by Lukens, Mark
“I used to play them with Sayid.”
“You ever play Zombie Takeover?”
“Yeah, he played that one.”
Emma heard the laughter in Rose’s voice, the feeling of warm nostalgia at the memories of her and Sayid, a past that now could never be experienced again.
“You wanna play?” Mike asked her.
“She might want to rest,” Ray said.
“No, that’s okay. I could play. I don’t mind.”
“Just go easy on her, killer,” Josh told Mike from the kitchen.
Ray got up and went into the kitchen. Emma heard Ray whispering something to Josh, but even her sensitive hearing couldn’t pick up what he was saying.
“We could help with the dishes first,” Rose said. “It’s the least I could do.”
“Yeah,” Mike agreed.
“I got it,” Ray said. “Why don’t you two go ahead?”
“You sure?” Mike asked, suddenly incredulous, like he was being set up somehow. Ray usually didn’t let Mike shirk any chores.
Ray was already running water in the sink for the dishes.
“Come on,” Josh said. “I’ll go down there with you two.”
Josh led Mike and Rose down into the basement. Emma could hear Mike talking excitedly. She knew now that Ray had asked Josh to go down into the basement with them, to keep an eye on Rose. Ray had already locked the gun case earlier when Rose had been in the bathroom taking a shower, but he was probably hesitant to leave her alone with Mike.
They had decided earlier that Rose would sleep in the bedroom that Josh had slept in before he moved into her room. Luke offered to take the couch and Emma was sure that was so he could keep an eye on the front door, back door, and the door to the basement. Even if Rose wasn’t part of her group anymore (and Ray and Luke seemed to suspect she still might be), it didn’t mean that she might not pack a bag and leave in the middle of the night. Her leaving wouldn’t be a big deal, but if she was part of a group, or if she stumbled onto another group or the Dark Angels, she could reveal where this cabin was.
Emma believed Rose’s story, most of it anyway. But Ray and Luke were right to be suspicious. You had to be now.
Ray cleaned up the dishes and Emma dried them, handing them to Luke to put away.
“You believe her story?” Ray asked after the water drained out of the sink.
“Yes,” Emma said. “Most of it.”
“Same here,” Luke said. “But I’m not totally convinced.”
Ray led them into the living room, farther away from the door to the basement. Emma knew the three of them couldn’t hear them talking up here, but Ray was being extra-cautious as usual.
“Are you picking up anything from her?” Ray asked.
“Picking up anything?” she said.
“Yeah. Like psychically?”
“It doesn’t work like that. I’m not a radar machine.”
“You must feel something,” Ray pressed. “Sense something.”
Emma sighed. “I do. Not from Rose specifically, but I’ve been having this feeling, like something bad is coming, like a storm or tidal wave, something large and destructive.”
“Like the group she might still be with,” Ray suggested.
“Or the Dark Angels,” Luke added.
“I don’t know,” Emma said.
“She hasn’t seen us in her dreams,” Ray said.
“You don’t know that for sure,” Emma said. “She said she couldn’t remember her dreams.”
“Yeah, I never used to remember my dreams much,” Ray said.
“Me either,” Luke said.
“But I remember them now,” Ray finished. “They’re kind of hard to forget. It’s almost like they’re real, more like they’re memories or premonitions than dreams.” Ray paused for just a second. “It’s weird she didn’t recognize any of us, or that we haven’t seen her in our dreams. And she never mentioned the Dragon when I asked her about her dreams.”
“Maybe not everyone is having those dreams,” Emma said.
“Wilma, the woman I was with before, she didn’t dream of me or see Ray, Josh, or you in her dreams. But she dreamed about the Dragon. Those dreams scared the shit out of her.”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “That’s what I mean. It’s weird that everyone we know has these dreams except her.”
“Maybe she’s not one of us,” Luke said. “Maybe she’s not like the others we’ve been seeing in our dreams lately.”
“Maybe not,” Emma said. “But that doesn’t mean we should kick her out into the cold. It doesn’t mean she might not be a good person. Maybe not every survivor is involved with this. Maybe they’re not meant to be. Or maybe they’re not sensitive enough to these psychic forces. Maybe the Dragon isn’t visiting every survivor. Maybe he’s not able to. He can’t possibly visit hundreds in their dreams. He can’t be that powerful.” She almost added: Can he?
“Maybe,” Ray said, but didn’t sound convinced.
“Maybe she’s not a part of this, whatever this is, whatever we are. Whatever the Dragon and his followers are. Maybe there are a lot of people who have nothing to do with this, even a lot of the Dark Angels. Maybe they’re just recruited by their leaders and they go along just to survive.”
“I still don’t trust her,” Ray said. “I still can’t help thinking she’s some kind of Trojan horse, weaseling her way inside, scoping this place out, scoping us out. Waiting for the rest of her group to show up and attack. I might be wrong, but we just need to be ready for it. That’s all I’m saying.”
“If we’re attacked,” Luke said, “we need to think about a way out. We should have go-bags ready in the Jeep and the van.”
“Yes,” Ray agreed. “We should do that. I’m not saying Rose is a mole, but we just have to be careful. That’s all I’m saying. I told Josh to make sure she doesn’t find out about the tunnels. That has to be a secret we keep from her.”
“If she is a mole,” Luke said, “even if she’s being forced to do this, then she has the choice right now to come clean and warn us. And if she doesn’t, then that makes her our enemy.”
“I think we need to sleep in watches again tonight,” Ray said.
“You take first watch,” Luke told Ray. “And Josh can take the morning watch. First thing in the morning, I’m going to check the woods again.”
CHAPTER 22
Luke
Luke jumped awake when Ray touched him on the shoulder. Josh stood right beside Ray, barely awake but ready to take over the morning shift from the night shift so Ray could go upstairs to get some sleep for a few hours.
“It’s been quiet all night,” Ray said. He looked at Luke. “You okay? Bad dreams?”
“Yeah,” Luke said.
Luke was already dressed, he just needed to put his hiking boots on and lace them up, grab his coat, his pack, his rifle, and his handgun and shoulder holster. He slipped the holster on, then his black hoodie. He grabbed his dark backpack; it had the same stuff he’d had with him before: extra food, a canteen of water, extra ammo for his handgun and his rifle, a map, and a notebook in which he was making his own map of the woods. He had the small pair of binoculars hung around his neck, a compass and a small flashlight in his pants pockets, and a folding hunting knife in a case on his belt.
Ray had brewed coffee during the night. Luke poured a cup and walked back into the living room, sipping it. Ray hadn’t gone upstairs yet and Josh was settling down on the couch.
Ray wore his pistol holstered on his hip. Luke knew Ray wasn’t comfortable wearing the gun, but he seemed to be getting more and more used to it. He had shown Ray how to load the gun, how to hold it, how to aim it, even how to take it apart and clean it—everything except actually shooting it. He wished he could work with Ray and Josh, and even Mike, on shooting the guns, but it was too risky. The sound of target practice would travel for miles, bringing anyone within earshot: the Dark Angels, gangs, rippers, other survivors. Emma was right, people were going to stumble on this place no mat
ter how remote it was—no sense in advertising the location of their cabin with the sound of gunshots.
Ray was a quick learner, and Josh already had some experience with firearms, not a lot, but a little was better than nothing. And Mike was going to have to learn soon. Even though they couldn’t shoot the guns, Luke wanted to start practicing with other weapons, silent weapons like a bow and arrow, knives, fighting sticks, anything at hand that could be used as a weapon.
But those training plans would have to be set on hold for a little while until they either learned more about Rose or trusted her more.
Ray was still suspicious of Rose, and Luke was too, but he didn’t want to charge this woman with crimes before there was proof. Yet it was still difficult for Luke to buy all of Rose’s story. He believed some of it, but he found it hard to believe she had been living for days in the woods. It wasn’t impossible, but the chances of running across other survivors or rippers in the woods seemed pretty high.
But Ray had managed to survive for days without weapons, and with a child and a blind woman, so nothing was impossible.
Still, it would make him feel better to check out the woods, look for fresh tracks or signs that there were others in the woods.
After he finished his cup of coffee, he stood next to the door to Rose’s bedroom for a few seconds, listening. No sounds inside; maybe she was asleep. He looked back into the murky living room. Ray was upstairs now and Josh was still sunk into the couch. He hoped Josh was going to stay awake.
Luke went downstairs to the basement, not turning on any lights down there, using his small flashlight to guide his way. Inside the bunker, he went to the door that led to the tunnel to the garage, the shortest tunnel. He wanted to leave for the woods from the garage. If there was anyone watching, they might think he had stayed the night in the garage. The last thing he wanted to do was give away the hatch in the woods.
The garage tunnel was short and it led to a metal ladder bolted to the block wall. He climbed the ladder up to a small deck where he pushed a small door open that led into the garage. This small door was hidden under one of the wood work tables, with fake boxes attached to it. When the door was closed it was impossible to tell there was a door under the table.
He crawled out from under the table and stood up. He didn’t use his flashlight in the garage even though it was still dark. There weren’t a lot of windows in the garage, just the one in the door and the small rows of windows at the top of the two garage doors—just dark blue rectangles of early-morning light in the darkness right now. The Jeep Cherokee and the beat-up Dodge van he and Josh had taken from a house in the town of Heaven were just dark hulks in the gloom. Luke had mentioned to Ray that they should load up the vehicles with go-bags in case they needed to leave in a hurry, and he had every intention of doing that today.
It seemed like something bad was coming, a tidal wave of destruction, that’s what Emma had said. And Luke swore he could feel that wave coming, too. They had been somewhat safe here for a few days, but Rose showing up twenty-four hours ago had disturbed that feeling of safety. Now the paranoia was back, and it would always be a part of their lives. Paranoia is awareness—he’d heard that expression somewhere before. Paranoia keeps you alive; that’s what Luke liked to think.
The dream had come back to him, making his skin crawl. He’d been in the hell town (as he called it) again. Like the dream the night before last, he found himself in the middle of the street with the carnage and destruction all around him, the wintery trees, the brown grass and weeds, the trash and debris everywhere, the looted-out stores and abandoned cars, the dead and dying people, tortured men and women twisting in the cold wind, writhing hopelessly against the bonds that held them in place, and the gray churning clouds above it all.
Once again he found himself without his guns, without even his hunting knife. And once again he heard the sound of the Dragon preaching his evil to his congregation of Dark Angels. They were somewhere deeper in the town, deeper in the neighborhoods of homes.
He ran toward the sound, hoping to get to the Dragon before the Dark Angels killed him. If he could just kill the Dragon first . . .
But when he ran down the streets and came to the intersection, the sounds of the Dragon and his followers had stopped; everything was silent except for the ceaseless wind.
He saw the dilapidated three-story house across the street. The house seemed to be a living thing, a haunted place possessed by evil. The house looked run-down, the whole structure seeming to lean dangerously to one side, but it was all a trick to make him think the house was weak and harmless. But the house wasn’t weak; it was strong under its rickety façade. And it wasn’t harmless; it waited like a predator in the brush for unsuspecting prey to come along so it could pounce.
In the last dream, Luke had walked across the street to the house. But in this dream, he didn’t want to go. He knew there was something terrible waiting inside that house. But a moment later he found himself floating across the street toward the house. It felt like he was both being pushed toward the house by an invisible force and also being pulled there. His feet and legs didn’t seem to be moving, more like he was floating an inch or two above the street. But he didn’t look down to see if he was floating—he kept his eyes on the house, then the front porch, then the half-open front door.
“Luke . . .” the same voice from the dream before called out to him. A male voice, a voice he recognized immediately.
It was Jacob.
Luke was on the front porch, aware again that he was unarmed. Jacob was somewhere inside the house, and Jacob would surely be armed. There weren’t many people in the world that Luke feared, but Jacob was one of them. Maybe Luke could outfight him . . . maybe, but he wasn’t sure he could outshoot him, outthink him, outmaneuver him. Jacob was his superior, his teacher, the one who had trained him to be an enforcer, the one who had taught him to shoot, the one who had taught him all the dirty tricks.
Luke didn’t want to go inside the house.
Jacob was in there. But Jacob was dead, wasn’t he?
Could Jacob be alive? Could he have survived the shootout with the police? It was possible he’d gotten away from the cops on that Friday night when everything had started collapsing. It was also possible Jacob was immune to the Ripper Plague. Quite a coincidence, yes, but not impossible.
Or was the Dragon doing this, bringing Luke’s greatest fears to life, trying to scare him, rattle him? Was the Dragon that powerful?
Luke hadn’t entered the house, and Jacob hadn’t come out. But Luke remembered Jacob’s words from the dream: “I’ll be here waiting for you, Luke. I’ll kill everyone you know, everyone you care about.”
His skin crawled as he heard Jacob’s voice in his mind.
“Just a dream,” Luke muttered as he got ready to leave the garage. They’d found extra sets of keys for the house doors and garage on their first day here, and Luke had one of those keys to the garage door in his hand. He wanted this door locked when he left for the woods.
And now it was time to go.
CHAPTER 23
Mike
Mike woke up when his dad entered the bedroom. His dad was trying to be quiet, but Mike heard him. Mike lay on his side, facing away from the bedroom door. He didn’t move or turn over to look at his dad. He listened to him take off his shoes, then his gun and holster, then his flannel shirt.
“You awake?” Ray whispered.
Mike didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure why, he just didn’t.
Ray slipped into bed under a separate blanket.
Mike wanted to go back to sleep, but after a few minutes he realized he couldn’t. Within those minutes, his dad was breathing hard, nearly snoring. His dad had been awake most of the night, keeping watch in case any of Rose’s people—or anyone else—came out of the woods to the cabin.
Mike couldn’t believe he’d slept up here in this dark room by himself while his dad had been downstairs. He hadn’t even woken up once during the night. H
e’d always been afraid of the dark even though he didn’t like to admit it. But over these last few weeks he’d overcome his fear a little. Yes, the dark could be scary, the unknown, but he’d learned that there were scarier things in the light: there were rippers; there was a disease that turned your mom and little sister into monsters; there were survivors who wanted to kill you; or there were Dark Angels that wanted to abduct you and take you back to their leader.
Mike had seen their leader in his dreams—the Dragon, a tall shadow with glowing eyes. He’d felt the evil and the power coming from the Dragon. He’d seen the place where the Dragon lived, a small town ravaged by war and destruction, a cold and gray place. And in the last few nights Mike thought he’d seen the actual place where the Dragon lived, a haunted house, a place of evil. Terrible things had happened in that house through the years, and the Dragon had been drawn to that house by those terrible things. Somehow it made him stronger. But it wasn’t just the house that was evil, it was the entire town. There was a dark history there, the ground hallowed by blood and pain.
He might have dreamed about that town last night—he often did. Or he might have seen the woman and the little girl he’d been seeing in his dreams lately. But he was sure of one dream he’d had last night, the one where he seemed to be older . . . a man. He’d looked down at his muscular arms and legs in the dream, he’d seen the gun he held in his hand. The world was still destroyed, civilization still collapsed, but there were some places of hope, small pockets of rebuilding. Was he helping with that?
It wasn’t necessarily a bad dream, but the worst thing about it was that his dad wasn’t there. Neither was Emma, or Luke, or Josh. Not even the woman and the girl, and the other two they were traveling with. Were they all gone? All dead? Maybe he was just out on his own and the rest of them were somewhere safe.
He liked to think that.
His thoughts turned to Rose. She was pretty, and only a few years older than he was. He knew his dad and Luke didn’t trust her, but Mike couldn’t help feeling that she might be okay, just some girl who had escaped bad people and now needed their help.