The Next Ten: Beginnings Series Books 11 - 20

by Jacqueline Druga

  “I don’t know.” Dean shook his head.

  “You don’t know?” Joe’s voice raised. “Well, I’ll tell you, Dean, ‘I don’t know’ isn’t good enough. I’ll repeat, what now?”

  “Joe, I don’t believe . . .”

  “Don’t.” Joe pointed. “Don’t tell me we’re out of options.”

  Silence. Dean didn’t respond.

  “Dean?” Joe questioned. “Please don’t tell me we’re out of options.” His voice lowered to a passionate whisper, squinting with the pain of his words. “Tell me . . . We’re not . . . we’re not out of options. Are we? Not yet.”

  Raising his eyes to answer, the word ‘saved’ was literally an understatement for how Dean felt when he saw Danny Hoi walk in the room.

  Joe saw Dean’s attention moving elsewhere, and he turned to the doorway. “Danny?”

  “I think . . .” Danny extended a phone to Joe. “I think you should take this.”

  Joe reached for it. “Frank?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “Then I won’t talk. Not now,” Joe stated.

  “Joe.” Danny held the phone out again. “We traced the call. It’s coming from Eastern Ohio.”

  “Ohio?” Joe questioned.

  “Yes.” Danny replied. “Ohio. The location is why I think you should take this.”

  Hesitantly, Joe took the phone and brought it to his ear. “Hello.”

  “Pap-Pap.” Johnny sounded near tears.

  “Johnny?” Joe was shocked. “Look if this is . . .”

  “Pap, please.” Rambling, Johnny spoke despondently. “Pap, please. I’m sorry, Pap-Pap. I’m so sorry.”

  “Johnny.” Joe closed his eyes.

  “Pap, I’ll do anything. I will.” He sputtered out confusion filled words. “I will. I’m sorry. Just let me come home. Please, Pap, I just want to come home.”

  ^^^^

  Mormon Mountains, Utah

  The hour and a half drive seemed like an eternity and the search in the dense wooded area near the start of a desert was even longer. They stuck together in the search. Separating and each getting lost was not an option but once they had found the helicopter, they had no other choice.

  Frank had called out so much and so loud that his voice started to leave him. “Robbie! Ellen!”

  Hal could feel the heat that generated and blew in from the desert when he looked over his shoulder to where his brother’s voice carried. He returned to his examination of the chopper and area that surrounded it. It was clear that Robbie had made a crash landing. The blades of the chopper had severed and laid quite some distance from the bird. The helicopter laid on its side, remnants of an air battle and crash evident in the appearance.

  The minimal amount of blood found in and around the chopper assured Hal that injuries weren’t major. An abundance of blood wasn’t the only thing the crash scene lacked. Not only were Robbie and Ellen nowhere to be found, but neither were all of the supplies placed aboard.

  Some could have scattered upon impact, some might have dropped from the sky in the descent. Hal was sure they would have come across those in the search, but they didn’t. It was turning into an enigma that didn’t make any sense. There were no footprints and no supplies. There was nothing but a helicopter crash scene not far from a very open desert.

  Hal was certain there was no way, with injuries, that they made it too far on foot. They especially wouldn’t make it far carrying all the supplies. Even though he kept doing so, Hal couldn’t dwell on the supply issue. He had to place his thoughts on Robbie and Ellen. Where were they?

  “Hal!” Frank called out in the distance. “Hal, come here.”

  With a, ‘yes, he found them’ racing through his mind, Hal followed the direction of Frank’s voice. He ran through a small distance through the trees and down a small grade, where he nearly slid to the bottom to reach Frank.

  The smile and excitement quickly left Hal’s face when he saw Frank standing alone before a large, thick, tree. “Frank?”

  Hands on his hips, Frank turned his head to Hal.

  “Frank? I thought . . .” Hal caught his breath and walked to his brother. “I thought you found them.”

  “Nope, but I found what happened to them.” Frank still stared at the tree.

  Curious, Hal moved closer and as he made it to Frank he saw what Frank stared at.

  Tied to a tree with twine was a skinned rabbit. Its arms and legs were spread eagle, the torso was sliced wide open, and the result of the disembowelment lay at the foot of the tree.

  “Frank, you don’t think . . .”

  “No, look at it.”

  Hal was speechless for a second. “This looks like a Dean and Ellen bunny autopsy.”

  “Yep.” Frank poked the animal with a stick.

  “Do you think Ellen left this as a clue or sign?” Hal asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then why did you say you found what happened to them?”

  “The rabbit is a sacrifice,” Frank stated.

  “Ok.” Hal was lost. “A sacrifice for?”

  “A thank you.”

  “I am so confused.”

  With a ‘follow me’ wave of his hand, Frank brought Hal to the other side of the tree. “If you think we’ve seen it all, we haven’t.” Using the stick in his hand, Frank tapped the tree. “Read.”

  Inching his way to the bark, Hal was set back by the message written on the tree, printed clearly in blood. “My God.” Hal read it out loud. “Thank you, Heaven, for the gift of the Golden Gods who fell from the sky.” Slowly and eyes still wide from reading the bizarre message, Hal turned to Frank.

  “Heaven, Frank said. “Gods. Sacrifice. Skinless.”

  “Christopher Columbus.”

  “Exactly.” Frank nodded. “Golden Gods who fell from the sky?”

  Hal exhaled. “Robbie and Ellen. Oh my God.”

  “No . . . Gods. Plural, Hal. Plural. Do you believe this shit? Do you?” Frank grunted. “It’s a bad sci-fi movie, Hal. A thousand miles from home. Ellen and Robbie are gone and the skinless fuckin mole people have them. Now the only question is . . .” In a hard spin of his frustration, Frank threw the stick he was holding. “. . . where.”

  ^^^^^^

  THE PURSUIT OF CREED

  Beginnings Book 18

  Author’s Message

  Every once and a while I stop to thank you, my reader, for making it this far in the series. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and with all sincerity. You keep this series alive as much as I do.

  Book 18. Wow, we made it this far and there are still several to go. No worries, the series is not done yet.

  This book takes on a lighter tone. It also parodies (intentionally) a lot of Apocalypse movies. See if you can find them all.

  Feel free to email me for the list of parodied movies.

  Again, thank you.

  Let’s go have fun in our whacky world of Beginnings.

  CHAPTER ONE

  January 23rd

  The eerie sounding four notes played on a guitar rang out a split second before a black bird squawked and ejected itself in the air from the swinging metal fence.

  Frank Slagel, wincing some in annoyance, turned slowly to look back at the truck. “Hal, cut it out.”

  “Sorry.” Hal Slagel set down the guitar. “I couldn’t resist.”

  “This is so fucked up.” Frank slammed his boot to the ground, causing an upward spray of dust. “Why are we heading back home?”

  “You know why, Frank.” Hal stood slowly and walked to his brother. “It’s the only way.”

  Almost in pain, Frank closed his eyes. “We should have just kept going.”

  “For what?” Hal asked. “We’d run out of supplies. We’d run . . . out of energy. Big brother,” Hal’s voice dropped some, “I am in no shape to do battle with you. We fought hard this past week and I took some shots, literally. I want to end this with you but I need some rest.”

  “I could do this alone,” Fran
k said softly.

  “No, you can’t. You don’t know what you’re up against.”

  “I know.”

  “So am I to assume you’ve started to pick up some psychic vibes?”

  Frank only looked at him.

  “I didn’t think so. We’re too far away,” Hal explained. “We need to head back, rest up, regroup, pack up, and then head on back. We need strength and information we can only get from Christopher Columbus.”

  “Fuckin mutant.”

  “Well, yes, be that as it may . . .” Hal cleared his throat. “He is the . . . fuckin mutant that can help us out. We know they’re safe, Frank. We know by the note they don’t want to hurt them. They only want to worship them.”

  The corner of Frank’s mouth raised some in a smile. “Oh my God.”

  “Yes, they want to worship our little brother and Ellen.” Hal tried to remain serious. “Going by what Christopher said, there can be thousands . . .”

  “No,” Frank halted him. “You can’t really go by what Christopher said. He counts worse then me.”

  “True.” Hal bobbed his head. “But can we take that chance? We have one hot-headed ill-informed brother and one injured brother rushing in, without enough protection, to steal from them their new found gods.”

  Frank nodded in thought. “OK. You have a point, but . . . I’m not injured.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “Yeah, you did. You said one hot-headed ill-informed brother and one injured. I’m not injured.”

  “I’m injured, Frank.”

  “So are you saying that I’m ill informed?”

  “Pretty much so, yes,” Hal agreed.

  “Oh. Ok.” Frank shrugged. “Well, we better go since we did set up that meeting point with Beginnings.” He started to move toward the truck. “Hal.” Frank turned back around. “We’ll get them back, right?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Hal answered with certainty. “We’ll be nothing less than prepared. We’ll find them and get them. Frank, think about it. To do so . . .” Hal spoke passionately. “We will have to build a team, devise a strategy and travel thousands of miles to battle with a large civilization of underground . . .” Hal raised an eyebrow with a quirky smile. “Mutants.”

  Frank smiled.

  “Kind of apocalyptically cool.”

  “Very Chuck Heston like.”

  “You do know he is the original apocalypse movie hero.” Frank moved more upbeat to the truck.

  “And you are the true apocalyptic hero.”

  “I am.” Frank opened the truck door. “You know, Chuck made chest hair famous.”

  “You resemble him in a darker way,” Hal said as he got in.

  “I do.” Frank got in the truck and checked his reflection in the rear view mirror. “Hey, Hal, you think I should start making people call me Charlton?”

  “Absolutely not, Frank. No.” Hal tapped on the dash board. “Let’s head home.”

  ^^^^

  Beginnings, Montana

  ‘Let me come home, Pap. I just want to come home.’ Johnny’s desperate voice played over and over in Joe’s mind.

  ‘Come home? My God, after all that happened, how can you even ask that?’

  “I don’t remember. I don’t know how I did it.”

  “Does it matter? What’s done is done. I’m sorry, Johnny.”

  Why? Why did Johnny have to repeat how much he loved Joe and missed him? It only broke Joe’s heart even more. Even more painful that Johnny’s declaration of love, was the vow he made to get back home and win back their trust.

  That would be so hard to do, if not impossible.

  Dean Hayes walked into the small office expecting to be blasted by Joe for making him wait. Instead he saw the far off look in Joe’s eyes. “Still thinking about Johnny?”

  “How can I not? I hope that Elliott got the message through to Jess so he can use his escape to buy us time from the Society until we deal with the current situation.”

  Almost as if he took a moment of homage, Dean’s head lowered. “I can’t even deal with thinking about that.”

  “It doesn’t help that Frank’s out of radio range. Hopefully we’ll hear something soon. As for now . . .” Joe exhaled. “What do you have for me?”

  “Good. A change of subject is what I need.” Deal pulled up a little stool and sat in front of Joe. “I sat down with Jason and here’s what we came up with. Remember how we power blasted Elliott with the treatments?”

  “Yes.” Joe nodded.

  “That’s the first step in what we want to do with you. It will disable you for about four days.”

  Joe cringed. “Right now, I can’t be disabled. Will it hurt if we put a delay . . .” Joe slowed down. “Scratch that. We’re at the bottom of the ninth, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” Dean winked. “But we do need a healthy mind as much as a healthy body. Until this situation with Robbie and Ellen is mentally resolved some, we will hold off.”

  “Good.”

  “We’re going to do something that in the old world would be considered somewhat unethical. After the power boost, I want to try something. You can thank Jason on this one. See, Elliott’s condition is in the blood. That is why we had success with Elliott. By going intravenously, we are, in fact, directing it to the source,” Dean explained. “So that’s what we want to do with you. Hit the source, if you’re up to it.”

  “Inject the infected area?” Joe asked.

  “Actually we’re going to bathe it as a therapy. If we had a viable means for radiation treatment, I’d go with that, but I’m gonna try something else, using ultrasound and a technique similar to laparoscopy, I will go to each infected area and baste the lesions, so to speak.”

  “No cutting me open?” Joe asked.

  “It will be minor,” Dean answered. “I want as little air to reach the organs as possible. This will be after you’ve regained strength from the power blast. And who knows . . .” Dean shrugged. “Maybe we will see shrinkage and won’t have to take the other route.”

  A partial smile hit Joe. “Is that optimism? What a switch from before, huh?”

  “Yep.” Dean nodded. “I will be optimistic and I promise you I will be nothing less. After all, this is Beginnings and pretty much anything is possible. Of course, with all the bizarre happenings around here . . .” Dean chuckled “I’m starting to think Beginnings is running out of weird moments.”

  Joe immediately looked up when Elliott Ryder stood in the doorway. “You have something.” Joe stood.

  With a dropping heart, Dean spun around. “Please have something.”

  Slowly Elliott nodded. “I need to get this out of the way first because if don’t tell you, you’ll fail to hear it later. I got in touch with Jess. He’ll use the Johnny phone call to buy us time.”

  “And Frank?” Joe asked.

  Again, Elliott nodded slowly. “We heard from them. They drove into radio range. I have a truck meeting them and they should be home in twelve hours.”

  Dean had to ask. “Robbie and Ellen?”

  “Good news and bad news,” Elliott answered. “The bad news is, they don’t have them. Robbie and Ellen . . . are gone.”

  Dean’s hands ejected up in the air. “What good news can there possibly be then?”

  “Frank stated very strongly that he is pretty certain they are safe and fine. We just, you know, have to find them.” Elliott winced some.

  Joe’s frustration, coupled with confusion, was written all over his face. “Have to find them? How in God’s name can Frank be sure they’re fine?”

  “By his level of annoyance and his message, I’d say he found proof,” Elliott said. “But his coming home to prepare for the search tells me a lot. Come on, Mr. Slagel. If he felt Ellen and Robbie were in danger, would he or the Captain head back?”

  Joe exhaled. “No. OK, so what did my son say?”

  “Because I don’t want to be misconstrued, I’ll give you his exact words.” Elliott pulled out
a small tablet. “Have Christopher fuckin Columbus detained.” Elliott cleared his throat. “We need info.” He continued to read, “Robbie and Ellen weren’t kidnapped. They were taken as token idols to be worshiped by some . . . sick, fucked up mutant, underground religious fuckin . . . fanatics.” Elliott gave a ‘so there’ nod and closed the notepad. “In Frank’s words.”

  Joe turned his head slowly to look at Dean. “You were just saying what about nothing weirder happening?”

  ^^^^^

  It took some manipulation and maneuvering of figures but the reprogramming of coordinates in the computer looked legit. Jess Boyens was pleased with his job. He knew he had to do everything in his power to keep the Society looking for Johnny and away from the other side of the country.

  “South.” Jess handed Stewart Lange the readout. “Johnny placed a call to Beginnings, Montana and we traced the call from a southern vicinity. West Virginia.”

  “I knew he went south.” Stewart shook his head. “And you think this plan is the best?”

  “Absolutely,” Jess stated. “In my opinion Johnny has amnesia. He’s just lost right now. If George finds out what he did, George will kill him. Trust me, it would look to the people as if he killed his own son. We can’t have that. The news of Johnny escaping cannot get out.”

  “I know.” Stewart exhaled, “All right. The truth stays between us. You hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jess said. “I already started covering tracks, so-to-speak.”

  “Good. I’ll get together a small private search party and set them on the trail of the phone call. You . . . you handle George.”

  “I can do that.”

  “But the question is, Boyens . . . will he buy the new story?” Stewart asked.

  Jess’s head turned to the ringing phone. “We’re about to find out.” He reached for the receiver.