REFUGE
Book 5: Bonfires Burning Bright
Summary:
The surviving inhabitants of Refuge have been shifted between worlds, never knowing what would come next. When the bell rings out once more, and the town is deposited in a new dimension, they find themselves surrounded by the worst of all possible landscapes: Hell. And a very familiar one, at that.
As Griffin and Frost work to safeguard the town’s survivors from untold dangers yet to come, and solve the enigma of Renford Ellison’s plan, the town is thrust into a world straight out of Griffin’s nightmares—and his twisted, surreal paintings.
New alliances are formed. Answers emerge. But when Avalon is taken beyond the town’s border, Griffin must venture out into the hellish landscape, navigating a labyrinth of flesh and skulls. To save the life of his daughter, he will have to face down an evil he thought existed only in his imagination. And the clock is ticking, because the church bell is ringing…
In their darkest hour, with danger all around, will the inhabitants of Refuge find their way past the bonfires burning bright, or will they be lost forever?
REFUGE is a serialized novel, co-authored by #1 Amazon.com horror author, Jeremy Bishop, and five other authors, including Amazon.com bestsellers Kane Gilmour and David McAfee, USA Today bestseller Robert Swartwood, and newcomer Daniel Boucher. The novel was released in five parts, every two weeks, beginning in late 2013, but it will also be available as one complete novel. So read the individual parts or the whole completed novel. Either way, you’re in for a creepy ride.
REFUGE
Book 5: Bonfires Burning Bright
By Jeremy Bishop and Kane Gilmour
For Dick Shaw, for his guidance, good cheer and great stories.
—K.G.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This one was tough for me. I was sick through part of it, but Jeremy still managed to make it fun the whole way through. Thanks first to him for the invite and so much more. Thanks also to Daniel Boucher, Robert Swartwood and David McAfee for giving me a tough act to follow as a writer, and a quagmire of continuity as an editor. Ultimately, I think REFUGE turned out to be an amazing story, as all of Jeremy’s stories do. Thanks also to Cheryl Dalton and Pixie Brearley for encouragement and inspiration. To Steve Manke, Nick Winters and Doc Vaughn for patience. And to Eòin and Moira for daily interruptions of the best kind. Love you.
—Kane Gilmour
INTRODUCTION TO A SERIAL NOVEL
REFUGE is a serial novel, co-written between five authors. This means the reading experience will be a little different from a standard novel. The best comparison for this scenario is a TV show. Each episode furthers a larger story, but it also has its own contained beginning, climax and end. REFUGE is set up in the same way, so that each novella is an episode, and the first five books are effectively Season 1. Also, TV shows use different directors and writers, meaning the show’s style, pacing and tone might shift week to week. While our team of writers strived to make each episode flow right into the next, you will notice subtle differences in writing style and tone, especially with newly introduced characters. At first I felt unsure about this approach. I’d never done it before. But once I started thinking about Refuge, a town shifting between worlds, subtle changes in tone, voice, style, and so forth, makes total sense. So, I hope you enjoy the series and the unique experience created by each new co-author.
—Jeremy Bishop
But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.
Luke 12:5
1
Griffin Butler was angry.
Too many days, he thought. Too many days and no answers.
It had been nearly two weeks since the entire town of Refuge, New Hampshire had suddenly and inexplicably shifted off of a familiar Earth and deposited the remaining frightened residents into a bewildering array of hostile and alien landscapes.
A desert world. A jungle world. A land of falling ash and terrible darkness. The worlds flicked past, one after another like the town was stuck in the Devil’s bright red View-Master toy.
Click, an endless ocean.
Click, giant carnivorous trees.
Click, fire-breathing lizards.
The newest world in the Devil’s slideshow was a savannah; a brief and tantalizing breather, where nothing had attempted to kill them. Despite the alien presence of four small moons in the night sky, they could have been in Africa somewhere, based on the look of the landscape. Although they’d seen no lions, thankfully.
But while the week in the savannah world had been free of dangers, it had been lacking in answers, too. When they had first arrived, Griffin had stalked off to the hardware store with the recovered document safe Frost had found beyond the town’s border, in the world of ash and bones. He, Frost, and the doctor, Kyle, had cracked the slim thing open with the tools in Sam’s store. To Griffin’s surprise, inside the safe they found a battered leather-bound journal, some loose documents, a blueprint-like diagram and even a hand-drawn sketch on a cocktail napkin.
But the information those documents contained was in some kind of coded language, with great looping squiggles and arcs resembling some kind of Arabic. It was the drawing that really pissed off Griffin. A pylon, tall and archaic looking, like the one he and Frost had seen at the edge of town, had been sketched out. He felt certain that the diagram had been drawn by Renford Ellison’s own hand, and it was probably part of the original design for the mysterious mechanism propelling the town between worlds. But the image had been the only thing that made sense. The bizarre coded language kept them from gleaning anything more. Whatever secrets the documents held, he couldn’t crack them.
Discouraged at the trove of information just out of his reach, Griffin had wanted to tear the town apart looking for Ellison. But with the brief respite provided by the savannah world, Frost had convinced him—rightly so—that they needed to organize and prepare the town for whatever might come next.
“Prepare for the worst,” Frost had said. “Hope for the best.” It might not get them answers, but it would help keep people alive. Tracking down Ellison and uncovering his secrets had to wait.
Townspeople not actively patrolling the streets had been put to work, converting the Sheriff’s station into a fortress. The building had done itself proud in the latest attack, but the temporary plywood doors had needed to be replaced, and Griffin wanted the building to be a fortified stronghold, where everyone could weather any more dangerous attacks.
Sandbag walls sheltered the front and rear doors. Fire damage had been fixed. On the roof of the building, standing thirty feet tall and nestled between the array of solar panels, stood what Griffin called ‘the roost’—a tower of metal scaffolding and wood.
A lookout tower.
Without an ear-splitting bell.
From the roost, he could see clear to the borders of town in most directions, except past Domenick Ridge, over by the radio station. He could see the station and its tower, but not beyond it. That area was a blind spot.
Leaning against the roost’s railing, he scanned the green and yellow grasses and the distant, thick trees resembling the African Baobab. He shook his head in frustration. He wasn’t angry because their defenses had a blind spot, but because they were no closer to fixing the problem. At some point, they would have to embrace the cliché and turn their defense into an offense.
Kyle had performed post-mortem exams on the strange creatures that had invaded the town with every new shift, but he’d found nothi
ng linking the creatures to each other, or anything else that made any sense. Radar and Winslow had been working on deciphering the coded documents with no luck, so far. And Griffin had led a team out to Ellison’s castle-like home, but they had found neither Jennifer Turkette, nor the elusive Ellison himself. The mansion had been empty. He’d known that as soon as he had forced his way past the huge front door. Despite the lavish furnishings, the place had felt empty. Abandoned.
Bong.
Griffin’s stomach lurched at the sound of the bell. He turned toward the church steeple across the street and laid a hand on the barrel of the .50 caliber machine gun they’d taken from the Humvee and installed on the tower.
Footsteps clanged up the ladder behind him. Without looking, he knew it would be Frost. First by his side. First to the town’s defense. She had taken to her role as the town’s defender like she’d been born for it.
He looked over the side and saw Pastor Ken Dodge standing on the roof below, making his way through the solar panels to the ladder.
Frost topped the ladder. “I had kind of hoped we’d stay here longer. Lulled me into a false sense of security.”
“Me, too,” Griffin said, taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. They looked out over Main Street and saw people rushing toward the sheriff’s station, their sanctuary at the heart of Refuge. The Humvee—recovered from the National Guard depot and used for patrols—came roaring up Main Street from the south, just as the church’s bell started clanging like a frantic Salvation Army Santa. Soon the peal would just become one long drawn-out droning, and they would shift again.
To God only knew what hell.
Dodge scrambled up the ladder, and clambered onto the platform. “Looks like most everyone is following the game plan.”
Griffin gave a nod, then his two-way radio crackled to life.
“Last one’s in,” Cash said. “We’re locked up tight.”
“Everyone?” That surprised Griffin. “Even Barnes?”
“Yep. All except our missing town benefactor and his NASCAR nurse.”
Griffin’s scowl returned. The reference to Jennifer Turkette, the mysterious woman who had claimed to be Ellison’s personal nurse, didn’t help Griffin’s mood. The woman had saved a lot of people, using Quentin Miller’s lime-green monster truck and driving skills that spoke of military training. But she had then disappeared, and they’d seen no sign of her since. And if she wasn’t in Ellison’s fortress-like home across the lake, which was well stocked and had power, where could she be?
He looked over to the stone monstrosity in the distance, which resembled a castle more than a house. But then the clanging of the bell became a steady whine, and his eyes couldn’t help themselves. They went out to the border, to witness whatever horror the new world would sling at them.
The air around the edge of town shimmered, and the bell stopped abruptly. The grasses and trees of the world that had been their home for over a week slipped away, replaced by something new.
Something hideous.
“Oh no...” Dodge whispered.
“Oh my God!” Frost said, not making any attempt to keep her voice down.
But Griffin was the one in for a bigger shock than the others. He knew this world.
He had created it, after all.
Click, Hell.
2
Frost gripped the railing hard enough to hurt, but her mind, distracted by the view, barely registered the pain. Refuge had materialized on the top of a huge, gently sloping hillside. Tan, rocky soil led away from the town in all directions, leading down to strange formations of white stone—or was it bone?—and great globs of twisted flesh-like material.
Immense curved towers rose up in rows, resembling the rib bones of long-departed behemoths. She saw what looked like gigantic teeth erupting from the soil, and then slowly sinking back under—huge molars rising and falling, as if the entire landscape were the inside of a giant’s masticating mouth. Large bonfires dotted the landscape, their roaring flames stretching high into the sky and filling the air with a putrid, burnt scent and a thick choking smoke.
Bat-winged creatures swooped and ripped through the air, but their bodies were odd and twisted, their long, skinny limbs dangling at obscene angles. Distorted, like a surrealist painting. At this distance, she couldn’t tell exactly what they were, though she doubted a closer look would help clarify things.
Two miles to the south, the structures on the ground formed a city-sized circle. A long avenue extended out from the formation’s core, leading straight toward Refuge. The more Frost looked at the city, the more she realized that it wasn’t a city at all—it was a labyrinth. Within the massive circle, the white stone walls twisted back and forth. Huge curtains of flesh colored canvas looked like they had washed over the walls of the labyrinth in a tidal wave, and then frozen in place.
The visual effect was chilling.
But it was the sound that truly terrified her.
The labyrinth stretching below was probably ten times the size of Refuge—and it was populated. She could hear its residents screaming. More screams than her mind could process. Some long and shrill, some short and gruff like barked insults. But there was no mistaking the sound—they were people, in agony and anguish, terror and despair.
The sounds rose and fell in volume with the wind, as it swept more and more of the thick black smoke their way.
“What…what is it?” Frost asked aloud.
“Nothing we want to see,” Griffin answered, his tone grim.
Dodge bent forward and peered out at the labyrinth through Winslow’s telescope, which they had mounted at the center of the roost, allowing for a full three-hundred-sixty-degree view around town.
“Nothing you want to see, again, you mean,” Dodge said, and stood up. He looked pointedly at Griffin, and Griffin hurried over to look through the telescope. After a quick look, he stood up, his face drawn and ashen.
“What is it?” Frost asked.
Griffin said nothing.
“If you don’t tell her, I will,” Dodge said.
Griffin turned back to look out at the hellish place to which they had come.
“I painted this,” Griffin said softly.
“What? When?” Frost asked. She’d seen many of his paintings in the past. They were frequently printed in the local paper whenever he had a show. They were dark and shocking. Nothing like this. But it had been a while since she’d seen anything new.
Griffin turned around, his face still drawn and haggard.
“The paintings I don’t show.”
“How many?”
He shrugged. “Fifty. Sixty, maybe.”
“He showed one to me,” Dodge said, “years ago when he was questioning his faith, or lack thereof.” He turned to Griffin. “How did you come up with the images?”
“Nightmares.” Griffin said. “After I left the Rangers… I painted what I dreamt.”
Frost was stunned. The hellscape before her was horrible. That Griffin was capable of imagining something like this reminded her of the alternate Griffin—savage and violent. Despite what she knew about him, he was clearly capable of great darkness.
“You need to get some better dreams,” she said, attempting to quell her rising distress.
Griffin offered a sad smile. The darkness no doubt scared him, too.
Dodge headed toward the ladder. “People will want some comforting if they’ve seen what’s out there.”
Griffin stepped aside to let Frost descend before him.
“Aren’t you going to take a snap of this world?” she asked him.
“No point. I have plenty at home.”
The remaining population waited inside the office of the Sheriff’s station. They sat on every available surface and on the floor. If they spoke, they did so in quiet, hushed voices, fear filling their eyes at the occasional wailing from outside. Griffin saw all the people he had come to know better through this ordeal, after having known them only as acquaintances for year
s. Phillip Beaumont and his daughters. Mary Soucey-Bartlett and her husband, Brian, from the market. Widowed Tess and the boy, Wyatt. Laurie Whittemore and Julie Barnes. They were all waiting for their leaders—Frost, Dodge and Griffin—to come and tell them what would happen next.
Griffin looked at the expectant faces and wondered how he would tell them the world they’d come to, this new terrifying landscape, looked like the nightmares of his paintings. Then Frost saved him from needing to do so.
“Okay, everyone,” she said. “We’ve shifted again. We discussed this. We don’t know the dangers this new world might present, but we know what our town looks like and how best to defend it. Let’s start with what we know. Recon Team One? The Phantom. Check the road to the north and out by the diner. Team Two? The Humvee and the road south. Like we discussed and prepared for. We can’t stop threats coming from the air or the woods, but the three easiest ways into town are the roads. If the danger looks too tough, you run. Remember, your job isn’t to fight the threats, but to warn us of them. Go.”
When she finished, two teams of five men got up and left the station. Two men by the front doors, where they had attached iron bars from dismantled jail cells to act as defensible barricades, closed the gates after the teams departed.
“The rest of you go about your assigned tasks. Remember, we only need to stay here until we’ve assessed the dangers. If, like in that last world, things are calm, then you can go outside again or back to your homes.”
Griffin wandered to Frost’s office, where Winslow was hunched over the desk, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper. Radar and Lisa sat on the side of the office, Radar likewise scribbling on a pad sitting on Frost’s credenza. Lisa was flipping through the punctured journal from the document safe.
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