Summer's Dark Waters
Page 13
“See you tomorrow?” Amber asked.
He nodded, still unable to speak. His mouth felt dry.
“Good night then.” She stared at him for a moment longer. Joe thought she seemed shy all of a sudden, but he had no idea why she would be. Girls are weird, he thought. They seem to change all the time without any warning.
“Good night,” he managed to say. He felt so relieved that he had at least said something. Anything at all would have done just then.
Amber turned and made her way down the street. Joe stood and watched her until she had turned the corner and was out of sight, and only then did he turn to walk home.
Tomorrow, he thought.
After a while he smiled to himself, and he walked home a little more quickly, as if to hurry the next day along.
Afterwards
A week later, Amber’s dad went to an abandoned industrial park in a nearby town. Amber and Joe were spending the day at Emma’s house and he had told Emma he would collect Amber later in the evening.
“Be careful,” Emma had said quietly, making sure the children couldn’t hear, as he left. “Make sure no one can follow you.”
“I will.”
He drove to the park, and then walked around for a little while before he found his way in through an area where the fencing had come away. It was raining and there was no one around. This wasn’t the sort of area where people came walking anyway.
He found the old warehouse that was described in the message he’d received, and made his way inside through the side door. Inside it was dark and smelled of rust and mould.
“Hello, Luke.”
He turned quickly as the figure moved from out of the shadows.
“Hello, Stephen.” Luke could feel his powers causing his body and mind to become more alert, more focussed, even though Stephen was not exactly an enemy. Not a personal enemy of his, anyway. But he still had to be cautious around him. After all, he reminded himself, he would have done anything, risked anything, to get back here.
“How are Amber and Joe?”
“They’re well enough, despite everything. They fell unconscious when they came through the gateway after you, but they recovered.”
Stephen nodded. He seemed relieved. “I suppose you’ve taken the edge off their memories?”
“They weren’t ready to cope with it all,” Luke said sharply. “They have normal lives to try and live for the time being.”
Stephen walked into the grey daylight and stood looking down at the puddles under where the roof had leaked.
“They would have been drawn to the gateway sooner or later anyway,” he said finally. “But I wasn’t thinking properly. I thought that by taking them there they might quickly be able to open the gateway before the Lost knew what was happening.”
“Even for you, that was a terrible idea,” Luke told him.
“I know.” Stephen looked uncomfortable. “Will you tell the children I’m sorry?”
“I will,” Luke told him, “although whether they accept your apology is another matter.”
“Why did the Emptiness take them?” Stephen wondered. “So that they could close the gateway, or open it?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said, “But it’s closed now.”
“Maybe. But I think it just moved. It moved so it pointed somewhere else in the world. I suspect it moved somewhere very remote though.”
Luke felt a stab of fear inside him. “You mean... are you saying that some of the Lost from the Emptiness came through?”
“They emerged somewhere, I’m sure of it,” Stephen said. “But maybe your Order doesn’t need to worry too much. The gateway must have moved somewhere that destroyed them as soon as they came through.”
Luke found himself thinking about the gateway moving suddenly so that it opened out into the bottom of the deep ocean, or the cone of an active volcano. We would have known by now if they’d survived, he thought. Wouldn’t we?
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?” he asked. “I shouldn’t even be here. I should have reported you to the Order when I got your message.”
“But I knew you wouldn’t. Stephen took a deep breath. “No, that isn’t why I asked you to meet me. I need to warn you about them, Luke. There are Lost within the Order. I can’t prove it and I don’t know how many, but enough to endanger it. Some of them have been working from the inside for many years.”
Luke stared at him. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want.” Stephen glanced out through the doorway. “I have to disappear for a while. And find my family if I can.”
“That’s what they’ll be expecting you to do,” Luke warned him. “Everyone will be hunting you.”
“I’ll find a way.” Stephen paused and then added, “If I were you I’d get the kids and Emma and go and hide somewhere for a while, if you can. Then find another way of fighting the good fight, because I don’t think the Order will be around for much longer. It will splinter apart.”
Stephen walked to the doorway and took a few steps outside. He looked back only to say, “Maybe something stronger should take its place,” and then he walked away through the grey drizzle.
Before he had gone more than fifty yards Stephen had already faded from sight, almost as if the mist had spirited him away.
For the seventh day in a row, Arik woke up surrounded by darkness and a howling, icy wind that numbed every part of his body.
Unlike many of the Free, he was not from this world. But he had studied it, and he knew the shapes made by the stars in the sky. He had known where he was as soon as he arrived. When the gateway spat him out into this world he had lifted himself from the snow with an effort, stood against the howling, icy wind that tore through the darkness and raised his head towards the sky, peering at the constellations.
Within a few moments he had worked out where he was: Antarctica. And he was stranded in the middle of the Antarctic winter.
He could sense others of the Free, most of them scattered around elsewhere in this wilderness. Some were already dead or dying, but others would survive. He himself had withstood far worse conditions on his own world in the distant past.
Arik staggered to his feet and stood against the wind. The boy did this, he reminded himself. Somehow he altered the gateway as we stepped through.
He had survived for days without food, using his strength and stamina in conditions that would have destroyed most others, getting the water he needed by eating snow. Most of the Free who had once been human and had made it through the gateway were surely dead, unless they had somehow found shelter. But his own people were from a far harsher planet and were better equipped to survive.
He walked on again, as he had for days. When he finally saw the faint yellow squares that marked the windows of a research station in the far distance, he smiled to himself.
Then he walked a little more quickly.
As if to hurry the next day along.
Thank you for reading this book!
If you enjoyed it, please take a moment to write a review on Amazon US https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MU30N1G/
Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00MU30N1G/
AND you can get the sequel, The Light From Far Below, absolutely FREE from the author’s website:
https://www.simonwilliamsauthor.com/freebies.php