“So, you know how to take down the domes? All of them”

  Reno nodded. “Yeah, pretty sure they all work the same way. I was thinking about it, and I’ll bet they planted the generators inside the Earth a long time ago. We’ve been living on top of them for thousands of years.”

  “Now you sound like Jack.”

  Reno laughed and then shrugged.

  “Well, have you told whoever’s in command here?”

  “I have.”

  “What did they say?”

  Reno sighed, and looked at the far wall. He hesitated.

  “What is it?”

  He looked back at her. “Gerald. I don’t think he’s the top dog, but he’s definitely high up on the chain of command here. He thinks it’s too risky to go on the offensive, that we should stay here and wait for the ‘government’ to tell us what to do, as if that still exists. But the farther you get from the big cities the less infrastructure remains. I think that’s why some ex-military guy like your ex can be running this place while the Guard was still operating in Nashville.”

  Maya had just arrived and still hadn’t wrapped her mind around things. Her kids. Gerald. Reno. It was all too much, and coming too soon.

  “Gerald in charge of this place? These people? He couldn’t manage to take care of a puppy.” Maya shook her head, feeling overwhelmed and with a desire to hit pause and just think about things for a moment. “I could use a few minutes alone. I’ve got a lot to process.”

  “I understand. But hear me out. Some of the scouts saw you guys coming. They reported back to Gerald and he suspected it could be you. And when he told me what they’d seen, it was the only reason I stuck around. But I really don’t think we’re safe. The aliens know we’re here. We’re a target. And Gerald is happy to stay, living like whatever happens outside the gate doesn’t affect us. We need to leave and get the information I have into the right hands. Find the real military and fight back.”

  Maya pulled her hand from Reno’s.

  “I just need a night. I’ve got to sleep on it.”

  Reno nodded and stood. “I understand.”

  Maya stood next. “I don’t want you being upset.”

  “I know. I’m not. Just think about what I said.”

  Reno leaned forward to embrace Maya as she reached out for his hand. They met in the middle, eyes averted, and further contact abandoned.

  He cleared his throat, then turned around and went to the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Maya said.

  After opening the door, Reno looked back. “Think about what I said. For the sake of the people here. And your kids.”

  30

  Maya followed the voices of her children as she walked down the hallway. She came to a closed door and pushed it open to reveal a classroom with desks and a whiteboard on the front wall. The smell of copy machine toner and fresh magic markers filled the room, and she wondered what they had been up to before she’d arrived. Aiden and Laura sat in two of the desks and Luke was perched on top of another, facing both kids. He had one of Aiden’s portable gaming machines in his hands.

  “Well, I see you kids met Luke.”

  “Mom, this is so cool,” Aiden said. “Luke said he can hack my 3DS and load it with hundreds of games. For free!”

  “Yeah, it’s called piracy, dumbass,” Laura said.

  “Laura, watch your language.”

  “Yeah, and everyone does it anyway,” Aiden said.

  Maya frowned as she turned to Luke. “It sounds illegal, and I don’t want you guys breaking the law.”

  Luke smiled. “Don’t worry. I can’t really do it until we have some Internet anyway. So, for now, we’ll keep it legal and you can just keep making Mario levels.” He handed the console back to Aiden.

  “Did you kids get something to eat?”

  “Ugh,” Luke said. “Unfortunately.”

  Laura raised her eyebrows at her mom. “Told you the food sucks.”

  “Well, be thankful that you have something. There’s a lot of people struggling out there.”

  “Lucky them,” Aiden said.

  Maya rolled her eyes, ignoring her children’s comments. She took a deep breath and crossed her arms. “I’m going to go lay down for a little while. Are you guys okay?”

  “I’ll look after them,” Luke said.

  Laura rolled her eyes. “Whatever. We’re, like, the same age. I don’t need you looking after me.”

  “Okay, looks like you guys will be fine,” Maya said. “I’ll see y’all in a little while.”

  Maya walked out and hung a right down the hallway. She had only taken a few steps when she heard adult laughter behind her. She turned around to see Gerald and Cameron holding hands and walking toward her. They looked up to see Maya staring back at them, and Cameron’s smile quickly disappeared as they stopped by the door.

  “Hey.” Cameron avoided eye contact with Maya, who raised her eyebrows.

  “Where are you headed?” Gerald asked.

  “I was going to try to rest for a while. Needless to say, it’s been a long few days.”

  “I understand.” Gerald kissed Cameron on the cheek, then gestured toward the door. “You mind if I walk Maya to her room?”

  Cameron glanced at Maya, then back at Gerald. “Uh, yeah, sure.” She flashed Maya a quick smile, then went into the room to join the kids.

  Maya turned around and Gerald stepped up beside her as they walked down the hall. She was the first to break the cold silence.

  “Guess you guys made up. Or, should I say, she forgave you for leaving her to die?”

  “It’s not like that. You think I wanted to leave her? I was planning on going back to get her.”

  “Oh yeah, well, you didn’t exactly give her that impression.”

  “I didn’t know how dangerous it was going to be out there, or what things were going to be like at this base. I didn’t want to risk her getting hurt.”

  Maya stopped and turned to face him. “Damn straight you don’t. You need to send word to your military pals in White House. They’re holding women in the high school there against their will. You need to report it.”

  “To who? It’s too risky to be out there right now.”

  ”Is that right? But you can risk the safety of our kids?”

  Gerald sighed and ran his hand over his shadow of a beard. “That’s not the same thing. I didn’t trust the kids being in the care of your mother, especially that close to Nashville. I had to come get them. You would have done the same thing.”

  Maya slapped him across the face. Then she stuck her fingertip within an inch of his nose.

  “You don’t have any right to tell me what I would have done. And you sure as hell didn’t have any right to do what you did to my mother.”

  “They’re my kids, too, dammit. I get a say in how to protect them, and you weren’t there. I did what I thought was right by them and not by their grandmother.”

  Maya stood back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Fuck what you think is right, Gerald. And fuck you.”

  “Put yourself in my shoes. Really. Can you quit thinking about yourself long enough to do that? You would’ve done the exact same thing if you were in my position.”

  “You really don’t know me anymore, no matter how much you think you do.”

  Gerald turned and leaned back against the wall. He thumped his head against it twice.

  “We’re only going to make things difficult for ourselves if we go back and forth like this. Difficult for the kids, too.”

  “They’re all I care about.”

  “Then at least, while we’re around them, treat me like I’m their dad and not just some deadbeat piece of shit.”

  Maya stared at him and thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Only because I know all of this has been hard on them.”

  “Thank you.”

  Maya started walking again, and Gerald stepped off the wall and caught up with her in a few quick strides.

  “I can get to my room myself. I think we’ve said all we need to say.”

  “You know, I think you’re right when you said I don’t know you. The Maya I knew would never have made friends with someone like Cameron.”

  “She’s a good woman. I don’t really understand how you fooled her into thinking you were worth having her, but you did, somehow.”

  Gerald laughed. “Yeah, trust me. I think about that every day.”

  They didn’t say much to each other the rest of the way to Maya’s room. When they got there, Maya turned to look at him. She thought of her earlier conversation with Reno.

  “So, what happens now? How long were you planning on keeping the kids here?”

  Gerald shrugged. “I hadn’t really planned on leaving. And with you and Cameron here now, there’s really no point. We have enough food and supplies to last a long time.”

  “What about Reno? Did he tell you what he knows?”

  “He did.”

  “And?”

  Gerald shrugged. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to do much about it. No offense to you, Maya, but he’s just an EMT. The guys found him and some cop out in the woods with an injured soldier. We don’t even know if his story holds up.”

  “We’re targets here. Even if you don’t believe Reno’s story, we’ll die if we stay. They’ll eventually destroy the base. Have you seen the dome? The lasers? The fucking spaceships, for god’s sake?”

  He sighed as if he had answers for all those questions, but couldn’t be bothered with telling Maya what they were. Instead, he leaned in and took the conversation in a different direction.

  “Listen, I’m going let you in on something. Something’s not right with Reno. He’s unstable and he’s not thinking clearly. It’s pretty apparent something happened to him inside that dome. You need to be really careful around him.”

  She turned her head to the side, her mouth open. Him, of all people.

  Maya stared at her ex, silent and just waiting for Gerald to leave before going into her room. There, she laid on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

  31

  She wasn’t the only one wandering. Maya had seen several people as she’d walked down countless hallways inside the base, each one looking much like the last. Some of the doors had been left open, others locked, and some were being guarded by soldiers with guns. Drugs or ammo, she thought. There wouldn’t be anything else inside of Fort Campbell that they’d feel was valuable enough to guard—not once the mess hall had been locked.

  She’d passed a few people, but those few had kept their eyes to the floor or given her a quick, plastic smile—the kind you reserved for the family of the deceased in a funeral home.

  Finding her kids. That had been her only goal for so long. Maya had given everything she had, sacrificing herself and others to get back to Laura and Aiden. She had always known they were the most important things in her life, and now there was no doubt. Holding them, and even hearing their voices, brought her a taste of the sense of normalcy that had ended when that damn dome had dropped on Nashville.

  But having her kids nearby didn’t make things easier. In some ways, it made them worse. More complicated.

  The rec room lights were on and Maya walked on past, glancing in at two teenagers playing ping pong. She smiled and paused to listen to them making fun of each other in that good-natured way that teenagers will—rarely. And then she turned away and continued down the corridor.

  How long could this last? Even if they weren’t under attack, what was a realistic expectation for the lights staying on? How much food did they have? Clearly, medication and ammo were already low enough that at least some rooms needed to be guarded.

  No, they couldn’t stay here. Even without the imminent and inevitable return of the aliens, they couldn’t stay. And couldn’t the spaceship train a laser on this base at any moment? Sure, the soldiers had some defenses and had been able to use the big lights to turn back a few attacks, but what if the aliens decided it was time to take out this anthill once and for all? What if an entire fleet showed up, lasers blasting?

  The questions came faster as Maya’s pace picked up. So much for a restful afternoon before dinner.

  She’d been walking through so many corridors that she couldn’t quite tell which ones she’d already been down and which ones she hadn’t. It wasn’t until she recognized the bandana tied to the door handle, the one that had been around Reno’s neck, that she began to realize how few choices remained. He was probably in there resting, like she should have been. Or maybe he was plotting to leave.

  If they couldn’t stay here, though, where would they go?

  She’d seen what had happened to Nashville, the death and destruction that would take decades to recover from even if the aliens high-tailed it back to their cosmic home tonight. And her city wasn’t the only place with a dome. From what she’d heard, many cities across the globe had been domed, and most of those domes were still in place.

  Would she whisk Aiden and Laura away to a cabin in the mountains somewhere? An abandoned farmhouse in southern Ohio? Then what? Maya wasn’t exactly made for country living unless working on a Mustang counted as being a rancher. And even if she could find such a place, and even if the aliens couldn’t, what would come next? She couldn’t imagine the three of them getting her mother and then living the rest of their natural lives milking cows, churning butter, and strumming an acoustic guitar around the campfire at night.

  Reno wanted to leave, and she knew he’d take her and the kids with him. But he hadn’t seen what Luke, Cameron, and Maya had seen on the road. It wasn’t just the aliens anymore. Roving gangs of rapists and thieves had filled the space between law and extraterrestrial threats. Just because you left the base and found a secluded place to live didn’t mean you were safe.

  It was hard to tell what Gerald wanted, either, and as much as she’d warmed up to Cameron, the girl was still his puppet. Gerald would be loyal to his men, and he’d clearly achieved some level of rank after things had gone south. And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, he was still the father of her children, and he had a right to have some input in what was next for them.

  At some point, Maya’s feet had brought her back to her room, its door open and the light on. The hard, fluorescent lights and military-grade mattress didn’t inspire visits from the sandman.

  She stepped inside, shut the door, and laid down on the bed. Maya had never been much of an afternoon napper, but intellectual strain had brought a fatigue that might fade with a few stolen hours before dinner. She set an alarm to go off in ninety minutes, shut the lights off, and pulled the cover over her head.

  32

  When Maya arrived in the lounge for dinner, Gerald, Reno, Cameron, Laura, Aiden, and Luke had already sat down at a table. She stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at everyone’s smiling faces as they laughed and joked together. Cameron was the first to notice her, looking her way with a big grin on her face.

  “Hey!”

  The others waved, greeting her and saying her name.

  “We weren’t sure you were ever going to wake up,” Gerald said.

  “It was only a few hours.” Maya didn’t go on the attack. That was as friendly as Gerald would get, too, so she decided to let it ride.

  Cameron moved her hair out of her face and chuckled. “Been a rough couple of days.”

  “You know it,” said Maya.

  “Well, come in here and take your mind off it,” Cameron said.

  “I even grabbed a plate of this, um, ‘food’ for you.” Aiden pushed the plate to an open spot at the table next to him. Someone had had the idea to put the contents of the MREs and canned goods on plates, but it was still canned food—slightly microwaved.

  Maya walked over and kissed her son on the top of his head, and thanked him before sitting down.

  As she took the first bite of mashed potatoes that scorched her tongue but had frozen chunks in the middle, Maya looked around the table. “So, what were you guys laughing so much about?”

  “Uh, well, Dad was just telling some funny stories,” Laura said.

  “Yeah? About what?”

  No one replied, and when Maya looked up again, everyone was staring right at her. She swallowed her food, put down her fork, and stared coldly at Gerald.

  “What are you telling them?”

  Gerald put his hands up. “Nothing.”

  “We never knew how good of an ice skater you were, Mom.” Aiden looked at Laura, the siblings exchanging grins.

  The group laughed again.

  Maya stared at Gerald. She couldn’t help but smile as she shook her head. “You had to tell them that story?”

  On their second date, Gerald had suggested they go ice skating. It had surprised her because he hadn’t seemed like the kind who would be into skating, especially being a Southerner. But she had agreed to go, figuring it would be fun and a way to cut loose. And she’d been really into him. The problem was that she had only skated once in her life, at a friend’s birthday party in the 3rd grade. Gerald, on the other hand, had been skating with his buddies every weekend through most of high school. He’d been able to pick her up every time she’d fallen to the ice.

  “It was so funny,” Gerald said. “You tried hard, but you weren’t any good. You looked like a drunk duck. And then, on our next date, you were sitting all uncomfortably at dinner and wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “Yeah, well, if you had seen the bruises on my backside, you would have understood.” Maya couldn’t help but laugh, and everyone joined in.

  “We had some good times,” Gerald said.

  In the uncomfortable silence, Maya happened to glance at Reno, who along with Cameron, we’re the only two in the room not smiling. Reno looked down at his plate as soon as Maya looked at him. Aiden reached over and took Maya’s hand.

  “I’m really glad you’re here, Mom.”

  “Me, too, sweetie.”

  Gerald sighed and stood up. “I’ll gladly toast to that.” He held up his plastic cup filled with watered-down tea. “Here’s to my lovely ex-wife, Maya, my beautiful girlfriend, Cameron, and our new friend, Luke.”