Dread Uprising

by Brian Fuller

  She started at a shuffle but worked up to a reasonable speed. Trace spun and jumped out from behind the delivery truck and fired recklessly. The nearest Dread, the one with the 9mm, dove behind a garbage can, and Trace retreated. The Dread had a phone. Did they have reinforcements to call in? The bus had pulled up, brakes screeching, and Prescilla was almost there.

  Trace peeked out again. He could make out the red aura above the garbage can. The Dread with the blasted face had also jumped from the window and apparently broken a leg doing so. He held no weapon and shuffled slowly toward Trace, busted leg dragging behind him as he lurched around like a zombie from an old horror flick. Trace pulled back. If he could drop the one behind the garbage can, he could outrun mushy face.

  He glanced back again. Prescilla had stepped onto the bus and the doors had closed. He had done it.

  With quick, silent steps, he moved out of his cover, keeping his weapon trained on the trash can. The Dread was talking on the phone, and Trace took his chance, angling to the right and letting loose the instant he saw the Dread. He fired twice, one bullet snapping the Dread’s knee and one ripping into his hip. The BBG was out of bullets. That should do it.

  Trace backed away; once the Dread recovered from the initial shock, he would be ready to shoot.

  He glanced up at the other Dread to ensure he was far enough away. The mangled, sneering face regarded him coldly. The right eye and most of the flesh surrounding it was missing, exposed bone and muscle glinting wet.

  Just as Trace started to turn, the red aura that surrounded his ghastly foe grew in intensity. All at once it exploded outward, engulfing Trace. His legs failed and he fell to the pavement.

  In vain Trace struggled against the familiar emotional horror rolling at him like a spectral fog, swirling with the ghostly horrors of his past. His vision burned as it engulfed him, his defenses easily overrun. He’d been torched again.

  Trace pulled a beer from the ice and glanced into the living room where Terissa and Simon were sharing their intimate conversation. She was so beautiful, so fun, so sexy. How could he possibly think he could ever satisfy her? She deserved so much better. He was a worthless, boring husband. She’d cheated on him. He deserved it.

  Chapter 11

  Dawn

  He should have noticed it earlier. When women talk with someone they are attracted to, their faces light up, and Terissa’s face had lit up like a college rally bonfire every time Simon swaggered into the room. He had seen it. Had he just ignored it? Hoped it meant nothing? Poor Terissa. How miserable to marry someone only to find that she really wanted someone else. Why had she stayed with him at all?

  A savage kick that cracked his ribs flipped him over on his back and broke him out of his fog. A hand with a red aura grabbed his skinny, scratched leg and dragged him at a shuffling pace out of the middle of the alley toward the trash can on the opposite side where the other crippled Dread waited, still talking on the phone.

  Trace trembled, and his focus blurred under the despair and agony pressing on his mind. He knew the Dread now scraping him across the pavement had torched him, but the ability to classify his malady had no power to remedy it. As the back of his head bumped across the ground, he shut his eyes, always finding Terissa and Simon and the abiding shame.

  Now that he thought about it, hadn’t Simon always had his hands all over her? If he touched Terissa too familiarly when her husband was around, Trace could only imagine the circus romance at the office. Stolen kisses in the elevator. Romps in the break room. Sultry glances in depositions. Simon probably made Terissa laugh by pointing out how they were pulling one over on her stupid, under-earning husband. He could envision them draped all over each other in the supply closet while Terissa told him how Trace never could make her feel like he did.

  Surrender. He could do it now. The Dreads would finish him off with a quick shot to the heart and dunk in the tub. He would turn to ashes and flow down the drain and into oblivion, escaping his sorrow. But as he let the limping Dread drag him away, a spark fired within his leaden heart, an impulse to survive, to defy the pain. And although the smothering thoughts returned almost immediately to wash over him like a relentless tide, he clung to the spark and tried to muscle through the despair.

  With effort he yanked his foot from the Dread’s iron grasp and rolled away, shredded backpack falling from his shoulders. Wobbling, he stood, stumbling down the alleyway toward the street. Terissa. So beautiful.

  No! Fight it!

  The phone call meant more Dreads were coming. Surely the police would come too. One of the hotel’s clients would have called in a gun battle in the alley. The bright sun in the street beckoned to him, and he exerted all his strength to get out of the shadows and leave his hampered pursuers behind. He didn’t bother to look back. Get out of the shadows. Run.

  He staggered into the bus-stop bench, hands and arms shaking. The warmth and light of the sun revived him slightly, and he struck out with more speed, enough to escape two Dreads with two functioning legs between them, but not enough to get away from anyone or anything else.

  The twisted emotions coursing through his head had the fastest legs of all, and even the pure light of an afternoon sun couldn’t slow them enough for Trace to break completely free. Faces and concerned glances would sometimes register as he wandered like a sleepwalker up and down sidewalks and streets with no conscious direction. Terissa and Simon seemed to loiter at every street corner, in every car, and in every window, taunting him with knowing, perfect smiles.

  How long after they had been married had Terissa wanted to get away from him? He remembered the first time she’d missed one of their lunch dates downtown. He’d sat at the table of the Italian restaurant smelling the marinara and oven-baked bread sticks for an hour. She had never come. She hadn’t called. She hadn’t even answered his texts. That night, she’d apologized profusely and was so affectionate and sweet and giving he had almost forgotten the whole incident. That was probably the first day she had given in to Simon. The sting of it twisted his gut, but he couldn’t stop replaying it in his mind. The passage of time meant nothing. His thoughts wound about in a ring, always returning to the same place and starting over.

  “Get out of the road, stupid kid!”

  The outside world intruded on him again, an unpleasant distraction keeping him from perceiving his life in the honest light of reality. Evening had come. Soft, golden rays and shadows that normally cast the world into a friendly glow now surrounded him with decay and the coming darkness. The dying sun would heal the Dreads, and the night rushed at him as relentlessly as they had. His trembling worsened as day slipped into the tomb of night, the outside world turning as nebulous and forbidding as the inside of his mind.

  He had no idea where he was. Fewer office buildings and businesses lined the road now, houses taking their place. These houses were new, just like the one he and Terissa had bought with her money because he had none. If she had married a rich lawyer, she wouldn’t have had to support some pathetic student and could have used her money to buy more expensive dresses or travel. She’d probably married Simon already. Probably hadn’t even waited until her dead husband was cold in the ground.

  He wouldn’t put it past Simon to have planned his demise. Terissa might have helped. They knew that fragile Darcie would snap if she found out Simon was cheating on her. She wouldn’t blame her charming husband, of course. She would grab a gun and find Trace, the real one to blame, the one who couldn’t keep his own wife happy, forcing her to look for satisfaction elsewhere. He’d deserved to get shot. He’d ruined Darcie’s life and torn apart her fairy-tale marriage.

  Full darkness had descended.

  He ambled along a sidewalk, passing under the weak cones of light coming from beckoning streetlamps. Where was he? He rubbed his eyes. His jumpy, blurry vision didn’t care to take in the outside world but locked its gaze ever inward where the real darkness waited. The fence. That was the fence where Cassandra had baited the perv. Trac
e had walked all the way back to the elementary school on pure instinct. He turned toward the street and fell as his heavy feet slipped off the curb. He landed hard on his face with a grunt, splayed half on the sidewalk, half off. Ash Angels didn’t get tired, but he was tired, a worn-to-the-bone weary. Gravel bit into his cheek, but the numbness and exhaustion and cool gutter negated these discomforts.

  He had said he would come back to the school, and he had. He was done. He wished he could stop shaking and still his mind, but the loathing and horror pulled at him like a mighty tide, tugging him back into the stormy ocean where Terissa and Simon mocked him over and over, burying him in the surf.

  “Stupid, Jarhead! Look at me! Come on! Look!” It was Cassandra, no longer a child, voice conveying an atypical tone: concern. Night still prevailed. She had scooped him off the pavement and carried him somewhere. A car engine purred nearby.

  “Is he all right?” Goldbow asked.

  “No, he’s not all right! They’ve torched him, and he’s banged up all to hell. Trace, you beautiful idiot. Stay with me. You have to fight it. Don’t let it pull you back inside. Stay with me! Right here. Look at my eyes, Trace.”

  Trace tried. Her intense, blue eyes begged for his attention, but his mind wanted so badly to slide away. She put him in the back of the car and climbed in with him. “Let’s get him to Lake Pleasant, Goldbow.”

  “The Lake? He’s in bad shape. He needs the shrinks at Trevex.”

  “The Lake,” Cassandra ordered. “I want him to see the dawn there. We’ll get him back to Trevex when he’s cleaned up and doing better.”

  “Dr. Dawn it is,” Goldbow said.

  The car hummed away, and Cassandra pulled Trace onto her lap, wrapping her arms around him to calm the shaking. It helped.

  “Prescilla?” he croaked. “Is . . . is . . . sh-she—?”

  “She’s fine. You saved her, Trace. You did it. It’s over.”

  The happiness he should have felt refused to come. Sadness clawed at him, and tears fell unbidden from his eyes. He should have let Terissa see him cry. Would she have cared? Had she cried in secret too, when she realized she had married the wrong man?

  “I wish I could have been what she wanted.” He sobbed. “I thought I was a good husband. I tried.”

  “Hush, Trace,” Cassandra soothed. “Stay with me out here. Dawn is coming soon, I promise.”

  “Are you crying, Cassie?” Goldbow asked, his tone one of disbelief.

  “Of course not. Shut up and drive.”

  Cassandra hauled Trace out of the car, lugging him toward the water. “Just a few more minutes, Trace. Hold on.”

  The crispness of the morning and sharp breeze roused him enough that he could see rippling water as they neared a rough shoreline of dirt and rock. In the sky above, a few tendrils of colorful, red clouds foreshadowed the coming dawn and perhaps a coming storm.

  Goldbow waited behind them as Cassandra lowered Trace to the ground beside her, propping him up with her arm a few feet from the lapping water. Her heavy-metal ring tone sounded, and she swore, turning it off as fast as she could.

  Then the dawn.

  The bullets in his back slowly worked their way out of his body and fell to the ground. His cracked ribs knit together, and his scrapes were smoothed over with new skin. At last, the black hole sucking down all the light in his mind closed, and his control over his thoughts returned. He felt rejuvenated, but the Rapture failed to produce its normal giddy effect. He felt . . . sobered. His body was fit and ready to run, but his mind retained the weight of the last twelve hours. He closed his eyes and opened them again, welcoming the clean air and soft light of a morning on the lake.

  “Thanks for finding me, guys,” he said. “I got wrecked. This time was way worse. Look, I know I stepped over the line again. I . . . I just couldn’t leave her to the Dreads without trying. I couldn’t do it. I hope Ramis understands.”

  Cassandra regarded him with a look that almost seemed like admiration. “You don’t have to explain. At least not to me. You want to go back to Trevex now, or do you want to hang here or at my place for a while?”

  “How many forms do you think I’m looking at for this stunt?”

  She grinned and stood up. “Plenty.”

  He inhaled just to taste the air. “Well, I suppose I’d better get to it. You know how slow I am.”

  No sooner had he spoken than her phone rang again. She checked the screen. “Ramis. I told him to bug off until at least an hour after dawn.” She clicked a button. “Yeah?” she answered with a rude tone. “He’s fine. I’m well aware of that, for the love of mercy. We’ll be back when we’re back!” She hung up. “He can get things done, but I wonder if he has a soul sometimes. I guess I can’t blame him. The Archai, the Michaels, and the Medius are all riding his case to find out what happened out there. You’re the only one with all the answers. Thanks to you, the Michaels were able to burn four Dreads yesterday with no Ash Angel losses.”

  Trace nodded and started back to the car. “Is Prescilla really okay?”

  “She’s safe. She was pretty shaken up when the Michaels caught up to her on the bus. The dawn may have helped. What happened to her would be horrible for any Ash Angel, but for her? I’m not sure we’ll get her out of the Trevex complex for a few months.”

  Goldbow, who seemed subdued, finally spoke. “So what happened after you bailed out of the car?”

  Trace waited until they had all climbed into the same vehicle he had abandoned before relating the tale in full. Telling them helped to lighten the burden in his mind. It had been hard to focus on anything after the Dread torched him, but he remembered now why he had jumped out of the car against protocol.

  For the first time, his satisfaction over what he had accomplished began to grow. Ramis might rant and rave when he returned, but unlike the Nazi-streaker stunt, he regretted nothing he had done to save Prescilla, and he would not apologize or sign any contracts or forms promising he would never do anything like it again.

  Even better, when he finished his story, Cassandra, who had joined him in the back seat, was smiling. “This fixes everything.”

  “What?” Trace asked.

  “You got your first Bestowal! You see, Archon Ramis is no doubt planning to rip you up one side and down the other for disobeying me and ignoring protocol again. But the fact that you received your Bestowal puts him in a serious bind. Most Ash Angels get their Bestowals within a couple months. Blanks don’t get them for at least a year. You’ve gotten yours even before a few of the other Cherubs in your class. Some Bestowals are given for no apparent reason, but when they are given in circumstances like yours, it is seen as a mark of divine approval. I can’t wait until Ramis finds out. This is fantastic!”

  Goldbow caught Cassandra’s enthusiasm. “And when Archus Mars finds out he’s been given the gift of Strength, he’s going to press Ramis twice as hard to move Trace over to the Michaels. A Blank with Strength and fighting skills? Awesome.”

  “Mars might get his wish,” Cassandra conjectured. “If Trace here keeps blowing protocol, there’s no way Ramis will recommend him to the Gabriels, though Archus Magdelene—she’s the Archus over the Gabriels—might take him anyway because, well, Blank numbers are thin right now.”

  A break in the conversation gave Trace the opportunity to ask a question that had bugged him since he became coherent. “Does the fact that I had a vision when I got my Bestowal mean that I have some other gift, too, or is that just a part of receiving the Bestowal? Seems like Prescilla had one too.”

  “It’s normal,” Cassandra answered. “When a Bestowal comes, you are often led to where you are to use it. Not always. If you do have other foretellings, be careful. You’ll end up stuffed in a hole somewhere forever. The Occulum is highly protected, highly secretive, and by all accounts a deadly dull assignment.”

  “I don’t feel particularly strong right now,” Trace observed.

  Goldbow jumped in. “Bestowals have to be activated. They co
me from the divine energy within you called Virtus. Virtus is expended as you use it, and your supply can run out. When it does, it’s as close as you’ll come to being tired as an Ash Angel, unless you get torched or decide to go swimming. I have Speed and Toughness as my gifts so far, and I can only run those for about an hour before I feel like I need to stop.”

  “We’ll practice,” Cassandra reassured him.

  They arrived at Trevex about the time the mortal employees showed up for work, finding themselves in a queue at the guard shack while the sickly Edward Grain checked IDENT cards. Ramis called and told them to come to Trevex D rather than Trevex B to avoid unnecessary contact with the normals who worked there.

  The clouds had thickened as the morning progressed, mirroring Trace’s mood as they slid into the parking lot. Ramis, Athena, and a third Ash Angel—a spindly man dressed in a gray suit and tie—awaited them outside on the walkway. Trace steeled himself for another run-in with the head of training operations.

  “That’s Oberon,” Cassandra informed him none too pleasantly in reference to the man with Ramis. “He’s a shrink. I called in your status this morning while you were inside your own head. This is the second time you’ve been torched, so I think the shrink is standard procedure.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “I don’t think you get to choose,” Cassandra said.

  Trace got out and walked up to the welcoming party, Cassandra catching up to him like a mother walking a child to a doctor’s appointment. Athena scribbled madly on her clipboard.

  For the first time since dawn, Trace took stock of his appearance—shredded shirt, dirt-caked jeans and shoes. He could only imagine what his face and hair looked like. He stood up as tall as his eight-year-old frame allowed and walked toward Ramis, who had his hands behind his back, regarding him coolly.