“No. I’ll show you.” He took my hand and led me to the back wall using his computer as a flashlight. “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.”
“So if the ventilator is on, that means garbage has been dumped within the last twelve hours?” I asked.
“Yes. It won’t activate again until it’s done the twelve hour cycle,” Jack said, raking a hand through his hair. I noticed almost all of the coal was gone. “You sure you want to do this?”
“I’m sure,” I lied. I was scared to death. Even the thought I could be breathing poisonous air right now was terrifying me.
“We’re both exhausted. We should try and get some rest. We’ll need all our strength soon,” he suggested.
He led me to a corner of the dump and pulled me down beside him. I laid my head on his shoulder, positioning myself so nothing touched my bruised back. He wrapped his arms around me and held me against him. It felt good to rest. It felt safe in his arms.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but the sound of a door opening and the floor moving startled me awake.
“Jack!” I yelled.
I felt his whole body jerk awake beside me. I tried to stand, but the moving floor was throwing me off balance. I took hold of a nearby barrel and pulled myself up.
“Take my hand!” I extended it to Jack and he pulled himself up.
He used the barrel to steady himself. The conveyer belt was far from being a smooth ride. It jerked and lurched and threw us both off balance more than once. We were passing through into the next chamber now.
“This is it,” he yelled over the din of the machinery. “There’s no turning back.”
He took my arm and tried to hold it. I didn’t want to get separated from him so I clutched at his hand.
“Don’t let go!” I pleaded. I wanted to be brave, but I could feel the panic rising up. The conveyor belt took us further into the next chamber and the ride got rougher. The barrel we were using for support fell over and rolled on the floor. Without its support, we both lost our balance and fell too.
“Stay down. I’ll crawl to you,” Jack yelled, but another barrel came rolling at him and he had to dive out of the way. We were getting further apart.
I got to my hands and knees and tried crawling toward him, but the pitching of the floor kept throwing me from side to side. The further into the next chamber we went, the more vibration rattled the floor. I heard the sound of the steel door shutting behind us. In a few seconds we would be completely cut off from the Dome. My whole body started to shake with fear. When the door shut, the floor stopped moving. Jack got up and ran to me.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. I shook my head no. I couldn’t find my voice. The terror inside me had stolen it.
The high-powered air current Jack told me about clicked on and he grabbed my hand. The force of the current was so strong it pushed us along with the garbage in the direction of the door. The big steel door that led to the outside world started opening up. Jack and I clung to each other.
“Still think this was a good idea?” he screamed over the hum of the machinery.
I grabbed the lapels of his uniform and hung on tightly, but we were sharply torn apart by the conveyor belt jerking back to life. I tried to make my way back to him, but between the conveyor belt and the air current it was impossible. The doors were halfway open now and the brilliant light beaming into the room struck me. My eyes rolled up into the back of my head. The conveyor belt continued to move me forward but now I was blind. I had no idea when I would be dumped out into the waiting world.
I think I screamed for Jack. I didn’t even know if he was still in the room or outside already. I heard garbage thud and clunk as it hit the ground and then I was falling. It must have been only for a second or two, but it felt like a lifetime before my body touched down on something. The pain from the bruise on my left side was excruciating and I bit down on my lip. I forced my eyelids open, but I could only keep them open long enough to catch snapshots of the world around me. I didn’t see Jack. I screamed his name again, but the noise from the high-powered fan was too loud for me to hear my own voice. Did he make it? Was he alive?
“Sunny!” I heard Jack yelling when the doors finally shut and the sound was gone. He was close by.
“I’m here!” I called back. I heard him making his way toward me.
“Are you okay?” he asked, feeling my arms and legs. “Did you break anything?”
“I fine. I just can’t open my eyes. The light is so strong,” I said.
“I know. The sun is strong for me too,” he said. “Do you believe it? We’re seeing the sun!”
“Well, if I could open my eyes I could see it. It feels warm on my skin,” I said in wonder.
“I’ll get you off this slag heap and into some shade. That might help. Put your hands on my shoulders and follow in my footsteps,” he said, helping me up.
The terrain of the mound was jagged and unstable and our progress was slow. As we worked our way through the heap we discovered the sun’s rays weren’t just bright, they were hot too. We finally reached the edge of the mound and I opened my eyes long enough to catch a glimpse below. I think I saw trees, which didn’t make any sense. We were always taught that the nuclear winter had destroyed every bit of nature. I opened my eyes again and peeked at the ground. It was a long way down.
“This should be easy for someone who’s used to climbing a dark and scary mineshaft,” Jack said in an attempt to allay my fears.
“But I could see in the mineshaft. I’m blind right now,” I said defensively.
“I was blind in the shaft and you made me do it,” he said wryly. “Come on. Just hang on to me and follow my every move.”
I clung to him as we began our descent. The sides of the heap were even more unstable than the top and we slid a few feet with every step. Then the slag weakened at one point and we slid a good fifteen feet. I forced my eyes open, taking the pain the sun inflicted on my pupils. I lost my grip on Jack and he ended up sliding further down the mound than I did.
“Just slide down to me,” Jack said.
I did as he instructed and found it was a lot easier than trying to walk. After that, I opened my eyes more frequently; scared I might miss a step and send myself careening off the manmade hill. It seemed to take forever, but finally we reached the bottom.
“Not far now,” Jack said. He took my hand and led me into some trees. “Try opening your eyes.”
I did and the shade provided some relief from the glaring sun, but my eyes were still extremely sensitive.
“Are we in the woods?” I asked in amazement.
“We are,” Jack said smiling. “This isn’t what I expected at all.”
“I thought everything on earth died with the nuclear winter, but...” my voice trailed off as I looked in wonder at the world around me.
Trees taller than I could imagine were bursting with green leaves. I looked up at their canopies through narrowed eyes, trying to tolerate the pain of the bright light. I caught glimpses of blue sky and white fluffy clouds floating past. A breeze blew against my face bringing with it the foreign smells of earth and water. I heard a screech that almost sounded human and it startled both of us, but when I found the source of the noise I saw a bird sitting in a tree looking at us curiously.
“Let’s go explore,” Jack offered his hand to me.
“First I want to take this uniform off. I’m so hot,” I said. We both stripped down to our clothes and then I turned my back on him and took off the vest.
“That is a nasty bruise,” Jack said when he saw my naked back. “Does it hurt to breathe?”
“I’m getting used to it. I don’t think I broke any ribs,” I said. I let the vest fall and hit the ground with a thud. “I’ll never put that on again,” I swore as I put my t-shirt back on.
“I won’t argue,” he said, letting his eyes rove up and down my body. “At least while we’re out here. But when we go back inside, it goes back on,” he added. He gathered up the uniforms and the vest and stashed them in the base of a tree.
I looked back from where we came and saw the huge mound of garbage that had accumulated over 283 years. It was the only eyesore in what was otherwise paradise. I turned my back on the ugly mound and focused on the beauty of the woods.
“It’s amazing. I never thought I would ever see this!” I said in wonder.
“The air is so different out here,” Jack took a deep breath in. “It’s so… richer.”
I knew what he meant and it wasn’t just the different smells. The air itself was almost inebriating. Breathing it in made me feel more alive, like all my senses were suddenly put into overdrive.
“Is it just me or can I hear things better?” I asked.
“I know what you mean,” Jack agreed. “It’s like my ears just opened up. There are so many sounds out here.”
I forced my eyes to open wider and took in the sight around me. Every detail of the forest came into focus; shadowy areas dappled in sunlight, some areas dense while others open. It was then I realized the open area was a path, not unlike the footpaths we had followed in the rainforest.
“Come on,” I said to Jack excitedly.
The path was narrow and we had to walk in single file. I could see depressions in the soil and I knew I was looking at animal tracks. Animal tracks! Things were living out here. But it didn’t make sense. Radiation was toxic, which was the whole reason why we all lived in the safety of the Dome. But this paradise didn’t seem like a place that would kill us. It was warm and welcoming.
“I wonder what kind of animals made these tracks?” Jack wondered out loud.
“I don’t know, but a few of them are huge,” I said pointing to one track that was bigger than my foot surrounded by large claw marks.
“Hopefully we don’t meet up with it,” Jack said, gripping his rifle a little tighter.
“Maybe it’s friendly,” I suggested.
I heard a distant trickling that sounded a lot like running water and as we followed the path it became louder. We came upon a stream of water rushing past us in a hurry to get to the bottom of the mountain.
“A river,” I said out loud. I stayed in the shaded area, afraid to go back into the brilliant sunlight. My eyes were barely tolerating the shade.
I looked upstream and saw an animal drinking from it. It was small and gentle looking - a deer perhaps. I tapped Jack on the shoulder and pointed, not wanting to scare the animal away. He looked in amazement, then bent down and scooped water into his hand and drank it.
“It tastes fine,” he said and I bent down and tried it for myself. It tasted sweet and refreshing. Better than the water we had in the Pit. We both stood up, smiling at each other. I threw my arms around him, laughing at our discovery. The earth was fine!
“You know what this means?” I asked, hugging him close.
“We can save them,” he replied, a smile lighting up his face.
“We have to find a way back. We might even be able to get everyone out by tonight!” I babbled, my mind whirling with the possibility of setting everyone free.
“Slow down,” Jack said gently. “Finding a way back in isn’t going to be easy. The Dome is a fortress.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means it was built to be impenetrable. I told you getting back in was going to be a problem,” Jack said, looking at me.
“Can’t we go back in the way we came out?” I suggested, but even I knew that was going to be impossible.
“Not even you could climb up against that air current with debris falling down on you,” he gave me a wry look. “I have maps of the Dome on my computer and I’ll study them to find a weak point. In the meantime, my military survival training has taught me that our first order of business should be to find food, water and shelter. Water we’ve found, shelter is next.”
“Can’t we explore first?” I asked.
“We can explore while we look for shelter. I don’t know what time of day it is, but I don’t think it’s in sync with the Dome.”
We walked along the edge of the meandering river and saw several more animals along its shore. I was surprised by the amount of wildlife there was considering I had been taught to believe everything out here was dead. I couldn’t believe we had all been living inside the Dome all this time when we could have been out here, free.
“Head down that path,” Jack said from behind me. “There are too many animals by the river to make camp here.”
I saw a path leading away from the river and followed it. As we walked through the forest the sound of rushing water became fainter and once again we could hear birds cawing and whistling at each other. Large rocks jutted out of the ground in places, speckled with bits of foliage growing in their crevices. It looked like something out of a movie.
“Wait,” Jack said and something in the tone of his voice sent off alarms in my head. “Look at this,” he said, bending down to examine something on the ground.
I went back to take a look and saw long tracks dug deep into the ground. My eyes followed the length of the track and I realized it stretched far behind us and far in front of us. It was one long continuous track.
“What are they?” I asked, genuinely confused. The tracks didn’t belong to an animal.
“They’re vehicle tracks,” Jack said apprehensively.
That’s when we heard it - the low hum of a motor coming closer to us. I was about to suggest we hide when something came crashing through the forest and stopped in front of us. It was a man dressed in tattered clothes, his eyes looking at us wildly.
“Don’t just stand there! RUN!” he screamed.
End of Book One
A note from the author, S.M. McEachern:
If you enjoyed reading “Sunset Rising”, you may be interested in reading the Satellite Stories I am creating to go along with the series. Satellites are short stories designed to give the reader greater insight into areas of the story that the main character, Sunny, cannot see. They are an accompaniment to the series, but not a necessity - they’re just for fun! My first Satellite will be posted on February 1, 2013. For updates, you can follow me on Twitter:
Blog: smmceachern.wordpress.com
Twitter: @smmceachern
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sunset Rising Page 34