by James Phelan
“I heard, from Jedi,” Lora replied. “He managed to get away with Duke. Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” Sam replied, recounting a short version of events that had led to him being here at the diner, halfway toward the next Dreamer, Cody.
“We’ll head for you, and there is a team headed to Duke’s farm to clean up the mess and make sure everything there is OK. Jedi is tracking you too, so a team of Guardians will be on your tail, ready if you need them.”
“OK,” Sam said, feeling a little better to hear his friend had survived Plan B and escaped all those armed thugs.
“Sam,” Lora said, “How long do you think it will take you to get to Cody?”
“Well, that’s just the thing … I left my wallet behind in my backpack, and I need to fill the car with gas.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, and then Lora said, “OK, let me talk to the owner of the diner. I’ll pay over the phone with a credit card.”
“Good idea, hang on,” Sam said, then he went and got Flo, who spoke to Lora on the phone, then laughed heartily before passing the phone back to Sam.
“Wow, what’d you say?” Sam said to Lora.
“Just that I’m your big sister, and that you left your wallet at home, and that if your head wasn’t screwed on you’d leave that behind too.”
“That made her laugh like that?” Sam said.
“Well, I also added that last week you forgot to wear pants to school, and didn’t realize the mistake until you were standing at your locker, wondering why there seemed to be such a breeze.”
“Gee, thanks, way to embellish,” Sam said, seeing now that Flo had told her husband and that he was looking at Sam and laughing too.
“OK, go fill the car and get to Cody,” Lora said. “I’ll split the Guardian team headed to Tobias and we’ll come with the rest to get to you at the canyon. Stay safe.”
“Thanks. And Lora?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you sound like you’re locked in some road race?”
“Don’t ask,” she replied. “Though it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“We?”
“Eva’s here,” Lora said.
“Hey, Sam—good luck!” Eva called out in the background.
“Thanks.”
“Talk later,” Lora said. “Got a little situation here.”
“OK. Sounds like you guys need the good luck …” The phone call ended and Sam hung up the receiver, and sat back down to his map and coffee.
“This is on my husband,” Flo said, putting a huge greasy hamburger down in front of Sam, along with a tall glass of soda. “Growing boy like you needs all the nourishment he can get.”
21
It had taken Sam a lot longer than he’d hoped to get to Forsyth. He had been driving along the lonely highway, trying to keep his eyes open despite his fatigue. When he spotted a secluded area to the side of the road, he decided it was safer to pull over to sleep before continuing on.
When Sam exited the highway, a full twelve hours later than he had wanted, and drove toward Forsyth, the sun had almost completely disappeared. It was now just a red glow on the horizon. Bullitt’s gas tank was nearly empty again. Sam pulled the Mustang over on the gravel shoulder of the road, came to a complete stop and turned off the engine, winding down his window. The sounds of crickets and critters called out in the coming nightfall. Sam breathed in clean, fresh air, and looked at the row of tired shopfronts stretched out before him.
The first declared Forsyth’s souvenirs and gift shop “closed,” the second, Canyon View Motor and Tire Repairs, was the same. But it was the last that drew Sam’s attention—CODY’S ADVENTURE TOURS.
All of it, exactly as his dream had shown.
With any luck, none of my dream was retrievable from Stella’s broken dream machine.
Sam got out of the car and crunched his way across the pebbled driveway to the first shop. The front door of Cody’s tour company office was locked, so with hands cupped around his eyes, Sam peered through the glass. He couldn’t see anyone inside the dark room.
Maybe I’m too late … it’s much later than my dream, maybe Cody’s gone home for the day.
Sam headed around the back of the building, trying to be quiet on the gravel, stopping to listen at the next corner. His eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and he could make out a figure moving about in front of a well-lit storage garage.
It was a tall man, strapping kayaks onto a trailer. As Sam neared, he could make out more details.
Cody.
Sam walked toward him.
“Hey,” Cody said, turning at the noise and seeing Sam. “How’s it going?”
“Hi,” Sam said. He joined him at the garage. “Good. You?”
“You know, just packing up, getting ready for tomorrow.” Cody leaned back on tie-down straps to tighten them. He looked about eighteen or so but was much bigger than Sam—at least six foot four, muscular, with blond hair sticking out from under a trucker’s cap. He had bright blue eyes and gleaming white teeth that flashed against his well-tanned skin.
“Yeah, so I see …”
Cody smiled. “I head out early mornings, and tomorrow’s booked out, if you’re looking for a tour.”
“That’s cool,” Sam said. “Besides, I’m not much of a fan of early mornings.”
A cool breeze against the back of his neck gave him a chill and he looked around, startled.
“You lost or something?” Cody asked, looking at Sam.
“Nope.”
“Well, if you’re looking for a tour, you’ll need to call in the morning and arrange another time.”
“Yeah …” Sam said distractedly.
“Are you looking for a tour?” Cody asked, wiping his dusty hands on his jeans.
“Well, of sorts,” Sam replied.
Cody frowned, shrugged, then finished loading the final kayak. He stopped and looked at Sam closely.
“I’m Sam,” Sam introduced himself, hand outstretched.
“Cody.”
“Yeah. So, busy day tomorrow then.”
“Yep. Good weather forecast, plenty of folk around this time of year.”
“Don’t suppose you can cancel, for a private tour?”
Cody looked at Sam, his head tilted slightly sideways and a grin forming. “That’d cost you. Have to get another hand at short notice to cover my shift.”
“I have plenty of money,” Sam said, thinking he could place another call to Lora for payment if it came to it, or, better yet, he could convince Cody in the meantime that he was one of the last 13, holding the fate of the whole world in his subconscious …
Surely he wouldn’t charge me then.
“What kind of tour do you have in mind?” Cody asked.
“A flyover of the canyon.”
Cody shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t do flights. You gotta go another ten miles up the highway for that. Got helicopter and aircraft tours up there.” He could see that Sam was disappointed.
“You don’t take flights?” Sam said. “You see, time is kind of, ah, of the essence.”
Cody shook his head again, emphatic this time.
“Not even in ultralights?” Sam asked. “Or powered gliders?”
“Nope. Nothing powered. We do trekking by foot, rock-climbing, kayaks, riverboarding and spelunking only.”
“Riverboarding?”
“Whitewater rafting—without the raft. Just a life jacket, padding, a helmet and one of these little boards.”
“Right,” Sam said, his voice trailing off on seeing the tiny bodyboard-type raft.
This is the guy—trust the dream. We’ll kayak there, like we did in the dream … I guess no changing things this time.
“You OK?” Cody asked.
“Yeah, totally.” Sam smiled.
“Good for you. Catch you tomorrow, maybe,” Cody said, and walked across the driveway into the back of his office.
“Cody, can we talk for a sec?” Sam said, c
atching up with him. “I really need to talk to you about something.”
“We open at 6 a.m. tomorrow—”
“That’s fine. We can head out then. I want to go to a place where there’s a fork in the canyon.”
“Oh right, well, that narrows it down,” Cody gave a loud laugh.
“And there’s a hidden secret there. With a drawing, a very particular drawing. Thirteen figures?”
Cody stopped and spun around to look at him cautiously. “Where’d you hear about such a place?”
“The Internet.”
Cody scoffed. “It’s not on the Internet.”
“But there is such a place?”
Cody remained silent, looking like he’d realized he had said too much already. Then he said, “That site’s secret. Nobody other than the local custodians know of it.”
“Perhaps I didn’t introduce myself properly before,” Sam said. “But just get me to the canyon tomorrow morning and I will explain everything.”
Cody looked at Sam, weighing up what he’d said. “So if I take you there, you’ll tell me how you heard about it?”
“Yeah.”
“Getting there in a kayak ain’t no picnic.”
“I know.” Sam swallowed hard as he thought back to the smashed kayak of his dream.
Cody looked at him with a little grin forming at the corners of his mouth. “You done whitewater before?”
“Nope.”
“You staying up the road, in town?” Cody asked.
“No. Nothing planned yet,” Sam replied.
“We got a couple of rooms, nothing fancy but our workers stay there, you’re welcome to them.”
“Thanks, that would be great.”
“Follow me.”
Sam followed him up the hill to a little house looking down at the road and parking lot next to the garage. They went around the back, to where a clutch of little bungalows ringed a wide lawn with a swimming pool in the centre.
“I wouldn’t recommend taking a swim in the dark, you can’t check for snakes,” Cody said. He opened the door to the first bungalow. The room inside was decked floor to ceiling with Native American art and artifacts. He opened a small bar fridge in the far corner and poured a couple of cold drinks.
“So tell me, how’d you know about the building, the temple, and that drawing?” Cody asked. He looked around, as though there was some great conspiracy afoot.
“You showed me,” Sam said, smiling.
“What are you talking about? I’ve shown no one! I haven’t even told anyone.”
Sam smiled. “Not even in a dream?”
22
EVA
“We have to get off the road!” Eva said, doing her best to locate their pursuer through the open side window.
“Can you see it?”
“No,” Eva said. “Wait—yes! It’s up there, following every move we make.”
High above them was an aircraft, following every evasive manoeuvre that Lora tried. Nothing seemed to work. The small plane looped around and through the sky after them.
“I’m doing my best!” Lora said, navigating through the smaller roads off the highway.
“What is it?” Eva had never seen anything like it.
“An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle—a UAV,” Lora explained. “A drone aircraft, remote controlled.”
“Well, it’s not going anywhere,” Eva said, watching it above them. “If we don’t lose it, it’ll track us all the way to Sam. How long can it stay up there?”
“If it’s high-tech? Hours,” Lora said. “And it’s able to travel way faster than any car.”
“Great. Is it armed?”
“Doubt it—too small. Observation only,” Lora said. “They want to know where we’re going.”
“Stella, Hans or Mac?”
I can’t believe I’m reeling off a list of enemies now!
“No way of knowing. But we can’t lead it to Sam.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Outsmart it,” Lora said with a grim smile.
“Do you think this UAV thing can follow us in this dark?” Eva said. She hadn’t seen it for hours, even when they’d stopped to refuel the car and get food.
“Yep, easily,” Lora said, driving the Porsche at a steady speed among the highway traffic. “It will be equipped with infrared, so it’s locked onto this car. Might even have a way of tracing us through the Academy’s mobile phones.”
Eva looked at the phone on her lap that she’d used several times to contact Jedi. They’d driven from Washington State, down through Oregon and California, through to Death Valley. Now they were approaching a big glow on the horizon.
“We’re going to ditch everything up here,” Lora said.
“What’s up here?” Eva looked around. They were in desert country. There was not much of anything around, but plenty of cars travelling on the highway.
“Big hotels,” Lora said. “And even bigger crowds. Big, bright and so busy that we might be able to ditch this aircraft too.”
Eva nodded, though she felt tired and apprehensive. She stared at a garish road sign up ahead, welcoming them to “fabulous” Las Vegas.
23
SAM
“Maybe I kind of always knew,” Cody said, heating up a huge pot of chili beef and beans over a fire pit in a rocky camp site behind the bungalows. “All of my life, I’ve dreamed big. And the last few months, my dreams have become more and more vivid …”
“Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re not alone,” Sam said. “There’s many of us, always have been.”
“Dreamers?”
“Yep, that’s what they call us. And you and I, we’re part of a particular group—perhaps even more gifted than the others—who need to come together in order to retrieve something very important. There are 13 of us, and we are the best shot at winning this race for good.”
“Gifted?” Cody asked. “Compared to who? And what, will I become, like, stronger and faster? Like a superhero?”
Sam shook his head and laughed.
“Afraid not, least not in the real, waking world,” Sam said. He was leaning back on a camp chair, far from the small crackling fire. “But we have the ability to control our dreams—and our dreams are true dreams. They offer glimpses into the future.”
“Right,” Cody said, nodding as Sam spoke. “That’s how I found the temple in the first place. I’d dreamed about gliding down a gorge, and then kayaking until I found it. And the next day, I did it.”
“When was that?” Sam asked, trying to conceal his nervousness.
How long a jump might we have on everyone else coming after us?
“Three days ago. At first I thought it was just a dream. Then, the next night, bam! Another dream—same place, but more detail. Then it felt like I had to go. I thought it was crazy, but I just couldn’t not. Does that make sense?”
Sam nodded. “And so then you went there …” he prompted.
“Yep. And it was exactly as I’d dreamed. Well, that and more. It’s phenomenal.”
“And what did you find?”
Cody’s eyes lit up. He went into his bungalow and came back with a small box, which he opened next to Sam. Cody carefully unwrapped the linen cloths inside to reveal two small animal statues made from clay.
“They’re old, really old,” Cody said. “The temple looks like it was made by ancient Puebloan people, hundreds of years ago, if not more.”
“Nothing else?” Sam asked, almost apologetically.
Cody shook his head. “But, there’s plenty of these there,” he said. “I photographed the area where I found the statues. There’s a huge collection of them near the entrance. Like I said, I only went to the site two days ago—that’s why I was so shocked when you mentioned it. I can’t believe you’ve seen it in your dream too. That’s wild!”
“You said it,” Sam said. “Hey, can I use your phone?”
“Sure,” Cody said, pointing toward the open back door of the bungalow. “It’s on the benc
h.”
Sam went inside and phoned Lora. He called Cody in, then put the phone on speaker and made the introductions.
“The Guardians are about three hours away from Tobias,” Lora said. “They’ve had to shake a tail.”
“Guardians protect Dreamers,” Sam said to Cody by way of explanation. Then he said to Lora, “Was it Hans following them?”
“We don’t know.”
“Who’s Hans?” Cody asked.
“Billionaire treasure hunter, and he’s got the German Guardians backing him,” Sam replied. “He wants what we know and have.”
“To get the Gears and build da Vinci’s Bakhu machine.”
“Yep.”
“Which is really a mechanical map,” Cody said, “that will reveal the location of the Dream Gate.”
“Wow, you’re a quick learner, Cody,” Lora said over the speakerphone. “Took Sam ages to get his head around all that.”
Sam could hear the humour in her voice. “Yeah, yeah,” he said.
“It all makes sense …” Cody said, leaning on the bench toward the phone. “It feels like I’ve been expecting this. Thirteen of us …”
“Tobias and the Guardians will be at your location by sunrise,” Lora said.
“We’ll be waiting,” Sam replied.
“Meanwhile,” she added, “if you’re OK, we’ll change our plans and go see about a site that Mac may be using as a base. See if we can’t put him out of business.”
“Good luck with that,” Sam replied.
“What kind of security is there?” Lora asked.
“We’re safe,” Cody replied. “We’re at my house, about fifteen minutes from the canyon entrance that I always use.”
“Which is what I saw in my dream,” Sam added. “My worry is that with Stella on our tail, she might also be headed there. I mean, I wrecked her dream recorder, but I can’t help feeling that she’ll find out where we’re going …” He trailed off.
“Sam?” Lora said.
“It’s nothing. Just memories from my dream. We’ll hunker down here until sunrise. Hopefully Tobias will be here by then.”