Dawn of Revelation

by A N Sandra

  “We got him back. That’s the important thing. But the place where they were keeping him was… filthy, full of people stacked up like cordwood. It was terrible, honey. They are going to be even madder that someone saw it than they will be that Brock is gone. They are gonna come for me, and I’m gonna lie like crazy.”

  “If we are counting on how well you can lie, we are all sunk,” Danica shook her head.

  “I’m gonna do fine,” Bud promised. “I’ve always had a cool head.”

  “That’s different from being dishonest.”

  “I’ve got it.” Bud thought of the box in his pocket. He would be able to lie, he knew he would be. The trouble would come if someone really worked over BJ or Bryan. Although they were smart troublemakers and clever liars, they might get worked up over what had happened to their brother and get tripped up.

  A long shower before bed soothed Bud, almost as though everything that happened at the intake center was a dream. Danica hadn’t slept in their bed the night before, so the sheets were crisp and cool and Bud slid into them with a small shiver of pleasure. Danica slid in on the other side. Since it was summer they were careful not to touch because the air conditioning only worked so well in the bedroom during the heat of the day, but Bud could hear her breathing and went right to sleep.

  “What the hell? Who has time to sleep in the middle of the day? Wake up, you two! We need to talk!”

  Bud could hear the vicious words, but he thought it might be a dream. No one was really in their bedroom talking to them like that. Were they? Bud’s eyelids felt like they were stapled to his cheeks, but he cautiously opened them and looked at the bedside clock. One-thirty. He’d only been asleep four and a half hours.

  “Hello!”

  Bud knew who the voice belonged to now. He sat up in bed and turned to see Danica sitting up also, both of them facing their daughter-in-law, Susan. The chunky brunette might have been pretty, but the look on her face was pure wrath.

  “What the hell?” Susan continued to storm. “Are you even going to talk to me?”

  “Get. The. Hell. Out.” Bud said calmly. “Now.”

  “Nice try!” Susan raged. “I’m not going anywhere! You are going to answer for this!”

  “I’m calling the sheriff,” Danica said slowly. Bud could tell Danica must have been very deeply asleep when Susan barged in.

  “Good one!” Susan yelled. “You’re the ones who committed a crime and you want to call the sheriff?”

  Bud was only wearing some briefs, but he was going to be damned if he showed any shame to Susan, so he stood up firmly. “You don’t belong here. Go away.”

  “I know you took Brock out of HNMHIC!”

  Bud hated acronyms, but that was a doozy. “What does that even mean?”

  “You know what it means you selfish pig!” Susan was bright red. “You went in the middle of the night and took him out! All dressed up in camo with a bunch of hunting paint on, but I know it was you!”

  “God, you are crazy!” Danica rubbed her eyes. “Get out and let me get dressed.”

  “I’ll give you two minutes, but I’m not going away!” Susan turned and spun out of the room.

  Bud slid into clean jeans and a fresh t-shirt. Danica pulled on some denim shorts and a t-shirt. Bud put on socks and shoes, thinking he hadn’t gotten dressed this fast since his mother had come home early when he and Amy Walsh were fooling around when he was seventeen. Drawing a plaid shirt over the t-shirt, Bud tucked the ivory box in the chest pocket. Danica was running a comb through her blonde curls. They kissed and went out the door and down the hallway to find Joshua in shorts and a t-shirt sitting at the kitchen table while Susan angrily paced the kitchen floor in red heels.

  “You don’t need to come in people’s houses and accuse them of wrongdoing.” Bud started in on her. “The mental health people took Brock without ever talking to his family—”

  “His own father filled out all the paperwork—”

  “To avoid paying for Stanford—”

  “He couldn’t have gotten into Stanford to save his life!” Susan said angrily. “His father was loving and concerned. Brock is a danger to himself and the community!”

  Black rage descended over Bud at that moment. Only Danica’s firm grip on his arm stopped him from physically grabbing Susan.

  “Now people have died for your crime—”

  “Is Brock dead?” Joshua gasped.

  “No! The morons in law enforcement think that Kaitlyn Jorgensen’s uncles broke her out. Her mother had been in close contact with them and they are both Army Rangers in the area. They were staying at a motel in Redding. The timing couldn’t have been more convenient, but I know it was you—”

  “What happened to the Ryder brothers?” Bud cut her off. He’d known them since grade school. They never wanted anything more than to be career military and he hadn’t seen them for years. Their sister Jessica had married that no good Jack Jorgensen, but he’d seen Jessica around for years. Kaitlyn and Myah went to school with his own kids.

  “They had a stand-off with the police early this morning,” Susan raged. “They are both dead.”

  Danica burst into tears. How many tours of duty had they both lived through to be shot sixty miles from their place of birth? For a crime they didn’t commit. She started to sob.

  “They had all kinds of stuff on their computers showing they were planning to break into the HNMHIC, so everyone but me thinks they already did, but then where are Kaitlyn and Brock? Huh?”

  “I don’t have to answer anything you say,” Bud said. He told himself to focus on this conversation. He would worry about the people unfairly blamed for the thing he had done later. Except worrying about people who were already dead was pointless. But you have to feel bad for dead people—

  “The Global Alliance oversees the whole world!” Susan raged. “The Hollister Foundation is their US affiliate, and Urban Relocation is under that! I am in charge of Urban Relocation for the whole North State! I have my own car and a very big office.”

  “Your very big ass is trespassing in my house,” Bud said firmly.

  “I’m married to your oldest son! If you weren’t relocating to Sacramento this would be my house someday when Caleb inherited it! I’m not trespassing!”

  “You are not my family, no matter what you got Caleb to promise you,” Danica said with a deadly tone of voice. “We are not relocating anywhere, at all. This home will never belong to you.”

  “Well it’s not going to belong to you either. We got Mrs. Murray out, and Phil Sanchez is moving to Sac next week too. You are going to have to relocate, and this house is going to be razed. In a month no one will know it was ever here.”

  “Like hell.” Bud stepped forward. “Get. Out!”

  “Once I know where Brock is, I’ll go!”

  “You get out now!” Bud picked up Susan, struggling to get a grip around her bulging middle, and carried her out the back door while she screeched and flailed. She tripped down the short steps outside while Bud swiftly locked the back door with the deadbolt.

  “I’m coming back!”

  “I’m going back to sleep!” Bud told her through the kitchen window. “You aren’t worth worrying about!”

  Danica and Joshua were both slack mouthed at everything they had just seen. Susan had never been a delight, but the fit she had just thrown reminded Bud of a rabid raccoon, even down to her eyes ringed with too much eyeliner.

  “I can’t really go back to sleep.” Bud grinned at Danica. “Could you put on some more coffee?”

  “Sure, you want another breakfast too?”

  “I do,” Joshua said.

  “Fine.”

  Susan, gesturing wildly, was on her cell phone with her red heels grinding into the gravel as she spoke at the end of the driveway just outside the carport. Bud was getting a bad feeling about the way things were going.

  “I’m heading to the chicken coop,” Bud told Danica. “I’ll come back for that coffee.”


  Twilight had left her laptop in the chicken coop for Bud to use to inform the world what the intake center was really like. Bud figured that Susan was calling in some kind of backup and he wanted to make his report first.

  The words flowed as Bud recounted for the strangers on the Dark Web what he had seen and smelled in the Hollister NorCal Mental Health Intake Center. He posted his account to the same forum where he had posted his letter to Twilight.

  He thought of his letter to Twilight. What had he been thinking? He’d meant to ease her mind. Almost no real time had passed before he’d told her to help him break Brock out of the intake center and sent her into the wilderness with ibuprofen and band aids.

  “I hope that helps someone,” Bud said, shutting the laptop. So that Susan couldn’t commandeer it, he put it in the utility sink in the corner and turned on the water, submerging it completely. For good measure he took it out and stomped on it repeatedly before re-dunking it and leaving it in the water. Twilight had worked so hard for her business, and she was an amazing student, but after seeing the intake center, Bud knew that the future was not going to be rewarding good students or people with money-making talent. Natalie and Jase were almost certainly correct.

  Going to the door of the chicken coop, Bud noticed that Susan was nowhere to be seen, even though her car was still in the gravel. He opened the door and enjoyed the sunlight for a second before the sniper bullet caught him in the chest and he collapsed. Somewhere Bud could hear Danica scream. Indescribable pain shot through his whole body.

  “Dad!” Joshua was at his side in seconds. Bud couldn’t answer him though. He merely patted the pocket of his shirt.

  “Take it!” Bud said. The words cost him the rest of his mortal strength. The pain abated as he drifted away from himself, as though he was no longer tethered to his body.

  Joshua didn’t hesitate. He unsnapped the shirt pocket and took out the box, putting it in his own pocket before law enforcement closed in on the scene.

  “Get back!” An unfamiliar voice called.

  Joshua stepped back from Bud’s lifeless body in a daze. His mother was right behind him, and he stepped on her feet accidently before he righted himself. It seemed that the whole world paused, because Joshua saw stars the way that he had when he broke his collarbone in the eighth grade. The pain he felt made him one with the universe, no longer a separate moving part.

  CHAPTER 15

  August 8th, Interior Alaska Homestead

  All three houses were the same. They were five hundred and fifty-seven square feet, with two bedrooms and tiny kitchens and one main living area. The two bedrooms were downstairs on either side of the living area with the kitchen behind them, and each house had a small loft that could be a sleeping area or storage. None of them had a foundation but they were designed to be very stable.

  “We can sell this place as a fishing retreat later, if we need to,” Duane told Peter and Helena. They were getting ready to help Mr. Harris put up the first house frame. The houses would sit about sixty yards from each other in a straight line ending with the storage building. They would make a tiny village at the edge of the meadow.

  “Do people take vacations like that?” Helena wondered. “Just go to the middle of the wilderness and go fishing?”

  “Yes,” Duane laughed. “Your family didn’t, but other people do.”

  “If you say so,” Helena shook her head. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Put your gloves on,” Duane told her.

  All day was hurry up and wait. Mr. Harris would line things up, then Duane, Helena, Peter, Ray and Lourdes would lift, carry, and hold things until they were secured in place. It was long, tiring work.

  In between tasks, Helena would run to the garden to check on her war against the rabbits. The garden had grown considerably in the week and a half she had been there. Even some of the things she had planted herself were sprouting. The lettuce and spinach were big enough that she had made salad with them the night before.

  When no one was looking she had sneaked a tiny baby carrot out of the ground and enjoyed the sweet crunch. The long days of sunshine combined with the fast-growing hybrid seeds Mr. Todd had chosen helped the garden to grow extremely quickly.

  When she wasn’t cooking or working in the garden Helena helped with the construction going on around her. It wasn’t her strong point, but she could work well with good direction.

  “Just a little to the left… your other left… a little more…”

  “I’m doing my best!” Helena was balancing a large beam on her shoulder while her father directed her with placement. He gestured, and she moved slightly to one side.

  “Done!” Joel looked as delighted as humanly possible. Hard work and simple tasks made him happier than saving the world ever had.

  “Great,” Helena sighed. It was cute how pleased her father was, but she was just tired. “I’ll make some dinner now. Hungry?”

  “I don’t think I can wait for dinner. I might have a power bar.”

  “Very funny,” Helena scorned. “Keep it up and I’ll let you eat power bars.”

  “What are you making?” Ray asked. He had been watching Helena and her father place the last beam.

  “We’re just having roast beef from the can, but I’m making mashed potatoes and gravy.”

  “Make sure the goats get the potato peels!” Lourdes called.

  “Come help me peel and you can make sure yourself,” Helena told her.

  “Fine,” Lourdes said. “Come help, Ray, please?”

  “Okay,” Ray said. Everyone was surprised.

  All three of them started working on the mashed potatoes, Ray washing, Lourdes peeling, and Helena chopping potatoes to boil.

  “Ray!” Tawna said.

  Helena jumped, she had had no idea Tawna was right there.

  “I thought you were going to do something with me when you were done working on the house.”

  “I was just—”

  “Come on!” Tawna said shortly.

  Ray handed the potato he had been cleaning to Lourdes and retreated.

  “Lourdes, you should come too!” Tawna said.

  “In just a couple of minutes,” Lourdes replied. She began peeling so fast she was like a cartoon character.

  “This is enough,” Helena said. Her sympathy for Lourdes surprised her. “Go hang out with your mom.”

  Lourdes rolled her eyes just a little.

  “As soon as I give these to the goats.” She began gathering the potato peels.

  Helena smiled. “You do have your priorities straight.”

  The first house was finished. It was a very small, simple cottage built from a kit. The entire inside was finished, including plaster and carpeting. Helena had to admit that it was adorable. It would have fit inside the master suite of the penthouse in Dallas and now Mr. Harris and Tawna would share the house with Ray and Lourdes.

  Helena looked at it bitterly. Her father had always chosen Tawna and her children over her and Peter since he had married her, but this cut even more deeply. She needed him; it was a new, unfamiliar world. He was leaving her without a parent while Ray and Lourdes would live with him.

  “This really does suck,” Peter said, as if reading her mind.

  “We’re orphans now, I think,” Helena said.

  “Orphans who live with their mother,” Peter pointed out.

  “The irony,” Helena said. The idea of living with her mother just because her father had chosen Tawna and her children over her again, was galling. There had been enough rejection in her life already from her mother and peers at school. She simply couldn’t stomach any more bad feelings.

  “She’s being nice,” Peter offered. “She always asks how I am, or if I need any help with anything—”

  “Who cares? Dad was there for us the whole time we were growing up even though Mom was busy. Now Dad has Tawna and we’re alone. Don’t try to tell me we have Mom, because she isn’t a mom. She’s a person with an extremely similar D
NA sequence to us. That’s it.”

  “At least it’s a DNA sequence capable of great intelligence,” Peter smiled.

  “I would rather be a good mother than a really smart scientist, but that’s me.” Helena reflected that that wasn’t very fair to say because she never intended to be a mother at any point in her life. She had planned to go to college, maybe even graduate school for something exciting like journalism, nothing serious like law or biology. She was going to travel, eat good food, and play for most of her life. Her mother’s rejection of her when she needed her most had caused Helena to value fun over family. She reconsidered her previous words. “Okay, that was just mean, I really don’t care enough about her to be mean.”

  “You’re tough,” Peter commented. He sounded worried, and his lower lip sagged a little.

  “I’m a Garden Warrior.” Helena tried to make light of the void inside her that came from having a mother who had let her down so many times before.

  “It’s the best garden I’ve ever seen,” Duane told Helena as they walked through it in the twilight. It was almost eleven o’clock, but there was still enough reflected sunlight to see the plants clearly.

  “It’s been three and a half weeks since you planted the first part before we got here and there are cabbages as big as apples!” Helena tried to share credit. Elite education had taught her that taking credit for shared accomplishments was tacky if not sinful.

  “It’s not just the fast-growing seeds, it’s all the sunlight,” Duane said. “Farther south, in Matanuska, they grow pumpkins as big as cars.”

  “Our pumpkins are blooming even though we planted them last,” Helena said. She felt oddly competitive over the state of her pumpkins. The deep yellow blossoms had made her feel warm inside. Matanuska pumpkins could not possibly be better than hers. “That’s really good.”

  “It’s the end of the first week of July, and it might snow here in September, so they need to be mostly done growing by then,” Duane said.

  “I’ll do my best,” Helena said. “I can make pumpkin pie from a pumpkin. I helped Maria do it every Thanksgiving.”