Shuttered Sky

kicking in. It only took an instant for him to size up the situation.

“Haas!”

She jumped in the passenger door, forcing her way over Dillon to the driver’s seat. How long would it take to hot-wire a truck? Too long—Bussard was already on his way, sprinting the distance from the loading dock, with Burns and Johanson close behind.

While she fiddled with wires beneath the steering column, it was Dillon who had the presence of mind to grab her weapon and fire, blowing off the ignition completely. With the ignition gone, all it would take was a screw driver to start it, but there was nothing in the glove box but maps and gum wrappers.

Bussard jumped up on the running board, grabbing Dillon through the window. “You son of a bitch!”

And then Dillon did something strange. He turned to Bussard, and spoke. His voice was a garbled mess, his lips barely able to form words, but from the instant he began to speak, Bussard was transfixed. It only took a moment for Dillon to say his piece, but for that moment even the raindrops seemed suspended in air.

“She was dead before the fire,” Dillon hissed at Bussard. “You suffocated her.” Then Dillon leaned closer to Bussard and delivered his final line with a guttural growl of enmity:

“You suffocated her . . . and they knew.”

Something snapped. Something detonated with such force, Maddy could feel the shockwave pass through her in a single migraine pulse that made her hair stand on end. And suddenly Bussard didn’t look right. His eyes were wrong—mismatched. One pupil was open and dilated, the other closed to a pin prick. He fell from the running board onto Burns and Johanson, screaming, flailing his arms, tearing at his own scalp. Dillon slumped down, completely spent. Maddy frantically searched the cab for anything flat that could fit into the open sore of the broken ignition, and, finding nothing, she tore the mirror down from the visor, broke it against the dashboard, and jammed the largest sliver into the ignition. She cut her thumb and forefinger as she turned the jagged shard of glass, but the engine started. With Bussard still wailing, she tugged the shift into gear, sideswiped Burns who was trying to block her, and took off toward the electrified gate, her wounded right hand already on the mend, tingling in its point-blank proximity to Dillon.

* * *

In the commotion only one guard had the wherewithal to find a jeep, and take off in pursuit of the truck that crashed its way through the electrified gate. He was able to keep the truck’s taillights in his sights, but a half mile past the gate, a pickup came barrelling through an intersection near Bobby’s Eat-N-Greet, sending the jeep spinning off the road into a muddy ditch. An old man stepped from the ruined pickup, gripping what was most certainly a broken arm, angrily spout­ing about stop signs, and damned crazy-ass military driving. Meanwhile the vehicle he was pursuing had quickly sped out of sight.

So dazed was the security officer that he never stopped to wonder what a seventy-year-old man was doing rolling across this particular intersection at this ungodly time of night.

* * *

It was almost too much for Dillon’s system to take.

The massive loss of blood, the violent rending of his sinus cavity. Maddy’s final bullet had entered through his left cheek, and exited through his right, shattering his teeth and jaw in between. The effect had been bloody, and destructive enough to make Bussard believe the bullet had entered his brain. But apparently Maddy knew her anatomy, and the only injury to Dillon’s brain was the concussion from the blast.

The bullet never came close. He understood now that there was no other course of action that would save him. No other place she could shoot would have fooled Bussard—but these awful wounds were not like any wounds he had ever suffered. His experience had been with gashes that zipped themselves closed in a matter of seconds and broken bones that set themselves in a matter of minutes. But the shock to his organs and nervous system was too great for even his reparative spirit to remedy. Healing would take hours, maybe days, if he could recon­struct his body at all.

Crumpled in the passenger seat of the delivery truck, he slipped in and out of consciousness, feeling every lane change, every bump in the road like a fresh wound. The rain pelted the windshield and he couldn’t tell the beat of his heart from the beat of the wiper blades. Were they being closely pursued, or had they left so much confusion in their wake that they were able to get a sizeable head start? He had no idea. The outside world was still screaming at him, as it had from the moment he stepped out of his cell, but his own dopamine release drugged him into not caring.

“You’ll be alright, won’t you?” he heard Maddy ask. “Your face is looking better already, isn’t it?” She sounded so uncertain. She wanted some corroboration from him that she hadn’t gone too far. It hurt too much to move his jaw, so he reached over and squeezed her hand. She did what she had to do, Dillon thought. Any more, he would have died on the spot, any less, and Bussard would not have been duped. A trapped animal would gnaw off its foot to escape from the jaws of a spring-trap. This is what Maddy had done for him, and sacrificed her career to do it.

Some time later, he was dimly aware of being moved through the rain from the truck to another car that Maddy must have hot-wired. Then, once they were moving again, Dillon allowed himself to let go of his shaky grip on consciousness, not knowing whether it was death or sleep that pulled him down.

* * *

What did he do to me what did he do to me what did he do to me what did he—

Bussard had heard the gate fall as Maddy crashed through it in the truck, and a moment later he had heard her break through the outer gate as well. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now, because of what Dillon had made him understand.

They knew.

He pushed his way past his men, hurling them off as they tried to calm him. It all seemed part of a different reality. A lost reality. Now everything moved in fractured frames. Out of sequence. Out of step.

He is four years old. He holds a pillow in his hands.

From the rain into the gray chambers of the power plant. The kitchen. The cafeteria.

While his parents are out, and the babysitter sleeps, he carries a pillow to his sister’s room.

Stumbling through the halls of the plant, barely able to remember his way.

He carries a pillow to his sister’s room. A white crib. Pastel rabbits on the wall. Sweet smell of baby lotion. He can’t do it from the floor. He must climb into the crib with the baby.

Corridor A. Blood pooling at the end of Corridor A. The guard turning to him, looking at him with frightened concern. “Sir? Are you alright?”

A pillow in his hand. She is asleep. It’s easier this way. The baby struggles weakly, like the goldfish did on the floor, until the pillow wins, and she goes away to the angels.

Raising his gun, silencing the guard with a single shot. More blood on the floor of Corridor A.

Gone to the angels, but his parents might know. They might smell it on his pillow. They might see it in the eyes of her stuffed animals. He must make it all go away. And he knows where Daddy keeps the matches.

Moving through the containment dome. His footsteps echoing in the huge space. Ahead of him the giant concrete cube, and a vault door. An open vault door.

He watches with the babysitter from the lawn as the house goes up in flames.

An empty vault, and an open vault door.

His parents tell him it’s okay. That everything will be okay . . . except for the fact that Dillon is right. His parents know. Why should that matter? It should no longer matter. But it does. It’s the only thing that matters. They know.

The vault door, and to the right, the door’s control panel.

They know when they send me off to school.

Reaching for the control panel.

They know on Christmas morning.

Beginning the closing sequence.