Sleepers | Book 8

by Druga, Jacqueline

  “Alex, you’re wrong.”

  “Mera, we drank and watched Heston. Double aphrodisiac.”

  I laughed. “You’re funny. I may have drank and watched movies with you, but I didn’t cheat.”

  “I bet you did.”

  “No, that’s not me.”

  “You can’t resist me.”

  I laughed even harder. “No, Alex, I just know how I am.”

  “Well, there’s no way to prove it so you believe what you believe, and I’ll believe what I think.”

  “Sonny.”

  “I’m sorry?” Alex asked.

  “Sonny. If we fooled around, if I cheated on Beck, Sonny would know.”

  “How in the world would Sonny know?” Alex asked.

  “I tell him everything and…one, we wouldn’t…you know, in the living room, we’d do it in your room. Two, Sonny is a very light sleeper, especially back then. He’d know. Let’s ask him.”

  “You want to ask Sonny?”

  “Ask me what?” Sonny said coming out of his room.

  “Sonny,” I said. “You know how me and Alex always say Beck died and we brought him back?”

  “Yeah,” Sonny nodded. “But I don’t know about him dying. I only remember when he was at the ARC.”

  “Good. Good,” I said. “Now, you need to settle something for me and Alex. And I need you to be one hundred percent honest.”

  “Alright.”

  “He doesn’t know,” Alex said.

  “Shut up, Alex,” I told him and faced Sonny. “When Beck was away…did I…I don’t know…cheat on him?”

  “Cheat on him? You know Beck wasn’t expecting you to wait for him, right?” Sonny said. “So technically, if you did, it wasn’t cheating.”

  “Ha!” Alex barked out.

  I backhanded Alex. “Did I? Was I with someone else while Beck was away?”

  “Do you remember?” Sonny asked.

  “I only know the ‘Beck is Dead’ time.”

  Sonny nodded.

  “Sonny?”

  He shifted his eyes.

  “Sonny, you said you’d be honest. Do you know if I cheated on Beck? Was I with someone else?” I asked.

  Sonny sighed. “Yes.”

  Alex laughed obnoxiously loud. “I told you.”

  “Oh my God,” I said shocked.

  “Mera,” Sonny stepped to me. “I didn’t say anything because I knew you didn’t remember. That you only remembered the ‘Beck was Dead’ time. It wasn’t cheating. He told you he didn’t expect you to wait.”

  “Still,” Alex said, “she did.”

  “She did. It wasn’t a lot. Only a few times,” Sonny said. “It wasn’t a regular thing.”

  “Influenced by alcohol?” Alex said.

  Sonny shook his head. “No, she wasn’t drunk at all. It just happened, you know. I thought for sure you remembered when it seemed you were implying I was the father of the baby. But you weren’t implying…”

  “Stop.” I said and immediately shifted my eyes to Alex.

  Alex lost his smile.

  “Sonny, are you saying it was you and me?” I asked. “Not me and Alex.”

  “Oh god, no,” Sonny said. “You guys hated each other.”

  “But we watched movies and got drunk,” Alex said.

  “And always ended up fighting,” Sonny told us.

  “You and I…” I pointed.

  Sonny nodded.

  “Oh my God, I’m a slut.”

  “You said it, not me,” replied Alex.

  “You’re not a slut,” Sonny said seriously. “I will talk more about this later if you want.”

  I nodded.

  “Good. I have to get going. We’ll talk,” Sonny said then closed his door. “Mera, for what it’s worth, I’m glad this is out now.”

  I could only nod as he walked away, I was in a state of shock. “I did. I cheated on Beck. I can’t believe I did that.”

  “With Sonny, no less.” Alex shook his head. “Now I’m pissed.”

  “I feel horrible.”

  “As well as you should.”

  “Poor Sonny.”

  “I give up,” Alex said and walked away.

  They may both had left, but I was left standing there with a million questions, the first…had to do with my daughter, Hope.

  

  “No, absolutely not,” Levi said to me.

  He was the best one that I could think of to seek out with my question.

  “It would be the same as if you went back in time with long hair and for some reason, the past you decided to cut her hair. Your hair as a time traveler would not change, nor would the paternity of your daughter.”

  “Okay, whew,” I said. “I was worried.”

  “Why would you be worried?” Levi asked.

  “One more thing to explain to Beck.”

  “You’re not telling him about this, are you?”

  “I have to.”

  “No, you don’t. Do you remember having the affair with Sonny?”

  “No, I don’t. Not at all.”

  “Then how can you possibly explain something that this Mera, in front of me, never experienced?”

  “That’s true,” I said. “I just don’t get how it happened with Sonny.”

  “Only he could tell you that. I don’t get it either. He doesn’t strike me as a passionate person or even sexual. The man has a poster of Tom Selleck on his wall.”

  “I know, I just…I don’t get it. I’ve never felt that way about Sonny.”

  “Maybe the loss of Beck made you attracted to the strength of Alex, an alpha male. With Beck alive, you were maybe attracted to the non-alpha male.”

  I shrugged. “That makes sense, I guess. I do plan on talking to Sonny about this.”

  “To say what?”

  “I’m sorry. To apologize to him for any hurt I caused him.”

  “Typically, I would poke fun at that. Sonny isn’t always my favorite person, but Sonny, as I just learned, is dealing with something bigger than the both of us. I wish I could tell you what it is,” Levi said. “I cannot. Just know the comfort of words would be nice for him.”

  “He’s not sick is he?” I asked. “He’s not dying is he?”

  “Actually, Mera, in my opinion,” Levi said, “it’s worse.”

  It took a couple seconds for me think abut it, then I realized what Levi was talking about. He was let in on the secret about Sonny possibly being the Sandman. If it ended up being true, Levi was right. It truly was the worst thing that could happen to Sonny and to us.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  SONNY

  If it wasn’t for me getting car sick, I would have kept that map open the entire road trip to meet up with the Sleeper storm. I wanted to study the map, know the terrain, know the direction to send them.

  I remembered Michael telling me how he called the Sleepers to attack Haven when the marauders had us under siege. He said he simply envisioned them arriving at the gate.

  Michael was able to do that and supposedly, as the Sandman, I was more powerful.

  That scared me.

  I didn’t want to be this Sandman—he was the bad guy, the boogey man. That wasn’t me. Even if we succeeded in eliminating the thousand Sleepers a couple hundred miles from our home, that didn’t eliminate the others that still remained on the east or worse, the millions on the other side the Great Divide. Those were the ones the Sandman used to build his army and take over.

  How in the world could that be me?

  Javier was confident, then again, he always was. He told me that if he couldn’t fix me, he would get rid of the Sleepers.

  It would be over soon. He was working on an infection, thanks to me, that could bring them down. How he planned on getting it
to the west where most of the Sleepers were, was beyond me.

  I racked my brain thinking about the Doctrines, which I knew inside and out, trying to figure out how this thing now sounded so easy to conquer, how we could easily rid ourselves of the predicted future and start with a clean slate.

  The plans tossed out left and right were too simple. Would they work? Did our future selves try it before and failed, something I just didn’t mention in the Doctrines?

  Beck’s “Are you alright?” snapped me out of my day-dream silence.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. A little nervous.”

  “I get that,” he said. “We’ll be there soon. Studying the map?”

  “No. I want to but I get car sick.”

  “You were just being quiet. I thought you were sleeping like Danny.” Beck lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror. “But then I looked over and your eyes were open.”

  “Just thinking. You know, about the Doctrines.”

  “What about them.”

  “It’s just all confusing. Randy says the east is a free zone. In the Doctrines, it’s not. This right here, what we’re doing is. Only it says the gas we used wasn’t a hundred percent effective and a third of them kept coming.”

  “They also said after the fall of Haven, we were nomads. Never really staying in one place for long.”

  “There weren’t many of us,” I said. “That’s changed. But I can’t see it being a Sleeper free zone.”

  “The Doctrines end hundreds of years before Randy’s time, we know this.”

  “So if they’re in a free zone, where’s the threat?” I asked.

  “Randy didn’t come back to kill the Sleepers or Sandman. Randy came back in time to get Phoenix to the ARC. Cure the virus, save his future. He lost a wife and children to the virus. It is still in the air, still killing babies and then half the children before they reach thirteen.”

  “So we changed that and made it worse,” I said.

  “How do you figure?”

  “It’s easy. Randy came back to the cure the virus. Thirty years from now, Phoenix comes back to end the Sleeper wars. Then someone from the same time frame comes back to kill me. I obviously didn’t exist, or Sandman didn’t when Randy came back. Something we did caused it.”

  “I totally disagree,” Beck said. “I think Sandman was always there. Randy told us, in his time, the Sleepers were organized. So it wasn’t completely Sleeper-free. Something or someone, whether it was you or Michael caused the evolution of the Sleepers.”

  “Did you ever think a single person didn’t cause the evolution. Time did?”

  “Absolutely,” Beck replied. “You guys might just be a beacon to follow. However, something we did causes the cure of the virus.”

  “Saving Javier.”

  “Exactly. I believe he cures and beats it. Why else would the narrative and mission change between two travelers in the same time frame? The virus is no longer a threat, the Sleepers are. That’s from the travelers’ perspective. I think the Sleepers were always a threat, I just think we sped up the time frame of it somehow.”

  “So with the virus as a threat, it took longer for the Sleepers to take over?” I asked.

  Beck nodded. “Hence Levi and Noah coming back. Without the virus being the threat, instead of a thousand years in the future, the Sleepers take over completely in a couple hundred.”

  “Why would the virus inhibit that?” I asked. “I mean, why do you think a virus-free world created a Sleeper-friendly environment?”

  “I don’t know,” Beck said. “None of us do. I do know the future that causes these people to come back has definitely changed. And will keep changing, because we have the chance to do things right. We have the advantage of knowing what happens if we sit back and do nothing.”

  “What we do now will make a big impact.”

  “Exactly. You know, Sandman doesn’t have to be the bad guy in the Doctrines.”

  That made me laugh. “What else would he be?”

  “Like you, he’s just a guy trying to save the world,” Beck said. “You have the power and the pen. Do what you do best. Write it the way it should be.”

  

  As tired as I was from the drive and everything that was on my mind, a nervous adrenaline took over my body. I stood on a ridge with Beck and Danny, watching the tail end of the long line of Sleepers as they made a mindless pilgrimage east.

  Beck was explaining that if the “lead the Sleepers to water” plan didn’t work, he’d return the next day by chopper to distribute the gas. Something we knew from the Doctrines wouldn’t complete-ly work.

  There were so many of them, and they moved slowly, all in a mass. I didn’t know how I would be capable of controlling them. Not that many, no matter how hard I envisioned.

  Then something odd happened.

  They just stopped moving.

  The entire wave of Sleepers came to a grinding halt.

  We didn’t fully understand why, until several minutes later, when every single of them turned and faced the direction I was at.

  It was right then and there, the confirmation that I was controlling them.

  They were looking for me. Following a signal I didn’t realize I put out.

  I didn’t know exactly how it would work. The small lake was two miles away. Did I just envision it for them, did I speak to them telepathically?

  Hell, I was supposedly causing Marissa and Calvin to revert to animalistic and human behavior just by being in the vicinity. I wasn’t trying to control them.

  The ones afoot, I was supposed to control, but I didn’t really know how.

  “What if you just think?” Danny said. “Something like turn around, go north?”

  “Do they even know direction right now?” Beck asked. “Does it work that way? If Sonny played a demented game of Sonny Says, would they jump up and down on one foot?”

  “I think the closer they are to Sonny,” Danny said. “The more they emulate their former selves. Right now he’s a mile away.”

  “But he was four hundred miles away and they came,” Beck said.

  “I don’t know how it works when they’re near me,” I said. “But I think they come to me without call.”

  I based my statement on the fact that the Sleepers were moving again, only this time toward me.

  I knew right then and there if I wanted to lead them to the lake, I had to be there.

  

  “This is going to work,” Beck said. His voice held some sort of amazement.

  The two mile trip wasn’t a short one to the lake. Some of the roads were impassible, and we ended up having to walk the last quarter mile, which I felt was dangerous.

  There was a chance that they would just stop moving again.

  Or my presence, zipping around from road to road confus-ed them.

  Forty-five minutes after we got there, just when we were about to give up and go home, the first dozen or so Sleepers arrived.

  I stood on the other side of the lake.

  I expected them to hesitate, to stall there, but they didn’t. They kept walking straight toward me, into the water.

  Like some sort of Jim Jones baptism.

  They kept coming. Slowly, but they came.

  “Danny, your plan may work,” Beck repeated.

  “It was more like a tossed out thought,” Danny said. “Sonny, what are you thinking? Are you like thinking, ‘come to me’ or some shit like that?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yeah.” Danny said.

  “I was kinda thinking how hungry I am and I wish I didn’t leave my sandwich back at the truck.”

  Beck laughed then gave a slap to my back. “Maybe that’s what you need to do. Who knows, but, I’m not needed here, so I’ll run back and get your lunch. This is going to take a while.”


  “I appreciate it,” I told him.

  I didn’t know how to feel watching them self-drown. I wasn’t as excited about it as Danny and Beck were. I guess I felt indifferent to it. I was doing what I needed to do.

  I started the day feeling like the villain in a comic book, not that the feeling changed much, but at least a part of me was trying to counteract all the bad I supposedly was going to do in the future version I had read. A future version I hoped would never happen.

  TWENTY-NINE

  ALEX

  At the four-hour mark, as I expected, I heard from Beck that they arrived at the area where the Sleeper storm was located. They had moved another forty miles like we expected and were in the vicinity of the lake, a body of water they found behind and south of the Sleepers. If Sonny could truly direct them, it would take some effort.

  I knew what my day would entail.

  Day two of looking for those assassins from the future. Maybe that was a strong word for them, but I didn’t know what else to call them.

  Tom Selleck was within our walls, although there was a chance he got back out before we closed down the perimeter and put it under watch.

  My gut told me that wasn’t the case.

  He was still in our midst and knew his way around, in and out. The base wasn’t huge but it was big enough to miss a mere fourteen people if they didn’t want to be found.

  He was awful close to the movie theater, close enough to hear Mera scream. So he either lived near there or was in there hiding.

  Even though most of our population only knew of Tom Selleck from Sonny’s poster and shirt, he still would be spotted if he were out and about.

  Which led me to the question, would the others?

  I pretty much knew everyone. Surely, I’d recognize a stranger.

  Unless they weren’t a stranger.

  Over the last few months, we picked up several new people—any one of those could be from the future. We didn’t know what they looked like. Unless one really was David Hasselhoff, the only ones I clearly knew were from the future were Tom and Peter.

  It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, or your friend wearing black at a rock concert.

  Nothing was going to stand out about them, especially if they integrated themselves into our community.