I was going to go out until I saw the driver step from the bus.
Danny walked up to the back door as if bringing that bus into our yard was completely normal. He walked into the house.
“What is that doing here?” I asked.
“It’s parked there and will stay there. I have to get it ready,” Danny replied.
“For what?”
“To go,” he said nonchalantly.
I repeated, “To go.” I looked at Mera. “He said, ‘to go’.”
Mera asked, “Go where, Danny?”
“Anywhere. Out. To meet up with Sonny. I want to prep it. Pack it, have it ready to roll.”
“Why?” I questioned. “Where is this coming from? If it’s because of yesterday, I can understand. But Beck’s Sleeper troops aren’t far away and we’re coming up with a plan to—”
“No.” Danny shook his head. “After this morning, I have no doubt that things are gonna happen. They’re coming and we’re gonna have to go.”
I shook my head. “How do you know this?”
“Keller told me. He told me this morning. He said ‘We go. They come. We run.’ Just like that. That’s what he said.”
Mera gasped.
“Keller,” I said. “The little boy there with no ears, no mouth, he told you?”
“Yep. I heard him. Here.” Danny pointed to his head. “Weird.”
“Yeah, it is. Okay. Good luck with your bus.” I opened the door.
“Alex,” Mera called. “What the hell? You still don’t believe?”
I looked at her, Danny and then to Keller who happily and so oblivious enjoyed his cereal. “No,” I said and left.
I pulled the door closed behind me and stopped. Looking at the bus gave me a twisted feeling inside my chest; it almost caused me to lose my breath. I had to get to the clinic, but seeing that bus made me realize, more than I wanted to admit to Mera, that I was starting to believe her about Keller.
And it was scary. Because if a little boy with no ability to verbally communicate was talking and warning us, then we’d better listen.
The clinic wasn’t too far from the home front. So my ‘thinking’ walk, trying to figure out what I was going to say to Levi, was a short one. Almost there, I passed Bonnie. I waved but I slowed down some, because I didn’t see Jessie with her.
I was going to ask, but fearful that Bonnie would think I was questioning her, I kept walking. Jessie was probably in Bonnie’s house.
Taking a deep breath, words rehearsed in my mind, I stepped into the clinic, not expecting to see Levi and Javier right inside the hallway.
Levi gushed out my name as if he were relieved to see me.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “I’m here to talk to you about the baby. Do you guys have a minute?”
“Alex, the baby is gone,” Levi said.
A sickening feeling hit me. “You guys were supposed to wait. To talk to me. To tell me when …”
“No.” Levi cut me off. “Gone. Disappeared. Someone took the baby.”
We weren’t talking modern day technology or hospitals with security bracelets. It was Grace. There really wasn’t much of a clinic staff, no one watching to see a kidnapping. I stammered, “W-wait. Who would just take …” It started as a heaviness churning in my gut and it hit my chest when the revelation hit me. “Oh God. I’ll be back.”
I spun and rushed from the clinic. I hoped, I really hoped I was wrong. But it all hit me at once. Jessie in a hurry, being the big girl, running out. Bonnie and no Jessie.
I ran as fast as I could back to the house, my mind begging with each step I took that the house was the destination. But just in case, I put out a radio call on a private channel.
27.
Mera Stevens
“And how exactly is he talking, Mera?” Beck asked me. He had come down right after Alex left and saw the bus. I took him outside to explain.
“Tele… tele…something.”
“Pathic.”
“Yes, that’s it. I hear him, but not through my ears. Jessie does too, and so does Danny. My kids and I can’t all be crazy. You don’t believe me.”
“I am not saying that. Not at all.”
His words made me smile. That was the one thing about Beck. With the exception of the day he arrested me, he always gave me the benefit of the doubt.
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “But the whole baby thing doesn’t. Something is up with those boys. Something beyond our understanding or control. Every child died, all babies were stillborn but those two. Keller was born without eyes and ears and communicates. Phoenix, well, he’s like… way up there. I don’t know how he got so smart and advanced.”
“Mera, he spent a year in a scientific environment. He didn’t have a choice but to learn.” Beck reached for the porch door and allowed me to go in first.
“So what do you think about what Danny is doing?”
Beck looked at Danny first. Danny was at the table with the boys.
Beck replied, “I think Danny should keep doing what he’s doing. Get the bus ready, just in case we have to emergency evacuate. But Danny is in charge of that. You and the kids. Okay? If something happens and you have to run, you guys go. The bus is there for you.”
I nodded and exhaled. “Thank you, Beck,” I tiptoed up and kissed him. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
He laughed. “Me, too.”
I cringed. He didn’t know why I said that, but I did. It was a slip.
To my surprise, Alex rushed in the back door and frantically blurted, “Tell me Jessie is here.”
“No,” I replied. “She has lessons with Bonnie.”
After a single shake of his head, Alex lifted his radio. “Stan, that’s negative. Keep looking. No one, repeat, no one in the community is to know but our guys.”
Beck moved forth. “What’s going on, Alex?”
“Jessie took the Sleeper baby, I think they’re both missing.”
“Oh my God.” My hand shot to my mouth. “Alex, you don’t think …”
“She has to be in this community somewhere. I have people looking.”
Danny jumped up. “I’ll go look by the creek. I hate that creek. It scares me when the kids go there.” He moved to the door.
Alex pointed. “Do not leave the wall. Got it?”
Danny opened the door.
“Danny,” Alex called. “I’m dead serious. Do not leave the wall.”
“It’s my sister.”
“I know that,” Alex said. “But if we need to look outside Grace, then we leave together and leave with a plan and armed. Got that?”
“What’s out there, Alex?” Danny asked. “How bad did it get?”
“Check the creek.”
Danny flew out.
Beck walked to the hall. “I’m gonna grab my weapon and do a perimeter outside the wall, just in case.”
I turned to Alex. “I’ll get Bonnie to sit with the boys. I want to help look.”
“Mera, I don’t think that’s—”
“Baby,” Phoenix said. “She took baby back.”
I immediately looked at Phoenix and Alex raced to the door.
Then I heard another voice. Keller’s.
“Hurry, Alex. Get her. Help her. Hurry.”
Alex froze. He literally froze at the door then he quickly spun around. His jaw clenched and he moved to the table and stared at Keller.
Keller just sat there, he didn’t move, cereal still in his hand.
“You heard him,” I whispered. “You heard that too.”
Alex’s dark eyes shifted my way, then back to Keller. “I will,” he said to Keller then ran from the house.
It wasn’t like the old days when I could pick up a telephone and call. I had to get hold of Bonnie. To do so, I had to gather the boys and take them. My heart raced with fear. Where was my daughter?
28.
Alex Sans
I knew. I absolutely positively knew Jessie wasn’t in Grace. But where was she? My first i
nclination, because of the freakish incident with the babies, was the back area that led to farming. But we had men posted on that wall. Surely, one of them would have reported a young woman in a flowery summer dress carrying a baby.
Everything was freakish. A toddler who spoke like a three year old and a deaf, mute boy who delivered to me via a telepathic manner a plea to help his sister. I reeled in disbelief but determined that I would find Jessie.
I felt confident until I got the radio call from Stan stating they saw her in the Reflection Area.
Typically, I wouldn’t have panicked, but it was the wooded area on the outskirts of the Reflection Area that Sonny and I found the baby.
Ironically, or possibly on purpose, she was heading there.
My stomach knotted and I radioed that I was headed that way.
Beck came on the radio. “Alex, wait for me.”
“Negative. I’m by the gate.”
“Alex, just wait.”
“Negative.”
There wasn’t time to wait. Someone said they saw Jessie heading to the Reflection Area, no one said anything about her still being there and that scared me.
Grace from an aerial view was a big square. Center of the west wall was the main road, the main gate. From that were the town buildings – school, store, things like that, and also the main church. Random barrack-style buildings were set up around the community for housing, with a few big houses. We lived in the biggest of the houses because we had a lot of the kids. Grace wasn’t huge; it was pretty compact. Except to the east.
The north wall had a small entrance, a gate that led to the Reflection Area. The east wall had a bigger gate for going to the fields just beyond that. The south, not a single exit.
The wooded area ran in circumference around the north and east, with the narrow portion being north … the Reflection Area.
I knew the second I got to the North Gate that Jessie wasn’t in the Reflection Area.
No one was around. I closed the gate and started running toward the wooded area.
Sleepers be damned, I cried out her name. “Jessie! Jessie!” I called with every pounding slam of my feet to the ground.
Just at the edge of the Reflection Area where the empty area met the woods, Beck called for me.
I ignored him. I searched the ground looking for foot prints.
Nothing.
“Jessie!”
Over the radio, Beck barked, “Goddamn it, Alex, wait.”
I didn’t respond. I wasn’t scared for me or scared of the Sleepers. I was well aware of how many had gathered a little over a mile away.
I ran into the woods, looking left to right. I headed northeast, knowing that was going to lead me eventually to the edge of the woods, just on the grade that overlooked where the Sleepers were gathering.
I didn’t care.
Ignoring Beck’s pleas over the radio, I saw it on the ground and it made me stop.
Blood.
A pool of it, a good foot in diameter. Fresh, bright blood.
An ache filled my chest. No. No. No. No.
I wanted to scream, cry out.
Oh, God, Jessie, where are you?
A small trail led from that bloody spot, and even though I didn’t want to see where it ended, I followed it. Not twenty feet away, I saw the body. Had it not been for the blood trail, I would have missed it. It was so small.
My fault. My doing. What had I done? The myth of the animal killing the young after it being touched by a human was somehow proved true in a twisted turn of fate. The tiny Sleeper baby lay curled in a ball. Its body was a bloody, mangled mess. His left arm was nearly detached from the body, his stomach ripped apart and insides pulled as if a hand just tore into him.
The worst, the absolute worst, was the fact that the child’s eyes were open and staring and his head had been crushed. Stomped upon until dead.
I suppose to kill him took mere seconds, but it was seconds of misery an innocent baby, Sleeper or not, did not deserve.
Heartbroken for the sadistic, cruel punishment the baby had endured, I dropped to my knees. My hands hovered over the body at a loss what to do. I removed my overshirt.
“Oh God,” I heard Beck’s voice and then heard his footsteps come to a halt.
My jaws locked and tightened and my face grew hot. I felt so much emotion over it, that I was literally frozen right where I knelt.
“Alex, come on. Leave it. We have to find Jessie.”
I brought my shirt down to the baby. Before I could say anything, Beck had taken off.
Leave it.
It.
I would have to, but I’d return. Beck was right. We had to find Jessie. I covered the body of the infant and resumed my search.
29.
Mera Stevens
I grabbed an extra radio from the house and attached it to my belt as I took the boys to Bonnie’s. She refused to watch Keller. What the hell? It was my daughter, and she was allowing her fear of Keller to stop my search? I had to rush to Michael. It was on the way that I heard Alex on the radio. Jessie had headed to the Reflection Area. I monitored the back and forth until I got to Michael’s school.
I pulled him aside. “Jessie took the baby. We can’t find them.”
“Where are you going?” he asked. “Stay put.”
“To find my daughter.”
I was about to run out, when he told me to give him one second. I didn’t have a second, but I waited. He was gone about a minute and returned with a gun.
“Just in case.” He placed it in my hand. “Safety is on.”
“Thank you.” I put the weapon behind my back and turned for the door.
“Mama,” Keller’s voice called me.
I turned.
Michael looked at me. “What is it?”
Ignoring him, I spoke directly to Keller. “What, Keller?”
“Mera?” Michael asked.
A pause, then Keller said, “Help Jessie.”
On that I flew out. I could hear Michael calling my name, but I kept going. Beck had said something about a group of Sleepers in the town northeast of Grace, just beyond the woods. The ‘hive’ of Sleepers they needed to get.
That was my destination.
I hurried to the gate, just by the fields, the same area where the Sleepers had stormed. I saw Danny racing out. I called for him to wait. I felt more secure being with my son. He was as determined as I was.
I feared for my daughter, especially since I didn’t see her at all.
We headed straight for the woods. I knew where the town was. I told Danny what Keller had said. He moaned, and his face screamed with worry.
“Why, Mom? Why would she do this?”
“She’s like a little girl. She doesn’t know.”
“But she took the baby.”
“She thought the Sleepers attacked because they wanted it back.”
Danny stopped. His winced and bent over to catch his breath, then he started running again.
After a few minutes of running through the wooded area, I spotted the end of it at the top of the small hill. The sun peeked through the trees, and I followed the brightness and my son.
“Mera, stop!” Beck’s voice carried to us. “Don’t go any further!”
I looked to my left and saw him and Alex running our way. We didn’t stop. It was my daughter; I had to find my daughter.
Once I reached the top of that grade, I had no choice. I couldn’t move. I could tell Danny had the same reaction.
A gathering of Sleepers? A hive? No term whatsoever could even remotely begin to describe the magnitude of what I saw.
My body heaved. Between the shock and being winded, I felt as if I were going to throw up. It wasn’t just a large group of Sleepers; it was a sea of them. I couldn’t even comprehend what I saw.
Danny had a look of sheer horror on his face, and conveyed it to Beck when Beck arrived.
“Jesus, Beck,” Danny gasped. “How did this happen? How did so many get here? This is more than
were around the ARC.”
Beck shook his head. “I don’t know, Danny. It’s more than I have ever seen. Too many for our ground forces.”
I could hear them, the Sleepers. Their voices were a low-grade hum, like locusts. Then I saw Alex and the blood on his hands.
“Oh my God.” I thought immediately that they had found my precious daughter. “Jessie’s?”
“The baby,” Alex squeaked. “The baby was killed. It was a Sleeper kill.”
My eyes welled with tears and my body shook, “Where is Jessie? Oh, God we have to find her.” I started to go back to the woods.
Beck stopped me. “She’s not there. They got the baby, Mera. They killed the baby. I don’t believe for one second that they killed Jessie.”
“Then where is she?”
Slowly, Beck went from looking at me to the multitudes of Sleepers below.
“You think she’s there?” I gasped and pointed.
“If they were hurting her, we would have found her. No,” Beck said. “I think they took her.”
I saw through the corner of my eye, Danny dart forward only to be halted by Beck’s grip.
“Leave me alone, Beck.” Danny swung out, fighting Beck. “Leave me alone, that’s my sister. It’s my sister!”
“What are you gonna do?” Beck asked harshly. “Rush down there? Storm into thousands upon thousands of Sleepers with a pistol? They’ll tear you apart.” Beck moved his face closer to Danny’s. “Tear… you… apart.”
“It’s my sister.”
“And that is your mother.” Beck shook his head. “For her. No.”
Alex stepped forward. “I’ll take that chance.”
“No one goes,” Beck ordered. “Not without a plan. You hear?” He looked at all of us. “Jessie is a Sleeper. Sleepers don’t hurt Sleepers.”
“They killed the baby,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I think it’s a ‘we had the baby’ thing,” Beck replied. “We know for a fact they don’t touch Jessie. We saw it.”
My throat closed and I tried to talk. “Beck, it’s my daughter. My daughter. She doesn’t know. She has to be scared. She has to be so, so scared.”
Alex spoke my name softly and stepped to me. “Mera.” He looked into my eyes like he had never done. Deep and with conviction. “I promise you, with everything thing I am, I promise you, I will get her. I will go down there. I will get her and bring her back.”
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