Where Nightmares Ride

by R A Baxter

  Derek shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. I thought it was Jack’s car. Go grab his keys from Farley’s office and escort him to the satellite parking area. Make sure he leaves.”

  The larger soldier gave Derek a grin that made Jack shudder. Jack feared they had no intention of taking Taylor to the car. They were going to kill him. The guard let Taylor go, nodded, and opened the door for him. The shorter soldier winked at Jack before joining the larger one by the door.

  Taylor stopped and turned to Jack. “See you back home, dude. I’ll try to take a picture of that road south of the camp before I leave.” He winked at Jack.

  “No pictures,” the shorter soldier said.

  “If you can’t take pictures there,” Jack said, “take one of that old house we passed on the way here. You know, the one with the leaning porch columns?” Jack wanted to warn him that his life was in danger, but there was nothing he could say that would help.

  Taylor smiled and nodded, then the two soldiers shoved him out the door and left.

  Derek faced the boys, the pink box still tucked under his arm.

  “Guys,” Derek’s voice sounded way too friendly. “I know it’s been inconvenient being stuck in your cabins all evening, but there’s a real threat out there and I think Lynch and Farley are right to take it seriously. You guys are lucky, though. You’re all invited to sleep in the lab tonight. It’s much nicer than this cabin.”

  “Forget it,” Jack said. “We’re not doing it.” He couldn’t hold back the venom in his words.

  Derek looked at Ming and Travis and found them both standing resolute with their arms folded. Tony and Carl looked at each other with raised eyebrows, then shook their heads. “Really? Wow. I wasn’t expecting this. It’s just a sleep study. Why are you so worried? Montathena Research really needs those lab results and they’re paying you top dollar for them. You’ll never make easier money. We’re literally not asking you to do anything but sleep. I assume you’re planning to sleep tonight anyway, aren’t you?”

  “Actually, I’ve been having trouble sleeping. We all have.” Jack folded his arms.

  Derek opened his mouth then shut it and furrowed his brow. Jack knew Derek couldn’t admit he knew the boys weren’t having trouble sleeping.

  “I guess that’s it then.” Derek shook his head. “I thought we were friends, Jack. I promised Lynch I’d bring you all to the lab tonight. I didn’t imagine you’d turn it down. He’s not going to be happy.” Derek shoved the pink cardboard box into Carl’s hands. “I even snagged these brownies to make up for your troubles.”

  “I'll bet you did,” Jack said.

  Derek glared at Jack then yanked open the door before storming from the cabin.

  Ming walked over to Jack. “Isn’t it your car?”

  Jack grinned and nodded. “There’s a road that runs along the south wall of the camp. If we can get away from here, Taylor will be waiting for us on that road. If they make him leave, he’ll wait for us near an old house we saw in Silverton.”

  Carl set the brownies on a nearby nightstand and grabbed three of them. Tony rushed over to take four more and Travis took one. Ming picked up a few and handed one to Jack, but he tossed it on a table and looked out the window along with Ming. They watched Avard standing in a Jeep near the main offices, talking to a dozen armed soldiers. Four other troops marched toward the front gate. Two guards were standing at the doors of every building in their view.

  “We don’t have a chance,” Ming said. “There are people everywhere and they all have guns. There’s just no way.”

  Travis walked up behind them. “Remember to keep your voices down.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore!” Jack pounded on the windowsill. “We’ve lost.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Tony shoved a whole brownie in his mouth and sat on edge of his bed.

  Ming nibbled his brownie. “All I can say is, nobody’s forcing me into that lab. I’d rather be shot dead than let them mess with my mind.”

  Travis nodded and placed a brownie in his mouth when Jack grabbed his arm and pointed at Carl, laying at an awkward angle across his bed, his eyes closed. Tony laid down and closed his eyes, too, then drifted off.

  Jack slapped the brownie from Travis’ hand and slammed the box to the ground, sending mangled brownies scattering across the floor. Ming let his dessert drop to his feet.

  “That crazy old geezer!” Jack stomped on the brownie box. “Lynch said they’d do something to force us to sleep.”

  “I thought he said they’d release some kind of gas into the room!” Travis brushed crumbs from his hands.

  “They’re not taking any chances,” Jack said.

  Ming ran to the sink, flipped the faucet handle, and scooped water into his mouth. He gurgled and rinsed out his mouth three times, but when he looked at Jack, the drooping of his eyelids told him that he’d been too late.

  “That’s it! I don’t care who sees me. I’m out of here.” Jack tore open the door. The two guards turned around and faced him, their huge bodies forming an impenetrable wall.

  “Nobody leaves!” the man on the right said. He shoved Jack back into the room, but his actions were not what held Jack’s attention. Beyond his shoulders, Jack spotted Katie and Clara, in their flowery nightclothes, walking down the path to the research facility. Damien escorted them. The guard slammed the door and Jack stood motionless, staring at it.

  Perhaps he only imagined it, but he thought he heard the soft hiss of sleeping agents releasing into the room.

  Katie stood with her arms folded, watching her reflection in the lab’s observation window. She shivered at the discomforting thought that Farley might be ogling her and Clara at that very moment, on the other side of the glass. Brass sconces washed the corners of the room with light that cast a web of shadows from the black rubber tubes and wires hanging above the row of six inviting beds. The air temperature didn’t account for the chill she felt.

  Clara stood next to her and pretended to be brave, but her tight grasp on Katie’s wrist told another story. The door opened, and Farley walked in, his hands clasped together. He approached so close to Katie she had to take two steps back.

  “You’re here,” Farley’s face twitched when he smiled. “I’m glad I could at least count on you two to cooperate. Pick any bed you like. Make yourselves at home.”

  Clara glanced at the beds and sat on the nearest one, still clinging to Katie’s arm.

  “I need to speak to Damien.” Katie didn’t budge.

  “Why so nervous? You remind me of your sister; always so skittish. Would you like something to drink?”

  Katie’s face flushed. How dare he talk about Abby like that? “Who wouldn’t be afraid around someone like you?” She pulled Clara’s hand from her arm and tossed her bag on the bed next to her. “Let me talk to Damien!”

  Farley laughed and pulled a radio from his lab coat pocket. “Damien, you back there? Mm hmm. Yes. She wants to talk to you.” He looked her up and down. “He’ll be here in a minute. Can I get you anything else?”

  Katie just stared at him.

  Farley rolled his eyes, then turned and left the room.

  “Seems like a comfy room.” Clara set her backpack on the bed and pulled out a gray stuffed elephant.

  The door opened, and Damien walked in. “Hey, Farley said you wanted to talk to me. I heard the others opted out for some reason. Tomorrow, you’ll be able to show them how irrational they were.”

  Katie just stared at him, struggling to speak without releasing a flood of emotion. Damien stopped talking and looked away. She had one question for him, and she felt that her whole future—her whole life—hung on his answer to it.

  Damien looked at Clara, then back at Katie. “What’s wrong? You okay?”

  Katie briskly shook her head, then looked into his eyes, tears blurring her vision.

  “Come on,” Damien said. “What’s wrong?”

  Katie wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “Dam
ien, I want to ask you something, and I want you to be honest with me. I’ve been lied to so many times. I need you to tell me the truth.”

  “Of course. I have no reason to lie to you.”

  “You know how I feel about you?”

  He nodded. “I care about you, too.”

  “Okay then, tell me. Is this sleep study dangerous?”

  Damien looked down and then to the left. “That’s a strange question, I mean, I told you before. I’m fine, aren’t I? I did this same sleep lab in this same building.”

  “Answer my question!”

  “I did. I mean, I’m not going to say that some kind of freak accident couldn’t—”

  “Damien, stop skirting the question! I want to hear it from you. Is this safe?”

  “Yes!” Damien glanced up at her for only a second before returning his gaze to the floor. “It’s perfectly safe. You’ll see. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be thanking me. Stop worrying about it. Why can’t you just trust me?”

  Katie felt her insides melting away. She felt his hands take hold of hers and she jerked them away. She had nothing more to say. She walked to the bed next to Clara’s, moving more like a robot than a person, and pulled aside the comforter. She climbed into her bed and lay there staring at the ceiling.

  “Katie, why are you acting like this?” Damien rushed to her side.

  She pretended not to hear him.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what the problem is, but you need to know that I’m here for you no matter what you think. I’ll be on the other side of that window every second, making sure nothing happens to you.” He marched out of the room.

  Tamera entered, her heels clacking on the vinyl floor. “Good Evening, girls. Please, lie down, Clara, while I attach these sensors to you. It will feel a little cold, but it is perfectly harmless.”

  Katie hardly knew what was happening. She heard the bed springs complain as Clara laid back on her bed. She heard Tamera prepping her for the sleep study. She just felt numb—not sad or angry or afraid—just devoid of feeling. Jack’s note and cellphone recordings kept running through her mind. Was this procedure going to wipe out her mind? It didn’t matter. She wasn’t so sure she cared about her current mind anyway.

  “I assume you heard what I said to Clara.” Tamera stood at Katie’s side and squeezed blue gel onto a wired, disk-shaped sensor before attaching it to her left forearm. She circled the bed and applied sensors to each of Katie’s legs, three places on her forehead, and a few on her stomach.

  “There you are.” Tamera closed the gel tube and placed it in her pocket. “Place this headgear over your face and you will fall right to sleep.” She handed Katie a clear plastic mask with elastic blue straps.

  Katie stretched the bands and pulled the mask over her face.

  “Perfect. Sleep tight.” Tamera strutted to the light switch by the door and dimmed the lights before leaving the room.

  Air coursed through one of the tubes attached to Katie’s facemask and she tore the mask from her face.

  “You need to keep the mask on,” Tamera said over a speaker.

  “I will. I just need to get used to it first.”

  “Take all the time you need.” This time Damien spoke.

  Katie stared at the mask and again pondered her relationship with Damien. She was so sure he’d tell her the truth. She wanted him to be her hero, the one to rescue her from the clutches of the Intershroud. Instead, he’d betrayed her again. She’d aligned her whole future with him, but now she saw no future. Nothing mattered. She slid on the mask and tried not to think about what was about to happen to her mind.

  A sickly glow radiated from a translucent tube above her head. She glanced at Clara. Her cousin’s eyes were wide open, only rarely blinking, and she clutched her comforter like she was descending the downhill slope of a roller coaster. A gaseous yellow substance flowed from a box by her bed and into her mask.

  Katie’s troubles evaporated. She wanted to kick herself. Her poor cousin was terrified, and Katie hadn’t even informed her that her life was in peril. She’d been thinking only of herself. She grabbed her mask and started to yank it off but realized it would make no difference. She searched the wall for the generator room door and wondered if Jack really would take out the power.

  What have I done? she thought. Don’t let us down, Jack. Please don’t let us down.

  She watched Clara’s eyelids drop, then Katie did something she hadn’t done since her mother left her that dreadful night three years earlier. She prayed.

  Jack paced the cabin like a caged animal. There was no way to get to Taylor. He’d failed to warn Katie and lost his evidence in the process. Ming sat on his bed, struggling to stay upright, yet he’d only nibbled a brownie. Tony and Carl lay comatose and Jack suspected Marina and Barbara were out, too. He couldn’t leave the cabin. Gunmen were everywhere. Time had run out. He’d run out of hope.

  Travis yanked at the edge of a panel below Ming’s bed, then stood up and kicked it. It wouldn’t budge. “They’ve won, guys. We might as well have enjoyed those brownies.”

  “They can’t do this to us!” Jack kicked the crumpled pink box across the room. “It’s supposed to be a free country!”

  “They’ve got guns,” Ming said.

  “Then they’ll have to shoot me.” Jack ran to the door and yanked it open.

  “Get back inside!” One of the guards gripped his rifle tight.

  Jack froze. He couldn’t think. Something crossed his line of sight that caused him to question his own eyes. Four shadowy forms dashed through the pine trees just beyond the guards. They looked like small bears until they sprouted wings and lifted into the air. They glided toward the roof of the research facility.

  “What was that?” One of the guards fixed his rifle on one of the creatures and fired five shots. The creature didn’t even slow down. A dozen other gunshots pierced the silence from locations throughout the camp.

  Jack, Ming, and Travis darted to the window. Two guards already lay prostrate on the roof of the research facility. The third man rolled off the roof edge and clung to it for a few seconds before falling to the ground.

  Five hairy, winged, dwarfish creatures scrambled around on the roof. Six soldiers gathered around the building and fired at them non-stop. Two of the winged beings disappeared in clouds of black smoke, and Jack wondered if sleep agents were making him hallucinate. The remaining three dark entities surrounded the block of wood tied to the power lines. They grabbed the wood and pulled and twisted at it until one of them lit up like a candle and fizzled into another black cloud.

  A roof hatch swung open and another soldier brought out a rifle and started shooting. Another manlike creature turned to smoke. The last creature held the green cord in its hands and the block of wood dropped and slid down the metal roof.

  Indistinguishable voices shouted. An alarm sounded. More shots reported. Other flying beasts dived from the trees and slammed into gunmen on the ground, knocking them to the earth. The last creature on the roof laughed like a mad gorilla and yanked the power lines tight with all its strength. Sparks bathed the roof in electric light.

  Then there was inky blackness.

  Katie smiled when darkness enveloped the sleep lab. A generator buzzed on a half-minute later and the lights flickered back on.

  “Katie?” Damien spoke over the loudspeaker. “Very funny. Get back in bed. Clara?”

  Katie took a deep breath and gently pressed a finger over Clara’s mouth. She twisted the thumb-turn on the generator room door. Damien called her name several times before shaking the locked door lever to the generator room.

  “What’s going on here? What’re you doing?” It was Farley’s voice.

  “Don’t ask me,” Damien said. “They’re gone, but all the doors are locked.”

  “I don’t care about them! Can’t you see we’re under attack? Get outside! I want these attacks stopped!”

  A key scratched against the door lock and Katie turned to the
generator. Clara leaned on a nearby wall, her eyes half shut.

  “If you’re awake enough, help me disable this thing.” Katie felt a little drowsy, but Clara was much worse off. Katie searched the large metal box but found nothing easy to destroy. Clara picked up the connector plug. Katie dug into her bag and brushed aside combs, a mirror, a small purse, and a make-up kit before finding her pocketknife. She pulled the plug and plunged the room into darkness again, then cut the thick three-pronged plug from the wire. She grabbed Clara’s hand and led her out the back door of the room.

  Jack grasped the window curtain in his hand. The camp had gone dark below the thick cloudy sky. Gunshots and unintelligible shouts railed from the left and right, all over camp.

  One of the guards outside the door let out a loud “Oof,” and metal clanged against the cabin’s wooden porch deck.

  “What in the—” the second guard didn’t finish his sentence. Jack heard the crack of a wood railing.

  “This is our chance!” Jack felt for his backpack in the near darkness and ran to the door. He opened it and stepped over a lit flashlight spinning on the porch. Ming rushed up behind him, grabbed the light, and shined it on the two guards. One lay curled up on the porch, his arms around his stomach and breathing with forced effort. The other man lay passed out in the dirt amidst parts of the former railing.

  “Let’s go!” Jack said.

  Ming tripped on the sling of a rifle and kicked it aside. Travis leaned down, grabbed it, and joined Ming and Jack.

  The gunshots and shouting never stopped, and headlights now pierced the blackness. Motors revved, and the chopping of helicopters echoed through the mountains.

  The boys ran for the trees.

  Katie held tight to Clara’s hand, fearing who or what she might bump into in the lightless rooms of the facility. She waved her free hand in front of her and wiggled her foot in the air before each step, but her precautions didn’t save her from slamming her right shin into the metal leg of a table. She winced and stopped, leaning over to massage her leg.