“You guys all right?” Beck asked.
I opened the door. “Yeah, we’re fine.”
“Wow, you guys look good and smell fresh. Good job.” He reached his hand into the small bathroom, stroking Jessie’s hair from her eyes. “Look at you. Pretty. Pret-tee.”
Jessie smiled. “Tee.”
Beck laughed. “Close enough. Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “Alex scavenged about the camp. For you.” He extended a brand-new unopened bottle of bourbon.
“Oh my God! Thank you.” I smiled. “You’ll have some, right?”
“Absolutely. But there’s more. People in this camp liked to drink. I’ll let you guys finish, but hurry, okay? We’re all waiting to eat.” He turned.
“Beck?” He stopped. “I know you showed me pictures, but what were your kids’ names?”
He turned around and faced me. He seemed bowled over by the question.
I stepped to him. “I’m sorry I never asked you. I am really … really sorry, it was wrong, it was selfish, and I should have—”
“Dakota and Levi,” Beck answered, and then cleared his throat. “Levi was the baby. Just born. And it’s okay that you didn’t ask. It’s been really painful.”
“And your wife?”
A pause. “Robyn.”
“Can we talk about them one day?” I asked. “I’d like to.”
“Yeah, we can. We’ll find time, sit down, and talk about our families.”
“I’d like that. And I am sorry. I really am… for all that you have done—”
“Mera,” he cut me off, “I didn’t do anything.”
“Yes, you did,” I argued. “You sacrificed, you put yourself in harm’s way, you were there. We owe you.”
“Everything I did, I did because I wanted to do. You, Danny, Phoenix …” He paused to give a small smile to my daughter. “Jessie. You guys are the only reason I keep going. You won me over with your lame excuses at the refugee center. Danny, when he was bitten, all I saw was a boy I wanted to help. And your passion for finding Jessie became mine. I didn’t care if I lived or died until I jumped in the truck with you guys. So, no, I owe you. And … I’ve said too much.”
“You said more than you have in two months.”
“Nah, I talk, just not much. Finish up, we’re hungry.”
I nodded my agreement, realized he said all that he could say, and let him walk away. He was comfortable talking for a moment, but I could feel his uneasiness after he was done.
I exhaled, placed the bottle of booze on the sink, and grabbed the brush to finish Jessie’s hair. “I’ll be done in a minute,” I told her.
She reached up, and her fingers touched the bottle.
“Yeah, that would be called Mommy medicine. Good stuff, too. Stuff Daddy wouldn’t let Mommy buy.” I lay down the brush. “You know what? It’s been a couple of days.” Lifting the bottle, I unscrewed the cap, sniffed it, and took a small sip. “Yeah, that’s good stuff.” Recapping the bottle, I set it back on the sink and finished Jessie’s hair. I also reminded myself to thank Alex for thinking of me.
* * *
I should have known to expect Spam since Alex and Michael were in charge of making dinner. We all sat around a small campfire. It was relaxing.
I discovered Sonny’s name was a nickname. His last name was Wilson. He told us that his father, like Alex, had a habit of calling everyone ‘Son’, young or old, so the nickname stuck.
Sonny told us his story.
The campsite was a place he and his family went every single weekend during the season. He was at the campsite opening and stocking the camp when the Event took place.
He and many others rushed home, Sonny especially worried since he heard that women were spontaneously giving birth. Maria, his wife, was seven months pregnant.
When he got home, the town was in hysterics over the death of the children. Hospitals were packed, traffic was jammed, and for a town of ten thousand, the chaos matched that of a big city.
His wife did not give birth to a stillborn, not then, anyhow. The baby stirred and kicked in her belly, and they believed they were spared.
In fact, the entire town, nestled in the mountains, believed they were spared by the massive Event that shook the world.
It was not until about two weeks after the Event, Sonny said, that the town started falling ill. One by one, they were sent into the elementary school gymnasium because they were showing aggressive tendencies.
While we were tucked away in the church, Sonny’s town was in the thick of things. This didn’t make sense to me. The whole world spiraled into a deadly Event, and one town was spared.
If Sonny’s town had been spared that long, then others had to be spared, as well. At least that’s what Sonny thought.
“When most of the town started to turn, I loaded supplies and hunkered in the house,” Sonny said. “I thought we were okay. My mom, father, sister and her family, my wife, we were doing fine. Then one morning, I woke up, and my whole family was pale. Even my wife and she was still pregnant. She never had that baby.”
I looked up at Michael. I didn’t have the courage to tell Sonny about his wife and son.
“They stared at me with this eerie look,” Sonny continued. “I knew. I knew they had turned. I couldn’t do anything about it, I wasn’t going to kill them, so I went below. I was there about a month when you guys showed up. Funny thing was I never saw a Paler on our property before that day.”
I saw everyone’s look of shock.
Alex asked, “Why did you call them Palers?”
“That’s what the mayor in town called them. It just stuck. Why?”
Alex looked at all of us. “That’s just what Randy called them.”
“The Future guy?” Sonny said with a hint of disbelief.
Alex nodded.
“Well, I can tell you, I don’t know why the future guy would say that, I can tell you why we called them that. Maybe the future liked the name Paler better than Sleepers.”
“Maybe,” Alex said, “at least the translators did.”
Sonny tilted his head and looked at Alex. “I’m confused.”
“Randy brought with him these things called the Doctrines,” Alex explained. “They’re like the Bible to the people of the future. Originally, they were called Logan’s Logs. Later, in the translated Doctrines, these people called them Palers.”
I added, “Logan’s Logs probably wouldn’t have called them that.”
Sonny shook his head, his lips parted. “What were these Doctrines called?”
I answered. “Logan’s Logs.”
“Wow.”
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. Go on,” Sonny said. “Tell me about Logan’s Logs.”
“Apparently they were written by a man who was with us,” I said. “They describe the Event, our journey to find Jessie and our arrival at the ARC, and even beyond that. They’ve been translated, because there was no way he would have written that Michael was the Son of God. And he called them Sleepers as well.”
“And where is the author of the logs now?” Sonny asked. “At the ARC?’
“No, he died a while ago.”
“He died?” Sonny asked. “So, let me get this straight. Some guy from the future tells you he came back to save the baby because he is the only cure?”
Alex held up his hand. “Cliff Notes version. One thousand years from now man wants to make us better. They come back in time, release a virus, it backfires and creates the Sleepers, kills the kids. The virus continues to kill half the kids in the future. Randy, a product of the viral future a few hundred years from now, time travels here because the Doctrines talk about the immune child. He figured, save the child, save the future.”
Sonny coughed on his sip of water then looked at me, ironically as I was filling my glass with a hefty helping of bourbon. “No wonder you drink so much.”
His comment caused everyone to laugh.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was rude.”
<
br /> “No, it’s no problem. It’s not the reason I drink this much,” I replied. “I always did. I’m a functional alcoholic. At least that’s what my friend Kelli used to call me.” I lifted my glass.
Sonny stood. “So, Randy follows the Logs like they are a guide, but the guy who wrote them died? How accurate are they?”
Alex fluttered his lips. “Not very. All of us here are supposed to be dead according to the Doctrines, except Mera. And, of course, Padre, but I haven’t seen him perform miracles or shoot fire from his fingers like the Doctrines say.”
“You know,” Michael spoke up finally,. “if I weren’t such a God-fearing man, I’d call you an asshole, Alex Sans. The Doctrines make no mention of me shooting fire from my fingers. I read almost every word. I’ll prove it. I’ll go get my notebook.”
“Your handy-dandy notebook like in Blue’s Clues?” Alex taunted.
Michael growled his frustration and wagged a finger. “You… you… I’ll pray for you.”
Alex found pleasure in that. He laughed.
“Dude,” Danny said. “Quit picking on Mike. What are you gonna do when you find out he is, like, a chosen one? You saw him save my mom. That shit was not normal.”
My son’s words caused Alex to become silent. He grabbed for my bottle.
“Please forgive me,” Sonny said, “but it’s really hard to believe. I know you folks have your reasons, but if the guy who wrote the Doctrines is dead, why are they still incorrect? If this time travel stuff is real, why didn’t the Doctrines change?”
Alex sprayed out the booze that he had just taken into his mouth. “Exactly. I saw Back to the Future, I thought the same thing. The moment Bill died, theoretically, the Doctrines should have changed or disappeared all together.”
“Yeah,” Sonny nodded. “I mean, right now to us, time travel is fiction, but we all saw enough movies to know that those Doctrines would have changed. The moment that man died, the words would have changed. But the last you read them, were you dead?” Sonny asked Alex.
“Yeah. I was a goner.”
“See? So it’s hard to believe.”
“That’s because they’re fiction,” Beck said softly. “Historical fiction.” He reached across to me, grabbed the bottle, and refreshed his drink. “When Bill wrote them, he wrote his own version of what he wanted people to think happened, not the whole truth. So then the words were translated and rewritten, and the translators changed it so much, it didn’t matter what he wrote. It turned into fiction.” He downed his drink.
Beck’s opinion made some sense, but the whole thing was mindboggling. My head spun from the conversation, and I could only imagine how poor Sonny was trying to process it. We had been living with this information for months. He was learning it, and we didn’t have anything to support our stories. We had to have sounded ridiculous to him.
We set the conversation aside for the night and moved on to something else, plans on what we’d do, where’d we go, stuff like that.
Despite the fact that I had been living with the knowledge of the virus, the Doctrines, and Project Savior for a while, I couldn’t help but think there was a piece of the puzzle still missing.
A big piece.
* * *
I dozed off, not for long, and I couldn’t fall back asleep. It was close to three in the morning. Sonny was courteous enough to give my children and me the back bedroom. Phoenix slept between Jessie and me, with Danny on the floor.
I could hear movements on the roof and knew it was Alex keeping watch.
Quietly, I made my way through the darkened trailer and outside, calling out in a whisper to Alex, so he didn’t shoot me.
With ease that impressed me, I climbed the ladder to join him on the roof of the trailer. The view was breathtaking.
“Nice, huh?” Alex asked.
“So beautiful.” I walked to him. “May I?”
“Please, sit.”
I did, dangling my legs over the side of the trailer as he did. “You can see for miles up here.”
“Yep, very few clouds.”
“How’s the radiation?”
“Nil.”
“That’s good.” I rubbed my hands together; it had chilled some. “So what do you think?”
“About?”
“Do you think we’re safe here?”
“For the time being, yeah,” Alex said. “You do know, we really are gonna have to find you guys a safe place to settle in and maybe wait it out until Phoenix and I get out of the ARC.”
“You’re really going back there?”
Alex nodded. “I gave my word, and you know what Randy said. Phoenix is the cure for the children of the future. Plus Randy is there. We have to get Randy. It’s only for six months. I was out at sea longer than that.”
“And you don’t think the New Jerusalem is where we should take Phoenix?”
“I think if Randy’s friend said the ARC is the place, then this New Jerusalem is a copy cat or something. My main concern is to get you safe and far away from the Sleepers.”
“But the bombs—”
“I believe,” Alex said, “that they didn’t reach every place. They couldn’t. I also know they concentrated more on this side of the country.”
“So why can’t we stay here at this place?”
Alex stared out then turned to me. “Not so sure this place will be safe for that long. The moment it gets cold, and we use any heat, there’ll be steady smoke signals rising to the sky. I don’t what place will be safe, really, any place that’s not a fortress. The Sleepers … they bother me more now.”
I sighed. “You, too?”
“Yep. When I first joined up with you guys, they wandered more than anything. You know. The biting, like with Danny, was rare. When we ran into them at the clinic, they were just …. I don’t know … testy.”
I snickered. “Good word.”
“Then they got more insistent, mobbing, chasing. Then they got violent. Even the violent ones I could deal with. These Sleepers, Mera …” He looked at me, dazed. “The Sleeper today opened my car door. They never open doors. She had a candy bar in her hand. And I saw what was in Sonny’s house. They may not attack each other, but they sure as shit eat their dead. Plates, Mera, they had plates on TV stands …”
“I know.” I closed my eyes. “It was freaky.”
“No, it was downright scary.” He took a sip of his water. “The transformation is too scary. If they’re starting to think or act on instinct, they’re gonna be a hell of a lot harder to control, because they outnumber us big time.”
Think?
For as much as I felt the Sleepers were changing, that hadn’t crossed my mind. I leaned more toward them just reacting to old memories.
“What do you think is going on with the Sleepers?”
“Don’t know for sure. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say,” Alex heaved in a deep breath then exhaled loudly, “our Sleepers have awakened.”
19. ALEX SANS
My father loved to fish. In fact, he loved it so much it led him to divorce my mother. I remember being in basic training and getting to make that two minute, once a week phone call. My mother had said, “Alex, your father went fishing.”
“He always goes fishing,” I’d replied.
She then added, “For good.”
I thought it was a joke, and then I feared she meant he died, until she gave me the short version of how he just packed up and left.
Never once did she let on to me that it bothered her. She portrayed normalcy in her letters, and while I detected a hint of sadness, I never quite knew how much it broke her heart.
It devastated her. Twenty years of marriage, and he left without warning and moved on before I even got out of boot camp.
She was the only one that came to graduation. It was on the eve of her fiftieth birthday, and she and I celebrated both events. I was proud of her; she seemed as if she was doing fine.
I came home for a brief leave before training, went out with my f
riends, kissed my mother, told her I wouldn’t be late, and while I was out … she took her own life.
Put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
She left a simple note saying, “I’m sorry, Alex, I can’t take the pain any longer.”
I never saw my mother as a weak woman, but to me, suicide was weakness. That tainted my view of women as being strong. To me, every woman who said or presented she was strong was putting on a front.
I also never forgave my father and never saw him again.
If he hadn’t died in the twenty-plus years since he left, then I prayed he was a Sleeper.
I didn’t think of my father often over the years until the day Danny and I walked the mile to the lake to fish.
Danny boasted he was an extreme angler, whatever that meant, and had learned from his father.
Daniel was a good man from what I’d learned. If he truly was a lot like Sonny, then I would have liked him.
My father never taught me. He gave me a rod, said to fish, and he went off in his own direction.
I learned, though. I’d put him to shame.
When we got to the lake, I saw what I believed to be one of the most bone-chilling sights, which confirmed many of my fears about the Sleepers.
In the middle of the lake was a boat; sitting in it was a man with a fishing rod. He wasn’t casting, he just let it sit there.
Both Danny and I were excited at the prospect of another survivor, until I raised my rifle and peered at him through the scope.
“Fuck.”
“What?” Danny asked.
I handed him the rifle.
“Oh my God. A Sleeper?”
I nodded. See, I had this theory, especially since visiting the prison in Washington and seeing the Sleepers in the yard. Those Sleepers barely ate, and had even looked as if they were dying. So my theory was that in a short amount of time the Sleepers would die off from starvation. However, Sonny’s parents with their plates of flesh, the bargain store clerk with her candy bar, and the fisherman showed me that, even if they didn’t have a real clue as to what they were doing, they lived instinctively.
Sleepers 2 Page 9