Deadlock Trilogy

by P. T. Hylton

  Hesitantly, he expanded the bubble, allowing them back into it. San was still laughing.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn’t noticed. Though there was something in Rayd’s eye. He was looking at Zed strangely, like he knew something was off. But it didn’t matter. Zed was committed to what he intended to do.

  He concentrated hard and shifted the bubble, pulling it away from the four and expanding it, making it larger than he ever had before. He put the bubble around the entire town.

  When the bubble was in place, Zed relaxed. All there was to do now was wait.

  So he waited. He waited in the town, among the people. He kept to himself mostly, but he interacted a bit more as the years went by and the town grew accustomed to their strange new circumstances. They eventually grew comfortable spreading out and going into the frozen world for supplies. To Zed’s surprise, many in town liked and respected him, as he suggested possible solutions to various problems. It gave him a little thrill to have people turn to him in times of trouble. He’d never experienced anything quite like it.

  Slowly, more and more of the strange, featherless bird creatures gathered in the skies above the town. And eventually, they started attacking. This concerned Zed, because it was something he hadn’t planned for, and he thought he had planned for everything. He eventually discovered he could protect himself from the creatures by creating a second bubble, a bubble that surrounded only him and moved himself ever-so-slightly deeper into time. It wasn’t far enough that it impaired his interactions with the townspeople, but it was enough to confuse the time-sensitive creatures. But there was a problem. Holding one bubble was easy for him now, but holding two bubbles took concentration. Eventually, he figured out a mental trick. He took the second bubble and mentally put it in a box and sealed it shut. The box was in his mind, but he represented it with a real wooden box that he carried with him. This mental trick made things much easier. In fact, he figured he probably could have expanded his protective bubble much further if he’d been so inclined, maybe even large enough to cover the entire town. But he didn’t see the use in that. These people were doomed anyway.

  So he waited years, watching the number of streaks in the sky grow and watching his fellow townspeople be slowly picked off one by one as the creatures descended each night.

  Finally, when the sky was thick with the things, when there were only a handful of people left alive in the town, he decided it was enough. He walked to the edge of town where the four Exiles remained frozen and expanded the bubble to include them.

  San was still laughing, but her laughter stopped abruptly. It was evening now.

  “Impossible,” Wilm muttered. “You stopped time without us knowing?”

  “Wilm,” Vee said sharply. His eyes were on the sky. “Look.”

  Wilm turned her head upward and her eyes widened as she looked at the hundreds of white streaks above.

  “I think it’s fair to say the town is ripe now,” Zed said.

  “How long?” Wilm asked, a tiny quiver in her voice. “How long was time paused?”

  “Five years, near as I can reckon it,” Zed said. He dissipated the bubble, bringing them all back into time.

  “Wilm,” Rayd said. His voice was thick with emotion. “Who cares how long it’s been? Can’t you feel it? The town is ripe. Bring Joseph.”

  Wilm nodded and closed her eyes for a moment. Then another man was standing next to them. Zed was startled not only by the sudden appearance but also by the man’s identity. It was the man who’d driven Zed from Santa Cruz to Wilm’s cabin in the mountains that day so long ago.

  The man was even more startled. He stumbled around in confusion for a moment before his eyes settled on Wilm and he realized what had happened.

  Wilm looked at him, urgency in her eyes. “Joseph, listen carefully. This town is ripe. We need you to locate the book immediately, please.”

  He nodded vacantly. Zed felt a touch sorry for him, not having a moment to wrap his head around what was happening to him. But just a touch.

  Joseph pulled something out of his pocket and Zed nearly gasped. It was a compass. But on the back of it was the broken clock symbol. There were other Tools. Zed suddenly felt dizzy. There was a familiar buzz in the air, the same as when he used the pocket watch, but stronger. Because the two of them were in close proximity, he realized.

  Joseph glanced at the compass. “It’s this way.”

  The six of them made a strange procession through town. Joseph led them through the streets like a twisted version of the Pied Piper. He stopped in front of a small house and pointed at a cellar door. “It’s down there.”

  Vee grabbed the door and ripped it off its hinges. He tossed it aside and nodded for Joseph to continue.

  Joseph led them into the cellar. He took a cardboard box off a shelf and pulled out an oversized, leather-bound book. It showed a symbol of a broken key on the cover.

  Rayd reached for the book, but Wilm grabbed his wrist.

  “No, not here,” she said. “We’ve waited so long. Let’s do this under the moon.”

  Rayd nodded reluctantly, and the group moved back into the street, Joseph carrying the book.

  They stopped in the middle of the street. Joseph set the book down on the blacktop and stepped slowly away.

  Wilm smiled. “Okay. Now.”

  The four of them reached down and each put a hand on the book.

  And the world warped and twisted around them. Zed felt sicker than he’d ever felt before. It was as if a hole was being cut in reality and something terrible was sticking its head through. That something terrible, Zed realized, was the true nature of his four employers.

  It was over in a moment. The book was gone. The street was gone. The town was gone. Zed, Joseph, and the four stood in an empty field.

  The skin of the four beings before him glowed a golden orange. All four of them had their eyes closed and even Vee had a smile on his face.

  “Where did the town go?” Zed asked.

  Wilm looked up at him. She was moving slowly, as if in a drugged-out haze. “It’s gone. It never was. We’ve consumed it, past, present, and future.”

  This was a terrible thing, Zed knew. But he couldn’t help feeling a bit satisfied. He’d done it, and he knew what he had to do next. He took a deep breath and spoke. “You’re happy? This is what you wanted?”

  “Oh, yes,” Wilm said in a lazy voice.

  “Good,” Zed said. “Then I’d like my reward.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN: REUNION

  1.

  Rural Western Wisconsin

  January 2022

  They stood in a patch of woods about three miles from the Mississippi. The area was strangely undeveloped. No major highways passed through here. Even the smaller roads were scarce. There were no farms. It was almost as if people were consciously—or perhaps unconsciously—avoiding this area.

  Christine looked around with a critical eye. “This is it? This is where the town’s supposed to be?”

  “It’s where the town is,” Mason said. “We just can’t see it. Or it’s on another plane of existence or something. But it’s here. Trust me. I was in it less than two weeks ago.”

  Christine put her hands on her hips and grunted noncommittally.

  Will winked at her like he always did when he was trying to reassure her.

  It had been a long, strange trip. For all of them. Just three days ago, Christine had been happily plying her trade of podiatry in a private practice, enjoying living with her husband, and anticipating the visits with her son Trevor when he travelled home from college.

  Then he’d shown up. Mason.

  What was he to her, anyway? Stepson? No, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t anything. He was just the son of her ex-husband. If she even believed his crazy story. Which, God help her, she had to admit she did.

  Mason had told them about Sanctuary, about how Jake had used a book with strange powers to create a safe place for people, a place from which they could neve
r return. Christine had felt a stab of jealousy when he’d told them about Logan, his mother. But she couldn’t stay angry long. It seemed as though she and Jake had both accepted the reality that he would probably never return, and they’d both moved on.

  Then came the hardest part. Mason told about the strange creatures in the forest and the people who’d attacked Sanctuary. He’d told of Zed’s final battle with a creature named Vee. He’d told of Jake’s death.

  Mason had also explained everything that had happened since. Escaping Sanctuary with Frank and a woman named Sophie, going to King’s Crossing, and being separated from the Earth itself. He’d told of the years they’d spent cut off from the outside world.

  Christine listened to all that, but her ability to feel and react appropriately had somehow shut off when she’d heard the details of Jake’s death. She’d long suspected it, but the confirmation hit her hard. She felt numb.

  Will was great, as he always was in a crisis. He supported her. He held her. This man who’d killed for her and her son, who’d never questioned her love even as she hoped night after night for the return of her first husband. Deep down, Christine wondered if maybe Will had been the tiniest bit relieved to learn of Jake’s death. But no. She wouldn’t think that of him.

  But she couldn’t wallow. Frank was alive. That was cause enough for rejoicing. He and thousands of other people needed help. And Christine would help them if she could. There was something else in that town. Zed. She’d feared his return for so long. Now she almost anticipated what it would be like facing him again. It made her wonder if a dark part of her didn’t so much fear Zed as miss the fight against him.

  Will turned to Mason. He looked at him strangely. Will was always a little slower to react to the weird than Christine. She knew when he looked at Mason he saw a distorted, elderly reflection of his stepson, Trevor. It was disconcerting to Christine, too, but Will was having a more difficult time processing it.

  “So what do we do?” Will asked.

  Mason smiled sheepishly. “Frank said you’d know. He said, if anyone can figure it out, it’s Will.”

  Will thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “You mind?” he asked Christine.

  She paused. She knew she had to do it, but she felt strangely possessive about the knife. That was silly, she knew. He’d give it back in a second. He always did.

  She passed it to him, handle first.

  He took it and an easy smile grew on his face. “Yeah, it likes this place. It’s singing to me something fierce.”

  “You know what to do?” Christine asked.

  Will nodded, a wide grin on his face now. He marched to a spot twenty feet away. “Here,” he said. He held out the knife to Christine. “You want to do the honors?”

  He knew her too well. She snatched the knife out of his hand. “What do I do?”

  “This is like a—I don’t know—a tether point. You just need to cut it. Push the broken clock symbol and swing the knife like you’re cutting a line.”

  She pressed the button and felt the familiar click. “Okay. Let’s do this.” She swung the knife in front of her and was surprised when it stopped against something hard, sending a jolt up her arm. “There’s something here.”

  Will nodded. “The knife can feel it, even though we can’t.”

  She swung it again. And again. And again. On the fourth try, there was an audible snap.

  And suddenly, they were standing on a paved road.

  2.

  King’s Crossing

  Another Christmas had just passed and that always made people grumpy. Frank understood. It seemed the only function of holidays now was to remind people of the things they’d lost. Family. Friends. And—less important but still annoying—candy! It wasn’t uncommon to run across a group talking in reverent tones and using words like Hershey’s and Ben and Jerry’s and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

  Frank felt the loss of those things. But maybe not as acutely as the others. He’d spent seven years in prison, followed by who-knew-how-long in the Away eating only the flesh of the Unfeathered, before this current isolation. He was used to coping, and at times coping with far less.

  He arranged the few remaining boxes in the storeroom for the thousandth time, verifying everything was in its place. Of course it was. There was so little left here he probably would have noticed at a glance if anything was missing. They still had a nice supply of canned beets. So there was that.

  Still, he came here every day. His empire had shrunk substantially over the last seven years, but he felt possessive of it.

  A frantic pounding on the door roused him from his thoughts.

  Odd. No one knocked on this door. Not ever. That was part of what he liked about coming here. When he was here, he was forgotten.

  He marched to the door and pulled it open. Garrett, one of the police officers in town, was standing there. Frank’s first thought was that something must be wrong. Maybe someone was hurt. Had Matt tried to kill himself again, maybe succeeded this time? Then he noticed the look on Garrett’s face. The police officer wore a wide smile, and his eyes were bright and happy.

  “Frank,” he said, and Frank could have sworn there were tears in the man’s eyes. “It’s happened. It’s finally happened. We’re back.” His message delivered, Garrett ran into the unusually crowded street, letting out a whoop as he went.

  Garrett hadn’t said what had happened. He hadn’t needed too. Frank understood.

  Mason had succeeded.

  Frank stumbled down the concrete steps of the old warehouse and into the street, ignoring the bite of the cold January air through his tee shirt. Patty Gossel was the first person he saw. He grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Are they sure?” he asked. “The mist’s gone?”

  She nodded furiously. “It’s gone. Jim Franklin walked a mile past where it used to be, and nothing stopped him. There’s some gas at the police station. Word is they’re filling up one of the old cruisers to venture out farther.”

  He pulled her in for a hug, which she returned with just as much enthusiasm. Frank wasn’t sure he’d ever exchanged a word with her before, but that hardly mattered now.

  The streets were filling as the news spread. It was strange to Frank. After seven years of being trapped in town, the first thing they did on their release was push closer together to celebrate. Maybe it made a certain type of sense. They’d been through something together, something no outsider would ever understand. And they needed that one last time to be together in a way they never would again.

  Frank followed the flow of the crowd moving toward downtown, toward Volunteer Park, toward the Mississippi. He felt an arm slip around him and turned to see Sophie. He pulled her close in a tight hug.

  “Can you believe it?” Frank asked. “The old bastard did it!”

  “Probably my babysitting influence,” Sophie replied, a wide smile on her face.

  They had just reached Volunteer Park when a cheer went up in the crowd. The people parted to let the new arrival through.

  “You did it, Mason!” someone called.

  “Tell us what happened!” someone else yelled.

  But Mason didn’t reply. He just kept walking forward, acknowledging them with a nod and a sheepish smile. Frank felt his heart swell as he saw his two old friends behind Mason.

  Will had a bit of gray in his hair now, and it seemed to Frank he’d put on fifteen or twenty pounds. Christine had gone the other direction, becoming thinner, perhaps a little too thin. Despite the lines on their faces, they still had that old spark in their eyes.

  He ran forward, pushing past the other onlookers, and embraced them.

  They held their group hug for a long time, none of them saying anything.

  Finally, Frank pulled away and looked at Christine. “You heard about Jake?”

  She nodded, tears filling her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried to save him.”

  “I know,” Christine said.

>   Frank felt someone nudge his shoulder. He turned and put his arm around the woman behind him. “Sophie, this is Christine and Will Osmond.” He grinned at his two friends. “And this is Sophie Hinkle. My wife.”

  Christine’s jaw dropped. “No way. Frank Hinkle got married?”

  Mason rubbed his chin. “Yeah, sorry about that. He made me promise not to tell.”

  Frank said, “No way I was going to miss seeing that look on your face.”

  Handshakes and introductions followed. There were plenty of other people who wanted to meet Christine and Will, and plenty who wanted to shake the hand of Mason Hinkle, hero of King’s Crossing.

  Frank didn’t know how long they’d been standing around basking in the presence of their fellow townspeople. It might have been five minutes, it might have been an hour. All he knew was he didn’t want it to end. Not yet.

  So, of course, it did.

  A voice boomed through the crowd. “My people.”

  They all turned toward the voice. Zed was standing in a pavilion, using it as a make-shift stage. He was holding the book with the broken man symbol.

  “Your lives are in danger,” Zed said. “The decisions we make in the next few minutes will determine whether we live or we die.”

  Christine said, “I really hate that guy.”

  3.

  “This should be a time for celebration,” Zed said. “I would like nothing more than for us all to revel in each other’s company. We’ve waited so long for this moment. And we should be allowed to enjoy it. We’re free. However, our freedom could also be our downfall.”

  Sophie squinted up at Zed. The sun was behind him, shining in such a way that he almost seemed to glow. She wondered for a moment if he’d planned it that way. Who was she kidding? Of course he had.

  His voice filled the park, as if amplified. Sophie remembered Frank’s stories about how Zed used to control the crowds in Rook Mountain.

  She turned and saw Frank was looking at her.

  “You’ve never seen him like this,” he said.