Phoenix. It wasn’t her original name, she thought, but it was better than nothing. She would take it, for now.
“They call me the Developer,” he continued. “My colleagues, the Engineers, and I have been working to maintain order here in Paragon. But this misguided rebellion has been making that job… difficult for us.”
A rebellion? Something about that felt familiar to Phoenix, but she was tired now. Too tired to think any longer. She felt her consciousness slipping away, the pain assaulting her body numbing any attempts by her mind to process what he was saying.
The Developer eyed her for a moment, then released her aching hand and reached above her head. An electronic beep pricked her ears and relief washed over her body, dragging her ever further toward sleep.
“Rest now. There will be plenty of time to talk when you’re feeling stronger. You’re safe here, Phoenix. I’ll make sure of it.”
The sliding door closed behind him with a hiss and she settled deep into the fluffy pillow at her back. Something about his words rang false in her head, but the utter deliciousness of the heavy sleep creeping over her overwhelmed any misgivings she might have had.
Phoenix, she thought. Maybe he was right. Maybe this was the start of something better.
Finally the pain faded into the background, along with the urgency of her questions. Cocooned by the distinct sweetness of hope, she closed her eyes and drifted off into a peaceful slumber.
7. DREAM
Alessa couldn’t see his face, but she could feel the heat of him sidled up against her. His body wrapped protectively around hers, she was flooded with a sense of sanctuary, of knowing she was safe from whatever dangers lurked outside.
Still enveloped in the tranquil mist of sleep, she smiled deeply and rolled over to face him. Her eyes still closed, she dreamily ran her hands over his broad chest and nuzzled her face against the scruff of his chin with a sigh.
Tilting her head up, she trailed his chiseled jaw with her lips, their mouths meeting in a slow, tender kiss. Their eyes fell open in unison and she lost herself for a moment in the endless blue she knew so well.
But then something began to change for Alessa, some incongruous feeling rising fiercely from her gut. A sudden distinct thirst overwhelmed her. But not for water – for blood.
And she was taken with the bestial desire to kill.
Startled, she pulled back from their embrace, searching his eyes for answers. And what she saw there set her heart racing.
Yes, those blue eyes were the same she remembered, but the face that held them was not. It wasn’t Isaac she lay entangled with, but Joe.
Alessa shot up with a staggering gasp, the world spinning around her. Clutching at the memory of her dream, she struggled to calm her shallow breaths and still her pounding heart.
Isaac stirred next to her, groggily placing his hand on her lap in a drowsy attempt at comfort. “Everything okay?” he exhaled.
Catching her breath, Alessa patted his hand. “Yeah, just a bad dream. Go back to bed, Isaac.”
Isaac readily complied, rolling over in a contented little ball with a heavy sigh.
Alessa sat rigid, staring blankly at the wall of the lean-to until her heart finally began to slow. A seeping guilt crept into her chest and she lay back down, her back to Isaac, as she tried to bury the disquiet nagging at her conscience.
It was only a dream, she reasoned. She didn’t have control over her subconscious. Yes, she’d had feelings for Joe once, but that was before. She was with Isaac now. She loved Isaac. And Joe would understand that, he’d want them both to be happy.
Wouldn’t he?
Alessa swallowed her doubts and reminded herself that it didn’t matter anyway. Joe was gone – he was the past. And any feelings she might have had for him were lost the moment that Paragon’s guards seized him and took him away forever.
But were they really? Just because Joe was gone didn’t mean her feelings had disappeared. She’d loved Joe, perhaps in a different way than she loved Isaac now, but that didn’t make it any less real. Joe had been her closest friend, but he’d also meant much more to her than she’d ever had the courage to tell him – and now she’d never have the chance.
Maybe that’s where this was all coming from. Maybe she’d never really dealt with his loss, and the loss of the future she could have had with him, had things gone differently.
But that didn’t explain the disturbing conclusion to the dream, the overwhelming urge to rip something apart with her teeth. That was just… grotesque. Where had that come from?
Maybe it was just her mind’s way of punishing her for the forbidden fantasies of Joe, of bringing her back to the present – and the loving partner dozing by her side.
Before long, dawn peeked through the cracks of the shelter and Alessa realized sleep was a futile proposition. Careful not to disturb Isaac, she shimmied out from under the blankets and crept outside to tend the fire and prepare for another day.
An hour or so later, Isaac finally awoke and joined Alessa at the fireside, sharing a meager breakfast of the few canned goods they had left.
“I gotta say, Less, tuna for breakfast is not my ideal way to start the day.” He smiled brightly despite it and proffered the can in her direction. “You want the rest of this? Come on, you know the protein is good for you…” he teased.
Alessa scrunched up her face, but took a few spoonfuls anyway. “Well, the smell certainly wakes you up, that’s for sure. Who needs coffee, right?”
Isaac laughed and finished off the can, using his finger to fish out any remaining pieces. Alessa knew it may not have been his favorite, but he knew better than to let food go to waste now.
Packing up their cooking supplies, Isaac paused, a look of concern on his face. “Hey – what was your dream about this morning?”
“Dream? Try nightmare,” she replied. Turning her back to him, she dumped a bucket of snow on the fire and watched it hiss as she continued. “I dreamed that we –” she just couldn’t tell him she was having fantasies about Joe, “– me and you, I mean, were in the lean-to just cuddling, and then all of a sudden I got this bizarre urge to… well, to rip your throat out.”
She risked a quick glance at his eyes, hoping he hadn’t picked up on her lie. She’d told him the exciting part, at least. The rest didn’t really matter, did it?
Isaac’s eyebrows shot to the sky. “Well, I’ll be sure to stay on your good side today…”
Alessa laughed. “Don’t worry, I had a good breakfast.”
“Oh yeah, tuna… Great.” Isaac grinned.
Alessa turned back to the fire and sighed with relief. She knew she could count on him not to read into anything as silly as a dream – that was her own neuroses. In fact, with the bright morning sun pressing on her face, she was starting to feel better about the whole thing already.
They set off on the trail, and in the light of day the tumult of the morning was all but forgotten. Alessa and Isaac picked their way through an ever-thinning forest until finally, the trees broke and their feet landed on pavement.
“Land ho!” Isaac yelled, his feet dancing on the blacktop and his eyes glimmering in the late-afternoon sun. “Civilization, here we come!”
“You are such a dork.” Alessa shook her head. “‘Land ho,’ really?” but she couldn’t help but laugh. As much as she worried about what they’d find once they reached more populated areas, his giddiness was contagious. It really felt like they’d hit a milestone.
Still grinning, Isaac whipped out the compass and pointed to the right. “Looks like that way is south.”
“Sounds good to me,” Alessa nodded.
The two-lane road was still flagged by trees on either side, but Alessa knew if they followed it, they’d have to hit a town, or at least a highway, eventually. They headed out hand in hand, straddling either side of the double yellow line as they walked. With much of the snow on the street melted from the sun, they were able to make much better progress, chattering excitedly
all the while.
Isaac looked around at the sloping trees and gentle curve of the road. “This really brings back memories, you know? We used to vacation off a road just like this when I was young.”
Alessa nodded. “Yeah, Joe mentioned that you guys would rent a cabin or something?”
“Yup. My parents worked two jobs, but we never had a lot of money, and vacations weren’t really in the budget. So when they found this house on a lake that we could get for practically nothing, they jumped on it. Granted, it wasn’t the most glamorous place – it didn’t even have running water, and let me tell you, going to the outhouse by yourself in the middle of night as a kid is not a fun experience – but we really loved it there.”
Isaac’s face lit up with the memory. “There was this rope swing off the dock – I’d forgotten about that.” He smiled brightly, squeezing Alessa’s hand. “Joe and I would spend hours taking turns on that thing, seeing who could make the biggest splash.” He looked at Alessa and she could see the beginnings of tears in his eyes before he brushed them off. “How about you? What did you guys do to get away?”
Alessa thought back to her childhood, to their cookie cutter house with the neat little lawn littered with toys and bedecked with a massive swing set. She smiled.
“We were such a typical suburban family. Everything about our lives, before the war at least, was… pleasant. My dad worked a white collar job, my mom stayed home with us, we spent summer days by the community pool and summer nights watching movies at home. And once a year we’d take a big family vacation, usually to one of those fancy new theme parks with all the virtual reality rides and stuff.”
Alessa stared off into the distance, remembering all the good times her family had shared. She still missed them so much – it hurt. But she pushed back her tears and continued. It felt good to remember.
“There was this one time, though, that we went to a vintage amusement park, one that still had a real rollercoaster and everything.”
“No way! I thought those had all been torn down?”
“So did we. My dad explained that the simulations were so much cheaper and safer, they’d stopped building real thrill rides when he was a kid, and he didn’t think any were still in operation. But my little brother had learned about them in school and he was so adamant that he needed to ride one. So we went online and found this old park that was selling tickets. It was an eight hour drive, but we went.”
Isaac looked almost as eager as her brother had been. “Was it amazing?”
Alessa laughed. “Actually… I chickened out.”
Isaac gasped. “No!”
Sheepishly, Alessa explained. “It was just so big – and the cars were moving so fast, and well, I got scared.”
Isaac dropped his jaw, his expression pained.
“I was a kid!” Alessa punched his shoulder lightly.
Isaac shook his head vehemently. “No excuse. I bet Janie went on it, didn’t she?”
Alessa would never forget the massive grin plastered on Janie’s face when she came off that ride. She’d actually puked and come up smiling. “No, of course Janie would never miss it.” The thought of Janie and all her daring and gusto panged at Alessa’s chest. “And my brother had a blast as well. It was a great trip.”
“Even though you were too lame to enjoy it.”
Alessa sighed. “Even though I was too lame,” she agreed. She regretted not getting on that ride. If she’d known what was to come, she would have.
“That was the summer before they dropped the first nuke, actually.”
Isaac’s smile faded. “I was so young when it happened – only nine, I think – I couldn’t make sense of what was going on.”
“I know, me too. I was in middle school at the time, and I remember them trying to explain it to us, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around how so many millions of people could die in a single instant. Or why someone would want to do that to us. I just remember thinking, ‘But I never did anything wrong. Why would these people want to hurt me?’”
“Yeah, that’s how I felt. I knew there were people fighting in the world, but it was never here. And it’d never occurred to me to that it could be here. Then when that happened… everything changed.”
Alessa thought back to that first year after the bomb. Her country had acted quickly, finally entering the global wars that it had tried so hard to stay out of. A retaliation bomb was dropped, then another, and another, and pretty soon the beginnings of a nuclear winter had begun to settle on the planet. A lot of people couldn’t get the food they needed, but all she’d noticed at the time was that they’d started eating a lot of canned and packaged foods instead of the fresh stuff her mom always used to buy.
Isaac continued. “I remember one night we sat down to dinner and all we had was a single can of beans, for the four of us. We’d never been as well off as other people, but that night was when I realized that something had fundamentally changed for us. We weren’t just poor anymore – we were actually fighting for our survival.”
It wasn’t until the outbreak many years later that Alessa had felt really and truly hungry for the first time in her life – she couldn’t imagine what it had been like for Isaac. Even when the skies had clouded over and the crops had failed and food had gotten exorbitantly expensive, Alessa’s parents had always had plenty of money to provide for them.
Isaac wasn’t so lucky. “Actually, it was the civil service program that saved us. When Joe turned 14 he was finally eligible to join, and the government gave us extra rations in return for his service. That kept us going until the outbreak.”
That was interesting – Alessa hadn’t known that some families received assistance in return for their service. She always just thought that serving was something everyone was expected to do, a duty you owed your country. She was glad, at least, that Isaac’s family had benefited.
But before she could ask what had happened to his family during the outbreak, a strange feeling stopped Alessa in her tracks. “Isaac, something’s wrong.”
She grabbed his hand and stood motionless, observing the quiet road and watching for any signs of movement. Isaac followed her lead, holding his breath and listening, alert to any disturbance.
Out of the silence, an earsplitting roar rose up from the woods, the same bloodcurdling blend of howl and wail that had haunted them in the forest.
Isaac made to take off, but Alessa’s feet rooted to the spot as an explosive wave of frustration overtook her body. She shuddered deeply, unsure where this strange feeling had come from.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she should move. But the odd foreign sensation racking her nerve-endings had engulfed her every thought.
Her vision glowed red, and she froze.
8. EVASION
The spine-chilling cry threw every reflex in Isaac’s body into overdrive, but for some reason he couldn’t fathom, Alessa was still standing there, wide-eyed and mouth agape.
It wasn’t like her to freeze under pressure, and that realization scared Isaac more than anything. If Alessa wasn’t reacting, something was seriously, seriously wrong.
But a flash of movement in the bushes caught his eye, and he knew he didn’t have time to contemplate; he yanked Alessa’s arm behind him and ran.
Thankfully, that shove seemed to be all she needed – she took off at top speed, still clutching Isaac’s hand.
The road hit a sharp turn and Isaac and Alessa flew around it, ignoring the sounds thrashing through the woods on either side of them. They were faster on the road, at least – whatever was following them seemed to be having trouble closing the gap.
Isaac’s heart sang as they came through the bend to find an old charging station only a few yards ahead – refuge!
Isaac considered hopping into one of the electric cars that lay abandoned in the lot, but even if they could lock themselves inside, Isaac suspected that he and Alessa wouldn’t last long behind all those windows against whatever was hunting them.
They skirted past the cars and aimed instead for the shabby little convenience mart on the far side of the lot. The store had been looted; broken glass littered the floor in every direction, glinting in the twilight.
His heart in his throat, Isaac weighed the possibility of finding a hiding place inside. He scanned the store for an inconspicuous spot, but it was just a single open room. If they dove behind a display case the creatures might not see them, but if they came in looking for him and Alessa, there was nowhere to run.
“No good – let’s try around back,” he urged, his feet crunching on the shattered plate windows as he dashed to the far side of the building.
There – a door. It must be a bathroom or supply closet, Isaac thought – either would do. He ran to the doorway, frantically jiggling the knob and slamming his palm against the door. It was no use – it was locked tight. His heart sank.
They needed another plan.
Turning around, Isaac sucked down air in rapid breaths as he searched the trees surrounding the lot. Should they take their chances back in the woods?
“There!” Alessa yelled. She was pointing at a large dumpster in the back corner of the lot, partially hidden from view behind a tall fence.
It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. Menacing growls sounded from the front of the building, and whatever was following them was drawing nearer by the second; they were out of options.
“Let’s go!” Isaac panted, and they dashed together toward the holding bin, sliding in between the wooden posts of the fence and the painted metal of the trash receptacle.
Isaac lifted the heavy lid of the dumpster, pushing aside the thick chain that dangled from its midpoint. He took a quick peek inside the container – mercifully, it was empty.
Another round of snarls rose up from beyond the fence – their pursuers had rounded the corner. “Get in,” Isaac commanded. Alessa didn’t hesitate – she tossed her pack in and vaulted over the side of the dumpster, landing inside with a thud.
Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) Page 5