Sleepers 3

by Jacqueline Druga

  We didn’t stop. Like pieces to a puzzle, she’d left clues everywhere, and that led us to the prison and to Miles. Miles ran things with compassion for everyone, even the Sleepers.

  He kept them in the prison yard, fed them, and prayed that a cure would be found. Unlike us, he didn’t kill them. That was a good thing because that was where we found Jessie. She was a Sleeper. Well, she had just turned.

  With a right soup mixture, we were able to reverse some of the virus. Unfortunately, however, the Mensa Society girl of nineteen was reduced to the mentality of a two-year-old.

  But Mera had her daughter, she had her child.

  Jessie was so childlike it was hard to see the woman that she had become. She probably would never mentally grow beyond the age of ten, and that was being optimistic. The virus has done a lot of damage to her brain. Not like the others, but enough. However, the bottom line remained. Despite the fact that she was gentle and not dangerous, Jessie was still a Sleeper, my constant reminder that the Sleepers were still human. Jessie was the only Sleeper I liked, the rest I could care less if they were human; I needed to kill them all. Well, except for Pastor Mike, Beck was convinced he was Sleeper.

  For our sake and for the sake of our future. Because see, by what I have been told, and that wasn’t much, the Sleepers are the future. They mutated and took over. We and those like us are the minority and are almost extinct.

  Jessie inched her way into the room.

  “Hey, Jess, not joining Mom at the gate?”

  “See you.” She smiled. “You sick?”

  “Nah, just got a boo-boo.” I patted the spot on the bed next to me. “Come here.”

  She hurried over like an excited child. She sat down and kissed me.

  “Thank you,” I told her. “This means a lot.”

  “Mommy coming.”

  “Does Mommy know I got hurt?”

  Jessie nodded again. “She’s showing Phoenix to Michael.”

  “Oh, so Mike sees him first?”

  “She likes Michael.”

  I groaned. At that instant, the door opened. I expected Mera. It wasn’t her; it was Levi. The disappointment on my face must have been evident.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just me,” Levi said and walked inside. “Jessie, honey, can I be alone with Alex?”

  “Okay. I’ll go find Mommy and bring her to Alex.”

  I rubbed Jessie’s back. “You do that, thank you.” She darted a kiss to my cheek and I smiled. After she left, I asked Levi, “What’s up?”

  “Alex, do you know what you brought back with you?” Levi asked.

  “A bloodstream full of Sleeper virus?”

  “That, too. But I am speaking of—”

  “That too?” I asked, shocked. “That too? I’m that infected?”

  “Yes, anyhow—”

  “No. No stop. Anyhow? Get back to my infection.”

  “We’re battling it,” Levi replied. “That’s the best I can tell you.”

  “Are you confident?”

  “Uh …sure.”

  “Uh sure?” I plopped backwards. “That doesn’t sound confident.”

  “I’ll be more assured when Javier looks at your blood. Now I would like to talk about this baby you brought back.”

  “Is it dead?”

  “No.” Levi shook his head. “I didn’t bring it back. Sonny did. I wanted to kill it.”

  Levi exhaled. “I understand that. But it’s giving us a chance to examine a Sleeper newborn. First glance of the blood, it doesn’t carry the virus. However, I’m willing to wager its DNA shows it.”

  “Mutation.”

  Levi nodded. “The first step in the evolution process to what we had in the future.”

  “We should kill it. They discarded it anyhow. Tossed it to the side.”

  “And my guess is it would have been retrieved after the parent stopped eating the afterbirth.” He paused. “Sonny told me about it. Plus, Alex, really, it’s a child. An innocent child. We don’t know, at this point in evolution, if the Sleeper is inherently violent or it’s a learned experience. We may be able to raise this child normally.”

  “They’re reproducing, Levi.” I told him. “We haven’t changed the future one bit. It’s still going to end up that way unless we kill every single Sleeper.”

  “They outnumber us in vast amounts.”

  “But they are reduced to violent animal beings. They don’t carry the ability to reason or plot at this point. Now is the time for us to declare war and take them out.”

  “I don’t think that it is possible.”

  “It is,” I said. “At first I held out hope that the Sleepers would die out, but survival instinct took over and they thrive. Now they are multiplying. In order to eliminate the virus, we have to eliminate every single one.”

  “That includes those who carry the virus that we know of,” Levi told me.

  I knew of whom he spoke… Jessie. He wasn’t aware about Pastor Mike. Both he and Jessie were technically Sleepers. Maybe not in the way the rest were, but they carried the virus, the ability to prolong it, to lead it to the future. What to do with them was a bridge I’d cross when I got there. The fate and future of mankind was hanging on what we did in the present. The clock was ticking; it was now or never on what had to be done. One Sleeper, one town at a time if we had to. We just had to do it.

  9.

  Mera Stevens

  I didn’t need to be a doctor or a scientist. I didn’t need to look at blood work to know that the newborn baby was a Sleeper. His eyes gave it away, round, dark eyes with pupils that faded into the dark color. His skin, while still newborn pink, showed early signs of discoloration. His cry was not normal, either; it ached out of him, almost a painful whimper. Was there something about him that hurt or was that just the sound he made?

  I did not intend to see the baby; in fact, I didn’t even know he existed. No one told me.

  I grew worried when neither Sonny nor Alex showed up for Phoenix’s homecoming. Then I got angry. How dare they miss it? I was bringing Phoenix to the school to see Michael when Jessie told me about Alex’s boo-boo.

  Immediately I went to the clinic. I brought Phoenix with me, but Levi wouldn’t let me see Alex or Sonny. While Sonny wasn’t injured, they were watching him, they told me.

  Alex, on the other hand, had been bitten. The viral levels were high, and until they could bring them down he was staying and being observed.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. Dinner had come and gone. I fed the troops and then summoned Michael to sit with the kids until I returned. I sensed he’d rather not stay back, but agreed.

  It was pushing the ten-hour mark since I had seen Alex and I honestly started to fear the worst.

  I believed my fears were confirmed when I walked into the clinic and saw Sonny with his head down, hands joined.

  “Sonny!” I gasped and hurried to him. “What is it? What happened? Did Alex turn?”

  Sonny shook his head. “Alex is fine. I’m fine. They’ll let Alex go after one more confirmation test.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Sonny raised his head. “I wanna leave Grace, Mera. I don’t want to live here anymore. I think I’m gonna bug out and look for another place to go. Maybe … maybe you and the kids can come. We’ll live there. A farm, something. Anything but here.”

  Apparently, something had occurred and Sonny was either intentionally being vague, or he thought I knew.

  “What happened?”

  “Priorities. Humanity. Sometimes I wonder if we are here to be protected or prisoners in a dictatorship or what.” He shook his head once. “Do you know who runs this place?”

  “Everyone,” I said. “Alex would be the leader in protecting us and ensuring our survival. But there’s Levi and Noah. I can’t say who makes decisions because there’s never been a decision to make that was brought to the community since we arrived a year ago.”

  “You know we were attacked today.” Sonny slowly stood. “
Five of them. Waiting. It was obvious we walked into a trap. This isn’t the first time Sleepers wandered into Grace. It isn’t the first time we followed and killed them. We’ve done it a lot.”

  “Okay, stragglers…”

  “It’s more than that. I feel it. They’re coming from somewhere.”

  “Have you said this to Alex?”

  “Yep. They won’t go out and look any further than one sector. Or that town we hit for supplies.”

  “Why?”

  “Afraid of what they’d find. And the fear of the unknown is causing them to lose all humanity. I could be wrong.” Sonny began to pace. “I see their point to an extent.”

  “Sonny, I love you, but you are talking in circles.”

  On my words, Sonny only pointed to the closet door behind him. “What’s in the storage closet?” I asked.

  “My reason for being upset.”

  At first, I thought Sonny had completely lost it. I opened up the storage closet and heard it, the simply painful whimper. Then I saw him. The baby. He was placed in a drawer that had been lined with a blanket. I reached sympathetically for the infant, and then I saw his eyes.

  “He’s a Sleeper.”

  Then Sonny explained to me what had happened. How he found it, how Alex wanted to kill it. Hating to admit it, I saw Alex’s reasoning. So did Sonny, but like me, Sonny also saw a baby.

  “Why is he in the closet?”

  “Because they are waiting for him to die.”

  While we were standing in that closet, me in shock over what Sonny had just said, Javier came in.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Sonny says you are waiting for this child to die? Are you killing it?”

  “We are thinking about it,” Javier said. “Something humane.”

  “Killing a baby is not humane,” I argued.

  “He is a Sleeper. Not only that, it’s not a virus, it’s his genetic makeup.”

  “He’s still a baby.”

  “Have you held him?” Javier asked. “I know Sonny hasn’t since he was brought in, but that was a while ago. Have you held him? Picked him up?”

  “No.”

  “Go on.” Javier nodded. “Pick him up.”

  Was he seriously thinking I wouldn’t pick up a child? Me, the master of motherhood, the one everyone turns the children over to. I ended up with most of the orphaned children because it was something I did well. Certainly, I could handle a newborn Sleeper. I reached down, bracing his head, and brought him to me. He wasn’t in my hand five seconds before he made this God-awful cry, thrashing his arms and legs, as his head went back and forth, his little hands darting out.

  I jolted and placed him back in the drawer.

  “See?” Javier said.

  No, it isn’t right, I thought. I took the blanket, bringing it up and around him in a swaddling manner and lifted the child. His head thrashed. I was convinced that in time he’d calm.

  “Mera,” Javier said compassionately, “I know your instinct is to hold that child, break that child and believe everything is going to be alright. He will never survive.”

  “That was also said about Phoenix.”

  “He’s an abomination.”

  “They said that about Keller. And look at them both.”

  Javier nodded. “He is a Sleeper thought, Mera. He will not tame. The mere fact that he has attacking instincts at birth tells me he is born to be that way and that it isn’t learned. Chimpanzees are cute at first, then they grow up and become violent.”

  “Is this why you have him hidden?”

  “We don’t want anyone to know about him.”

  “They why haven’t you killed him yet?” I questioned.

  “We have tests to run.”

  I laughed in disbelief.

  “Mera, stop. I have you upset, Sonny is depressed as if I am committing genocide. This is not your child or his. This, sorry to say, is a product of something I created. Euthanizing him after we are finished is the humane thing to do.” He pointed to the child in her arms. “He is a future we cannot let happen.”

  “What if… what if he can be normal or behave normally?”

  “He cannot be taught. The moment he gets teeth he becomes a danger.”

  “What if we taught him or tried?”

  Javier nodded. “Your arguments are noble. But what if … you can’t? What if we did attempt it, but in six or seven months he can’t be tamed? What then? How will you feel when you have known him for months?”

  I felt Sonny’s hand lay upon my shoulder. I knew instantly it was an argument he had been having all day. That was why he was so worn down.

  I placed the baby back in the drawer. “Can you tell me before you do it?”

  Javier nodded. “We will.”

  “Can you at least put him in a normal bed? Treating him like a normal baby is a start.”

  Again, Javier only nodded.

  I left with Sonny. I assured him that though our argument was over for the moment, the battle hadn’t been lost.

  10.

  Alex Sans

  I read a book. An entire three hundred-page novel penned by an author named DiLouie. Javier had it in his personal collection, and about the four-hour mark he gave it to me to read. It dealt with an apocalypse of the undead. I thought at first, why would I read something about the dead rising when I was close to living it? Then I realized as I read that the story was different. It wasn’t a typical, B movie zombie horror novel; it was different. The ‘cause’ was different and the characters had to face something unbelievable as the reason for the dead rising, much like we had to face the unbelievable.

  Shit happens.

  Sometimes we can’t control it and sometimes it is out of the realm of our suspension of belief. Not everything is as cut and dried as we want to believe. I learned that through that novel, and it gave me a different approach.

  It made me focus more on survival.

  Who was important, what was important, and where the hell was Mera for the last twelve hours?

  Levi looked like he needed to go to sleep. His eyes were dark, his shoulders slumped, and had I not known better, I would have sworn he was an early stage Sleeper.

  “Twelve-hour mark. All clear. You are free to go.” Levi said.

  I was already dressed, showered, and Patty, who made most of the clothes, sent me some stew.

  “Am I okay?” I asked.

  “Javier’s antiviral worked great. All good.”

  “Excellent. Can you make sure Javier gets his book back?” I pointed to it.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Tell me something... I was bitten, on my Sleeper deathbed. Was it my imagination, or did no one give a shit?”

  “By no one, are you meaning Mera?”

  I nodded.

  “Alex, Sonny sat outside this room all night. He just went home a couple hours ago. Mera was by twice, once right away with Phoenix. We just couldn’t take a chance.”

  “Was I that bad?”

  “Your levels were that high.”

  I whistled. “Bet you were scared to come in here and do tests.”

  “Yes,” Levi smiled, “we were. When Mera was here the second time, Sonny told her about the baby. She saw him.”

  “Christ.” I rubbed my head. “Knowing Mera, she got upset. Did you tell her what’s going on?”

  “She’s not happy.”

  “I’ll talk to her. Could be after she spends time she’ll see we aren’t the bad guys, we’re making the right decision. No worries.”

  I just wanted to get out of that room. I had been there long enough. I thanked Levi and headed to the door. I was almost home free, door open…

  “Alex, before you go. Before you try to talk to Mera, we need to talk. We really need to talk.”

  His words were laced with seriousness, as was the expression on his face.

  I closed the door.

  11.

  Mera Stevens

  “I’ll pray about the situation,” Michael said. />
  I liked Michael. I really did. Maybe not from the second I met him but at least in the first half hour. He was genuine and kind and the least selfish person that I knew. He was also pretty smart.

  Michael, though, had a mutated form of the Sleeper virus. We learned this when the Sleepers didn’t attack him. We never let this tidbit out. No one but a select few were even aware.

  Pastor Michael saved me, and I would never tell anyone about him. No one needed to know. Michael was different, which was an internal argument for me with that baby.

  I told him about the child when I arrived home and asked that he not tell anyone. It was a delicate situation. Sometimes when I looked at Michael, I worried that he was lonely, that maybe we didn’t spend enough time with him. He was always with the children and those who needed spiritual guidance. He didn’t take an oath of celibacy before The Event, but did after, just to ensure he never infected anyone or wasn’t a participant pushing the Sleeper gene into the future.

  “How were they tonight?” I asked him.

  “Good. Sleeping. How was Phoenix on his first evening?”

  “Amazing. Odd.”

  “How so?”

  “He took an immediate protective instinct over Keller. Sat with him, ate with him, and watched him. It was odd.”

  “Then you need to see this,” Michael said and waved his hand for me to follow. He led me to my bedroom and slowly opened the door. My heart instantly warmed when I saw the boys on my bed. Phoenix and Keller sound asleep; both on their sides, facing each other, and their hands were locked.

  Immediately my mind flashed back. It was déjà vu.

  When we first got Keller, I had been outside and Beck was putting the kids to bed, also making sure Jessie fell asleep, too. When I went into the trailer, he was standing over the cradle with an odd look on his face.

  “Everything okay?” I whispered to Beck.

  “This is amazing.” He waved me over to him. “Come look.”

  Arms folded, I walked to the cradle where, for the time being, we were able to fit both Phoenix and Keller.

  “I wanted to check on them,” Beck said. “And look.”