by S. S. Segran
She licked her lips and nodded. Jag and the others watched as she and Mariah silently headed back to their room. Tony left after them.
Kody shut the door and suppressed a yawn. “I’m taking Tony’s advice.” He returned to his bed and was out within moments. Aari gave Jag a reassuring look before he retired as well.
Jag, however tired he was, couldn’t bring himself to fall asleep until an hour later. He and Tegan would have to talk. It was too much of a coincidence that they’d had similar nightmares on the same night and woke up around the same time.
Can it get any weirder than this? he wondered as he finally drifted off to sleep.
7
Tegan and Mariah walked out of their room with their bags at ten the next morning. The boys were already packed and waiting in the hallway. Aari playfully tugged at Tegan’s earlobe, mindful of her numerous piercings. “Morning. Did you sleep okay the rest of the night?”
“Considering what happened, yes.” Tegan glanced at the time on her phone. “We really should get going.”
The friends descended to the main floor. As Jag checked them out of the hotel, a voice behind Tegan sang, “Good morning!”
Startled, she turned around but relaxed when she saw Tony with his bags, fresh-faced despite having had his sleep interrupted. She smiled. “Hey!”
“You’re looking much better than the last time I saw you,”, he noted.
“Thanks. And you . . . ” She scanned him from head to toe. “ . . . are still wearing striped socks.”
“Life’s too short to wear boring socks,” he responded poetically with a dramatic wave of his hand. “Oh, whoa, who’s got that flowery perfume?”
Mariah snickered. “That’s probably Tegan’s shampoo. Her mom made it. We’ve all gone nose-blind to it, though.”
“Your mom makes shampoos?” Tony inhaled deeply, puckering his face in thought. “Lavender and . . . lilac?”?”
“It’s her hobby,” Tegan said, blushing slightly. “She crafts handmade soaps and bath bombs, too. And sheesh, what kinda honker do you have?”
Tony smiled and bobbed his head as if he was about to break into dance at any moment. “My girlfriend is a florist, so my nose has gained new knowledge over the years. Oh, man, I can’t wait to see her again.”
By this time the others had noticed Tony and greeted him warmly.
“So you’re driving all the way to Cali today?” Tony asked as they exited the lobby.
“That was the plan,” Aari said, “but we’re off to a late start. We’ll be staying in Vegas for the night instead.”
Tony’s eyebrows rose. “We may as well be traveling together. I was planning on stopping at Vegas for dinner, but I’ll be continuing through the night. Maybe I’ll see you guys there.”
“In a city like that, the chances are slim. But who knows? Sure would be cool if we did.”
They arrived at their cars. Tony shook hands with each of them as they stood under the blazing sun. “It was a pleasure meeting you guys,” he said with a slight bow. “Take care, you hear?”
Jag grinned. “You too, Tony. Thanks again for helping out yesterday.”
“Anytime. Hopefully this won’t be the last time we talk, you guys seem like a really great bunch.” Tony smiled amiably at the friends one last time before getting into his car and driving off the premises.
The five watched until the SUV was out of sight. Kody sighed. “Such a shame to meet someone like that, only to never see him again.”
Jag slid into the driver’s seat of the Jeep. “Come on, we really need to get going. We were supposed to be in Vegas by noon, but that’s not happening now.”
“We needed the sleep,” Kody said as they clambered into the vehicle, retaking the same seats as the day before. “Matter of fact, I still feel like I need to grab a catnap.”
Aari rested his head against the window. “Judging by the bags under everyone’s eyes, I’m guessing the feeling’s mutual.”
Jag pulled out of the parking lot. “Sleep, then.”
“We’ll be leaving you alone again,” Kody said.
“I don’t think I want to nap,” Tegan muttered. “I’ll keep Jag company, don’t worry.” She could hear the three in the back wiggling around until they were comfortable. Soon the only sounds in the vehicle came from the air conditioner blowing cold air into the cabin and from Kody’s and Aari’s quiet snores.
Jag was silent for a while before saying, “Hey, Teegs?”
“Hm?”
“About last night, the dream you had . . . ”
Tegan winced. “What?”
“You said that you heard a voice, but you didn’t mention what it said.”
“What does it matter? It’s just a nightmare.”
“Teegs . . . ”
She curled her fingers into the hem of her t-shirt, nearly tearing the light fabric. “No, Jag. Let it go. It meant nothing. It’s just a dr—a nightmare.”
“You said that it felt real, as if you were actually there.”
“Jag, I don’t want—”
“I had a nightmare too, and it was basically the same as yours.”
Tegan snorted and stared ahead at the lines on the freeway. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m not joking. Some kind of battle, right? Destroyed buildings and vehicles all around you? Feels like some isolated place on a mountain . . . a construction site or something?”
She looked at him sharply. He continued. “My dream took place during the early morning.”
“Mine . . . ” She looked away. “Mine, too.”
Jag slowly let out a long breath, then filled her in on every detail of his nightmare. “And I keep having it over and over and over.” He ran one hand over his face. “Since school started, that’s the only dream I can ever remember.”
Tegan was shaking slightly as she listened to him. “This is just some weird coincidence. It’s got to be. There’s’ no other explanation. There isn’t.”
“Some coincidence,” he murmured as he sped up to pass a slow driver before merging back into the travel lane. “I heard a voice at the end of my dream as well. A man, calling me by name, and—”
“Telling you to wake up?” Tegan’s voice was soft, nearly inaudible.
“Yes.” He glanced at her. “I guess the man you heard told you the same thing, huh?”
Tegan folded her arms and chewed on her bottom lip. Neither she nor Jag spoke for the next while. She was glad that he wasn’t pressing her any further on the matter, although there wasn’t much else to speak about; all the facts were laid out but none of them made sense. She tried to find every plausible reason to explain this coincidence but nothing worked. If you can’t figure it out, it’s best to forget it, she thought. It’s nothing.
She inhaled and exhaled a few times as she clenched and unclenched the fingers of one hand. Just as she started to calm down a little, there was a terrified bellow from the backseat. Jag slammed on the brakes. Tegan lurched forward with a gasp and gripped her seatbelt.
The driver behind them held down the horn angrily. Jag returned to his senses and eased his foot off the brake to press down on the gas pedal.
Tegan snapped around to look behind her. The three in the back were clearly awake. Kody looked frightened out of his wits. Tegan reached out to grab his hand. “Kody? What’s the matter?”
He looked at her with fear in his green eyes, and right then Tegan knew. She tightened her grip on his hand. “Was it a battle?” she whispered.
He nodded slowly. “They were torn apart,” he said in a low voice. “Just . . . murdered.”
“Black creatures?” Jag asked; he and the others were listening in carefully.
“Beasts. They were beasts. I—” Kody looked at Jag through the rearview mirror. “Wait, how did you know?”
“I saw them in my nightmares,” Jag answered softly.
Tegan swallowed. “I saw them, too.”
“That’s impossible.” Kody pulled his hand away from Tegan. “That’s impossible.”
<
br /> “Did you hear a voice telling you to wake up?” Jag asked.
Kody shrank back. “You’re freaking me out, man.”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“I . . . ”
Tegan tilted her head. “Kody?”
Kody rapped his forehead with his knuckles. “Yes. I did.”
“I’m sorry, are you guys saying you all had the same dream?” Aari asked incredulously.
“Not exactly,” Jag said. “More like . . . different perspectives of one elaborate dream.”
Mariah’s brow crinkled. “What do you mean?”
Jag lifted one hand from the wheel and curled his fingers slightly, as if he were holding an imaginary sphere. “I’ve been thinking about this. Imagine the dream as this reality where there is one timeline. Many things are happening in this dream, all at once. I see one part—my part—in my dream. Tegan sees her part, as does Kody. The dreams aren’t totally independent of each other. What we see are different perspectives of the same dream, one event. In this case, that event is apparently some kind of a battle.”
“But how is that possible?” Kody demanded.
“Beats me.”
Tegan gave Kody a gentle pat on the knee to soothe him even though she was in a daze herself. She could hear Aari muttering “This isn’t possible” repeatedly in the backseat. Despite agreeing with him, she had a funny feeling that either he or Mariah would be the next one drawn into the nightmare.
8
On the outskirts of Concordia, Kansas, a farmer backed his truck and a trailer filled with bales of hay toward a large barn. His skin was tanned and weathered, the palms of his blemished hands callused and seasoned like a sailor’s. A scar ran from the side of his nose to his cheek from a mishap during his teenage years. Though he looked to be in his seventies, his amber eyes, half hidden by a cap, shone with youthful curiosity and the resilience of a man who’d overcome numerous hardships in life.
He aligned the trailer by a bale elevator that extended to the hayloft where two young farmhands were waiting to stack the hay, then turned off the engine and hopped out to load the bales onto the elevator. The men conversed as they worked, laughing and bantering as they often did to make the routine job go by a little faster.
“Hugo!”
The farmer turned around to see a woman with her graying hair in a side bun standing behind him. A yellow Labrador retriever sat by her side. The man smiled and reached down to stroke the dog’s head affectionately, then looked at the woman. Removing his cap, he bowed playfully.
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Oh, don’t you do that now. How many times do I have to call you in for supper?” Her voice contained a hint of the Portuguese accent that he too carried.
Hugo leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, meu amor. I wanted to get as many of these stacked before calling it a day.” He nodded up at the hayloft. The young men grinned and waved down at the couple.
The woman placed her hands on her hips. “Has he been holding you hostage?” she called out to the farmhands.
They laughed and one of them called back, “No, ma’am! We’re just happy to help a great fella like your husband. You’ve both been very good to us since we began working for you.”
Hugo beamed and his wife gently cuffed him before addressing the farmhands again. “Go home, dears! You can help Hugo finish this up tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
As the woman took Hugo’s hand, he waved at the young men as they exited the barn and locked its doors. “Have a good night, boys!”
“You too, Mr. Sanchez!” They smiled and headed to their cars, then drove off the property.
Hugo laced his fingers with his wife’s as they walked toward their two-story home. The Labrador trotted ahead and entered the house, then waited patiently for the couple to come inside.
Hugo closed the door and took a deep whiff. “It smells so good in here.” He removed his checkered shirt and went to throw it into the laundry basket.
“It’s just corn and roast beef,” his wife said, though she sounded pleased.
As Hugo walked through the living room toward the kitchen, something on the television caught his eye. “Julia, have you seen this?”
His wife came to stand beside him while wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She frowned and tucked some loose strands of hair behind her ear. “It’s the crop failure we keep hearing about, isn’t it?”
Hugo reached for the remote and turned the volume up. “ . . . the phenomenon appears to be spreading rapidly. Reports from the last few hours indicate that major crop failures have been observed across Kansas, the Dakotas, and now Oklahoma and Texas.”
Julia gasped. “It’s spreading so quickly?”
Hugo regarded the television, eyes narrowed. Having worked the fields for decades, he had never heard of simultaneous crop failures like this. He listened as the reporter discussed the occurrence with a panel of experts. The crop failures that had begun in the farms of the Midwest did indeed seem to be spreading across the country at a frighteningly quick pace.
Julia looked up at her husband, searching his face. “Hugo . . . our crops.”
He gathered her into his arms. “Shh, we’ll be fine.”
“A couple of fields around here have already been destroyed . . . You heard how badly the Jacksons were hit in Baldwin City. And the Moores! They’re not too far from here and they lost all their crops.”
“Julia, please, don’t worry.”
“It’s just a matter of time, isn’t it? We’re going to lose our crops soon, aren’t we?”
“Don’t think like that, Julia.” He shut his eyes tightly. “We can’t afford to think like that.”
“Hugo . . . ”
Keeping an arm around her, he pointed the remote and turned the television off. “Come, supper is getting cold.”
As he led his wife away from the living room, Hugo swallowed the lump that was rising in his throat. He kept telling himself that they had gotten lucky; that whatever virus or bug was killing the crops had missed their farm. To think any other way would not bode well for him, and especially not for Julia, whose health was easily affected by stress.
They ate silently. His attempts at making her smile were met with barely a lift of her lips.
“We’ll be fine, meu amor,” he murmured. “You’ll see.”
9
Rows of serrated teeth gnashed menacingly from the jaws of a flattened, cone-shaped snout. The head of the creature merged with a grayish-brown body with two dorsal fins. Its cold, dark eyes followed the curious beings that, in turn, seemed to be watching it without a trace of fear. It stared them down for a few moments more. Then, with a swish of its tail, the sand tiger shark swam away.
The friends stood in a circular swimming pool at the Golden Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas, peering into a two-hundred-thousand-gallon shark tank located right at the center of the pool. The Tank, as it was known, hosted three hundred different types of fish, including sixteen sharks. A water slide went right through the tank, allowing vacationers to zip past the marine life that resided on either side of the tube.
“I’m glad we’re staying here for the night rather than rushing to Santa Barbara,” Aari said, smiling as the fish he was having a staring competition with swam away. “Feels nice to unwind, especially after what happened yesterday.”
The four of them turned around and motioned at Kody to join them, but he hung back.
“Come on, Kode-man,” Jag called. “You’ll get a better view from here.”
Kody folded his arms.
“What’s up with you?” Aari asked.
Kody pointed at the tank. “Look, I like food. I just don’t want to be food, okay?”
Jag pursed his lips and went over to splash Kody in exasperation. “There’s acrylic between us and the sharks, dude!”
Kody waddled away as fast as he could. “Only six inches of it! How can anyone feel safe?”
“You’re missing out, Kody.” Mar
iah looked back at the marine life as they swam around. She watched the smaller fish move around with ease, not seeming to be bothered that there were eight-foot-long predators circling in the tank.
As she observed them, something caught her eye in the glass. She squinted slightly, then froze. There was a reflection of a man staring in their direction. Her heartbeat quickened. It was the bearded man from Salt Lake City—the one who’d attacked them.
She spun around, sending water spraying everywhere, and scoured the crowd, once, twice, three times. The man was nowhere to be seen. She raked over the visitors again but he seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
“Mariah?”
Tegan was staring at her in concern. Mariah reached out and grabbed her friend’s wrist tightly. “He’s here,” she told her in a low voice, teeth clenched.
“Who is?”
“The man with the smoke grenade.”
Alarmed, Tegan scanned around. “Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“I don’t see him. Where is he?”
Aari overheard them and looked over. “He who?”
“Mariah’s saying she saw the guy who attacked us yesterday,” Tegan replied.
“Where did you see him?” Aari asked.
Mariah waved her hand vaguely. “I was looking into the tank and I’m sure I saw him in the reflection, but when I turned around he wasn’t there.”
Aari took a careful look at the crowd, then gave Mariah a reassuring smile. “He’s not here, ’Riah. Maybe it was someone who looked like him.”
Mariah felt her cheeks flush; her friends were thinking she’d lost it. “I know I saw him. He was just there, watching us and—” She halted midsentence when she saw Jag grab Kody in a headlock and drag him over to the shark tank. Kody was trying to resist the entire time but gave up when Jag pressed his face against the glass.
“Jag, you’re—” Kody’s complaint ended in a startled yelp as a shark swam by. “I’m done! I’m so done!”
Jag let him go. Kody, in his attempt to distance himself from the Tank, tripped over his own feet and fell backward, splashing everyone around him. The others stepped back, protesting, but Mariah remained where she was, too preoccupied to be bothered.
