Fear (A Gone Novel)

Thirteen

25 HOURS

IT WASN'T POSSIBLE to draw on or mark the surface of the dome. So Astrid gave Sam a plan and Sam asked Roger—he liked to be called the Artful Roger—to build ten identical wooden frameworks. Like picture frames exactly two feet by two feet.

The frameworks were mounted on poles, each exactly five feet high.

Then Astrid, with Edilio for security, and Roger to help carry, walked along the barrier from west to east. They paced off distances of three hundred paces. Then, using a long tape measure, they measured off a hundred feet from the base of the barrier. There they dug a hole and set up the first frame. Another three hundred paces, then another carefully measured hundred feet, and another frame.

At each frame Astrid stepped back to a precisely measured ten paces. She took a photograph through each frame, carefully thumbing in the day and time and approximately how much of the area inside the frame appeared to be covered by the stain.

This was why Astrid had come back. Because Jack might be smart enough to think of measuring the stain, but then again he might not think of it.

It was not that Astrid was lonely. It was not that she was just looking for an excuse to go to Sam.

And yet, look what had happened when she did, finally, go to Sam.

Astrid smiled and turned away so Edilio wouldn't see it and be embarrassed.

Had this been her desire all along? To find some excuse to go running back to Sam and to throw herself on him? It was the kind of question that would have preoccupied Astrid in the old days. The old Astrid would have been very concerned with her own motives, very much needing to be able to justify herself. She had always needed some kind of moral and ethical framework, some abstract standard to judge herself by.

And, of course, she had judged other people the same way. Then, when it had come down to survival, to doing whatever it took to end the horror, she had done the ruthless thing. Yes, there was a certain crude morality at work there: she had sacrificed Little Pete for the greater good. But that was the excuse of every tyrant or evildoer in history: sacrifice one or ten or a million for some notion of the common good.

What she had done was immoral. It was wrong. Astrid had set aside her religious faith, but good was still good, and evil was still evil, and throwing her brother into the literal jaws of death...

It wasn't that she doubted she had done wrong. It wasn't that she doubted she deserved punishment. In fact, it was the very idea of forgiveness that made her rebel. She didn't want forgiveness. She didn't want to be washed clean of her sin. She wanted to own it and wear it like a scar, because it was real, and it happened, and it couldn't be made to unhappen.

She had done something terrible. That fact would be part of her forever.

"As it should be," she whispered. "As it should be."

How strange, Astrid thought, that owning your own sins, refusing forgiveness, but vowing not to repeat them, could make you feel stronger.

"When do we check back?" Edilio asked her when they were finished installing.

Astrid shrugged. "Probably better come back tomorrow, just in case the stain is moving faster than it appears to be."

"What do we do about it?" Edilio asked.

"We measure it. We see how much it advances in the first twenty-four hours. Then we see how much it advances in the second and third twenty-four-hour periods. We see how fast it grows and whether it's accelerating."

"And then what do we do about it?" Edilio asked.

Astrid shook her head. "I don't know."

"I guess I'll pray," Edilio said.