Then the pain hit him like a sledgehammer. He screamed as the darkness flooded the halls, devouring the scene around him.
Only blackness remained.
Chapter 28
THE SHADOW MAN
He ripped the visor from his face and gripped his shoulder. He could feel the blood seeping through his clothing, running between his fingers.
“He cut me!”
“How bad?” The man standing close by, Lead, motioned another man over as he took a closer look at his diver’s wound.
“Bad enough. Jesus, this hurts like a bitch.”
“Get him to medical,” Lead ordered. He turned to another man standing in the shadows, the next diver in the queue. “Suit up.”
“Roger, sir.”
“And hurry up. We’re running out of time.”
Chapter 29
BRODY26
Garland Trail, Nebraska
Tuesday, November 12, 1968
He was in his apartment, standing in the middle of the darkened room, with no idea when or where he had come from. His head was throbbing, and he was so famished that he immediately went to his small fridge and yanked the door open.
There were a couple of cans of cheap beer, some cold cuts, a jug of orange juice, and a bottle of vodka. He grabbed the lunch meat, ripped open the package with his teeth (having just one hand made opening things an adventure sometimes), and started stuffing the thin-sliced salami into his mouth, one piece after another, savoring the flavor. His stomach growled as he made quick work of the entire package. He washed it down with the orange juice, drinking almost the entire half-gallon carton.
Still, though, he was ravenous, and weak, as if he hadn’t eaten for days.
He went to a small cupboard that served as his pantry and grabbed a box of breakfast cereal. Frosted Flakes. After eating five or six handfuls, he took another gulp of orange juice, emptying the carton.
He felt as if he were eating air. He was still hungry, but not quite as much as before.
During the minutes he’d been here, the awareness of where he was and who he was began to seep into his consciousness. He was twenty-six years old, a disabled (he hated that word) veteran living in Garland Trail, Nebraska.
Another memory flashed before him, and he instinctively glanced at his palm, expecting to find his fingers bloody and shredded by a piece of broken glass. He remembered the school, looking for Connie, then being chased by the shadow man. He’d cut him, with the glass. Shoved it into his shoulder as far as it would go, then the shadow man had vanished, and the darkness had enveloped him.
He had to find Connie, right now, before he disappeared into the black again, or the shadow man found him.
But where should he go?
The alley, where you saw her last.
His rifle was (or might be) there, too. Brody stepped outside his apartment, taking one last look in case he’d never see the place again. He’d lived in this crappy little spot for a few years and couldn’t help but feel a connection. But if what he’d realized in the darkness was true, the apartment was nothing more than another stage prop, part of the elaborate farce constructed for the shadow man’s entertainment.
The truth seemed so hard to believe, that everything he knew and remembered wasn’t real. All his time in Vietnam, the stinking mud during the rains, the insects biting without relief, and the dark, dangerous Viet Cong tunnels.
Brody glanced down at the pinned-up sleeve of his field jacket, and doubt tumbled through his mind. His arm was gone. He remembered the day clearly and how the pain nearly drove him insane. He’d never forget the sound of the grenade blast, the feel of the shock wave hammering his body, and the realization that he was terribly hurt. And then the horror of seeing what remained of his left arm twitching in the mud.
How could that possibly not be real?
Brody slammed the door shut and went downstairs. He would head back to the alley, hopefully find his weapon there (where he left it today? Yesterday? When?), and try to find Connie. But there was one thing he had to check first.
A newspaper vending machine was outside the building, and luckily, it still had a paper at the bottom. He fished in his pocket for a dime and felt something else. He pulled it out and stared. Yellow, plastic. A toy dinosaur. His, but not his. Not in this place.
He’d taken it from his shelf
Ten years old
and put it in his pocket.
The dull thudding in the back of his head flared, the pain causing him to wince and take a quick breath, but it passed quickly. He put the dinosaur in his jacket pocket, pulled a dime from his pants pocket, and slipped it into the slot. He opened the box and grabbed the paper, checking the date.
Tuesday, November 12, 1968.
It was always Tuesday, November 12, 1968. Every, single, goddamned day.
He threw the paper on the ground and walked in the direction of the alley where he’d last seen Connie. Connie from the future, a worker in an underground ark, whatever the hell that is, born in 2032, five years after the China War. He wasn’t sure exactly how she fit into this game, but she was the only person who seemed remotely real. Was she really from the twenty-first century, like she believed, or was she like him, trapped in some sort of made-up world? Maybe the war with China, the ruined country, and the underground facilities were all fake, too.
She’d only mentioned that single place, the Ark, and no others. There were four distinct places where his game was being played. He wondered if Connie was experiencing the same thing: different lives, ages, and events. If so, why hadn’t she mentioned any of the other locales? Then again, their time together hadn’t been long enough to have a real discussion about what was happening to both of them.
As he walked, he kept an eye on the darkened spaces between the buildings, watching for the shadow man to emerge. Brody had hurt him (as a ten-year-old kid, at that), and if the bastard did reappear, he’d probably be pissed. The important thing was, he’d actually hurt him. He remembered shooting the shadow man when he was in the firefight (someone else’s, not his), when he appeared as an empty outline of a man, a hole with nothing but blackness inside. The bullet didn’t have any effect then, but in the school, when the shadow man was an actual man, the glass had cut him. He’d screamed in pain. If Brody saw him in this place again, and he appeared fully formed, as he did in the school, then a shot to the head might just kill him.
Brody hoped he’d get the chance to see what a 5.56 round to the visor would do.
All the alleys looked the same, and Brody had some difficulty finding the right one, but he recognized the dumpster he and Connie had hidden beside and found his M16 on the ground exactly where he’d left it, right after Connie had vanished. He sat down and laid the rifle across his legs and checked the magazine. He released it, and holding the gun against his thigh with his hand, he thumbed out the remaining rounds. There were seventeen rounds left, eighteen including the one still in the chamber. It made sense; he’d slammed a magazine into the rifle during the firefight (a made-up place), and fired one shot at the shadow man while still in the field. Then, he’d fired another single shot at him while he was chasing Connie on the street (here, another made-up place).
Eighteen would have to be enough. He slowly reloaded the steel twenty-round magazine, finding it extremely difficult to do with only one hand. The last time he’d done this, his left arm was still firmly attached.
Why the firefight? Brody wondered. Why would the shadow man have wanted him to relive his time in Vietnam and give him someone else’s uniform (as well as someone else’s fight)?
He reinserted the magazine, made sure the selector was set to SAFE, and stood.
At first, he wasn’t sure, then he heard the sound again. He clicked the selector to SEMI, pressed the buttstock of the rifle between his elbow and ribs to hold it steady, and turned, index finger slipping from the guard to the trigger.
Someone was behind him.
He saw a shape in the alley, coming towar
d him. He squeezed the trigger.
She was in the darkness.
She was in the Ark.
She was in the darkness. A dream flashed by.
“Stay here, C Bear. Close the door and don’t come out, okay?”
“Mommy, don’t—”
“Listen to me. Stay in our room and don’t open the door.”
She was in the Ark, hands over her mouth, muffling a scream. The pain.
She was in the darkness. Floating in the nothingness. Then—
She was in the Ark, huddled against one of the air purifiers on the eighteenth level. Everything was happening so fast this time she barely had any time to catch her breath and recover from the pain of slipping away. Her head felt as if someone had buried an axe blade in the back of her skull, right above her neck. A slicing pain, hot steel splitting her brain in two.
She held her hands tightly over her mouth as she released an agonized moan, the tears streaming down her dirty cheeks.
The smell of recycled air, oil, and solvents calmed her trembling body, and the pain in her head slowly began to fade. Home. My God, I’m home. It had been so long since she’d felt the familiar confines of her workspace.
Connie grabbed the side of the rusty machine and lifted herself off the floor, surprised at how weak she was. And hungry. She stood by the machine, listening to the comforting hum of the equipment she was tasked with maintaining. She felt the familiar thrumming of the massive generator on the lower levels through the steel floorplates, heard the whoosh of air through the ductwork and the clacking of automatic circuits opening and closing.
Home.
It had been a safe place, once. But not anymore.
This was where all the people she’d ever known had been transformed into unblinking robots and where the shadow man had killed her entire family.
She’d had the dream again while in the darkness. She’d been a little girl, terribly scared, hugging her mother, a woman whom she felt was her mother, but it wasn’t really her. She’d seen her real mother, here, in the Ark, lying dead on the floorplates, the shadow man standing over her.
This time the dream had only lasted a few seconds, but it usually lasted much longer. The woman would disappear into the shadows, calling for Connie’s father (not her real father). She would stand in the doorway, terrified, then, driven by some longing (Mommy and Daddy are hurt), she would walk down the dark hallway to the living room, where she would see them. All of them.
Then they would come for her. She felt herself slipping away, just as quickly as before.
She was in the darkness. Only for a second.
She was on an icy street during nighttime, and the air was cold. She knelt on the freezing asphalt for a few seconds, waiting for the pain to subside. She wrapped her arms around herself and felt her teeth begin to chatter. This was Brody’s place. She was back.
Connie rose to her feet and looked around, trying to get her bearings, and saw two men peeking out from a nearby alley.
There are three of them. The other one was still out of view. She knew she had to go away from them and toward the last place she and Brody had been together. She’d told him that, right? If Brody was here, now, he’d be in the alley by the dumpster. And if not, she’d wait for him there. As long as she could.
Connie walked quickly, trying to stay out of the lights but watching the shadows for her tormentor. She’d managed to avoid the shadow man so far, and she wasn’t about to break her lucky streak.
“I’ve got to figure out how to bring a damned coat with me next time,” she whispered to herself, her breath curling into the air. She found the alley easily enough and turned the corner. She stopped in her tracks when she saw a shadowy figure rise in the dim light. Then she saw the rifle.
What do you know, a man who can follow directions. She stepped into the alley, relieved to see Brody again. The smile on her face faded as she watched him turn and point the rifle right at her.
Brody swung his body to the left just as the rifle fired, the bullet ricocheting off the building to his left and zinging into the air. At the last second, he’d realized who he was shooting at. Jesus Christ, what did I just do?
He tossed the rifle to the ground. He’d missed, but if the ricochet had hit her . . .
She was facedown on the ground, arms covering her head.
“Connie!” Brody skidded to a stop and dropped to his knees.
She looked up at him, a strange mix of surprise, fear, and pissed-off in her eyes. “What—the—fuck, Brody! You could’ve killed me!” She reached out and pushed him.
He couldn’t keep his balance and fell to his side. “Are you hit?”
Connie stood and brushed the dirt from her palms on her coveralls. “No, I’m not hit, asshole. What the hell were you thinking?”
Brody was relieved Connie was okay, but he was so surprised he was fumbling his words. “I thought you were—I couldn’t see—Jesus! Don’t ever sneak up on a guy with a rifle!” He got to his feet as well.
“I wasn’t sneaking.”
“Then why didn’t you say something? Anything? Like ‘Hi, Brody, it’s me, Connie!’”
She tilted her head and put her hands on her hips. “Hi, Brody! It’s me, Connie! Hey, nice rifle! Don’t blow my fucking head off, okay? Is that better?”
Brody laughed, which probably wasn’t the right thing to do at the moment, considering he’d almost killed the only real person in this crazy place who was in it with him, but with her head tilted like that . . . Well, it was funny.
She stared at him for what seemed an eternity, then started laughing. “God, Brody, do I need to paint myself bright orange or something?”
He shook his head. “That was close. I thought you were the shadow man.”
She picked up the rifle. “If the shadow man is here, he probably heard the shot,” Connie said. “Not to mention the three guys who like to beat you up back there, or that fat-ass bartender with the cannon and all his angry buddies. We need to move.”
Brody reached for the rifle, but Connie shook her head. “Uh-uh. If you think I’m giving this back to you right now, you’re crazy.”
Brody smiled. “Can you use it?” He was pretty sure she could.
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
They made their way through the darkened town, walking through the shadow-cloaked streets, until they found another boundary. The scene in front of them ended abruptly at a swirling black cloud, stretching from the ground and up into the night sky. They chose one of the nearby buildings to hole up inside.
“Hold this,” Connie said, handing him the rifle. Brody watched as Connie pulled her sleeve over her hand, balled it up, and punched through a glass panel on a side door. She reached inside and flipped the lock.
“You’ve done this before?” he asked, more than a little impressed.
“Nope. Never.” She opened the door and motioned him inside.
“Why didn’t you use the rifle?” Brody asked as he walked inside.
“Because . . . it’s plastic?”
“It’s tougher than it looks, believe me.” And so are you.
Connie shut the door behind them.
“Want to risk any lights?” Brody asked.
She shook her head. “If he’s out there, we don’t want to make finding us easier.”
They used illumination from the streetlights outside and made their way to a pile of boxes on the far side of the mostly empty room. The space looked like a storage facility of some kind. “Have you felt it yet?” Brody asked.
“No, not yet. We’ve got some time, I think.” Connie sat down on the floor beside the boxes. Brody sat down next to her and leaned the rifle against the nearest box, well within reach.
“I was in the dark, Connie, and I learned something about this place.” Brody blurted it out but figured this was the way their conversations would have to be, since neither of them knew how long they’d have together.
“Did you dream?” she asked. There was
an excitement in her voice that Brody hadn’t heard before.
“No,” Brody replied, “it wasn’t a dream, really. More of an awareness of what’s happening around me. There’s four of me, Connie.”
She was silent for a few seconds, and Brody could tell his revelation wasn’t registering.
“Along with this place,” Brody continued, “there are three others.”
“What do you mean by others?”
He scooted closer to her and didn’t like the way she recoiled. The withdrawal was minimal, a tiny movement, but he noticed it just the same. He stayed where he was. “Look, when I was in the darkness, I saw things. Remembered things. About me, but from other places. We’re going through the same thing, Connie. I know we are. You’ve been there. I saw you.”
She moved a few inches away. “What do you mean, I’ve been there?” she asked, her voice taking on an odd tone that Brody didn’t particularly like. He heard fear in her voice. He’d thought she would tell him much the same thing, how she’d seen other versions of herself as well, but from her reaction, Brody began to think she had no idea what he spoke of.
“In Joshua, Maine,” Brody continued, “you were there. In my house. You were dressed like my wife, same clothes and everything, but it was you, Connie.”
She said nothing.
“I’ve seen you in Culver, Ohio. We’re both little kids.” Again, nothing but silence. “And in Colorado. West Glenn, Colorado. We’re both teenagers.”
Even in the dim light from the outside, Brody could see that she’d looked away from him and was shaking her head.
“Connie, we’ve talked to each other, run from the shadow man together, in all of these places, just like we’ve done here. And you—the different you—have asked me if I remember any of my dreams.” He waited, the seconds ticking by as he gave her time to respond. Connie just sat there, her eyes fixed on a spot on the floor in front of her feet. “You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?” Brody asked.
“I only know my home, in the Ark, and this place,” she said softly.
The Argus Deceit Page 19