Harlow leaned against the tree as she waited for Clint. She scanned the compound of the Dome, this new place of nightmares where she seemed destined to live.
The shadows from the walls had lengthened considerably, already creeping up the sides of the ivy wall on the other side.
At least this helped Harlow know directions—the wooden building crouched in the northwest corner, wedged in a darkening patch of shadow, the grove of trees in the southwest.
The farm area, where a few workers were still picking their way through the fields, spread across the entire northeast quarter of the Dome.
The animals were in the southeast corner, mooing and crowing and baying.
In the exact middle of the courtyard, the still-gaping hole of the lift lay open, as if inviting her to jump back in and go home.
Near that, maybe twenty feet to the south, stood a squat building made of rough concrete blocks, a menacing iron door its only entrance—there were no windows. A large round handle resembling a steel steering wheel marked the only way to open the door, just like something within a submarine.
Despite what she'd just seen, Harlow didn't know which she felt more strongly—curiosity to know what was inside, or dread at finding out.
Harlow had just moved her attention to the vast opening in the middle of the main wall of the Dome when Clint arrived, a couple of sandwiches cradled in his arms, along with apples and two metal cups of water. The sense of relief that flooded through Harlow surprised her—she wasn't completely alone in this place.
"Cookie wasn't too happy about me invading his kitchen before suppertime," Clint said, sitting down next to the tree, motioning to Harlow to do the same. She did, grabbed the sandwich, but hesitated, the writhing, monstrous image of what she'd seen in the shack popping back into his mind. Soon, though, her hunger won out and she took a huge bite. The wonderful tastes of ham and cheese and mayonnaise filled her mouth.
"Ah, good," Harlow mumbled through a mouthful. "I was starving."
"Told ya." Clint chomped into his own sandwich.
After another couple of bites, Harlow finally asked the question that had been bothering her.
"What's actually wrong with that Brent guy? He doesn't even look human anymore."
Clint glanced over at the house. "Don't really know," he muttered absently. "I didn't see him."
Harlow could tell the boy was being less than honest but decided not to press him.
"Well, you don't want to see him, trust me." She continued to eat, munching on the apples as she studied the huge break in the wall. Though it was hard to make out from where she sat, there was something odd about the edges of the exit to the outside corridor.
She felt an uncomfortable sense of vertigo looking at the towering walls, as if she hovered above them instead of sitting at their base.
"What's out there?" she asked, finally breaking the silence. "Is this part of a huge experiment or something?"
Clint hesitated. Looked uncomfortable. "Um, I've never been outside the Dome."
Harlow paused. "You're hiding something," she finally replied, finishing off her last bite and taking a long swig of water.
The frustration at getting no answers from anyone was starting to grind her nerves. It only made it worse to think that even if she did get answers, she wouldn't know if she'd be getting the truth.
"Why are you guys so secretive?"
"That's just the way it is. Things are really weird around here, and most of us don't know everything. Half of everything."
It bothered Harlow that Clint didn't seem to care about what she'd just said. That he seemed indifferent to having his life taken away from him.
What was wrong with these people? Harlow got to her feet and started walking toward the opening.
"Well, no one said I couldn't look around." She needed to learn something or she was going to lose his mind.
"Whoa, wait!" Clint cried, running to catch up. "Be careful, those vines are about to close." He already sounded out of breath.
"Close?" Harlow repeated. "What are you talking about?"
"The opening, you goof."
"Doors? I don't see any doors." Harlow knew Clint wasn't just making stuff up—she knew he was missing something obvious. She grew uneasy and realized she'd slowed her pace, not so eager to reach the walls anymore.
"What do you call that opening?" Clint pointed up at the enormously tall gaps in the walls. They were only thirty feet away now.
"I'd call it a big opening " Harlow said, trying to counter her discomfort with sarcasm and disappointed that it wasn't working.
"Well, it's a door of sorts. And they close up every night. The vines began to move like snakes in their nest. and they stretch across the opening closing us in for the night."
Harlow stopped, thinking Clint had to have said something wrong. She looked up, looked side to side, examined the massive vines as the uneasy feeling blossomed into outright dread.
"What do you mean, they close?"
"Just see for yourself in a minute. The Searchers will be back soon; then those big vines are going to move until the gap is closed."
"You get hit in the head?," Harlow muttered. She couldn't see how the mammoth vines could possibly be mobile—felt so sure of it she relaxed, thinking Clint was just playing a trick on her.
They reached the huge gap that led outside to more ivy pathways. Harlow gaped, her mind emptying of thought as she saw it all firsthand.
"This is called the East Bend," Clint said, as if proudly revealing a piece of art he'd created.
Harlow barely heard him, shocked by how much bigger it was up close. At least twenty feet across, the break in the wall went all the way to the top of the vines, far above.
"Are you kidding?" Harlow asked, the dread slamming back into her gut. "You weren't playing with me? The vines really move?"
"What else would I have meant?"
Harlow had a hard time wrapping her mind around the possibility.
"I don't know. I figured there was a door that swung shut or a little mini-wall that slid out of the them. How could these vines move?"
And the idea of those walls closing and trapping her inside this place they called the Dome was downright terrifying.
Clint threw his arms up, clearly frustrated. "I don't know, they just move. Makes one heck of a creepy noise. Same thing happens out in the maze—the walls shift every night."
Harlow, her attention suddenly snapped up by a new detail, turned to face the younger boy. "What did you just say?"
"Huh?"
"You just called it a maze—you said, 'same thing happens out in the maze.'"
Clint's face reddened. "I'm done with you. I'm done." He walked back toward the tree they'd just left.
Harlow ignored him, more interested than ever in the outside of the dome. A maze?
In front of her, through the East Bend, she could make out passages leading to the left, to the right, and straight ahead. And the walls of the pathways were similar to those that surrounded the dome, the ground made of the same massive stone blocks as in the courtyard. The ivy seemed even thicker out there. In the distance, more breaks in the walls led to other paths, and farther down, maybe a hundred yards or so away, the straight passage came to a dead end.
"Looks like a maze," Harlow whispered, almost laughing to herself. As if things couldn't have gotten any stranger. They'd wiped her memory and put her inside a gigantic maze. It was all so crazy it really did seem funny.
Her heart skipped a beat when a guy unexpectedly appeared around a corner up ahead, entering the main passage from one of the offshoots to the right, running toward her and the Dome.
Covered in sweat, his face red, clothes sticking to his body, the boy didn't slow, hardly glancing at Thomas as he went past. He headed straight for the squat concrete building located near the Lift.
Harlow turned as he passed, her eyes riveted to the exhausted runner, unsure why this new development surprised her so much.
Why wouldn't people go out and search the maze?
Then she realized others were entering through the opening, all of them running and looking as ragged as the guy who'd just whisked by him.
There couldn't be much good about the maze if these guys came back looking so weary and worn.
She watched, curious, as they met at the big iron door of the small building; one of them turned the rusty wheel handle, grunting with the effort.
Clint had said something about runners earlier. What had they been doing out there?
The big door finally popped open, and with a deafening squeal of metal against metal, they swung it wide. They disappeared inside, pulling it shut behind them with a loud clonk.
Harlow stared, her mind churning to come up with any possible explanation for what he'd just witnessed. Nothing developed, but something about that creepy old building gave her goose bumps, a disquieting chill.
Someone tugged on her sleeve, breaking her from her thoughts; Clint had come back.
Before Harlow had a chance to think, questions were rushing out of his mouth.
"Who are those people and what were they doing? What's in that building?" She wheeled around and pointed out the East Bend
"And why do you live inside a freaking maze?" She felt a rattling pressure of uncertainty, making his head splinter with pain.
"I'm not saying another word," Clint replied, a new authority filling his voice. "I think you should get to bed early—you'll need your sleep. Ah"—he stopped, held up a finger, pricking up his right ear—"it's about to happen."
"What?" Harlow asked, thinking it kind of strange that Clint was suddenly acting like an adult instead of the little kid desperate for a friend he'd been only moments earlier.
A loud crack exploded through the air, making Harlow jump. It was followed by a horrible poppinh, snapping sound. She stumbled backward, fell to the ground. It felt as if the whole earth shook; she looked around, panicked.
The wall was closing.
The wall was really closing— trapping her inside the Dome.
An onrushing sense of claustrophobia stifled her, compressed his lungs, as if water filled their cavities.
"Calm down," Clint yelled over the noise. "It's just the vines!"
Harlow barely heard him, too fascinated, too shaken by the closing of the opening. She scrambled to her feet and took a few trembling steps back for a better view, finding it hard to believe what her eyes were seeing.
The enormous vines seemed to defy every known law of physics as it slithered along the ground, throwing dust as it moved, in and out of eachother, growing lo her and longer. The crunching sound rattled her bones.
It felt like her head was spinning faster than her body, and her stomach flipped over with the dizziness.
Impossible, dhe thought. How can they do that? She fought the urge to run out there, slip past the moving vines before they shut, flee the Dome.
Common sense won out—the maze held even more unknowns than her situation inside.
She tried to picture in her mind how the structure of it all worked. Massive vines, walls of ivy and moss, hundreds of feet high, moving like snakes—an image from her past life that flashed through her thoughts. She tried to grasp the memory, hold on to it, complete the picture with faces, names, a place, but it faded into obscurity. A pang of sadness pricked through her other swirling emotions.
She watched as the vines reached the end of its journey, its connecting hands finding their mark and entering without a glitch. An echoing snap rumbled across the Dome as the vines sealed shut for the night.
Harlow felt one final moment of trepidation, a quick slice of fear through her body, and then it vanished.
A surprising sense of calm eased her nerves; she let out a long sigh of relief.
"Wow," she said, feeling dumb at such a monumental understatement.
"Ain't nothin', as Wren would say," Clint murmured. "You kind of get used to it after a while."
Harlow looked around one more time, the feel of the place completely different now that all the walls were solid with no way out.
She tried to imagine the purpose of such a thing, and she didn't know which guess was worse—that they were being sealed in or that they were being protected from something out there.
The thought ended her brief moment of calm, stirring in her mind a million possibilities of what might live in the maze outside, all of them terrifying. Fear gripped her once again.
"Come on," Clint said, pulling at her sleeve a second time. "Trust me, when nighttime strikes, you want to be in bed."
Harlow knew she had no other choice. She did her best to suppress everything she was feeling and followed.