Dominion

by Bentley Little

  How was that possible?

  Her spirits sank as she stared at the television. She and Kevin had been planning to alert outside authorities, but she hadn’t thought they’d be the only ones to do so. She’d assumed that others had escaped to tell what was going on here. And people from the outside must have been trying to contact people in the valley. Relatives, friends, business associates. What about all the people trying to order wine? What about all of the tourists trying to drive into Napa? Hadn’t any of those people complained?

  Apparently not.

  Maybe they’d been killed.

  She tried not to think of that.

  Maybe the entire state had been taken over by bacchantes.

  That wasn’t physically possible.

  Not yet.

  Kevin sat down on the bed next to her. “Nothing, huh?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe there’ll be something on the late news.”

  “Maybe,” she said doubtfully.

  Kevin looked toward the window. She followed his gaze and saw the deepening hues of twilight peeking in between the boards. He stood, turned on the room light, closed the Venetian blinds.

  “It’s going to be a long night,” he said, walking back to the bed.

  Penelope nodded. “If we live through it.”

  He sat down next to her, and the two of them remained there silently, watching the TV.

  Officer Dennis Mccomber finished raping the corpse of | the chief’s daughter and pulled out, rolling off her. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and reached for the bottle next to him, finishing it off. He was sore and spent and buzzing, and that was exactly how he wanted to feel right now.

  God damn, he felt good.

  Freedom.

  That’s what this new god had brought. Freedom.

  It was what he’d been craving all these years, although he hadn’t really known it. As a policeman he was supposed to enforce the law, make sure people followed the rules, but he had never really been interested in that. He had joined the force so that he would be above those laws, so that he would not have to follow those rules. Speeding? He could do it.

  But if other people attempted it, he would give them a ticket. Ass kicking? He could do it, but if other people did it, he would arrest them.

  It had not been real freedom, though, only a taste, a sample, a whetting of his appetite.

  This was freedom.

  Mccomber reached over and touched the chief’s daughter’s cold breast, squeezing the nipple.

  He had been afraid before the god had arrived, filled with a nearly debilitating dread that had only been relieved by wine. But His arrival had been anything but dreadful. Indeed, it had been the most glorious event in Mccomber’s life, and the liberation he had felt as the reverberations of the god’s rebirth had spread throughout the valley had been stronger, purer, and more real than anything he had ever experienced.

  He had been born again himself at that moment.

  Mccomber grabbed the chief’s daughter by the arm and rolled her over. He looked toward Goodridge. “You want her next?”

  The chief shook his head drunkenly, then fell facedown on the desk.

  Mccomber laughed, his laughter doubling as he saw blood from the chief’s broken nose pool onto the papers spread atop the desk. He threw the bottle against the wall, was gratified to hear it shatter. He nodded toward one of the rookies lined up by the window.

  “Next,” he said.

  They awoke in the morning to the sound of gunfire. Penelope jerked up, disoriented to find herself dressed and sleeping in a strange bed. Then the past forty-eight hours returned in a rush, and she looked around the dim room until her eyes found Kevin crouched in front of the boarded window, peering through the slats of the Venetian blinds.

  She tiptoed over to where he sat crouched, ducking down next to him.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  He shook his head, put a finger to his lips.

  She looked at him, on his knees, tightly holding his baseball bat, doing his best to defend them though he was obviously frightened. A tingling feeling passed through her. She should reward him, maybe. Give him a blow job while he waited there.

  No!

  She inhaled, exhaled. What the hell was she thinking about?

  Blood.

  Raising herself to the level of the window, Penelope spread apart two of the slats, peeked through the blinds, between the boards. Outside, in the middle of the street, a migrant farmworker had been surrounded by a group of gun-toting women dressed in motley rags. They were passing around a bottle, taking turns shooting at his feet to make him dance. Or shooting at what was left of his feet. For he was attempting to cavort now on what looked like bloody stumps as the women called out the names of various dance steps, laughing.

  “Lay low!” Kevin whispered, grabbing Penelope’s shoulder and pulling her down. “Don’t touch those blinds! They’ll see the movement!”

  She nodded, followed his lead, peering at an angle through the slats without touching them. The women on the street were shooting again, dancing and whooping as the farmworker fell screaming to his knees.

  Their intoxication seemed to come as much from the violence as the alcohol, and the scary thing was that Penelope knew exactly how they felt.

  She sat on the floor, facing away from the window, listening but not looking.

  She had awakened in the middle of the night with a craving for wine, the smell of fresh blood in her nostrils. She had gotten a drink of water instead and had forced herself to fall back asleep. The blood, she thought now, had come from the bathroom. The woman who’d stayed here before them had probably been menstruating at the time.

  How could she smell that, though?

  Her senses were becoming heightened.

  That was a frightening thought, and she pushed it away.

  What were her mothers doing now? she wondered.

  Or her mother and her aunts.

  That was one thing good that had come out of all of this. She had finally confirmed what she’d known all along—that Mother Felice was her biological mother, her real mother. Despite everything else that had happened, that knowledge made her feel good. The last time she’d seen her mother, she had been naked and covered with blood, but Penelope still had the feeling that after this was all over and done with after the rest of her mothers were dead ~

  —the two of them would be together, and it would be different, better, than before. They would be a real family, a regular family, a normal family, and whatever difficulties they might have, whatever problems they might come up against, would be normal problems.

  Outside the cabin, there was a shot, a scream, and wild laughter.

  Penelope turned toward Kevin. “They killed him,” he whispered. “They shot him in the head.”

  She closed her eyes, feeling sick, seeing in her mindj| the farmworker’s bloody, stumpy feet as he tried to danced on the asphalt.

  “They’re leaving.” Kevin remained at the window for a*;i moment, then slumped down, exhaling deeply. “Fuck.” >

  “What could we have done if they’d come after us?” I Penelope asked, still whispering.

  Kevin shook his head. “Pray.”

  A half hour later, they were clean and combed and had finished their breakfast, such as it was. Kevin was still keeping watch on the window, but the women had not come back and the street outside remained empty save for the corpse of the farmworker.

  Penelope forced herself to smile. “So what are we going to do today?

  Have a picnic? Hit the mall?”

  “We should try to get out of here,” he suggested. “Out of the valley.”

  “We tried,” she said. “We failed.”

  “Well, we can’t just sit here and wait and … and hope that someone comes to rescue us.”

  “We could find someone to help us.”

  Kevin snorted. “Yeah. Right.” He was silent for a moment, thinking, then a look of hope passed ov
er his features. He turned toward Penelope. “Mr.

  Holbrook. He knows about things like this. We could find him, see if there’s any way he can help us. His address is probably in the phone book.”

  Penelope blinked dumbly.

  “He knows a lot about Greek mythology,” Kevin continued. “Maybe he can figure out something that can get us out of this.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to see him. I don’t like him. He’s creepy.”

  “Creepy or not, we don’t have much choice. And he can’t be any creepier than the other shit we’ve seen.”

  “If he’s still here,” she pointed out. “Or if he isn’t one of them. Or dead.”

  Kevin was obviously excited. “We’ll wait a little while longer, make sure no one else is out there, then we’ll haul out to the car and get out of here.” He started opening the dresser drawers, looking for a phone book. “Start packing our stuff.

  We need to be ready to roll.”

  Penelope thought of arguing, then nodded, saying nothing. She walked into the bathroom, where she began filling up empty sports bottles with tap water. She stopped after the second bottle, looked at herself in the mirror above the sink.

  Holbrook.

  Logically, it sounded good, but the thought of going out to look for the teacher gave her an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wished she could be as optimistic about this as Kevin was, but the idea didn’t sit well with her. She told herself that she was being stupid and paranoid, but she knew that she wasn’t, and the worry showed on her face. The face staring back at her looked scared.

  She glanced away from the mirror, picked up another bottle, filled it up.

  Outside, there was a different feeling in the air, a different emotional atmosphere. Both of them felt it. It was subtle, indefinable, but there, a tangible presence, not merely her own altered perception. She felt nervous, anxious, as though there was a wildness within her struggling to break out—or, more accurately, a wildness without her that was struggling to break in. There were still no people on the street, but the sense that there were no rules of behavior, no boundaries, that everything was acceptable, anything goes, was alive and well and struggling for supremacy with the ordinary values inside both of them.

  She could see it in Kevin’s face, could feel it in herself.

  In the sky above, an airplane, a jumbo jet, flew from east to west, toward the ocean. It was strange to realize that everything that was happening down here was merely a two-second blip on the ground to the people in the airplane. If they blinked, they’d miss the valley. While she and Kevin were desperately trying to escape the hellhole that Napa had become, those people would be served free drinks from the stewardess as they settled in to watch their in-flight movie in air-conditioned comfort.

  But how long before all this spread? How long befo it affected Sonoma?

  Vallejo? San Francisco?

  She didn’t want to think about it.

  They loaded their supplies in the trunk of the car, thenfj got in, Kevin driving.

  He looked down at the page he’d torn out of the phonel book. “Palmer,”

  he said. “That means we’ll have to go| through downtown.” He glanced over at Penelope. “Don’t | worry. We’ll make it.”

  Penelope looked out the windshield of the car at the bloody body of the footless farmworker. “I hope so,” she; said.

  He started the ignition, put the car into gear, and pulled onto the street. “I just hope he’s there and alive and not one of them.”

  Holbrook’s house was a nondescript crackerbox on a street of small, identical subdivision houses.

  Kevin was not sure what he had expected, but it had not been this. Hell, Holbrook’s house was even shittier than his own. He thought of Holbrook lecturing at the front of the class, giving grades, meting out punishment, and it was hard to reconcile that figure of authority and respect with a man who lived in this small, slightly rundown home.

  He parked the car by the curb in front of the house and got out, leaving the engine on. He grabbed one of his screwdrivers from the storage space on the side of the door. “Same deal,” he told Penelope. “Be ready to take off. I’ll go up and check things out, and if something’s wrong, I’ll speed back, hop in, and we’ll haul ass.”

  Penelope smiled. “You don’t want me to take off without you this time, huh?”

  “Fuck no!” He grinned. “I must’ve been crazy.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around.”

  They both laughed.

  “Okay,” Kevin said. “I’m—”

  “What are you doing out there in the street? Get inside!”

  Kevin looked up, startled by the sound of the voice. Over the roof of the car, he saw Holbrook standing in the open doorway of his house, holding a shotgun.

  “Get your asses in here!” the teacher roared.

  Penelope looked toward Kevin, panicked.

  “Now! Before they see you!”

  She opened the door of the car and got out, hurrying across the lawn toward Holbrook. Kevin sped around the front of the car and passed her, clutching his screwdrive … just in case. Holbrook’s fear and concern indicat< that he was probably all right, but they couldn’t afford to| take any chances.

  The teacher raised the shotgun to his shoulder, andl Kevin’s heart lurched in his chest—it was a trap! the basf tard was going to blow them away!—but he stopped in front of the stoop, screwdriver outstretched. “Are youf drunk?” he demanded.

  Holbrook lowered the shotgun, smiled grimly. “Well, I guess that answers that question. I think we’re all okayij here.” He moved to the side, holding the door open. “Get; inside. Quickly.”

  Penelope moved up the stoop and past him, into the; house. Kevin started to follow, then realized that the car’s”; engine was still running. He turned, sprinting back out to : the street.

  “Hey!” Holbrook yelled.

  “The car!” Kevin yelled back. He reached the vehicle, opened the door, threw himself across the seat, and switched off the ignition, turning and pulling out the key. Closing the car door behind him, he hurried back to where Holbrook stood frowning.

  The teacher grabbed his arm as he started to walk into the house. “What were you doing? You could’ve been killed.”

  Kevin yanked his arm out of the man’s grasp. “There’s no one on your street. And that running engine was a red flag to every psycho out there. Besides, I don’t want anyone stealing my car.” He looked into Holbrook’s eyes. “I’m going to need it.”

  “Get inside.”

  Penelope was standing just inside the living room, looking uncertainly around. Holbrook closed the door, locked it, started throwing a series of dead bolts. Kevin wished that Penelope had grabbed a weapon before leaving the car.

  Holbrook put down his shotgun, resting it against the wall next to the door. He turned toward Penelope. “The Daneam women brought back Dionysus, didn’t they?”

  Kevin stared at him, shocked, “How—” he began.

  “They’re meanads.”

  “I know that,” Kevin said. “But how did you know that?”

  Holbrook ignored him. “Did you help them?” he asked Penelope.

  She shook her head.

  “Do you know how they did it?”

  She looked away, looked toward Kevin, didn’t answer.

  “Come on, then,” Holbrook said. “I have something to show you.” He walked past them, through the living room into a short hallway. He opened what looked like a closet door next to the bathroom to reveal a narrow staircase leading down. “Down here.”

  Kevin followed the teacher, Penelope behind him. He caught her eye as he turned around, saw her trepidation. He felt more than a little apprehensive about going in here himself, but he continued down the stairs, following Holbrook.

  The narrow stairwell opened into a room that was easily half as big as the entire house above.

  “Jesus,” Kevin said. He looked around. The entire b
asement was filled with ancient artifacts and poster sized photos of friezes. Graphs and charts had been tacked up next to photographs of Greek ruins and historical sights, and everywhere were piles of books and papers.

  Against the far wall was what looked like a Greek shrine, or a high school drama department’s conception of a Greek shrine. It was rough and amateurish, its pillars made of grey papier mache, and appeared to be only half finished.

  Holbrook walked over to a desk on which a battered computer terminal was flanked by two giant stacks of notebooks. He picked up the top notebook, fished a pen out from under the papers that covered the rest of the desk, and turned toward Penelope, opening the notebook to a blank page.

  “It’s Dion, isn’t it? Dion Semele?”

  She nodded. “Tell me how it happened. Tell me everything you know. Start from the beginning.”

  She did.

  Kevin had heard it before, but the story was just as horrifying and unbelievable the second time. Holbrook listened silently, intently, scribbling furiously in his notebook.

  “Fascinating.” The teacher continued to write after Penelope had finished talking. “So the gods hid inside genes and chromosomes. In DNA.” He shook his head, smiled to himself. “This could be the origin of Jung’s conception of the universal archetype, the collective unconscious. Perhaps this is where the concept that God is to be found within us got started—”

  “Write a paper later,” Kevin said. “Jesus, there are people dying out mere. We don’t have time to sit around playing little mind games.”

  “These ‘little mind games’ are what’s going to save your ass.” Holbrook turned back toward Penelope. “You don’t know what they were chanting when they were anointing Dion with the blood?”

  She shook her head. “Not really.”

  “That’s too bad. If you did, we might be able to reverse the process. As it is …” He trailed off.

  “Can he be killedr Kevin asked.

  Penelope looked from Holbrook to Kevin. “Killed?” she said, her voice rising.

  Kevin could not meet her eyes. “Can he?”

  The teacher nodded slowly. “I think so. But I don’t know for sure. I