Dreamwalker

by Russell James

  Food.

  Twin Moon City residents were condemned to hunger without the blessed release of starvation. Rayna had to be dying for a decent meal.

  Pete went to the mansion kitchen. He’d mentally finished it years ago after reading about the kitchen in the Vanderbilt’s Asheville estate. Pure white marble countertops offset cabinets of dark oak. The oven, stove, and refrigerator were cast iron and white, the zenith of 1930’s technology. Anachronistic, but an old mansion would just feel wrong with a microwave oven in it.

  Hot food was out of the question, but the pantry was full. He filled a sack from under the sink with canned goods and stuffed some utensils and napkins in his pockets.

  He slung the bulging sack over his back like some Santa Claus for the starving and headed for the trap door. A cool, musty breezy greeted him when he opened it. The tunnel stretched out unchanged. Candles flickered along the packed earth walls. Pete descended the steps.

  The tunnel still terminated at a ladder to the ceiling. Pete scaled the ladder. He gave a panel at the top a push and it rotated up on its hinge. He tossed the bag up first, grabbed a candle, and stuck his head into Twin Moon City.

  The candlelight revealed a small apartment bedroom. By Twin Moon City standards, it was in great shape. The mattress and bedding were gone, along with the dresser drawers. Clothes lay scattered about. A tasteful painting of a New England harbor still hung on the wall, and a freestanding full-length mirror leaned against the door to the bathroom. The place had been ransacked, but not decimated like the older parts of the city.

  This area of the city felt different as well. The surge of energy that rushed beneath his feet in the city center was just a trickle now, not as concentrated as it was closer to its destination. Perhaps it also meant there were fewer souls this far out. Fewer souls would draw fewer hunters. He hoped.

  Pete cleared a corner of the dresser and dripped some molten wax on the top. He mashed the base of the candle into the congealing wax as a makeshift holder. Its weak yellow light filled the room.

  The living area of the apartment had not fared as well. Ravaged, trendy Scandinavian furniture lay upended in the corners and the kitchen was in pieces. Weapons fire had transformed one of the front windows into a sea of misshapen jewels on the floor. A few bullet holes salted the back wall. The hallway door hung on one hinge, the lock and handle blasted away.

  From the apartment’s second story view, the neighborhood only looked half-bad. Some shop windows remained intact and the road wasn’t littered with personal belongings. Why with the right investors…

  Pete flipped a couch over near the window and sat on the one undamaged cushion. All he had to do now was wait for Rayna to find him.

  Fifteen silent minutes passed. One gunner Jeep made a roaring pass down the street, but held its fire, on the way to a hotter destination.

  Footsteps creaked in the hall stairwell. Rayna appeared in the doorway.

  “Pete!” she whispered.

  Pete’s heart skipped a beat at the disheveled sight of her.

  “At your service.”

  She nearly skipped into the room. He wrapped her in a hug that became much longer than he expected when she didn’t release. Rayna felt wonderful in his arms, real and alive. The power of her soul ran through her, the power that had been absent in the shell at Legacy Hospice.

  “I knew I felt you here,” she said.

  “This way,” Pete said, pulling her away from the living room. “I made us dinner reservations.”

  They entered the candlelit bedroom. Pete beckoned Rayna to sit on the floor by the bed. Rayna caught sight of the full-length mirror and did a double-take before sitting down. He slid the sack of food out into the candlelight and extracted a can of ravioli. Rayna’s jaw dropped.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped. “You brought food! The perfect gift.”

  “I had a hankering for Italian tonight,” Pete said. “Hope that works for you.”

  Rayna grabbed the can and yanked off the pop top.

  “Dog food would work for me right now,” she said. “This is as good as steak and lobster.”

  Pete handed her a spoon. Her cheeks flushed, as if using a utensil had not crossed her mind. She slid the spoon from Pete’s hand.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m starved. This stuff is hard to come by.”

  “No apology needed,” Pete said. “Dive in. We should talk and eat at the same time.”

  “Aren’t you eating?”

  “No,” Pete said. “Not hungry. I ate…”

  He stopped himself just short of saying “in the real world.” For Rayna, this was the real world.

  “…before I came,” he finished. “This stuff,” he gave the sack a nudge with his foot, “is a gift for you, or anyone else here who needs it.”

  Rayna smiled and devoured a big spoonful of ravioli with a look of ecstasy.

  “Damn good cooking, Mr. Holm,” she said.

  “I slaved away all day in the kitchen,” he said. “Now, we need a plan, so I need some information.”

  Rayna swallowed quickly. “Fire away.”

  “I brought you food instead of a weapon. I thought added firepower would just attract more hunters. Right?”

  “One hundred percent,” she said. She raised a ravioli salute. “Food is fantastic.”

  “This place here,” Pete said, waving a finger over his head, “isn’t as devastated as the rest of the city.”

  “No. It takes a while for the new sections to run down. Veteran residents just pass through for some looting. The gunner Jeeps expend some pent-up energy blasting buildings when they need to, but they generally stay on their prey’s scent hard. Until enough new residents show up here, the Jeeps roam elsewhere.”

  “Do you get to talk with the others?” Pete asked.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “It’s hit or miss. Whoever you run into. Nothing organized. It isn’t safe to stay together. Even groups of two gather gunner Jeeps like a magnet. Besides, a good number of the residents are close to cracking and turning hunter. They aren’t good company.”

  Pete thought about Waikiki Simon.

  Rayna scraped the bottom of the ravioli can with the spoon and looked like she was about to give it a lick. He reached in the sack and tossed her a can of green beans.

  “Here,” he said, “eat your vegetables.”

  She smiled and popped open the can.

  “How did you know I could ‘leave a reflection’ that first night?” he asked. “Can you do that?”

  “No way,” she said. “I told you, I’m no dreamwalker. My sister told me she used to use that trick in her nightmares.”

  “Any other tricks she shared with you?” Pete asked.

  “No, that was about it. There was a lot about her nightmares she didn’t share. She tried to shield me from it all.”

  “How did Cauquemere get loose in the tactile world?” Pete said. “Why isn’t he still bound here?”

  “Estella said he was released through a mirror in some voodoo ritual. That’s why I was a bit surprised to see that one.” She pointed at the full-length mirror in the room. “Hunters destroy them first thing when somewhere new joins the map. The man has a vampire-level aversion.”

  “You would think that Cauquemere would have a little better handle on the furnishings when he created these places.”

  “He can’t. The areas are pulled wholesale from people’s memories. Cauquemere isn’t too creative if it isn’t torture.” She took a mouthful of beans, but still managed to force out, “Idiot savant.”

  In the same way leaving a reflection instantly made sense, Pete suddenly knew how to use the mirror. It was so simple.

  “Give me a hand with this, Alice,” he said. He stepped over to the mirror. “Wonderland time.”

  Rayna put the empty can on the floor and went to the mirro
r’s opposite side. They each lifted their side of the base and Pete led them into the living room. He positioned the mirror so it faced the street. They stepped back.

  “Ohh-kayy?” Rayna said.

  He lined up the abandoned bakery across the street on the first floor, dead center on the area right in front of the counter. Pete raised his hand to the mirror, fingertips spread wide. He closed his eyes and channeled the energy in his body so that it pooled in his shoulder. He held his breath and pushed the energy further down his arm, like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. The power spun his fingers out of phase with this location and they tingled.

  He placed his fingertips against the cool mirror. It felt soft, like Jell-O wrapped in cellophane. His epiphany said the surface should give, he’d pass through, and end up in the bakery. He pushed harder. The mirror just flexed. He didn’t have the horsepower.

  “What are you doing?” Rayna asked.

  He had to somehow be stronger. A second inspiration hit.

  “Come here,” he said.

  With one hand still on the mirror, he took hers. It felt like he’d plugged into a high voltage outlet. Life force flew through him, a force warm and wonderful and unmistakably Rayna.

  His fingertips danced with a life all their own. He pressed against the glass and passed through. He pulled Rayna along. He felt dizzy for a split second. When his head cleared, the room had changed.

  He and Rayna stood in the bakery.

  “Wow,” Rayna gasped. She gave Pete’s hand an extra squeeze.

  Through the bakery window they could see the mirror in the second floor apartment.

  “I think we just found our invitation to the palace,” Pete said.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Pete and Rayna made a quick dash from the scene of their teleportation back to the second floor apartment. The mirror issued no round trip tickets.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Rayna asked.

  “I doubt I can get a tunnel into the palace,” Pete said, “otherwise your sister would have created herself a tunnel out. Since there’s no way we’d get past the howling madmen circling the gates, we’ll go over. From that office rooftop, we’ll aim this right into a palace window. We’ll be in the building in a flash. Then we find Estella.”

  “Cauquemere won’t give her up,” she said.

  “We’ll make sure he isn’t home. This is where you come in.”

  “Name it.”

  “We’ll draw Cauquemere out of the palace,” Pete said. “He’ll leave if there’s a big enough disturbance, like when the men hijacked the gunner Jeep. I can’t create something here, but if I brought you food, I can bring back anything. I’ll bring back a distraction, say, a bomb. You’ll plant it in the city, a few blocks away, then head up to the office.”

  “We need to throw a bigger party than just an explosion to get Cauquemere to accept our invitation,” Rayna said. “We can’t take the chance he’s there when we drop in.”

  “Two of us can only make so big a distraction.”

  “Then I’ll get help,” Rayna said. “Bring me in a dozen assault rifles. I’ll recruit some residents. They’ll lay low, dispersed around the bomb site. Once the blast goes off, they’ll ambush the arriving hunters.”

  “Cauquemere can’t ignore an organized uprising.”

  “And the palace is left empty,” Rayna said.

  “Those people firing around the blast area,” Pete said, “they won’t have a chance. Against a hundred Jeep-riding zombies and Cauquemere, they’ll be cut to pieces.”

  “But they’ll go down swinging,” Rayna said. “I can find a dozen who’d rather get a quick ticket out of here.”

  Pete gave the sack of food a shove with his foot. Cans clinked together. “These can be recruiting inducements, if you need them.”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  “Okay. For now, we need to get that mirror hidden in the office building. Can you get us there?”

  “Hey, you’re on my turf. We just need to get it there in one piece.”

  The heavy mirror was five feet tall and two feet wide.

  “We can do it,” Pete said with more confidence than he felt. He yanked the drapes from the window. They came down in a pile, accompanied by the thick metal curtain rod and an explosion of dust. Pete wrapped the drapes around the mirror.

  “Ready?”

  “You bet,” Rayna said. She whipped her hair into a pony tail and grabbed the top of the mirror. Pete took the base and they lifted it off the ground.

  Rayna pulled him out the door and down the stairway. They paused at street level. Rayna stuck her head out the open doorway and scanned the area.

  Neon streetlights illuminated the eternally damp streets. Nothing moved.

  “Looks clear,” she said. “We’re going right, then up the alley behind the house. Ready?”

  Rayna didn’t wait for his reply. She nearly yanked the mirror out of Pete’s hands as she charged out of the house. They dashed through the narrow, littered alley. Their footsteps echoed like rifle shots in the brick canyon, a potential call to arms for a pack of screaming hunters. Pete’s heart raced at top speed.

  Even with the bulky mirror, Rayna moved like a cheetah on the hunt. At the next street, she paused and dropped to one knee. Pete rested his end on the ground and caught his breath.

  This street had been annexed into Twin Moon City for some time. Blasted building faces littered the street with shards of glass and splinters of wood and concrete. Across the street sat a destroyed clothing store. Fifty-caliber rounds had reduced the now nude mannequins to a jumble of limbless, charred torsos.

  “We’re going for that store,” Rayna said. “Straight through that missing front window.”

  “Right behind you,” Pete said.

  From the distance, came the dreaded staccato blare of an unmuffled V8, like the scream of a mechanical dinosaur. They bolted for the store.

  They hit the far sidewalk at a run and leapt through the display window. The mirror’s side scraped on the window frame. They dodged empty clothing racks and wads of stray hangers. A machine gun thunked a block away.

  They headed for a hole in the store’s rear wall. This wasn’t blast damage from the hunters’ weapons. The chiseled edges spoke of hours of patient work to yield a slit just wide enough to take a person sideways. A similar slit breached the wall of the adjacent building, the beaten ground between the two scuffed clear of trash.

  Rayna slipped through with ease, the mirror’s tip balanced on her trailing hand. Pete saw the problem too late.

  “Rayna!”

  He stopped and the mirror slid past him. He grabbed the base just as the frame’s wide feet jammed in the narrow slot, inches too wide for passage.

  Outside the building, an engine roared.

  Pete stepped back and kicked the center of the base. The feet shattered. The mirror dropped. He caught it with one hand, inches from the floor.

  “Pete?”

  Rayna’s voice sounded miles away from the other side of the wall. Brakes screeched out front.

  “Got it! Go!”

  He slid through after the mirror. The tight alley flashed by and he passed though the next wall. His knuckles scraped against the concrete’s sharp edge.

  Whatever this building had been, it was empty now, looted and stripped or maybe just a gap in some victim’s hijacked memory. Rayna angled across the open space to windows that faced the next street. Bullets rattled around inside the store behind them.

  The mirror bounced and weaved in Pete’s hands, as if intent on deserting from its important mission. Pete was out of step with Rayna, her up was his down. He skipped and shifted the weight of the mirror in his arms. He fell into the rhythm of her a long-distance runner’s lope. Now the mirror seemed to glide on air.

  Three more streets. Pause. Pant. Run. Each nei
ghborhood was more ravaged than the last as they moved into older sections of the city. They dashed into a burned out bookstore and scared up two residents like a pair of quail. They passed through another engineered gap in the wall and into another empty set of offices.

  “Almost there,” Rayna said.

  She aimed them through the front door, straight across the street and through the missing front window of a pizzeria. The sign on the door beside it said CLOSED. Someone had scratched the word ALWAYS above it.

  She made a beeline for the metal rear door and hit the center bar at a run. The door stopped halfway open with a heavy thud. Metal clattered on asphalt.

  Between the buildings, a hunter lay face down on the ground. He wore the remains of a fast food worker’s uniform. His machine gun had landed a few feet down the alley. Black, greasy hair hung down to his collar. His head turned a slow 180. Mummified flesh covered its face. It looked up with dead, glassy eyes. Its mouth dropped open and out came a high-pitched, cackling laugh.

  Pete dropped the mirror. He charged the hunter and kicked its head like a soccer ball. The head tore from its neck with a mushy rip and hit the pavement a few feet away. The decapitated body dropped back to the ground.

  A gunner Jeep barreled past the far end of the alley. Brakes wailed and the engine revved as the driver threw it into reverse.

  “It’s coming back,” Rayna said.

  Pete scooped up his end of the mirror. She led him through one more building and to the rear door of a second. The sign on the door read EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. Pete wondered what didn’t qualify as an emergency in Twin Moon City. Rayna heaved the door open. They pulled the mirror inside.

  It was the blasted cubicle hell near the palace.

  Pete stripped the protective drapes from the frame. He rocked it toward the filtered outside light.

  Not a scratch.

  “Let’s stash this in the base of the stairwell, behind the door,” he said. “We’ll move it up to the roof at the last minute.”