’t argue about this though, there isn’t time.”
Jenny reached out in slow motion before she snatched the tube from her hand. She kept it pointed at Sam without saying a word. If she wanted to, she could end this little adventure right now. Jenny seemed to press her lips together as she considered this before they heard footsteps again.
They both turned as the doors slid open again and another man in a bio-suit stood in front of them. He froze there in confusion as Sam jabbed the wand into his stomach and he convulsed, diving face first into the ground. Sam could hear his teeth click together when his jaw connected with the tile. It would hurt when he woke up.
Without a pause she grabbed Jenny’s hand and pulled her over the man and out into the hall. They sprinted down the corridor. They were a good distance from the elevator when the two guards stepped off.
“That’s her,” one of them yelled as they pointed their wands at them.
Sam pushed Jenny back as they began to run back toward the way they had been coming from and she felt two flashes of heat brush past her. She looked back surprised as one of the men held his blue wand out at arm’s length. A bright white ball of white glowed as the rest of the wand strobed between blue and white. Sam pushed Jenny to the ground a split second before it shot over top of their heads and burned the wall behind them.
“They can do that?” Jenny asked in shock.
Sam didn’t answer. She just pushed the girl around the corner before another wave of heat brushed passed her head.
“What’s the plan?” Jenny asked.
Sam stared at the dead end as the footsteps grew closer. There was nowhere left to run. She turned to face the men with the wand at her side.
CHAPTER TWELVE
There didn’t seem to be a button or trigger. She shook it, squeezed it,
twisted it, even rubbed her fingers over the handle but nothing happened. How did these things fire?
“What are you doing?” Jenny asked.
Sam turned to see her standing in an open stairwell. How had she missed it?
“Come on,” Jenny said and ducked inside.
Sam looked back down the hall one last time before she ducked in after her.
“Where do we go?” Jenny said. She was already a flight above Sam.
“The top.”
“What?”
“There's a hangar. It’s at the top.”
She could hear Jenny fly up the stairs. It sounded like she was taking two steps at a time as Sam fought to catch up with her. She turned the corner of the stairwell as another blast of heat hit the wall.
“Stop!” a man yelled.
“Stay close to the wall!” Sam yelled up to Jenny.
She raced up another flight, then another and another. Her legs and chest burned by the time she reached the tenth flight, she questioned if she could actually make it. It was getting harder to see with her breath fogging up the helmet and then she misstepped and fell to the ground. Immediately she caught herself but in that fraction of a second, she realized the only footsteps she could hear were coming from above. Down below there was nothing. No one was following them. Why weren’t they following them?
“Jenny, stop,” she yelled out.
She ran up the steps trying hard to catch up to Jenny. Her heart was pounding, and she took in a deep breath as she pushed the door open at the top. She stopped in her tracks as she saw a man in a bio-suit holding a wand to Jenny’s neck. A second man stood off to his side.
“It’s over, Samantha,” said the man without the wand.
His voice was familiar, and it took her a moment for her to realize he was the bald councilman from earlier. The tag on the front of his suit read Card. Sam pointed her weapon at him.
“Let the girl go. I swear I’ll use this.”
He smiled and stepped toward her with his hands up. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Put the weapon down and let us take the girl. All will be forgiven.”
“No.”
The smile broke from his face and he opened his mouth as if choosing his words carefully, when the man holding Jenny dropped to the ground and the weapon in his hands bounced away. Jenny stood over the man with the tube Sam had given her in her hand, a single drop dripped from the end onto the floor.
Card didn’t hesitate as he turned and dove for the weapon. He managed to wrap his fingers around it and turned back toward Sam just as she jammed the end of her wand into his shoulder. He convulsed but didn’t let go of the wand. His eyes stared at Sam, defying her as he gritted his teeth. It seemed impossible but somehow, he held on. Sweat poured down his forehead as he kept his gaze locked on her, the scowl frozen on his face as the veins popped out of his neck.
It was like he was some kind of hate-fueled machine. Just when she thought he would never give up, his eyes slid closed and the weapon rolled out of his fingers as his head thumped against the floor.
She jumped back as if he was ready to pounce on her, but he didn’t move.
“Is he dead?” Jenny asked.
From the breath on his mask Sam could see he was still alive. Then behind them they heard the ding of the elevator reaching their floor. The doors slid open as two more men stood there. Sam pointed her weapon back at them and they looked at each other before one nodded, hit a button and the doors closed back on them. Above the doors Sam could see the numbers beginning to drop. She looked down at the two men incapacitated on the ground. The councilman was already beginning to stir, and she kicked the wand on the ground away from his fingers. It rolled into the darkness of the hanger. Somewhere out of site it bounced off something metallic.
“Come on,” Sam said as she pulled Jenny along after her.
She used the wand as a light as they ran. The hangar itself must have been five hundred feet across. It was littered with aircraft of all different kinds. There were antique twenty-first-century jets all the way to modern self-flying hover planes. She let go of Jenny’s hand and pulled the key card from her pocket.
“What are you looking for?” Jenny asked.
Sam tapped the card on her leg. “It’s a light blue quad-copter, registration number N7756.”
“Why that one?”
“It was Dr. Tesla’s. He taught me how to fly in it. His card should still be able to start it.”
"There are so many. It will take us forever to find it."
“Come on,” whispered Sam. “They’ll be here soon.”
Jenny ran through the hangar, with her arms out. “I don’t see it. Are you sure it’s here?” she yelled out.
It didn’t take Sam long to find it though. It was exactly as she remembered when she was a little girl. A sky blue quad-copter. It looked like a large torpedo with two rotor arms on the front and two in the back. It was the only one in the entire hangar. It was a dinosaur compared to the large sleek triangular transport ships they made today.
“I found it,” Sam called out.
She pressed the hatch button, and it hissed open. Inside this copter was where he had first shown her the old world. It had been her first glimpse of what had become of it. She remembered the crumbling, rusted towers and the broken roads. It hadn't taken long for nature to begin to claim them back again. Jenny ran up and jumped into the back seat where she found a seat belt and turned it in the air.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
Sam snapped it together before she lifted herself up into the front seat, slid her card into the reader and the dash screen flashed to life.
“How long will it take for us to get there?” Jenny asked.
“About an hour.” Sam said.
She hit the hatch button, and the doors dropped down over them before she looked at the controls in front of her. She knew exactly what she had to do. She had done it dozens of times before, but this was different. He wasn’t there to guide her. She was all on her own.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked. “What are you waiting for?”
Sam continued to stare at the controls. Was she crazy? Was she really doing this? She relaxed her hands on the controls just a moment before a ball of light shot past them and the windshield of the copter next to them exploded. Jenny screamed. Sam turned to see him hobbling his way toward them. Card had found the weapon Sam had kicked away. He held it out at them as it pulsed from blue to white, the ball of white light growing brighter at the end.
“Stop!” Card yelled out. “This is your last warning.”
Two exhausted men burst from the stairwell, into the hangar, right behind Card. They struggled to catch their breath as they jogged up to him and for a moment, he turned his head.
“Go,” yelled Jenny. “Go!”
Sam snapped out of her trance and pulled back on the controls as the copter began to lift into the air. It shook, and they spun around as they banged into one ship and then another. A message came up and told her that the sky light was closed. The copter began to automatically drop back down until Sam hit the manual override. She pulled back on the controls, and they rose higher into the air as she heard what sounded like rocks pelt them from the outside.
“Is that supposed to be open?” Jenny asked and pointed up toward the skylight.
Two more taps belted the back of the craft.
“I think so,” Sam said. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
The words obstacle and danger flashed on the screen as Sam pulled on the controls with all of her strength and pushed the copter up. Alarms rang in her ears and she closed her eyes at the last second. She could hear glass shatter, and the groaning of steel. Everything shook and vibrated before there was a loud pop and the only sound was the hum of the engine. When she opened her eyes again, the floor of the hangar was replaced by the twinkling lights of the city below them.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” said Jenny and
craned her neck. “This is unbelievable!”
They looked down on the city as its shape emerged. It wasn’t just a rainbow but a spiral, going through the spectrum one and a half times before ending in the green tower they had risen out of. The honeycomb shape of the windows that was so hard to see in the day was distinct now, like a giant rainbow beehive.
Sam guided the controls in her hand as they rose up higher and higher with the city passing underneath them, until they reached the translucent white energy field that was called the Shell. The city below them was only possible because of it. Everything she had ever been taught was that death waited on the other side of the field. Dr. Tesla himself had called it a chaotic world where nightmares came alive. Now that nightmare world was Jenny’s only chance of survival.
Sam looked back at Jenny and smiled. She had to be strong, if not for herself then for the girl. As she pushed forward on the controls, the field rippled around them like a wall made out of water. Jenny pressed her nose against the glass as she watched it dance around them. When they came out the other side there was nothing but darkness and pin pricks of light in the sky. Sam looked at the stars. It was the first time she had seen them this clearly. Dr. Tesla’s hallway didn’t do them justice. This was a moment she had dreamed of. It should have been a happy moment, but instead it was hollow. The lights on the controls flickered.
“Ms. Samantha, is it supposed to do that?” Jenny asked, looking for some kind of reassurance.
The lights flickered for a couple of seconds more before they didn’t come back on, and suddenly they began to plummet.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sam coughed, fanned the dust away from her face and fought with the deflated airbags that dangled in front of her. She strained to unhook her seat belt until it came loose with a click, and she rolled into the dash.
“Jenny?” she cried.
“I’m okay,” Jenny said and coughed.
Sam bent down and grabbed the blue wand from the floor as it came away in two pieces with wires connecting the two halves. She tried to snap it back together in vain before she finally chucked it aside.