by David Beers
The Devil’s Dream
by
David Beers
Copyright © 2014 by David Beers
Ebook formatting by Jesse Gordon
Table of Contents
Part I: Running From the Wall
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part II: Appropriate Measures
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Part III: Dreams and Nightmares
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Part IV: Epilogue
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
For my mother, Cara Clark.
This book was written with you
in mind every second of the way.
Miss you, Mom.
Part I
Running From the Wall
Chapter One
The seat smelled of vomit and piss.
Matthew understood the smells, understood the past they revealed, but that understanding was way in the back. His mind was still warming up and the smells filtering in inspired wild appreciation but mattered little.
Matthew looked up the long aisle even though he could only see a few feet in front of him. His eyes were a cold, gray blue, like he had just been pulled from a deep freezer—but he thought they would change back to the deep ocean blue he remembered with a bit more time. His breath came out measured, but he kept having to remind himself...
In and out. In and out.
He hadn't needed to move his lungs in ten years.
It'll pass.
But would it? He didn't know. He doubted anyone did, not after how long he had been behind The Wall. No one tested trials based on ten-year escapees. His lungs might just stop working, or his brain misfire without the gas it had grown accustomed to and blood would begin flooding through the gray matter inside his head. There was a strong possibility he might die here on this piss stained bus seat.
In and out. In and out.
That's all he could control, and after ten years, it was almost more than he could handle.
No. He could control where he was going; he could get off at any stop he wanted on this cross-country bus trip. Except Matthew knew where he was headed. Florida. To warmth. To sun. A place to start again. A place to see his son—to reunite with Hilman and forget about the ten years as a prisoner, and the ten years before that. The Florida sun could do that, right? That's why old people moved there, so that the sun's rays could burn away their past. Could melt the years, leaving them whole once more. That's what Matthew needed, to be whole.
Without any doubt, people would be looking for him very soon. Perhaps even now. America was a big country though and Matthew had learned from his mistakes. Ten years ago he'd been rash, ambitious, and naive. You couldn't spit in the eye of the government, of the collective police force. It didn't matter if you were Matthew Brand or John F. Kennedy, they would put you down. No, he'd learned. It was a big country with plenty of places to hide. Plenty of ways to disappear. That's all he wanted now: no media, no televised events of his life, no knowledge of him at all. The people after him could look but they wouldn't find him. Matthew was going to fade away, going to drop off the world.
Matthew was going to find his son and live happily ever after.
* * *
Allison Moore put her phone back on the nightstand and then turned to look at her husband. He hadn't woken, and it would be another two hours before he did.
She raised her head and double checked the clock—4 A.M.
Thirty minutes to get ready. An hour to get out there. She would be there by six.
Allison laid her head back down on the pillow and looked back at Jerry. This one wasn't going to be just Phoenix. Wouldn't be just Arizona either. This one would take her away and she didn't know for how long. Now she had to wake up her husband and tell him the news, tell him that she was quite possibly leaving for a month or more, and she had to do it in the next five minutes or so in order to make sure she left on time. She would wake him in the early morning, with darkness still surrounding them, and tell him she was leaving.
"Babe," she whispered.
Jerry didn't move.
"Babe," she said louder. "Wake up. I need to talk to you."
His eyes opened, wide and searching for who was speaking.
"Jerry, I just got a call. It's important," she whispered. Marley's ears were too sensitive for the size of house they lived in, and she didn't want to wake her daughter up yet.
Jerry cleared his throat. "What was it?"
"Someone escaped from The Wall."
Silence, Jerry blinking as his mind tried to wake up. "That science fiction thing?"
"Yeah. They're putting me on it."
Jerry yawned and rolled on his back. "Well that's good. You have to go in now?"
"Yeah, but there's more. This guy isn't going to wait around here in Arizona. He's leaving. I doubt he'll get out of the country, but certainly as far away from this place as he can."
"And you have to follow him?"
"Yes."
He sighed, placing his hands together on his stomach. "You don't know how long?"
"No." She wanted to hug him, wanted to wrap her arms and legs around him and tell him how sorry she was, how it wasn't what she wanted but that she didn't have a choice. None of those things would be true though. The truth was she wanted this as much as she wanted anything else in life and that short of him saying he would leave her, she was going to be in her car heading towards Phoenix in a few minutes.
"This is big, Jerry. Bigger than anything I've ever touched before. The guy who escaped, it's Matthew Brand."
His head turned to her so that they were looking into each other's eyes. "Who?"
"Matthew Brand."
He closed his eyes as he did anytime he thought deeply, blocking out the rest of the world so his mind could look for whatever he needed. "From all those years ago?" He asked, his eyes still closed.
"He escaped sometime tonight. He's already running and ahead by at least a few hours."
Opening his eyes, he turned back to the ceiling. "Are you going to tell Marley?"
"I was planning on it."
Don't roll over. Don't give me your back, please God, support me in this. She was going to leave but she didn't want to leave with him angry, with him bitter. A month, maybe a little longer, and the man would be caught and they could go on living as normal. Except that's not true, is it? Because normal for you, Jerry, and Marley isn't normal for anyone else. Normal doesn't have your husb
and not a bit surprised when you wake him up and tell him you may be leaving for a month.
"Yeah, you probably should."
"You going to be okay?" She asked after a few seconds.
"Of course. It's just not the happiest thing I could ask for."
Allison moved in then, putting her head on his shoulder and wrapping her arm around his chest. "I love you," she said.
It took a few minutes, but he finally responded. "I love you too."
They lay there, still and silent, until Allison simply had no time left. She leaned over him and kissed his lips. "I do love you."
"I know."
She showered and dressed quickly, putting on the lightest bit of makeup. She was told everyone who ran The Wall would be there when she showed up, which was a necessity, because she had no idea how anything inside the place worked. As far as she knew, no one else in the country did either, not even the congressmen who authorized it. They all only assumed it would simply keep working. It hadn't though. A computer malfunction or a little dust in the wires, and now a dangerous person was loose.
Allison went to Marley's room, opening the door as softly as she could.
Her daughter's eyes were open, looking at the door swinging open.
"Mom?"
"Yes, baby, it's me. Did I wake you up?"
Marley pulled the blankets up to her chin. "I heard you walking up to the door. What time is it?"
"It's early. You need to go back to bed when I leave, okay?"
"Okay." Marley nodded.
"I have to go away for a little while, baby," Allison said, kneeling down next to the bed. "I'll still be able to talk to you every day, but I won't be able to come home."
"Again? Why?" Marley asked. No tears filled her eyes, not anymore, but Allison still saw pain in them.
"Work. They want me to go catch a bad guy that escaped."
"Will you be careful?"
"Of course." Allison kissed her daughter's cheek.
"How long are you going to be gone?"
"It won't be too long. They know I have to get back here to you and Dad."
This wasn't the first time she'd left. This wasn't the first conversation that resembled this. So when Marley closed her eyes and said 'I love you', it nearly broke Allison’s heart. Her daughter was so used to Allison having to leave that she didn't stay awake any longer than necessary. The I Love Yous and kisses and then it was back to bed because it was too early to be dealing with all this. She reached up and stroked Marley's hair, tears coming to her own eyes. Was this the life she wanted her daughter to have? Early morning wake-ups with a kiss and an I'll be back as soon as I can, dear? No. Of course not. She wanted her daughter to have what all parents wanted for their children: birthdays with both Mom and Dad snapping pictures and hugging all over her. (How many of those have you missed? Two out of ten?) Everyone around the dinner table every night. Both parents there in the morning when she woke up. Instead, Allison’s daughter and her husband were used to her leaving.
Allison kissed Marley's cheek one more time and then left the room, closing the door as softly as she had opened it.
Chapter Two
The building looked just like any other. Wood, metal, concrete. It sat on land about as rural as one would find in Phoenix. The federal government had bought up everything around it in a radial mile so that no structures could border it. A building standing alone, by itself, and that was the only thing that looked any different about it for Allison. It was alone in a city. Except she knew the inside, the guts of this building, were different. There wasn't another one like it in the whole country; none of them contained what this one did. A building that stretched across an acre and inside it held three men.
That wasn't right though; it held two now. One left this morning, just up and checked out of The Wall.
The name didn't suit the building, that's what Allison realized as she sat in her car looking up at it. It wasn't very high. Two stories. It was large, but the moniker didn't fit.
The congressman who introduced the legislation came up with the idea, not the scientists who figured out how it would all work. The idea was simple and that's why the name was too. The Wall would keep the people you couldn't kill away from society. Forever. The one's that you couldn't let die, for whatever reason, but couldn't let live either, they would be kept behind The Wall for as long as needed.
It wasn't even invented for Matthew Brand. The first, if Allison remembered correctly—she probably didn't though, she never remembered names—was an Arthur Morgant. The guy raped his niece and then murdered her. Was a real piece of work. Nothing special about him, not like Brand, until they got him into prison. They ran some blood work on him and found out he was immune to the AIDS virus. Wasn't just immune, but would actively attack the virus, wiping it out.
That wouldn't have changed things too much for Arthur except he just happened to be extremely unlucky in his timing. Had he raped the young girl five years before, he probably would have just went to the gas chamber and been done with the whole life thing. Instead, the science evolved at just the right time to go into human trials, and thus The Wall was born. The ACLU and other civil rights groups protested against it, but in the end the Senator got his way and Arthur was inducted as the First Member of The Wall. They froze him, basically, his mind and body, so that they could run tests on his blood. The story faded from view shortly after Matthew was locked up, and Allison thought no more about it. She imagined they were still draining blood from him, still trying to replicate what his body could do, but there didn't seem to be any major breakthroughs yet. Poor Arthur was still suspended in some type of hibernation.
Brand had been put in there too, but for a different reason. He didn't have anything that the US could use immediately, like Arthur, but he could have uses in the future, The Powers That Be reasoned. Every time someone went into The Wall, it was national news, with discussion on both sides about the pros and cons to such a measure. Allison was for it, had been since the beginning. If they weren't in here, they were just going to be locked up or put to death, so what did it really matter?
She opened her car door and stepped on the asphalt. Cars filled the parking lot, even at six in the morning. The sun still rested below the horizon, but Allison was the last to arrive apparently. This is what she had waited for, to be walking into a building like this with an assignment seemingly picked from heaven. A career assignment. Art called her and let her know he selected her name to head up the task force. Fifteen years and here it was, laid out before her, and all she had to do was perform. All she had to do was find Brand and bring him back. To here. To the electric chair. To wherever they wanted him, it was her job to simply bring him there.
She closed her door and walked across the parking lot to The Wall.
* * *
"This is it?"
The man next to her gave a small laugh, his first sign of happiness since being introduced to Allison.
"Not what you were expecting?"
The building seemed endless. Hallways upon hallways, offices branching out from the hallways like small homes in an underground labyrinth. Massive rooms full of computers that, she was told, could hold the entire Internet in them if needed. The place felt like a separate world, something other than the Earth that she inhabited before stepping in here. The vastness, the people traveling the hallways, and the words this man spoke with—all of it was so different.
And all of it created for the objects in front of her.
Which was, when compared with the rest of the building, nothing.
She looked at The Wall, the core to this entire operation, feeling like she'd been lied to. You're told Santa Clause brings your presents every Christmas, and then at some point you either see your parents wrapping the boxes or they simply have a conversation with you, and you realize that Santa had never been there. You realized your parents had been there doing it for you the entire time, because they loved you obviously, but nonetheless, in that love they had lie
d. It felt the same here; The Wall protected the world from the worst and at the same time gave the world access to whatever those prisoners possessed that it might need. The Wall, though, was three oval glass containers, each about ten feet long and five feet wide. That was it. Nothing huge, nothing to inspire awe in those looking upon it.
"I guess, I thought it would be bigger or something," Allison responded.
"Nope, just these three containers, which we call Silos. Might surprise you to know that each one costs ten million dollars to create. That's thirty million dollars of glass in front of you."
Allison walked closer, not asking permission. This had been Dr. Tom Riley's building last night; now it was hers and he knew it. Dr. Riley would be lucky to have his job when this was all over with, not by any of Allison's doing, but simply because he was the man that presided over Matthew Brand's escape from an escape-proof prison. The best he could do now would be to assist in any way possible, and she hoped he understood that.
She placed her hand on the empty Silo, the one in the middle. It was cool to the touch, like it might have just been pulled from a refrigerator. Her fingers ran across the smooth glass feeling no imperfections. The thing sat at an angle, two clear glass poles attached both to the ground and the middle of the Silo kept it a few inches off the ground. The door to the Silo stood open, Dr. Riley saying they had not touched it. No handles on either side, just opened outward and left there.
Allison turned to look at the Silo on her left. This was old Arthur, child rapist and perhaps savior of Africa if his blood could be figured out. Gas surrounded him, creating a hazy shield that she peered through. No prisoners were actually frozen; they were inserted naked and subdued, magnets attached to their skin so that they would remain suspended, and then the gas did the rest of the work. It preserved both the skin, the inside organs, and the brain as the prisoner breathed it in and out.
"It won't keep them forever. A couple hundred years probably, but he is aging inside there. Just much slower than the rest of us."
Allison didn't turn around, but gazed in at the black man's face. His eyes were open, but he only stared at the ceiling blankly. "So if they can't figure out how his body attacks the AIDS virus in a few hundred years, he'll die?"
