by Lukens, Mark
She’d seen Hell Town so many times before, and she’d seen others in that town—in this dream and the dreams before—the others that Brooke drew in her art tablet: the man and his son, the other two men, and the blind woman.
But the others weren’t there in Hell Town this time; she’d been alone. And she’d been in a different part of the town, away from the town square and the businesses, away from the congregation of the Dragon’s followers, his worshippers. Now she was a few blocks away, drifting along the neighborhood streets, drawing closer toward an intersection of streets, toward a three-story house that was beginning to fall apart, the porch beginning to sag.
She’d felt like she’d been floating a few inches above the street in the dream, being both pushed toward the house and pulled toward it at the same time. The front door was opening, only blackness beyond it. But there were people inside that darkness. She knew Petra was in there, and she knew the Dragon was in there too.
“Leave the store,” the Dragon said from the darkness. “Leave the store, and I will let her go.”
The Dragon’s voice was clearer in this dream than it had been in other dreams, not so deep and demonic. His voice was low, but more human now. And she heard a southern twang that he seemed to have suppressed before.
The Dragon stayed hidden in the darkness beyond the front door. He hadn’t come out to show his face. Why? Because she knew his secret? She knew he wasn’t the monster he pretended to be. His eyes weren’t going to shine anymore. His spell over them in the dreams was weakening.
Suddenly Kate had stopped in the dream, just hovering above the street, her body floating in the air. He had stopped pulling her.
Or maybe she had stopped him from pulling her.
Yes, his powers were weakening.
“You’re no monster,” she yelled at the open doorway. “You’re just a man, just a person like the rest of us.”
“Men can be far worse than monsters,” another voice said.
She recognized the voice—it was the man from the video on the cell phone, the man with the cruel smile and small, hard eyes. “You’ll only get one last warning to leave. You don’t have any idea what we can do.”
An arm shot out through the open doorway of the front door, a hand holding a pistol. The man started shooting at her, bullets flying. Even though he was holding a pistol, the gunshots sounded like a machine gun.
And then there were the screams.
But the screams weren’t in the dream anymore; they were real. They were coming from the roof. Someone was shooting up there. A machine gun? Did they even have something like that?
“Stay in here!” Kate yelled at Brooke as she bolted out of the tent, running over to the ladder attached to the scissor lift. The sounds of screams and shooting came down from the shattered skylight, shards of glass all over the lift and the floor.
And there was another sound, the sound that had been familiar to her. An airplane. There was an airplane up there.
Tina came down through the skylight, grabbing the ladder, blood soaking her arm. She climbed down the ladder, but slid down the last few feet, dropping to the floor with a thud.
“Oh shit,” the doc said as she rushed up to Kate and Tina.
Tina lay on the floor, staring up in shock, her face splattered with blood.
“Who’s shooting?” Kate asked Tina.
“Airplane . . .” she whispered. “. . . shooting at us.”
“We need to get her away from that skylight,” the doc said.
Just then a few bullets rained down through the skylight, one of them ricocheting off the ladder with a pinging sound.
Kate didn’t hesitate, she grabbed one of Tina’s wrists and the doctor grabbed the other one. They dragged Tina away from the ladder, out of the light shining down through the shattered skylight as she howled in pain.
When they got Tina thirty feet away from the ladder, they stopped dragging her, lowering her arms back down gently.
Tina’s eyelids fluttered; she was close to passing out.
“Tina,” Kate said. “Stay with us.”
“I need to get my bag,” the doc said. “Some more supplies from the office. Stay with her.”
Kate nodded but kept her eyes on Tina. “Please, Tina, stay awake. What happened? Who’s up there?”
“Dark Angels . . . in a . . . in a plane . . . shooting . . .”
“Who else is on the roof? Fernando? Jo?”
Tina gave the slightest of nods, her breathing so shallow it was almost silent. She lay absolutely still, like she was afraid of making the slightest movement, like it would be too painful. Her eyes were glazed, her blood pooling around her body from the gunshot wounds in her torso, a lake of blood.
“Max? Was Max up there with you?” Kate asked her.
Tina didn’t answer.
“Kate!”
Kate looked up and saw Max rushing toward her. He had a gun in one hand and walkie-talkie in the other. “What’s happening?” he asked, then stopped, staring down in horror at Tina.
“There’s an airplane up there—”
“An airplane?”
“—it’s shooting at us, at anyone on the roof.”
“Who’s on the roof?”
“Tina said Fernando and Jo are up there. But I don’t know who else. Could be more. The doc was just here. She went back to get some medical supplies.”
“Just one plane?” Max asked. “Are there more Dark Angels on the ground? Trucks?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what Tina told me.” Kate looked down at Tina—she was out now. She reached down with a trembling hand and felt for a pulse in her neck. There was no pulse.
Max looked over at the ladder that led up to the skylight. Blood was smeared all over the ladder from Tina’s descent, more blood on the floor from her fall. Diamonds of glass winked back the daylight at them from all over the floor. A wide trail of blood led from Tina’s body to the bottom of the ladder where they had dragged her from.
Kate watched Max as he stared at the ladder. She knew what he was thinking. “No, Max. Don’t do it. You can’t go up there.”
“Fernando and Jo are up there.”
Kate wasn’t so sure either one of them was still alive.
“Listen,” Max said. “The plane’s going away. It must be circling in the sky. It has to keep passing by so they can shoot. I can go up there when it’s flying away and circling back, when the shooting stops.”
The shooting had stopped now for the moment.
The doc came rushing up to them with two duffel bags. She crouched down beside Tina, doing her best to stay out of the puddle of blood.
“I don’t think she’s . . .” Kate didn’t want to finish the sentence, didn’t want to say the rest out loud.
The doc had a pair of blue nitrile gloves on. She reached out and felt Tina’s neck just like Kate had done, then she picked up Tina’s right hand, feeling her wrist.
Kate looked at Tina’s eyes; they were still halfway open, any light in them gone, just dead eyes in a dead face now.
Max stood up.
“Max, no. Please.” Kate jumped to her feet too.
Max looked down at the walkie-talkie in his hand. He pressed the button. “Jo. Fernando. Come in. It’s Max.” He let the button go. There was a burst of static. He pressed the button again. “Fernando. Jo. It’s Max. Come in.” He waited for another few seconds, listening to the static. He pressed the button again. “I’m coming up there.”
Jo’s voice came through the burst of static. “No, Max. Don’t.”
Kate’s heart jumped. Jo was still alive, but she sounded like she might be hurt; her breath was labored as she spoke.
“Jo,” Max snapped. “Are you okay?”
“I’m . . . I’m okay.”
Kate didn’t believe her.
“Is Fernando okay?” Max asked. “Is he shooting back at the plane?”
“He’s dead,” Jo said. “Two others up here are dead. Tina got away, though
. She got down the ladder.”
Tears welled up in Kate’s eyes.
“You’re the only one alive up there?” Max asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you hurt? Shot?”
“I’m okay for now. Don’t come up here. The plane is coming back. A man is shooting from it.”
“They’re coming back to shoot you,” Max said. “They won’t stop until they get you.” He looked at Kate. “I have to help her.”
“Don’t, Max,” Jo said from the walkie-talkie, her breathing heavy. “The plane’s coming back now.”
“Are there other Dark Angels out there?” Max asked. “Dark Angels on the ground? In trucks?”
“I didn’t see any,” Jo answered. “But this could be the first wave of the attack. The others could be coming.”
The machinegun fire from above started again.
“Oh shit,” Kate said. She was sure the shooter in the plane was going to get Jo this time. Where could she hide up there?
Max started for the ladder.
“Max, no!”
He wasn’t going to be stopped, Kate knew that. They had lost Tina and Fernando and two others up there on the roof. And now they were going to lose Jo and Max. A quarter of their people were going to be wiped out within minutes.
The gunfire stopped and Max was ready to climb the ladder, his foot on the last rung of the ladder when he froze. There was another gunshot. The airplane’s engine died. A second later there was a crash, and then an explosion.
Kate wondered if Jo had gotten to Fernando’s rifle. Had she shot the plane down?
Max ripped his walkie-talkie off his belt. “Jo!”
“Max,” she said, breathing the word out from the walkie-talkie. “Kate. The plane went down. Someone just shot it, and it . . . it crashed. Exploded.”
Kate stared at Max. Who had shot the plane down?
CHAPTER 51
Kate
Kate ran over to Max at the bottom of the ladder.
“You didn’t shoot that plane down?” Max asked Jo, pressing the button on the walkie-talkie.
The doc came toward them. Others were coming from the tents. Rebecca and Patrick stood twenty feet away, Rebecca’s hands on the boy’s shoulders. They’d all heard the gunfire from the roof, the whining drone of the plane as it flew by, and now the explosion.
“No,” Jo said. “Someone else did.”
“Who?” Kate asked Max.
Max handed the walkie-talkie to Kate and then climbed the ladder.
“I don’t know,” Jo said. It sounded like her breathing was heavier, like she was moving around.
Kate saw Brooke come from the gloom of the store, standing beside Patrick and Rebecca.
“Don’t go up there,” Brooke pleaded.
“It’s all right. The plane is gone now.”
Brooke just stared at her, on the verge of tears.
“I have to go up there and help.”
Brooke didn’t say anything else, just watched Kate. Patrick took a step over to Brooke and took her hand in his. Rebecca put her hand on Brooke’s shoulder. Tiger wound himself around Brooke’s legs. It looked to Kate like a family photo. She realized that if something happened to her, maybe Rebecca could take care of Brooke like she took care of Patrick.
Kate promised herself to talk to Rebecca about that soon, but right now she needed to focus on what she was doing. She climbed the ladder and crawled up through the shattered skylight like she’d done dozens of times before. It wasn’t quiet on the roof. The gunshots and the drone of the airplane were gone, but other sounds had taken their place: a mob of yells, screeches, a few high-pitched screams from the rippers, running feet.
Max was already with Jo at the other side of the roof that looked over the parking lot. They were both keeping low behind the knee wall, Jo with a pair of binoculars up to her eyes. Max had Fernando’s rifle with him.
Fernando. He lay only twenty feet away in the middle of the roof, sprawled out, limbs flung out from his torso like a discarded ragdoll. He was facedown and half of his head had been blown away. His back was riddled with bullets. More bullet holes dotted the roof and the massive HVAC units. Two other people, Wes and Sophie, lay farther away, struck down while running, full of bullet holes, lying in pools of blood.
Kate had paused for a moment to stare at the dead. Jo had been the only one who had survived. But was she wounded? Bleeding out? Was she dying?
Kate rushed to Jo and Max, crouching low as she ran, like a cat on the prowl. But she didn’t feel like a cat, like a predator; she felt more like the prey.
“Are you hurt?” Kate asked Jo when she crouched down next to her at the knee wall.
“My arm,” she said.
Kate saw the blood on Jo’s shirt sleeve; it was soaked with it.
“I think it grazed me,” Jo said, glancing away from her binoculars to look at Kate. She handed the binoculars to Max.
“Can you move your arm okay?”
“Yeah. I don’t think it’s broken.”
Max stared through the binoculars, peering up over the edge of the block wall. “They’re coming.”
For a moment Kate thought Max was talking about the rippers. The screams and calls of the rippers filled the air—of course they were coming. But then she realized that he was talking about the two vehicles parked at the edge of the parking lot. She saw a van and a pickup truck drive down into the shallow ditch and then come up the other side with ease. They crashed through the line of shrubs and bounced onto the edge of the parking lot.
“The rippers are going to get them,” Max said.
“They’re not Dark Angels, are they?” Kate asked.
“No,” Jo said. “Can’t be. They wouldn’t have shot the plane down if they were. They helped us. Saved us. We need to help them.”
Max jumped to his feet and ran to the skylight. “We need to get that back gate open!”
Kate followed Max to the skylight and then down the ladder.
Before Kate was even on the floor of the store, Max was barking orders at Phil and Lisa, both of them standing nearby. Kate followed the three of them as they sprinted to the loading bay. Phil opened the rollup door and Lisa opened the small metal door, running outside to unhook the wires from the car batteries that electrified the fence.
“You wait three minutes,” Max told Lisa as he jumped down from the ramp to the pavement. “Then you hook them back up. No matter what.”
Lisa nodded, waiting next to the plywood platform of car batteries, the leads in her hand.
Kate caught up to Max and Phil as they ran alongside the back of the building. Phil had the key to the padlock, and he got to the gate first, unlocking it and sliding it open. The box truck they used to have blocking the gate had never been returned after Max and Fernando had dumped Jeff and Neal’s bodies and gone for the weapons in the middle of the parking lot, so the gate was clear for the two vehicles.
Max ran out through the gate as Phil slid it all the way open, standing by it, ready to slide it closed again. Max didn’t have his rifle with him—he’d left it on the roof with Jo. He was defenseless as he ran out to the parking lot. The vehicles were coming, Kate could hear them, but there were also hundreds of rippers coming too.
“What are you doing, Max?”
“Showing them the way inside!” he yelled back. “Stay there!”
Kate stopped just outside the gate, watching as Max ran to the far corner of the front of the building. She looked to her right, beyond the cars and trucks that had been lined up in front of the entrances and the row of shrubs on that side of the parking lot. Dozens of rippers were coming from the partially constructed building; they were almost to the cars and trucks now, ready to crawl over them like a wave of insects.
She looked back at Max as he waited for the van and the pickup truck. She didn’t think they were going to make it.
CHAPTER 52
Petra
Petra had fallen asleep again even though it was the middle of the
day. What else did she have to do? She’d checked all the basement windows again. Even if they were unlocked, there was no way she could squeeze her body through them. She had crept up the stairs to check the door, trying to twist the doorknob gently. It was locked, the door sturdy. She had even climbed up on the table to check for any weak spots between the floor joists in the ceiling, looking for a place she could push the wood flooring up.
Nothing. There was no escape. She stretched out on the bed under the blankets and fell asleep.
And now, again, she had been awakened by a noise: the basement door opening up. The daylight splashed down the steps.
She sat up in bed. Who was coming down the steps? She’d already had breakfast, and she wondered if that would be her only meal of the day. It seemed too early for dinner. She didn’t hear the dishes rattling lightly on the tray, the careful footsteps of Audrey as she descended the steps.
Maybe it wasn’t Audrey. Maybe it was Jacob coming down this time. Or one of the Dark Angels. Or maybe the Dragon himself. She figured they were going to interrogate her soon. It had to happen eventually. They would want to find out anything she knew about the store, any weaknesses in the defenses, a list of the food and supplies in the store, the names of the people there and what weapons they had. But she thought the Dragon might have different questions for her, questions about the others she saw in her dreams.
The footsteps seemed too light for a man. Maybe it was Audrey, or maybe it was one of the other “housemaids” coming down to change the bucket in the small bathroom she used—God knew it needed it.
Petra waited in her bed. She was still dressed, her hiking boots on the floor beside the bed. She was cold from inactivity even though she’d been under the blankets.
Audrey appeared at the bottom of the steps, washed in the muted daylight for a moment, hesitating at the landing above the last few steps like she had to wait for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the basement, perhaps nervous about a surprise attack. She was dressed in the white clothing she usually wore, but this time she had on a pair of brown ankle boots laced up tight and a dark sweater wrapped around her that was too big for her.
