Lamentations - Part Six

Alistair clenched his teeth at the pain of running on his hurt knee. He had a sick feeling in his stomach when he found that all the doors leading to the main control room had been propped open: Emil was waiting for him. The control room was filled with computers and monitoring equipment and his cousin was staring through a massive glass pane. On the other side was the whirling hydraulic generator, still pumping life into the stagnant dome.

Alistair took a deep breath. “You can’t do it, Emil. You’ll just hurt the First.”

Emil sounded as if he were walking barefoot over nails. “But this dome is a reminder. I need to get rid of it, or the First won’t return to the way they used to be.”

“If the explosion is big enough to wipe away the dome, it’ll destroy the Outskirts, too. And what about the aquifer? Aren’t we right on top of it?”

Emil’s fingers bit down on the pane’s frame. He choked out, “I did this for them. Are they all going to attack me?”

Alistair replied soothingly, “We can’t return to the way things were before the PCR. We can only move forward.”

Emil walked over to a console, the blue light bouncing off his face. “If you move forward far enough, you’ll reach the end. Maybe I should just end it for all of us.” He looked down at his feet and spoke into his chest, “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the Lord’s wrath. He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light.”

“What book is that?”

Emil did not look up. “Lamentations. I memorized it. I thought it was a sign, since I found that decaying Bible the same day as the virus.”

“Lamentations, how does it end?”

Emil saw him, his eyes watery. “Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return; renew our days as of old unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure.” The tears spilled down his cheeks before his face disappeared behind his hands. “But…it also says long before that: Deal with them as you have dealt with me for all my sins; My groans are many, and I am sick at heart.”

Emil gave one sob before pressing a couple of keys. “Go. Stopping the generator won’t destroy the whole dome, and it won’t affect the aquifer.”

“Are we in danger?” Alistair was now a foot from Emil.

Emil’s eyes were red and tired. “Leave, and you won’t be.”

Alistair punched him in the face, knocking him out. He cringed as he shook out his knuckles. Amanda ran in, her pockets and the two packs full of seeds.

“We’re taking him home.”

“Alistair, you moron.”

“Amanda, help me. My knee’s hurt.”

“No!”

“Help me!”

Amanda took Emil’s left arm and held it across her shoulders. They carried him awkwardly into the elevator. The ride to the ground level was agonizingly long. Both Amanda and Alistair expected something terrible to happen, but it didn’t come in those thirty seconds.

The doors slid open. Amanda had barely placed her toe onto the lobby’s tiled floor before she and Alistair were pushed from behind. They spun around to see Emil swaying drunkenly. The doors cut him from view and the elevator hummed its descent.

Alistair pressed the call button like a madman, but the elevator’s hum was quickly overpowered by an alarm, a terrible artificial wail.

“No. NO!”

“Ali,” Amanda begged. “The elevator won’t come back up. It’s standard safety and we can’t override it.”

“No, we can’t let him kill anyone else, not even himself.”

Amanda grabbed Alistair by his shirt and pulled him down to her eye-level. She talked directly into his ear. “We have to move forward.”

Alistair punched the call button again, but the elevator refused to come up.

*

The rising sun was just touching the Outskirts, its pink light reaching for it like a hand. Alistair saw, for the first time in months, the shacks built from mudbrick and the PCR’s debris, the barred windows, and the horizontal roofs. But it was different, too. Quiet. No one was awake yet, and no dogs greeted him like they normally would have. Everything was in slight disarray, a haphazardness from putting things back in order.

Amanda had not reveled in her cousin’s probable death. Her silence broke only when she asked her brother, “What are we going to tell them?”

Alistair kept strolling through the alleys. “You fell in love with a domie?”

The change in subject sent a current through his sister. “Yes,” she answered.

“I’m so sorry.” He paused in front of their home and drew Amanda into an embrace. “We’re going to tell everyone the truth. We’re going to them we’re sorry.”