Forest of Dreams

by Bevill, C. L.

  Ariel nodded at Theo. “I think we’ve gotten everything ready by now, Martin.”

  “Good,” Theo said. “We’ll be along directly.”

  Ariel glided to the door. Tate cast me an impenetrable glance and followed her out. Then it was just the two of us. My fingers itched to reorient the crutch in a way that was never prescribed by the maker.

  “‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger,’” Theo quoted as he stared at me with those whiskey-colored eyes.

  “I should have figured you for a Nietzsche aficionado,” I said.

  “There’s a good library here,” Theo said. “There’s some classics as well as a varied selection of end-of-the-world novels. The Stand by Stephen King, Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, The Last Man by Mary Shelley, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I’ve spent a great deal in consideration of these timely literary pieces. Someone had a very ironic sense of taste.”

  “Sometimes you almost sound sane,” I said.

  Theo nodded. “Sometimes I am.” He stepped toward me and I frowned. I didn’t want sane Theo near me anymore than I wanted insane Theo near me. “I have no intention of hurting you, Lulu,” he said. “No, we’ve got a great deal to discuss, you and I.”

  “And not a lot of time?”

  “On the contrary, we have plenty of time,” Theo declared. The emphasis on the word “we” made me shudder inwardly. He knew something I didn’t, and he was about to educate me. He gestured at the door. “Let’s walk.”

  I followed him, not wanting him at my back. For all Theo’s sins, he seemed to understand that I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. I left the mug on the console. Let someone else clean up for a change.

  “The paperwork we found,” Theo said conversationally as he strolled down the hallway, “seems to indicate that this place was built in the early 60s, close to when the other place was built. A few of the documents are dated in the late 50s.” He paused at a table with a collection of the rechargeable lanterns and plucked one up in his hand.

  “The height of paranoia,” I said.

  “Yes, that would be it,” Theo agreed. “There were mission statements about protection, accountability, and the long-term survival of the human race. It sounds like an old speech from Kennedy minus the part about public service for your country.” He paused at a doorway. “This was where they had communications.” He rapped on the door with his knuckles. “The door was secured, and it’s made from steel. All the walls around it are reinforced steel. No one was going to interrupt the flow of information from the outside.” He chuckled suddenly and then added, “Unless it was no longer there.”

  I eyed the door. In all my time as a military brat I’d never seen the inner workings of a highly secured facility. Daddy had been at the Pentagon for a few years, and I had never gotten in the front door because I had no business there. It wasn’t like it was a museum. Neither was this place.

  I fought to quell my impatience. I desperately wanted answers as to why I was here, but I knew that Theo wouldn’t answer me until he was ready. This was part of his master plan, and I was to fall in line with that plan. (FB status of the day: I’m the stooge today; who knew it could happen so quickly? #Listentothepixiesnexttime)

  “Places like this rely on their security and their communications arrays,” Theo said. “It wouldn’t do much good if they couldn’t follow through.”

  “Cheyenne Mountain was NORAD headquarters,” I said, “so what is this place? A distant cousin? A practice run? The Greenbrier for this side of the United States? Or is it more like Raven Rock Mountain?”

  Theo beckoned me to follow. We went through other hallways and found massive rooms full of supplies and other rooms with bunkbeds galore. This was a place that would house throngs of people at the apropos moment. “They designed it, according to the papers,” he said prosaically, “so that it could become a de facto place of operations for the Air Force. The papers I read didn’t say it, but they assumed that Cheyenne Mountain would be targeted by the Soviets from the day construction was started, and this one would be the real deal. Hidden in the backyard because who would expect that?”

  I stared at stacks of boxes of MREs. The dates on the boxes weren’t that old, so the government had been funded and restocking this place for decades.

  “They made this place capable of receiving the Chief of Staff and their key officers. It became operational in 1966 as an OSD Defense Emergency Relocation site.” Theo waved his hands in the air and made a scary-movie noise. “I’m sure it was all very well-to-do and a governmental secret at the highest level.”

  “How many people could this place hold?” I asked. I was seeing pieces of the puzzle, but they weren’t coming together. What could Theo possibly need from me? He’d lured me here deliberately. Me.

  “Hundreds,” Theo said. “They had enough to feed hundreds for a ninety-day period. Ariel’s got it all figured out for us. How long, et cetera, for our little group. Of course, we’ve supplemented everything with supplies from the outside world.” He gestured at me to follow him once again.

  My thigh ached, but I steadfastly ignored it. I didn’t want Theo to be reminded of my weaknesses. We went down another long hallway, and he glanced back at me once. “It won’t be long and then we can sit for a while. I’m sure your leg is killing you.”

  Not really killing me, no.

  The hallway suddenly opened up into a larger area. It was similar to the cantina in that it was a high-ceilinged excavation, but instead of a building inside, it had a greenhouse with artificial lights. This was where most of their power was going.

  “This is our hydroponic section,” Theo said. “We’re very nearly self-sufficient here.”

  Two people were working inside the greenhouse. I could almost feel the vitamin D being manufactured by my body just by standing near the specialized lights.

  “How did you get here, Theo?” I asked, gazing at the lights and all the greenery inside the glass.

  “You know I fell into the water,” Theo said as he stared at the greenhouse. “I washed up near Oakland a day or two or ten later. I’m not sure how I got there. When I woke up in a city park there was a man sitting nearby.” He pointed at one of the two individuals inside the greenhouse. “Jeremiah there, as a matter of fact. He said he could hear me calling to him. It was funny, but I could hear him, too. There were others, as well. I could hear another voice, like the one on the bridge, telling me to come east to where the mountains met the skies, and I would find my destiny. That was the same voice that told me that I was going to need you later.”

  Theo was talking about Leander on the bridge. Leander could hear more people in his head than he could speak to. He’d told me once that it hurt him to try to put his words into people’s heads, but he’d done it on the bridge to keep Theo from hanging me. Gideon and his group had come on the run when he’d had a vision about me. I’d always wondered why they hadn’t been about two days sooner, and they could have saved poor Bath, too. Not Bath. Marcy.

  More occurred to me. Theo didn’t hear voices in his head because he was schizophrenic, but probably because he was psychic just like Leander and the rest of the humans who had made it through the change. Some of them were more obvious. Some of them were like me. I must have had something, but what that something was, I didn’t have a clue.

  There were some chairs nearby, simple folding chairs that had been placed against a hewn rock wall. I limped over and sat in one because this was going to be a short tour if I kept on going.

  “You’re thinking, Hasadiah,” Theo said. “Of what?”

  “I’m thinking you’re psychic, too,” I said, seeing no need to hold back. “You don’t hear God. You hear other people—” I tapped the side of my forehead— “in your brain. That’s your curse. You’re just like a bunch of others.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Theo said. “Some aren’t obviously gifted, of course. Or if you prefer, they aren’t cursed. Like you. You’ve said before that you don’t h
ave any special…gifts. Unlike your friend, Sophie, who can speak to any of the new abominations in their own languages.”

  “Leave Sophie alone,” I barked. “She’s a good person. She doesn’t deserve your derision.”

  Theo’s face broke into a wide grin. “You care for her. How wonderful! The egotistical, self-centered Louise has blossomed into a real girl. Like Pinocchio after he was granted his wish. You’ve blood and heart now. You feel. You love. What might be accomplished if all the world could know that love?”

  “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Theophilus,” I stated plainly. I took a breath and tried to collect myself. I needed every part of me to mentally battle with Theo and whatever scheme he’d cooked up.

  “I know you well enough,” Theo said. “Have you rested enough, my dear?”

  I stood.

  “I’ve one more thing to show you,” Theo added. We exited the hydroponics room and went down another long hallway. “These weren’t here originally. This was just another storage area. Now it’s our prison.”

  My stomach sank down into the ground.

  Theo rapped on the door, and a little peep window opened up. Two eyes stared out at us. The peephole immediately shut, and there was the sound of locks being disengaged. The door opened up, and a man stood there. It took me a moment to realize it was Penn, the one who’d given me the article about this place. He looked at me matter-of-factly, like I was just going to tamely accept his presence.

  The crutch was in the air before I realized what I was doing. It started its downward swing as Penn’s eyes went round with alarm.

  Theo promptly caught the wide part of the crutch in his hand and rumbled at me. “No, you will not, Hasadiah. Violence is not permitted here.” He yanked the crutch out of my hand, nearly causing me to lose my balance, and threw it away from me. “Come.”

  I glared volcanically at Penn as I limped past him. Then I saw who was in the prison, and my eyes shut.

  Chapter 14

  Lulu’s Choice

  The Present – Colorado

  The people who now called Cheyenne Jr. home had only to construct a wall made out of iron bars to restrict their detainees. One of them had welded the iron bars to create a makeshift set of jail cell walls to keep the prisoners inside. The bars with their messy, but secure, welds ran across the middle of the large room, leaving half of the room for the two guards who watched over them. A wrought iron security door, apparently plucked from a home improvement showroom floor, had been retrofitted to the rough-and-ready prison to create the opening. The back wall and floor were absolute granite, so there would be no digging out and away a la The Great Escape. The wall on the left was also granite with the exposed, raw scrapes from where machines and explosives had been used to break it away. On one side of the wide room sat a blue tri-fold partition, and I could see part of a chemical toilet behind the partition. Finally, there were three cots covered with blankets and pillows and three human beings, two of whom stared at me with wide, round eyes.

  “Lulu!” someone said as if they were surprised to see me, and I didn’t doubt that they were.

  I said a bad word, the kind of word that Louise would have never said. The rage that bubbled up inside my soul was a quagmire of boiling acid rising to a head. It would flow upward until it had nowhere else to go and then it would explode like a wayward bomb, taking out everything in sight.

  I looked away from the people inside the cell because I couldn’t look at them any longer. I saw that Theo was observing me with an expression of utter satisfaction on his face. Fervent nutjob: 1 Lulu: zip. (I could have gone back and counted that differently, but I was sticking to the present scenario just for the sake of temporary sanity.)

  Penn took a step back as my eyes drifted past him. I couldn’t stand to look at Theo any longer. I don’t know what Penn saw there, but it wasn’t anything good and wholesome.

  My fingers itched for Mr. Stabby. I wanted so badly to take that blade and slice someone open in a way that probably would have shocked me if I’d taken the time to think about it.

  Three human beings. Three. All were from Sunshine. I knew all of them. I liked all of them. All were people who would be missed.

  First was Zizi. She was a woman in her sixties who had originally come from somewhere in the Caribbean. (I had never asked where.) She had lived in D.C. until we fled the District as it burned, but she had never complained about it. Her day job was that of a stylist. She still cut people’s hair, but she also did a number of other things at Sunshine. So did many other people including myself. She had a gift of knowing people’s fate. She had seen that Clora had vanished before giving birth to Delphine. That bit of information had helped Sophie save Clora.

  I found myself standing in place, balancing on one foot, trying not to allow the fury to overwhelm me. I needed strength. I needed something I couldn’t define.

  The second one was Craig. A man in his fifties, he’d once had a daughter who’d gone to college in Arizona. His daughter hadn’t been a survivor, but Craig had. He was also somewhat of an expert on trains, and he’d been particularly useful in resurrecting some of the steam trains we used in the present. His blue eyes were strained as he stared at me through the bars. He liked to flirt with all of the girls, but I had always known it was all bark and no bite. Whomever he’d lost along with his daughter, had been the love of his life. He still worked with the trains, and he trained people to do the same. If he had any psychic power, I hadn’t heard about it.

  I bit down on the side of my cheek and felt the skin break as my eyes travelled to the third human being in the cell.

  Dimly, I perceived that someone in Cheyenne Jr. had a little compassion when they had brought this final person here to this cell. There was a plastic laundry basket full of age-appropriate toys near the person. Half the basket was littered around her in a rough semi-circle indicating that she’d been kept active. A Mr. Potato Head tottered near a pile of multicolored Mega Bloks. A well-used Fisher-Price xylophone sat near her right hip. A Playskool Sit ‘N Spin sat on her other side. There was even a pink corn popper in the corner next to a pink basketball hoop. There was a wide range of dolls and a stack of games that someone had painstakingly picked out. All of those items hadn’t come from Sunshine. No one had taken these three people and thought to bring along all of the toys. Instead, they’d prepped the jail beforehand.

  Delphine glanced at me curiously. Her carroty-red hair was done in little cornrows with beads on the ends that clicked together. Zizi had obviously needed something to occupy herself. Brown eyes, the color of the flank of a doe in the forest, looked at me blankly for a moment, then there was recognition on her two-year-old face. “Woo-woo,” Delphine said happily. It was just the way she said my name.

  “Lah-ooh lu,” Zizi corrected softly. Delphine had a few problems with letters but the community had rallied around helping her with speech therapy, and she was progressing nicely. Sinclair, the former surgeon from California, had been consulted, and he’d said that Delphine’s speech delay was likely because everyone anticipated Delphine’s every need. His advice was to make her ask for everything, but no one wanted to see Delphine unhappy. She was, after all, the first child born after the change. There weren’t many children about, and the people at Sunshine were happy to spoil her rotten.

  And since Delphine was here in this awful place, it meant she really was a survivor.

  There was a lurch in my stomach in addition to the lump I couldn’t force down my throat. I really, truly needed that strength. Where was it when I was desperate? Where was it when I was horribly, wretchedly, awfully desolate? I felt myself reaching out for something, for someone who might give me a solitary ray of hope. With all that I was, I reached for it, and one word passed through my mind. Please?

  Lulu?

  The rage inside me battled with the common sense of my brain. For a moment I didn’t realize what was happening. Then the image of Landers popped into my head. He wasn’t doing tha
t, but it was his voice, his thoughts there, giving me what I needed: that little bit of rope that kept me from tumbling off the edge of rationality.

  Lulu!

  I hear you, I thought. Landers, I hear you.

  “Woo-woo!” Delphine said and carefully tottered to her feet. The hem of the little pink and white dress fluttered behind her as she went. She rushed the bars and reached through them. Her tiny fists waved imperiously at me. “Woo-woo have cannee?” That meant, “Lulu have candy?”

  “Open it,” I gritted, glancing at Penn who had a ring of keys hanging at his belt.

  Penn looked at Theo. Theo nodded. Penn went to undo the padlock on the door and then stepped back as I carefully limped past him. After I was inside the cell, Delphine launched herself at me and wrapped her chubby arms around my neck. I winced because one of her knees hit my injured thigh, but I leaned into the hug and stared at Zizi and Craig as I balanced myself with Delphine. I heard Theo say something, and then the exterior door shut. When I glanced back, the cell door had been locked again, and the three men had gone. The lock clicked loudly after the exterior door closed.

  Lulu, what’s happening? Landers’s insistent thoughts threatened to overwhelm me, too. His worry was so palpable I could have wrapped it around me like a blanket.

  It’s Zizi, Craig, and…Delphine, I thought. They’re here, too.

  Landers’s instantaneous rage was so similar to mine that it surprised me for a moment. I probably shouldn’t have told him, but I don’t think that I could have restrained myself. An image of Clora popped into my head and then the image of a bracelet she always wore on her remaining wrist. (The comparison between her and Tate was almost inevitable, but Clora had lost her hand and lower arm because of the sorry circumstances of Delphine’s birth, rather than by the edge of a Japanese broadsword.) The sterling silver infinity bracelet sat all alone in the palm of Landers’s hand. It wasn’t broken, and the clasp was still connected. I struggled for a moment to understand what it meant. She never took it off because it had been a gift from Delphine’s father.