by P. T. Hylton
“Some of them. I hear we’re not supposed to leave town. Or sleep in the parks.”
She snorted out a laugh. “Yeah buddy, and that’s only the start. You want to do something, they probably got a rule for it.” She squinted at him again. “'Course, I’m sure they’ve got their reasons. Trust is a must and all that. What did you say you were doing here again?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Jake. About the day he spoke to you. Would it be all right if we went inside?”
She crossed her arms and glared at him. “No. Out here’s fine. And I already told the police all about what Jake said to me.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “I read the report. I’m wondering if there could be anything else you might have forgotten to tell the police. Between us.”
“I didn’t forget anything and I didn’t leave anything out on purpose neither. Jake kept it short and sweet. It was over in ten seconds. And I’m not dumb enough to hold back info about Rook Mountain‘s most wanted. Even if I did make out with him at some party in tenth grade.”
Frank sighed. “Okay. Of all the people in town, why did he pick you?”
Sally shrugged. “How the hell should I know? I hadn’t spoken to the man in years.”
“Have you thought any more about what he said? Does that thing about the quarry make any more sense to you now?”
“No,” Sally said. She pulled at the neck of her sweater as if it were choking her, although it looked two sizes too large. “Trust me, I’ve thought about all this. Why me? Why did he say what he said in the way he said it? I can’t make heads or tails though. How about you? Did it make any sense to you?”
Frank shook his head. “I have no idea what the quarry is or when he wants me to meet him.”
“What about the thing with the lock?” she asked.
Frank’s head snapped up. “What?”
“The lock. What he said about the Cassandra lock. Did that make sense?”
“Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.”
She snorted again, this time with frustration. “I thought you read the report.”
“I did,” Frank said. “But the copy I saw didn’t say anything about the Cassandra lock.”
Her face softened a little. “Guess they’re lying to you too. That makes me feel a little better about you as a person.”
“Sally, what did he say? Tell me exactly.” Frank felt the breath catching in his throat as he spoke. He had considered that this woman might be insane, that she hadn’t spoken with Jake at all. There were a million inside jokes and stories Jake could have used in a message that only Frank would understand. Why would he pass along one that Frank couldn’t? But this, the Cassandra lock… Sally had spoken to Jake. There was no doubt in Frank’s mind.
She licked her lips and spoke slowly. “He said, ‘Tell my brother to meet me at the quarry.’ Then he turned and I thought he was gonna leave. But he stopped like he had remembered something and he turned back. He said, ‘And if Frank comes, tell him to bring the Cassandra lock.’ That part mean anything to you?”
“No. Not a thing.” The lie came to his lips automatically and without thought. His mind was a million miles away.
“And the way he disappeared. I could tell the cops didn’t believe me, but I swear it’s the truth. He was there one second and gone the next. He didn’t run away. He just… vanished.”
Frank needed to get away. He needed to think things through. “Listen, I should go. I’ve bothered you enough. Thanks for your help.”
He turned and scurried down the steps before she had a chance to respond.
4.
Christine read the letter for the fourth time.
“When were you going to tell us about this?” she asked.
Trevor sat across the dining room table from her. He looked miserable and frightened. Sometimes Christine could have sworn he was a grown man. He'd get that determined, mischievous look in his eyes, and he was the spitting image of his father. But right now he looked like a scared little boy.
“I’m telling you now,” he said.
“Yes, you are. Less than a week before the start of school.”
He squirmed in his chair. She let him sit in uncomfortable silence while she read the letter one more time.
“So there’s no registration paperwork I need to fill out?” she asked. “Or some kind of parental consent form or something? ’Cause I’m guessing we missed the deadline for all that stuff.”
Trevor shook his head. He looked relieved to have been asked a question for which he could give a solid answer. “No, Mr. Thorpe explained all that to me. The Academy is technically part of the Rook Mountain school system, so they pull all your paperwork from there. He said no one has ever declined an invitation to the Academy, so you don’t need to accept or anything. They assume everybody who got in is coming.”
“Well,” Christine said, her eyes still on the letter. “There’s a first time for everything.”
Trevor got quiet again.
“May I ask why you waited so long? Were you afraid we would say no?”
Trevor shrugged.
“I can’t help but notice that you waited until Will was at work before you brought this up,” Christine said. Trevor stared straight ahead. She reached across the table and took his hand. “What do you want to do?”
He looked up slowly, that shaggy hair he refused to cut hanging in his eyes. “I want to go.”
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me why.”
“I want to get out of this town someday. I want to see what’s out there.”
“Honey, you know what’s out there.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but beyond that. Out farther. Out of this state. Maybe even across the ocean, you know?”
Christine raised her eyebrow. “You know they don’t let Resource Expansion workers do that, right? They go as far as they need to in order to get what we need. Then they come back.”
“Maybe someday they will. You always said I should go after my dreams, right?”
Christine looked back down at the letter. “What about supplies? Dress code? There’s not a lot of information here, Trev.”
“Mr. Thorpe said they’ll cover all of that during orientation.”
“Did Mr. Thorpe say why they picked you? Was it your test scores?”
“Yeah, I guess that was part of it. Zed selects every student himself. He came to the school a couple of weeks after we took the tests. We had an assembly and he talked for a while and looked every student in the eye. It kinda creeped me out. But then the next day Mr. Thorpe gave me the letter.”
A chill ran through Christine. Zed had looked her son in the eye and liked what he had seen there. She let the silence linger for a moment. Then she said, “Youngest person ever accepted, huh?”
He nodded.
Christine smiled. “I’m very proud of you. I’ll talk to Will. And we will all discuss it as a family, okay?”
“Think he’ll be mad?” Trevor asked.
“No, of course not.” Will wouldn’t be mad at the thought of Trevor going to the Beyond Academy. He’d be terrified.
Christine reached into her pocket and touched the key she had taken from Jessie Cooper. She knew she would let Trevor attend the Academy. It would look too odd if she didn’t. No one had ever declined an acceptance before. She had no choice. It was a terrible risk, putting Trevor in that place, but Christine couldn’t think of a way to avoid it.
Things were changing, accelerating around her. The key. Frank showing up to stay with them. And now this. They would have to move up their timeline. They’d been taking it slow and playing it safe for too long. Trevor might start Beyond Academy, but there was no way in hell he was going to graduate from it. If things went as planned, this would all be over long before that.
5.
Frank dragged the knife across the steak, sawing off a tiny piece. He wanted to savor every morsel of the rib-eye. He slid it into his mouth and closed his eyes. Without a doubt, this was the best thing he had
tasted in nine years.
“Dang, dude,” Frank said. “This steak is outrageous.”
Sean smiled. “Thanks. I dry brine them. That’s the key. People think it’s the way you cook it, but it’s actually the preparation that makes the difference. You like the beer?”
Frank set down his fork and took a sip from the frosty glass. His eyes widened again.
“I know, right? That’s Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. My personal favorite.”
“Man, what did I ever do to deserve all this?”
Sean laughed. “It’s your welcome home. What did you expect? I’m sure Will and Christine will have something at the house sooner or later, but I wanted to be the first.”
“Thanks, man,” Frank said. “So do you see Will and Christine much?”
Sean shrugged. “Not as much as I’d like, but we get together every once in a while.”
“How about Todd? You still tight with him?”
Sean set down his silverware. “Frank, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Todd’s dead. He died about eight years ago.”
“What? No. What happened?” Todd had been a friend. He’d been closer to Jake than to Frank, but it was still a shock to hear he had died.
“He was shot. They say Jake did it.”
A chill ran through Frank. “No way. I don’t buy that for a second.”
Sean furrowed his brow. They both took a few more bites of steak.
“Did Christine and Will talk to you last night?” Sean asked. “Did they give you the run down on, you know, the Regulations and everything?”
Frank shook his head and answered mid-bite. “No. We kept it pretty light.”
Sean sighed. “Well, as the first to officially welcome you home, I guess it falls to me to give you the lay of the land.”
Franked nodded. He had been dying for someone to come right out and give him some answers rather than hinting around everything. He had intended to ask Will and Christine last night, but things had been too awkward. “Thank God. Start at the beginning.”
“The beginning, huh?” Sean took another sip of his beer. “Well, you were here in the beginning. You remember Zed showing up in town, right? And the way people started going to listen to him talk in the park.”
“You kidding? My ex started following the guy around.”
Sean grinned. “That was pretty funny.”
“I remember him showing up on my doorstep too. Showing up on everybody’s doorsteps. What’s he got to do with what happened?”
“Maybe nothing.” Sean paused for a long moment. “Maybe everything. It’s not something people talk about, and honestly it’s not something I even like to think about. All I know is that when the bad things happened, Zed and his disciples got organized mighty quickly.”
“What bad things? You’re being vague again.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’ve never had to explain it before. It’s just something everyone knows.”
Frank let the silence linger. He wanted to give Sean the time he needed to find the right words.
“March 27th, 2014, we went to bed and everything was normal. We woke up on the 28th and everything had changed.”
“Changed how?” Frank asked.
“People were dead. Lots of people. There had been attacks during the night. I went on duty that morning and the dispatchers were already overwhelmed. We tried to contact Elizabethton to send some support units, and that was when we realized something was really wrong.”
“People were dead? What people?”
Sean took a deep breath. “Okay, it’s like this. Sometime during the night of March 27th, every person on the streets of Rook Mountain was killed. Torn apart. We didn’t know who did it and we didn’t know why, but fourteen people were ripped to shreds. Took awhile for us to even ID the victims. It was Christine who finally cracked that nut. We found what was left of the bodies in the streets. It looked like it had been done by wild animals. The meat had been stripped from their bodies.”
Sean glanced down at Frank’s steak. “Sorry. Maybe this isn’t the time.”
Frank set down his fork, his appetite shrinking. “No. Keep going.”
“You remember Kurt Hansen? Ty’s brother?”
Frank nodded. “Ty and I got reacquainted yesterday.”
“Kurt was one of the people they killed that first night. We found him on top of a squad car outside the station. Anyway, when I got to work it was chaos. Someone finally thought to call for help from an outside department, and that was when people started to lose it.”
“What do you mean?” Frank asked.
“Well, we tried calling Elizabethton and the call didn’t go through. That’s not exactly right. The call went through, but there was no answer on the other end. No voice mail either. It just kept ringing. We tried a dozen other departments and they were all the same. Our cell phones were down, and all we had were the landlines. Some of the cops at the station tried calling out of town friends and relatives, and there was no answer from any of them.”
Frank’s mouth felt dry. It had been filled with the savory taste of steak a few minutes ago, but that was forgotten now. “It sounds like some kind of coordinated attack or something. Like someone was trying to isolate the town.”
“Maybe,” Sean said. “As the day went on it started to feel like we were the last people left on Earth. The Internet didn’t work. All we could get on the TV was static—even the over the air local stations were gone. People started gathering around the police station and City Hall. They wanted answers and we didn’t have any to give.”
Frank wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “So you’re telling me that a bunch of people were brutally murdered in the middle of the night, and the next day Rook Mountain was cut off from the outside world?”
Sean smiled. “It sounds even weirder when you say it out loud. Don’t get me wrong, it seemed crazy that day too, but I was busy. I kind of took it in stride. I guess most people did. We eventually got everyone to go home for the night. That turned out to be a pretty good move. There were eight more murders that night. Again, it was all people who were outside. Four of them were cops. One was my partner Wes Dinsmore. He’d volunteered to pick up an extra shift.”
“I’m sorry, Sean.”
Sean nodded. “Thanks. The next day, as you might imagine, the group of people in front of City Hall was even larger. They wanted someone to explain what the hell was going on. No one could. Then he showed up.”
“He?” Frank asked.
“Zed. By that time, everyone in town knew him. He’d knocked on almost every front door in town. Most people thought he was a harmless nutcase, but he had a dozen or so loyal followers by then. Most of them were people in their early twenties. A lot of them came from rough backgrounds and were looking for something, you know?”
“So what does that wacko have to do with any of this?” Frank asked.
“He gets up in front of the crowd and starts talking about how he foresaw this. Saying that he warned the town.”
“Warned the town? How?”
Sean raised an eyebrow. “You said he came to your door, right? Do you remember what he said?”
Frank thought for a long moment. Then he remembered. “Holy shit. Are you saying that this dude actually saw this coming?”
Sean shrugged. “I’m just telling you what happened. I don’t know if he told the future or if he caused his prophecy to come true or if it was all a weird coincidence. But when he stood up in front of the town and said he had warned them, every person in the crowd knew exactly what he meant.”
Sean poured the rest of his beer down his throat. “There was a moment,” he said, “when it could have gone either way. For a split second, it seemed like the crowd might turn on him, blame him for what was happening. If it would have played out that way, I don’t know how it would have ended. Maybe we all would have lynched him or something. But it didn’t happen that way. Because, at exactly the right moment, Zed told us he knew how to fix it.”
Frank tilted his head. “He said he could set things back to normal?”
“No. He was very clear on that. He said life would never be the same, and there was nothing he or anyone else could do to change that. But he said he could stop the killings. He could protect us.”
“Did he say what he was protecting you from?”
Sean paused and looked away for a long moment before speaking again. “He didn’t have to. Many of us had seen the creatures by then. The rest had heard about them. It’s hard to describe, but I can tell you that he spoke with authority. I fully believed he knew what he was talking about, and so did everyone else. And then he pulled out this long sheet of paper and tacked it to the City Hall door.”
“What was it?”
“It was eighteen Regulations.”
“Huh,” Frank said. “So that’s how the Regulations started?”
Sean nodded. “Zed said that he could stop the killings for good, but that the town needed to agree to live by these Regulations. He didn’t ask for any elected office or any sort of title. He just wanted the vow of the people.”
“And the people agreed?”
“Yeah, they agreed. Wait, I’m trying to be honest here, so let me restate that. We agreed. I voted too. But, think about it, what was the harm? If Zed couldn’t protect us like he said, we were under no obligation to follow his rules. If he could protect us, well, maybe he knew what he was talking about and we should listen to him anyway.”
Frank whistled through his teeth. He wasn’t sure how much of this to believe. Twenty-two people dead in two nights? “What did these Regulations say?”
“They were well thought out, that’s for sure. Basically, they were the rules for sustaining a society in isolation. Stuff like how much food was allowed per person per day. How specialty fields like medicine and plumbing would be managed and sustained. How to go about getting gas for your vehicles and what to do if your vehicle broke down. But the most important Regulation was that no one was to leave town. Regulation 18 set up a plan for certifications.”
