Refuge Book 5 - Bonfires Burning Bright

by Jeremy Bishop

  “We’re either looking for him or information on how he did this—whatever this is,” she swept her arm around in an arc, but he understood she meant the shifts and the world around them, beyond the walls of the mansion. “If he’s hiding something, it won’t be in the bedrooms upstairs. It’ll be where people won’t think to look. So, not in his study or library or whatever passes for it in this huge place, and not in his master bedroom. Maybe…”

  She glanced over the balcony at the wood paneled wall that covered the space under the stairs. Then she pointed. Griffin stepped to her side of the staircase and looked down. A panel extended just a quarter of an inch from the rest of the woodwork.

  “…we should start in the basement or wine cellar or whatever.”

  Griffin smiled at her. “Good thinking, Sherlock.”

  She shrugged. “I’m an ex-junkie. We’re good at hiding stuff.”

  “This mean I need to search our basement?” Griffin asked as they started to descend the main stairs.

  “Only if you want to find my stash of Playgirl magazines from high school.”

  “And… You have officially killed my last shred of innocence.”

  Avalon laughed as they rounded the massive cherry-wood newel and walked to the loose panel. Griffin gripped it and tugged. A door opened silently, revealing a carpeted staircase winding down under the main stairs. He reached inside and flipped on a light switch. It was dark in the stairwell, but now that he thought of it, it was dim in most of the house.

  He turned from the stairwell and strode across the foyer to a tall rectangular curtained window, and yanked the drapes aside.

  It was pitch black outside.

  “Did we shift again?” Avalon asked him, stepping up next to him.

  “We would have heard the church bell. And no one radioed to find out where we are.” He looked down at the two-way on his belt, then pulled it off, about to make a call.

  Just then, the radio crackled to life in his hand, and he almost dropped it in surprise.

  “Griffin, do you copy? Over.”

  Frost’s voice. In the background, the faint howling and shrieking of the screams. She must be outside. Ellison’s thick walls blocked out the horrid din.

  “Here,” he replied. “What’s up? You seeing the darkness? Over.”

  “Yeah, think it’s just whatever passes for nightfall in this world. But it happened fast,” she started, sounding slightly worried. “Pastor and I had a—well, not necessarily a run-in, but let’s say a sighting—of S.G. Over.”

  Griffin stared at the radio in his hand, unable to process what he’d just heard.

  “Griff, did you copy that last? Over.” Frost asked, the sound of her cruiser’s door slamming closed finally muffling the background screams carried over the radio.

  “Copy,” Griffin said. “S.G. Are you both okay? Over.”

  “We’re good. Heading back to town. No sign of Ellison or Turkette. How about at your end? Over.” she asked.

  “Still checking out the place. Be careful, Helena. Over.”

  “And you. Out.”

  They had used intentionally vague language about their locations and who she had seen, in case someone else in town was helping Turkette and Ellison.

  Griffin lapsed into silence for a moment.

  “Dad?” Avalon asked eventually. “Who’s S.G.?”

  Griffin stiffened, debated telling her, and then decided that they weren’t in a TV show where everyone kept silly secrets. He turned to her and pointed to her backpack. “The former owner of your baton-javelin thingie. Frost called him ‘Savage Griffin.’”

  “No way! I thought he was all burnt up. She said the lizards got his arm and she took his camouflage…”

  “Looks like he hitched a ride.” Griffin walked back to the basement stairs.

  “Creepy,” Avalon said. “So he was here all last week, when we thought we were safe…” Avalon pulled her backpack off and looked inside the pack at the collapsed telescoping javelin inside. “You don’t think he’s after me to get his property back, do you?”

  Griffin shook his head. “She said he had dozens of them. I doubt it. If he’s after anyone in particular, it would be her, for revenge. Or me, for… Hell, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just taking his best shot at surviving. Either way, he’s an unknown and a danger. I haven’t seen the guy, but the way she described him, I doubt you’d mix the two of us up. Just in case though, we should have a secret phrase that only the two of use would know, so you’ll know I’m the real me, if we ever get into a doppelganger situation.”

  “If the guy’s an alternate version of you, then any phrase you come up with, is one he might come up with, too,” Avalon said, reslinging her backpack, as they came to the bottom of the stairs. Ahead of her was a long, clean hallway that ran straight for a few feet and ended at an elevator. To the right was a door.

  “You’ll have to think of the pass phrase then.”

  “Sam Jacobs is a vaginal dickface.”

  Griffin laughed. Hard. “What? Who?”

  “That’s the secret phrase,” Ava said as though it was obvious. “He was a guy I dated in California.”

  Griffin shook his head. “I’m not saying that.”

  “Sorry, dad. Like it or not, that’s the phrase.”

  “Seriously, you are murdering my inner child, girl.” Griffin, still shaking his head, opened the door and reached in for a light switch. The room was a vast rectangular space with an unfinished concrete floor. He could see a massive electrical station with networking modems and wires, as well as a gigantic gray fuse box. The other end of the room had an old oil tank for a furnace, and several hot-water boilers.

  He stepped out of the basement and closed the door, turning his attention back to the elevator. It had a panel to the side of it with arrow buttons for both up and down.

  Griffin looked at Avalon and then pushed the down button.

  “We go down.”

  The doors opened to a typical elevator, except that the plush carpeting of the hallway extended into the elevator as well.

  They boarded and looked at the options. B for basement, was where they were. Above that on the control panel were simple 1, 2 and 3 buttons, presumably for ground floor and the two upper floors of the mansion. Below the B button was an extra space, as if a floor had been left without a button, and finally, there was one more button labeled T.

  “T?” Avalon asked, as Griffin reached out for the button.

  “Hopefully it doesn’t stand for ‘torture chamber,’” Griffin said, as the elevator lurched downward, rapidly picking up speed.

  Griffin’s ears popped as the elevator’s speed decreased and they came to a slow halt. He looked at Avalon.

  “Not just a sub-basement, then,” she smiled.

  The elevator dinged, and Griffin pulled out his M9, ready for action. The doors parted.

  The opening revealed a long, sloping, carpeted hallway, with no doors on either side. Recessed lighting above gave the utilitarian corridor a more upscale feel, but as far as Griffin could see, the corridor went on forever.

  “Up for a walk?” Griffin asked, scratching his left arm, which had just developed an itch.

  Avalon took a deep breath and let it out. “Let’s do it.”

  As they walked down the relatively straight hallway, Griffin could feel more pressure changes in his ears. Behind them, he noticed the lights back by the elevator went out, but looking forward again, he saw that those lights further in the distance came on. He searched the ceiling and the walls and saw some cleverly concealed motion sensors, that must have been activating lights as they walked.

  After about twenty minutes, Griffin guessed they had walked a mile or so, underground. As far as he could see, the corridor continued on for another mile or more.

  “This thing just doesn’t end does it?” Avalon said, putting her long brown hair back in a ponytail. She was slightly out of breath, and her skin was still far paler than it should have been. Griffin as
sumed her color would come back once she had been off the drugs long enough.

  “Have you been keeping track of our direction?” Griffin asked her.

  Avalon just looked at him, the question in her eyes, waiting for him to finish his thought.

  “We went under the lake. We’re heading into the center of town. Under it, really. Way under.”

  “This is nuts. Where do you think we’ll come out?”

  Griffin looked at a compass feature on his wristwatch. “Should take us right under the church. Considering how the bell has been acting during the shifts, that’s where I’d guess this hall stops.”

  Fifteen minutes later they came to another elevator, identical to the one two miles behind them. The brass plate had only one call button. Up.

  Avalon pushed the button, and Griffin, who had re-holstered the pistol on their long walk, withdrew it again.

  The doors opened to a normal elevator again, this time with only three buttons. T for their level, which Griffin guessed stood for Tunnel. The next floor up was B, and the top floor was G.

  He selected B, and the doors shut. The elevator shot upward, and the ride felt close to as long up as the one at the other end of town had felt going down.

  “I’m going to be disappointed if this doesn’t come out under a volcano, or something equally Bondian,” Avalon quipped.

  “Hope for Moneypenny, but be prepared for piranha,” Griffin said, as the car slowed to a halt and dinged.

  As the doors parted, Griffin raised his M9. They heard a voice yell at them.

  “Freeze! Out of the elevator, slowly.”

  Griffin peeked around the edge of the elevator car to see Jennifer Turkette sitting on the floor, across a ten-foot wide concrete room. Her back was to a huge vault door, like Griffin had seen in old banks. She sat cross-legged, as she had back in Ellison’s house, when Griffin had first seen the African American woman. But her nurse’s uniform was gone now. Instead she had her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she wore a thick, hooded gray sweatshirt, tan slacks and hiking boots. She also had a holster on her hip, and a Glock in her hand, pointed at the elevator door.

  The only thing in Griffin’s favor was that the woman looked like she had been crying.

  When she saw Griffin and Avalon, she lowered the gun. She looked like a woman who had nearly given up on life.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said, dejected.

  Griffin cautiously stepped out of the elevator, with Avalon following him. He kept his M9 trained on the woman.

  “Miss Turkette, are you alright?” he asked, while surreptitiously glancing around the bare concrete room, looking for other threats or doors or even cameras, but the room was bare except for the elevator and the vault door.

  Turkette stood up and looked Griffin in the eye, sniffing back her tears.

  “That sonuvabitch left me behind.”

  8

  Kyle Gardner slowed his Ducati. Laurie Whittemore, sitting behind him on the bike, pointed over his shoulder to their turn. The gravel road ran straight, and dipped down to a parked pickup truck. The bike’s headlight illuminated the weather-beaten sign at the entrance to the gravel drive:

  Green Meadow Farm

  Eggs, Cheese, Apples.

  Best in Tow

  The N at the end of ‘town,’ had long since faded to a murky yellow, the same color as the rest of the sign. Kyle brought the bike down the lane and parked behind the battered truck, the emergency call he’d received on the two-way radio repeating in his head.

  Uh, this is Charley. I’m out to Green Meadow Farm, and Cash’s here. Somebody shot him. We need that doctor feller. Fast. There’s a bomb shelter or something, down the slope of the property. He’s awake, and we’re keeping pressure on the wound, but I don’t know what else to do.

  Kyle had jumped on the two-way at the station, and told the man—apparently the town’s drunk, Kyle had later learned—to continue keeping pressure on the wound. He’d be there shortly.

  Laurie had overheard and insisted on coming with him, which was fine, really, because he hadn’t known the farm’s location. Plus, he enjoyed her company. When he’d first met her at the diner, he’d seen past her timidity and her badly applied makeup. He’d seen a spark inside her that was dying to get out. He thought she might be a poet or a writer or something.

  Through the last two weeks, they’d talked more and he’d finally gotten her to open up. She was a songwriter—but a songwriter with no confidence. He wasn’t sure what she’d been through in the past—neither of them wanted to discuss their exes—but he believed the challenge of their shifting to crazy worlds full of terrifying danger would either make her or break her. He was going to try his damndest to make sure it was the former.

  They got off the bike and Laurie started running across the field, a flashlight in her hand. Kyle raced after her, carrying a giant first aid kit he’d found in the hardware store. All the ointments and pills in it were long out of date, but the gauze pads would still be sterile, and it had scalpels and hemostats, needles and thread, bandages and even a few Chux pads. It was the best he was going to find in this town.

  Kyle started coughing as he ran after Laurie. The smoke from the fires on the edge of town was thicker now. Smelled of barbequed meat. Winslow had mentioned the bodies that fueled the blazes. The thought made Kyle’s stomach queasy.

  “Cash! Are you okay?” Laurie called.

  “I’ve been shot in the chest. It hurts like a motherfucker, but I think I’ll live.” Cash’s voice came out of the dark, over the sound of the distant screaming and wailing that had set Kyle’s nerves on edge, even back at the station.

  Kyle found the tall man on the ground, his back leaned up against a metal door, in a concrete bunker-like structure that hadn’t been visible from the gravel driveway. He wore a t-shirt, but held a flannel shirt over the wound. Kyle gently lifted the shirt away, just for a moment, and stole a quick glance.

  Probably missed the lung. Good.

  A jacket was stuffed behind Cash’s shoulder and pinned in place between his back and the metal door. Laurie knelt in the dirt next to him, holding his hand.

  As Kyle set to work opening the First Aid kit, Laurie said, “ I can’t believe Charley shot you!”

  “Charley?” Cash said shocked. “Nah, Laur, you don’t understand. Charley saved me.” He indicated the blood soaked flannel he held against the wound. “This is the man’s shirt. It was that loony bitch Barnes that shot me.”

  Laurie sat back on her heels, stunned. “Julie Barnes?”

  Kyle leaned in and pulled the flannel back, going to work on the wound as blue and red flashing LEDs cut through the smoky field. The police cruiser parked behind Kyle’s bike. He could see Frost and someone else hurrying over to them. Kyle would pack the wound and then they would have to take Cash back to the station, where he had some light to do a better job.

  When he looked up again, Kyle could see that Frost wasn’t watching them as she approached. She was waving the beam of her flashlight in the air around them, and she had her gun out.

  “Lookout!” she yelled. Kyle whirled around and then dove to the side, crashing into Laurie, and knocking her down to the soil, just as something flew past where his head had been seconds before.

  He heard a gunshot, and then something fell to the ground nearby with a loud thump.

  Frost fired again, and more things fell from the sky around them. One looked like a set of human legs, with thick feathered wings at the hips...and that was it. No real body to speak of. Another had a beak like a raven’s but the size of a man’s arm. The rest of the creature was wings with small white bumps around the edges. As Kyle looked closer, he saw they were human teeth. And maybe some canine teeth as well.

  “What the hell?” he asked.

  Frost and Dodge arrived and took up positions on opposite sides of Kyle and Laurie and Cash.

  “Can he be moved?” Frost asked.

  “In a minute,” Kyle said, pushing Cash forward a
nd looking at the man’s back. He started tearing away Cash’s shirt as Frost started in with the questions.

  “Where is he?”

  “Charley didn’t shoot me. Was Barnes that did it. Then she went inside.” Cash gestured to the bunker’s door with his head. “Charley saved me. Made the call and gave me the shirt off his back. He was sober too. Then he went in there after that broad.”

  Dodge fired his M-16 rifle—a single round—and brought down a creature the size of a turkey vulture, with five spindly, spider-like arms, each with a foot-long talon on the end. The limbs twitched madly for a moment, and then fell still.

  “What are those things?” Cash asked, grunting as Kyle packed his wound from behind.

  “Not the worst things that are out here tonight.” Frost answered.

  9

  Winslow stood from his chair and leaned down over the punctured journal. He’d been translating it long enough now that he could perform the substitution decoding in his head and read the journal as if he were fluent in the language.

  Getting the whole picture with a chunk of the book’s center missing was tricky business. Joshua and Lisa worked on the diagrams and blueprints, while Winslow poured over the journal, always getting a partial picture of events on each page.

  He had to remind himself that the book had been picked up on an alternate world—not his Earth, or the Prime Earth, as he was coming to think of it. Things on the world this journal had come from were likely radically different from their own. The burned out husk of a landscape and fire-breathing lizards were proof of that. It was possible that nothing in this book applied to their Refuge. Their Ellison. But his gut said there was some overlap. If even half of what he was reading turned out to be true, he would be able to piece the rest together.

  The theory was very similar to what he’d come up with on his own. The technology was beyond his grasp, but between him and Cash, they might be able to make a go of it. The thing he really wanted, and wasn’t getting, was the motivation behind putting the technology in place. He understood now, how you could take an entire town and its inhabitants and shift them to another reality or plane of existence. The theories—if not the practical application—on that had been viable since Einstein’s day. The true question was why. Especially after DARPA had pulled their support from Ellison’s project.