by Lukens, Mark
Josh could feel his forearm now. It was hurting, itching. Things were moving around inside his wound—maggots trying to get out. His fingers finally wrapped around the cylinder of plastic—the flashlight. He pushed the button and a beam of light shot up at the ceiling, pushing the darkness back just a little.
He sat up and shined the light around the bedroom, panning it back and forth quickly, looking for the Dragon Lord.
No one there. He was alone in the bedroom. He shined the light down at the washcloth taped to his arm. He expected to see spots of blood on the washcloth, but there was no blood.
But it was still hurting like hell. Aching, like it had in the dream. He wanted to pop another pill. He sat there on the bed for a moment with the light shining down onto the covers, trying to think of when he had taken the last two pain pills. He didn’t keep the bottle of pills in his sock or backpack anymore, afraid Ray would take it from him. He had the bottle tucked underneath his mattress.
He wanted another pill, but he decided he wasn’t going to take one right now. He didn’t know how many pills he had left and he needed to space them out a little better. If they didn’t find some antibiotics soon, he was really going to need those pills when the inevitable came.
Josh shut the flashlight off, but he held on to it for a moment, lying in bed with only his legs under the covers. It actually felt a little hot in the room, which was a good feeling after all the cold nights he’d been exposed to. He wondered if he was already getting sick and clammy.
The darkness was oppressive, like an ocean of blackness squeezing him from every direction, pressing down on his body like a coffin lid. He wanted to go back to sleep, but he didn’t want to dream anymore. He didn’t even want to think about his dreams, so he tried to think about something else. He wondered why Ray’s friend had gone to all of this trouble to build this cabin, this fortress, but hadn’t even bothered to stock anything here. Ray’s friend seemed to have everything here—the Jeep in the garage, the lawn equipment in the sheds, the bathroom supplies, dish soap, extra towels—but no mass of food and supplies. It just didn’t make sense that this guy would go so far and then stop right at the end. What had been his plans? Tow a full-size trailer of supplies behind his truck when he finally decided to come out here to the cabin?
No, that didn’t make sense. There had to be supplies here. They had to be hidden somewhere. But where? Not outside, unless they were buried. And that was a possibility. Maybe there was a secret bunker buried on the property somewhere. Maybe it was close to the sheds. Josh closed his eyes and decided that tomorrow he would begin searching the land around the cabin for a metal hatch buried in the ground. Maybe Ray would be a little happier with him if he found the supplies. Ray seemed to hate him. Even when Josh had found the hidden breakers for the electricity and the hidden main shutoff for the water, Ray still seemed to hate him.
Josh remembered being down in the basement, crawling under the counter to get to the hidden electrical breakers. There were so many pipes down in the basement, so many wires, more than a normal basement would have.
Josh’s eyes popped open in the darkness. He’d been on the verge of sleep when it had hit him. There was something odd about all of those wires and pipes snaking across the ceiling and walls of the basement. He turned the flashlight back on and set it on the table. He used the light to find his jeans and slip them on. He put his hiking boots on, lacing them up quickly, trying to be careful with his injured arm. He slipped his black hoodie on and turned the flashlight back off, but he took it with him to the bedroom door.
He turned the doorknob gently, easing the door open. This was a newer home so there were no creaks in the hinges or the floorboards as he crept across the kitchen to the basement door, taking his time, feeling his way along through the darkness. It took a few moments to find the basement door. He could hear Luke breathing heavily from the living room, not snoring, but close.
Slowly Josh eased the basement door open and slipped inside onto the landing. He closed the door all the way before turning on his flashlight. He could have turned on the stairwell light, but he didn’t want to turn on any lights until he was all the way down in the basement.
With his flashlight beam guiding the way, Josh walked down the stairs. He got to the bottom and rounded the corner, venturing deeper into the basement.
He should have realized what was wrong with the basement when he’d been down here earlier. He remembered thinking that it was strange that the basement was so small compared to the floor-plan of the house above. But then Mike had noticed that his arm was bleeding and Josh’s mind had turned to that.
Now that he was down here again, it seemed so obvious. Wires and pipes ran to the far wall. He shined his light along the top of that wall, a block wall, but now he was sure it was a fake wall. There was something beyond that wall.
CHAPTER 49
Luke
In Luke’s dream he’d seen flashes of the woman and the girl that he’d seen in a previous dream, the ones he’d seen in the motel lobby, the ones he couldn’t warn or even save when the bad men had pulled up outside in the van. He also had glimpses of the other two people he’d been seeing in his dreams lately, the man and the woman traveling together.
But soon he was back in the place where he knew he would be—the war-torn town where the Dragon Lord ruled. Luke was back on the littered streets, walking past the destroyed and ransacked homes and buildings, many with the DA symbols painted on them with bright red paint, the only real color in this town that wasn’t a shade of white, gray, or black. Except the color of blood . . . there was that.
The bodies still hung from the branches of skeletal trees and from the edges of porch roofs, the mutilated corpses twisting in the wind, the flesh picked apart in places from the crows and buzzards. Some of the tortured people were still alive, still clinging to life even though they wanted death more than anything now.
Luke found himself walking towards the center of town, towards the noise of a crowd, a gathering of the Dragon Lord’s followers. He didn’t want to go towards the roar of the people, didn’t want to see what they were doing beyond those buildings, but it was like his legs were moving on their own, like some force was gently pulling him forward, a force just strong enough that he couldn’t resist. He had his shoulder holster under his black hoodie, but his gun wasn’t there. He didn’t have any weapons at all, yet he still kept moving forward.
Cheers erupted from the center of town. It sounded like a sporting event was going on, maybe a few hundred people attending. There was a glow of yellowish light flickering above the buildings, like there were bonfires.
Time sped up. He rounded the corner of a building to see a big town square surrounded by buildings that used to be businesses: a school, a post office, a restaurant, an antique store, a dentist’s office, other buildings that could have been anything before, but were now blasted husks of what they once were.
The people were gathered around a large wooden platform built a few feet up off of a large lawn of brown grass trampled down by thousands of footsteps. On the wooden platform an old-fashioned set of stocks had been built, the kind used in the Puritan days for punishment and public humiliation, the kind with a hole in the middle for a person’s head, and two smaller holes for the hands. A naked man was trapped in the stocks now, his body hunched over uncomfortably, his hands and head trapped in the stocks. His pale flesh was marked by the stripes from a whip. He shivered in the wind, frozen in place, trapped in the wood, his fists clenched, his eyes half-closed as he cried, his greasy and stringy hair hanging down on each side of his face.
The only other person on the platform with the prisoner was the Dragon Lord. The man was tall and thin, yet he exuded power. He was dressed from head to toe in black clothing. He wore a black executioner’s hood over his head, hiding his face, only the eyeholes allowing him to see. The Dragon’s followers surrounded the wooden platform, all of them excited, waiting for the violence that was coming.
The Dragon held an ax in his gloved hands, choking up on the handle, squeezing it like he was getting ready to swing it.
The man trapped in the stocks opened his eyes, staring at the ax, knowing what was coming soon. He trembled and struggled, but the stocks had been built too solidly, the holes his head and hands were in so tight he could barely budge. He had no way to turn his face away when the ax came for him.
Luke stood at the edge of the crowd, still by the corner of the building. Even though he was at least fifty yards away, it was like he could see everything up on the platform so clearly. It felt like he stood on some kind of elevation, like he was almost looking down at the platform. And the crowd there seemed to have parted just a little, allowing him to see better. Luke wanted to leave, he didn’t want to see this, but his feet were frozen to the ground—like they had been when he’d been inside the motel office, when the woman and girl were sleeping, when the van pulled up outside. He couldn’t move now, and he couldn’t help but to watch.
“Luke!” a man called.
Luke recognized the voice, and then he saw the man in the crowd. It was Jacob, the one who used to work for Vincent, the one who had trained him to become an enforcer, the one who had come to bring him back to Vincent when society collapsed. He and Jacob locked eyes for a moment, then Jacob turned his eyes up to the Dragon Lord on the platform.
It was impossible. Jacob was dead. He had to be. The police shot him. Hadn’t they?
The Dragon pretended not to notice Luke; he stalked the stage, his heavy black boots clomping down on the wood floorboards of the platform with each step. He stepped away from the man in the stocks, and took some practice swings with the ax, the weapon just a gray blur through the air with each vicious swing.
The man in the stocks sobbed, his body shaking. “Please,” he begged. “Please don’t.”
The Dragon walked over to his prisoner, aiming his ax at the man’s exposed face, lining up his swing patiently, then pulling back slowly and swinging the ax slowly toward the man’s face, stopping just inches away, getting ready for the real swing. At first Luke thought the Dragon was going to lop the man’s head off with his ax, but now he realized that he meant to bury the ax right in the middle of the man’s face.
“Stop!” Luke yelled at the Dragon Lord.
Finally the Dragon looked Luke’s way, his eyes shining brightly behind the eyeholes of his executioner’s mask. For a moment the Dragon was motionless, but then he drew his ax back and swung it as hard as he could right at the man’s face.
There was a sickening crunch. The man’s face folded in from the blow. The crowd erupted in cheers.
Luke snapped awake in the darkness. It was dark in the cabin with all the drapes closed over the windows, but Luke could still make out the faintest outlines of the archway to the kitchen, the stairs on the other side of the living room, and the other furniture in the room. He lay very still on the couch, breathing softly, listening to the silence.
But then he heard something, the sound of footsteps in the kitchen, a door being eased closed. Then he heard footsteps down the stairs in the basement. Luke stared at the kitchen and saw the faintest of light coming from under the bottom of the door to the basement. It was Josh. He’d gone down to the basement for something.
Luke sat up and slipped his feet into his hiking boots, lacing them up quickly. He crept to the basement door, opened it, and then he went down the steps as silently as he could. Even on the stairs, he could see the light from Josh’s flashlight from down below. He could hear him doing something down there.
Luke crept around the corner at the bottom of the steps. He entered the basement. He walked closer and then stopped when he realized that Josh was standing in front of the far wall, where some kind of doorway had been opened up, a black rectangle of deeper darkness.
“What are you doing?” Luke asked.
Josh spun around with a big smile. “I found it.”
CHAPTER 50
Ray
In Ray’s dream he saw Freddie, his younger brother.
Ray was back in that blasted town he often visited in his dreams, the Dragon Lord’s town. The low gray clouds were there again, hanging over the ruined houses and buildings, the rusted cars, the dead and dying bodies. Ray could feel the cold air on his skin, could smell the rotting and decaying flesh, he could hear the wind whistling through the rubble and leafless trees. He walked down the street towards the center of town where the collection of buildings and businesses were closer together. There was some kind of light coming from the center of town in the murky air, and there was a crowd there, cheering like they were watching a sporting event or a church revival.
“Ray.”
Ray froze. Someone was calling his name from somewhere close by. He knew that voice. It was a voice he hadn’t heard in so many years, a voice that belonged to a dead man—his younger brother Freddie, who had overdosed on heroin so many years ago.
“Freddie?” Ray said as he started walking towards the building to his left, the place where Freddie’s voice had come from. A part of him knew this wasn’t rational; he knew that it hadn’t really been Freddie’s voice, and he told himself not to seek out the owner of that voice. But Ray couldn’t stop, even though he knew Freddie couldn’t be alive, he still couldn’t stop.
A moment later, Ray turned the corner. He saw his little brother standing on a patch of brown grass between the two buildings. The cold wind blew the trash and papers past Freddie’s bare feet. Freddie wore only a pair of pants and a shirt, the clothing soiled with stains and dotted with holes. Freddie’s skin was ashy gray, his eyes and cheeks sunken in, his teeth too big for his emaciated face. A needle was stuck in the crook of his arm, a rubber string tied around his skinny upper arm. Freddie looked to be about nineteen years old, the age he was when he had died.
Ray stood very still as Freddie looked down at the needle in his arm like he’d just noticed that it was there. He reached for it, pushing the plunger down with his thumb, injecting the drugs into his vein.
“Freddie, don’t,” Ray whispered, but there was no force behind his words. He knew he couldn’t stop Freddie. Even if he stopped him now, Freddie would find more, he would always find more, and eventually he would do too much and die.
Freddie’s eyelids fluttered, his eyeballs rolling up into his eyelids, his face going blank, his mouth opening, a sigh of ecstasy escaping his throat. He fell forward, flat on his face, never bothering to catch his fall, already dead before he hit the ground.
Ray snapped awake. He lay in bed for a moment, not moving a muscle. He rubbed his knuckles in his eyes and felt the wetness of tears there. The memories of Freddie came rushing back to him. He knew it had been a dream, but it had felt so real, like his younger brother had really been standing there in front of him. But that was impossible because Freddie had been dead for over seventeen years now. Ray had tried to talk sense into Freddie when they were growing up, he had tried to save him, but he had failed.
Mike was sleeping right next to Ray. At least when he’d woken from the nightmare he hadn’t woken Mike up. Mike’s breathing was heavy and steady. Maybe Mike was living through his own nightmare at that very moment.
Ray knew he wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep for a while, but he lay in bed, not wanting to disturb Mike.
There was a soft knock at the door.
Ray turned towards the door.
Mike coughed, a breath caught in his throat as he jumped awake. “Dad? Where are you?”
“I’m right here, Mike.”
“I heard something.”
There was another soft knock at the door.
“Someone’s knocking at our door,” he told Mike. “Wait here.” Ray got out of bed and hurried to the door.
“Ray?” Emma said from behind the door.
Ray opened the door after turning his flashlight on. He pointed the light beam down at the floor, his heart in his throat. “What’s wrong?”
“We need to go dow
nstairs,” Emma said.
Ray’s heart skipped another beat. “What is it?” His voice was a little louder. He could hear Mike jumping out of bed, hurrying over to them—he had no intention of being left behind up here alone in the dark.
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “I think it might be something good.”
They all went downstairs, Ray first, Emma right behind him, and Mike behind her. Once they were all in the living room, Ray aimed his flashlight at the couches and saw that Luke wasn’t there anymore. His bedsheet was balled up at one end.
Ray hurried through the living room and into the kitchen. He checked every room: the pantry, the office, the bathroom, Josh’s bedroom. But no one was there.
Did they go outside? Did they take the van and leave?
No, their backpacks were still here.
A noise sounded from the basement.
“They’re down there,” Emma said.
Ray opened the basement door and hurried down the steps. Emma, and then Mike, descended the basement steps after Ray, both of them moving more slowly and carefully. Ray had his flashlight turned on, the beam lighting his way. He waited a moment at the bottom of the steps, making sure Emma and Mike got down okay. There was a beam of light coming from the other end of the basement. And there were voices.
Luke and Josh stood together at the other end of the basement, in front of a doorway in the wall, a doorway that hadn’t been there before.
“This whole block wall is fake,” Josh said with a big smile. “There’s a big door right in the middle of it.”
Even Luke was smiling as Josh entered the doorway in the wall, shining his flashlight around until he found a light switch just inside. A few seconds later fluorescent lights on the ceiling inside the room flickered and then came to life. Ray could tell the room beyond the doorway was large, like another entire basement. The room was crowded with floor-to-ceiling metal shelves stocked full of boxes, crates, bags, cans. Not an area was wasted.