A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

  “Hey, get it off me!” he shouted. “Eli, what’s going on? What were you thinking?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this! It wasn’t my idea!”

  “Well, the mongoose can’t come! What if it gets lost or something? Or stolen? Grandfather would totally shut down! Order it home.”

  Eli turned. “Marilyn, what do you think you’re doing?”

  What does it look like I’m doing? I’m coming with you.

  “But you can’t,” he said, still getting used to the idea that he was trying to reason with a mongoose. “Sebastian’s right—it’s too risky. You have to turn around and go back.”

  She sat down and scratched absently at her ear. I want to see Outside.

  “What’s going on, Eli? Did it answer? Why isn’t it going away? It’s supposed to do what you tell it.”

  Eli sighed. He’d explained to Sebastian that he could communicate with Marilyn, but Sebastian didn’t get how it worked. He seemed to think of her as something between a pet and a machine, as if the chip couldn’t possibly make her capable of anything more than rudimentary communication—something only slightly more interesting than a well-trained dog or a furry robot. Eli had tried to tell him she was a real person just like anybody else, but he refused to believe it.

  And Marilyn didn’t seem to care what anyone thought.

  “I already told you,” he said. “I can’t make her go home. She wants to come.”

  Sebastian glared. “You gotta be kidding me. What’s the point of a chipped animal if you can’t figure out how to control it? When are you going to learn to be the boss?” He shook his head. “Pitiful.”

  He made a sudden move as if to lunge at Marilyn, but she scooted away. Settling on the pavement just out of reach, she straightened to her full height and swayed from side to side as if readying for a fight. She narrowed her orange eyes at Sebastian and hissed.

  “Stupid Frankenrat!” Sebastian said under his breath. And then, “All right, but she better stay out of sight!”

  This wouldn’t be an issue, Eli knew. If there was one thing Marilyn was good at, it was hiding. So the three of them wove through the streets behind Douglas Avenue to the far edge of the dome, running as quickly as they could. It was more than two miles away. When they reached the gate there was still a great deal of confusion, as Sebastian had predicted, and the three of them blended into the chaos. Within moments they were able to slip past the monitors without anybody stopping them.

  For Eli it was a tremendous relief, but Sebastian laughed. He’d never doubted it would work.

  Once Outside, the first thing they felt was the oppressive heat. Eli had forgotten how muggy it could get. When they were younger their parents had twice taken the boys on company-sponsored perimeter tours. Both times, though, Mother made them wear environment suits—bulky, uncomfortable outfits with big helmets—which made it hard to see or feel anything. They wouldn’t need suits today, Sebastian had assured him. They wouldn’t be Outside long.

  Mud puddles dotted the otherwise dusty earth, remnants of last night’s storm. But now the sun shone so bright it took a while for Eli’s eyes to adjust. He blinked in wonder at the seemingly endless canopy of gray and blue. The real sky always seemed so lifeless to him, far less interesting than the artificial one Inside, in the dome.

  At Sebastian’s suggestion, the boys rubbed dust and mud on their faces and arms so that anyone who saw them might mistake them for Outsiders. Then the three of them ran toward the air filter. It wasn’t far. Most of the interesting stuff from the explosion had been cleared away by then. Somebody had already cordoned off the area around the enormous steel column. Part of the base was blown clear off, with shards of metal and melted wiring hanging everywhere. A fresh tech crew had just arrived to work on it. There were still plenty of people shouting and calling out orders, with others looking dazed as they milled around, cleaning up. Most were in their InfiniCorp uniforms, but not all, so nobody noticed the three of them slipping behind the garbage bins and rubble.

  “Look!” Sebastian said, pointing. “How cool is that?”

  Off near the ruins, set back from the commotion at the edge of the dome, a crowd of five or six people in tattered environment suits stood in a circle and held hands. They were chanting something Eli couldn’t quite make out. Even from so far away, Eli could see that one of them had red hair and they all had the weathered complexion that came from prolonged exposure to sun and sandstorms.

  Outsiders.

  “What are they doing?” he asked, wondering if one of them was the one he’d seen under the city.

  “Who knows?” Sebastian’s gaze had already moved on, looking farther ahead. “They’re desert rats. Let’s keep going.”

  They crept along the edge of the chaos, trying to move as close to the filter column as they could without attracting attention. At first they thought they were too late, that all the bodies had already been taken away. But then Sebastian saw one. Not far from a supply vehicle, somebody had thrown a blue plastic sheet over a lump on the ground, but the wind had blown it open. They dashed over to the vehicle and peered around it.

  It was an Outsider, a girl. One of her arms jutted out, and in her dead fingers she was still gripping an orange. Even though the body was mangled, the fruit didn’t seem damaged at all. Eli was mesmerized. Was she one of the nomads who sometimes set up wooden stands to trade things with each other, curiosities or supplies they’d found amid the wreckage? Or had she traded for the orange only moments before the blast? Was she a Fogger? There was no way to know. She looked like she was in her late teens, with long black hair that formed a fan around one side of her head. She might have been pretty, but now half her face was covered in blood. Her other arm, the one not holding the orange, had been blown off. Her eyes were open but she was obviously dead.

  Eli couldn’t speak. Sebastian was quiet too, and even Marilyn looked solemn. Of the three of them, she was the only one who had seen death before.

  It felt like they were looking at something holy. A sacred thing.

  Pretty soon one of the cleanup robots wheeled over and covered her again. Two Guardians lifted her onto a stretcher and loaded her into a ground transport. Eli, Sebastian, and Marilyn watched it drive away, a cloud of dust rising from the ground as it went. By then Eli was feeling dizzy.

  “Sebastian,” he whispered, “I want to go home.”

  Sebastian didn’t argue.

  Just as they were about to head back, though, they heard a voice calling out to them. “Hey! You over there! What are you doing?”

  Eli looked up. About fifty feet away on the other side of a pile of rubble, a skinny Guardian with the wispy beginnings of a mustache had his hands on his hips. He was looking directly at them.

  “Oh crap!” Sebastian whispered.

  All at once Eli felt his heart pounding even harder. Caught! What would happen when Father and Mother heard they’d snuck Outside? Eli didn’t like to think about their reaction. This was bad. Very bad. And yet there didn’t seem to be any way out of it. They couldn’t get back to the gate without crossing the Guardian’s path. And worse, he was moving toward them now.

  “Come on out from behind there!” he called again. “What department are you with?”

  Eli was starting to panic. “He’s going to find out who we are. What do we do? What do we do?”

  “Calm down,” Sebastian said. “I’ll tell you what we do. We run.”

  “What?”

  But there was no arguing. Sebastian grabbed his collar and yanked him back. The next thing Eli knew, the three of them were bolting across the hard ground, only they were heading away from the dome, toward the ruins.

  “Hey!” the Guardian shouted. “Get back here!”

  Head down, Eli ran as fast as he could. There was a pile of wood and metal refuse up ahead and, beyond that, the remains of a destroyed building. Somebody’s old garage, perhaps, or maybe a gas station. This whole area, the ruins around the dome perimeter, had o
nce been part of Old Providence, but that was before the storms started ripping the cities apart, before they needed to build the protective domes. Up ahead Sebastian ducked behind the wall so Eli followed, running on adrenaline. Oh god, what were they doing? Surely they’d never get away with this!

  Eli lost track of Marilyn, but around the corner he thought he saw Sebastian slip through the rectangular opening of a structure that might once have been a storefront. He headed in that direction, huffing and puffing, and climbed through. A moment later he was sprinting down a street of broken asphalt. He didn’t see Sebastian anymore, but he couldn’t stop. For all he knew the Guardian was right behind.

  Soon he had to rest. He’d never run so hard in his life. In front of a little alleyway he doubled over with his hands on his knees, gasping for air. Bugs swarmed around him, and his entire body dripped with sweat. He glanced around at the wreckage. He was surrounded by sagging, vacant buildings and telephone poles that slumped like dead bodies. Shattered glass and debris littered the ground, and just ahead stood the crumbling brick remains of the front of an old house. To Eli it looked haunted, its empty doorway like a mouth, its missing windows like eye sockets keeping blind watch over nothing. It gave him the creeps.

  “Sebastian?” he called, still struggling to catch his breath. “Marilyn?”

  No answer. Just the sound of his own breathing and the wind whipping through the rubble.

  It was only then that he fully realized he was all alone. He was farther Outside than he’d ever been before. Surely this place wasn’t safe. It was spooky. It was dead. Or was it? Eli realized there were plenty of places where thieves or even murderers might hide, concealed places from which they might even be watching him right now. Everybody knew that life out here was cheap. The savages wouldn’t think twice about ripping him apart just to go through his pockets.

  “Sebastian? Marilyn?” he called again, a little louder this time. “Are you there?”

  Nothing.

  He tried calling out to Marilyn with his mind, but either she couldn’t hear him or she wasn’t listening. Eli had no idea where she and Sebastian were, or where he was. He wondered why he’d listened to his brother. He’d been caught up in his curiosity about the savage he’d seen, and now look where it had gotten him.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow. The sun was like a furnace, and he realized he was dying of thirst. He felt like throwing up. This was the dumbest thing he’d ever done. Maybe the best thing now would be to head back. He could round up Sebastian and Marilyn and persuade them to make their way to the dome perimeter again and let the Guardians find them. True, it’d mean trouble from Mother and Father, but at this point that didn’t seem so terrible anymore. And what other choice did he have? He took a deep breath and decided. He would go back and turn himself in.

  Suddenly something grabbed his arm.

  He spun around. An inch from his face was a long, jagged knife. He was staring into the blade.

  “My, my,” said the Outsider holding the knife. “What fine boots you’re wearing.”

  Eli’s heart was pumping fast. The Outsider’s face was hidden behind rusty metal goggles, but from the voice he guessed it was a girl. In any case, much of her head was wrapped in tattered brown cloth, and she was covered in dust. Her environment suit, if that was what it was, was patched in so many places it looked like it was made of rags.

  “Little mousey ought to be more careful where it wanders,” she said, her fingers like a vise around his forearm. “Doesn’t it know there are dangerous people about? Mousey could get into real trouble roaming the ruins in a pair of boots as nice as those.” She grinned. She was missing more than a few teeth. “It could even get itself killed.”

  Eli was too terrified to speak. In what felt like an instant, she maneuvered him backward until his shoulders hit something solid. She had him against the wall. He felt himself starting to hyperventilate. He wondered if he was going to pass out. Was this the end? Was he about to die?

  Marilyn! I need you! Please, please! Come … !

  With the blade pressed against his throat, Eli tried to keep still. The Outsider’s masked face drew so close he could feel her sour breath on his cheek. The smell was like dirty socks and rotting cabbage.

  “Yes, yes …,” she mumbled, sniffing him. By then Eli was shaking. What was she doing? He’d never been within reaching distance of an Outsider before, and definitely never this close. It occurred to him that she must be suffering from the corrosion of the mind that eventually came to all those who lived Outside. Brain fever. He wanted to scream.

  But just when he was sure he couldn’t take another second, she backed her face away enough to lift her goggles, perhaps to get a better look at him. Still holding the blade steady with one hand, she pulled back the rusted metal circles, and Eli saw her face. She had a long nose and sun-mottled skin, and her cheeks were streaked with dirt. She really did look like a desert rat. She might have been older, maybe in her twenties, but it was hard to tell. Most startling of all was that one of her eyes was completely white, probably sightless. Her other eye, clear blue and intelligent, was fixed hard on Eli.

  “So, what’ll it be then? In or Out?”

  He could only blink at her. She seemed to be waiting for an answer.

  “Wh-what?” he managed, surprised he could even talk.

  She rolled her eyes and pressed the knife just a little harder against his throat. “Where are you headed, boy? Are you trying to escape the dome and join us Outside, or are you merely lost and looking for the way back?”

  The blade pinched his skin. “I-in!” he stammered. “I’m going back! I just—I went a little farther than I meant to! I’m not used to being this far from home!”

  “Really? How ever would I have guessed?” She smirked. “What’s your name?”

  “Eli!” He blurted it out before he could stop himself. The moment it left his lips, he regretted it. It was unwise to admit his real name—even if it was only his first name—to an Outsider. On the other hand, who could blame him if he wasn’t thinking straight? At least he hadn’t told her his family name. Who knew what crazy ideas might get into her head if she found out he was a Papadopoulos?

  Eli watched her pull back part of the cloth that covered her head. Now he could see some of her hair. It was cropped and red, and jutted in all directions. He realized he’d seen her before, just a few minutes earlier. She’d been one of the Outsiders at the edge of the ruins.

  Without taking her freakish eyes off him, she wiped her sleeve across her chin, which glistened with sweat. She seemed to study him with new interest now. “Why do I know this one …?” she said as if to herself. “Where have I seen its face …?”

  Eli wondered if she was the Outsider he’d seen in the tunnel. But no. Her size and shape were all wrong. Even so, he realized he was in danger of being identified, and that wasn’t good. He needed to change the subject fast. “W-was that you at the edge of the ruins?” he sputtered, hoping to buy himself time. “A few minutes ago there were a bunch of people standing in a circle, holding hands and chanting. Were you one of them?”

  Her eyes widened. She grinned. To Eli she looked like a space creature, some horrible mutant toying with its prey. “Oh yes,” she said, “I was there.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “What all of us should be doing. Preparing for the End of All Things. Readying ourselves for the journey ahead.”

  Eli glanced over her shoulder, trying to assess his options. The opening to the little alleyway was only a few steps away. If he could somehow slip past her, then maybe he could try to duck down there. He wondered if he could knock her over. He doubted it. She was a full head taller than he was.

  She leered at him and leaned in closer again. “How about you, little mousey? Are you prepared? Are you ready to face what’s coming?”

  Eli’s breath came in short gasps. “I … don’t know. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to p
ress tighter against the wall. He expected the worst.

  But then he felt the weight of the blade leave his throat. He opened his eyes. The outlandish woman had taken a full step back and was now just standing there, watching him. Did this mean she wasn’t going to kill him after all? He didn’t know what to think. She was eyeing him like he was the one who was out of his mind.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” she asked. “Are you blind? Look around. The Final Days are upon us. Soon there’ll be no dome for you to return to. Even now, little mousey, child of the artificial sky, your dreamworld is breaking up before your very eyes while you choose not to see. Meanwhile, here in the Real, out in the Actual, the storm clouds are already gathering to sweep you and your synthetic world away. Why do you sleep, little mousey, when you should be sounding the alarm?” She poked his chest with the tip of the blade. “Do you not see the truth, or are you too terrified to face it? Don’t you want to be among the survivors when the end comes?”

  “Yes, yes!” he cried, hoping to placate her so she wouldn’t kill him. “Of course I do!”

  Her expression darkened. “Then you have chosen the wrong path!” She spat the words, shouting as she raised her arms. “Your domes are ignorance! They are the way of certain death! Open your eyes! A false dream is no place to spend Armageddon! Your only hope is the Great Journey! Disavow the life of illusion and enlist in the cause before it’s too late!”

  “Okay!” he called out. “I will! I will!”

  The Outsider leaned closer again. Her face was still red with emotion, but her lips curled in a smile. To Eli she looked deranged. This is it, he thought. If he had any chance of living, he needed to make a run for it. He glanced at the alley again. He took one quick breath and tried to summon his courage.

  But just then, from somewhere over the broken wall above him, something leapt at her. It flew through the air and landed on her shoulder, sending her staggering back. There was the sound of hissing and screaming as the savage batted her arms at the furry thing that bit and scratched and leapt all over her.