Sleepers 2

by Jacqueline Druga

  A PERMUTED PRESS book

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-2-161

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-2-178

  Sleepers 2 copyright © 2013

  by Jacqueline Druga

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Dean Samed, Conzpiracy Digital Arts

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Introduction – Randy Briggs

  1. Alex Sans

  2. Alex Sans

  3. Alex Sans

  4. Alex Sans

  5. Mera Stevens

  6. Mera Stevens

  7. Alex Sans

  8. Randy Briggs

  9. Mera Stevens

  10. Alex Sans

  11. Alex Sans

  12. Mera Stevens

  13. Mera Stevens

  14. Mera Stevens

  15. Randy Briggs

  16. Alex Sans

  17. Mera Stevens

  18. Mera Stevens

  19. Alex Sans

  20. Mera Stevens

  21. Mera Stevens

  22. Alex Sans

  23. Randy Briggs

  24. Alex Sans

  25. Mera Stevens

  26. Alex Sans

  27. Mera Stevens

  28. Alex Sans

  29. Alex Sans

  30. Mera Stevens

  31. Alex Sans

  32. Alex Sans

  33. Mera Stevens

  34. Randy Briggs

  35. Alex Sans

  36. Mera Stevens

  37. Randy Briggs

  38. Alex Sans

  39. Mera Stevens

  40. Alex Sans

  41. Mera Stevens

  42. Mera Stevens

  43. Alex Sans

  44. Mera Stevens

  Author’s Note:

  This story is told in the POV of three survivors.

  Thank you so much Rita for all your help with this one – once again.

  Introduction – RANDY BRIGGS

  My existence is yet to be determined. While I live and I breathe in this world, now I have to wonder if my presence has marred my own future. I, like many others, watched my children die, watched them succumb to a horrible death on the eve of their maturity from a centuries’ old virus, one with no cure, no prejudices. A virus embedded in their DNA and activated with the simple release of a hormone meant to bring about the next stage of life, not death.

  I am a traveler and I wish I could say like none before me, but that would not be true. My travels are to stop the travesty of death in the future; theirs was simply to deliver it.

  I believe with every iota of my heart and being that I have accomplished the mission on which I embarked, to find and deliver the cure. In doing so, I discovered something else.

  Humanity.

  On a spring morning, a virus was deliberately released, intended to enhance the human race. However, it spiraled out of control. In the course of a single day, every child under the age of fourteen died. The virus raged through their young bodies at an unbelievably fast rate. The death was painful, horrendous and took not only their lives, but their beings, leaving nothing but dust as an indication of their existence.

  The virus didn’t stop there. It found other hosts. The virus ravaged the bodies of their adult victims differently. It took their lives by taking their minds, their humanity. It made them into ravenous, raging murderous beings that survived by their vicious animal instincts.

  They infected others and the virus spread.

  Before we knew it, the planet found itself infested with Sleepers.

  However, amongst the darkness there is a cure. It lies within the blood of a single newborn baby boy who defied all odds.

  It was in the search for this child that I joined with others, people who would forever change my view of the human race.

  You see, I come from a time and place where people just … exist. They live without living. I always believed I was different, and it took meeting the others to realize how different I was.

  I love life. I want to live life. I want my children to live. I want all children to live.

  While I was fighting to stop man’s extinction, I came to realize the battle had started centuries before.

  Despite the ruins, the death, the human race has a desire for life and a will to survive that I had not believed existed. If I succeed in anything, I hope that I not only succeed in bringing the cure to the future, but the passion for life and survival that encompass the people who I have met.

  They have taught me. Man will not become extinct, not without a fight.

  I witnessed with my own eyes their perseverance, that man just would not lie down and die, no matter how tough the odds or horrendous the heartbreak. He won’t.

  He just doesn’t have it in him.

  1. ALEX SANS

  I was ashamed of myself, so much so that my stomach wrenched and twisted in disgust. Every second I spent in that helicopter gnawed at me. I stared out the window watching them longer than I believed they could see me. I knew from the second the helicopter door closed I would regret the decision to go.

  How could I leave them? They were helpless on the roof of a hospital a mile or so outside of Denver, watching us leave, knowing that their fate, their deaths were less than a few hours away.

  From any perspective, the roof or the air, there was no escape. Sleepers filled the stairwell trying to burst through the blocked roof door, and they swarmed on the ground below. Every Sleeper for miles seemed to gather at that hospital, their arms raised high as though somehow they could reach those on the roof.

  Even though the Sleepers had no thought processes, they somehow knew what they wanted. It was as if, even though they were unable to comprehend it, the Sleepers had a mission: To eliminate everyone who had retained his or her humanity.

  At least it seemed that way.

  I know, I know. I had to go. I had to get on the chopper. I didn’t want to. I did not want to leave Mera; neither did Beck. I supposed it was because he had reached the end of his line. Finding Mera’s daughter in a world turned upside down was his goal after losing his own kids. Mera’s daughter, Jessie, was a Sleeper. Granted, we were able to reverse some of the damage, the dangerous side of her. The truth remained that she was infected.

  When the rescue helicopters arrived to take us to the protected bunker, Jessie wasn’t allowed to go.

  Mera wouldn’t leave her daughter. I didn’t blame her. At the age of nineteen, Jessie’s mental age had regressed to that of an infant. The remnant of the Sleeper virus made her that way. How does one leave a child behind to die alone, especially one with a helpless innocence?

  Mera didn’t.

  Her eyes focused on a noble goal, Mera had trekked across the country in search of her daughter. I felt honored to be a part of her journey, to get to know Mera, Beck and the others.

  I watched them through the window of the chopper as long as I could see them. I wanted badly to say to the pilot, “You know what, guy? Stop. Let me off. Just let me go...” Yet, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I told Mera I would take care of her teenage son, Danny. I would guard him with my life.

  Danny was beside himself. He was trying to be brave; I could see it. He buried his head against the baby, Phoenix, protectively cradling the infant in his arms. Maybe for comfort, but whether for him or the baby, I don’t know.

 
He lost his father, his brother, and now he was going to lose his mother and sister. I promised Mera I would take care of him, and that promise was the reason I didn’t get off of that helicopter.

  It’s funny, you know. Mera found Phoenix dangling between the legs of his dead mother. I killed her. A young pregnant woman, a Sleeper. I didn’t know much about Sleepers, just that they were deadly.

  Phoenix was born alive when all other infants born after the Event were stillborn. I figured it was an anomaly, chalked him up as dead, giving him no more than a day or two before he died.

  How wrong I was. It was ironic; the child I mentally condemned to death held within his blood hope for all of mankind’s continued existence.

  He held more life than I could even imagine.

  Finally, we pulled out of sight of the city and I sank a little in my seat.

  “How you doing?” I asked Danny.

  The young man, I think he was sixteen or so, only nodded. Randy, another member of our group, was silent. He stared out the window, not saying much of anything.

  They were taking us somewhere, whereabouts unknown, at least to us. They called it the “ARC”. I guess after Noah or something. I believed it was an acronym, for something stupid like Apocalypse Renewal Center.

  Who knew?

  Who cared?

  “It’s not fair,” Danny whispered.

  “I know.” I laid my hand on his head.

  “Alex, I feel so guilty. I shouldn’t have left. I shouldn’t have left my mom.” Danny finally looked at me, his eyes glossed over.

  “I feel guilty too. Trust me,” I said. “But your mom, she wanted you to live. And she couldn’t leave your sister.”

  “What do I have to live for?” Danny asked. “Huh? I have no family left.”

  “What about him?” I nodded to the baby. “Your mom loves him.”

  “They’re gonna take him,” Danny said. “Don’t kid yourself. They’ll take him. Isn’t that right, Randy?”

  Randy, a big guy, breathed out heavily. “Probably. Once they see him, see that he actually exists, they’ll take control of him, so they can find a cure. My guess is most people in the ARC maybe aren’t immune.”

  “See?” Danny said, looking back at me. “Unfair. They get to live, and my mom and sister die. Not a fair trade.” He closed his eyes again, laying his cheek against Phoenix’s head. The sadness he projected was contagious.

  When he said that, something clicked in my head.

  Trade.

  It wasn’t a fair trade, was it?

  I cocked my head in thought and looked at Phoenix. That little baby was crucial. They wanted him. They needed him.

  An idea hit me; trust me, it wasn’t well thought out. It was a spur of the moment thing, one I thought I’d wing and hope for the best.

  I didn’t know if it would work, but it was worth a shot.

  I looked at the clipboard-wielding man who’d hurried us aboard the helicopter. The callous, arrogant shit with no feelings, telling us that he couldn’t take Jessie.

  He didn’t actually show care or concern that Mera and Beck were staying behind, offering no other alternative other than stay and die, or go and live.

  Asshole.

  The more I looked at him, spinning my idea in my brain, the more my gut raged with anger, disgust and sadness.

  “Lower the chopper.”

  Clipboard Guy chuckled. “I’m sorry, that’s not possible.”

  I pulled my revolver from the back waist of my pants and extended it point blank at his head.

  “Alex,” Randy scolded gently. “What are you doing?”

  Danny looked at me with a look of relief, one that conveyed to me that he believed in me, and I wasn’t letting him down. It was that look that drove me to push on. I shoved the gun hard against Clipboard Guy’s temple. “The bird will go down one way or another. So, save yourself, save him, order your pilot to lower the chopper. We’re getting off.”

  When I saw the arrogant, confident look drop from Clipboard Guy’s face, I realized that my radical plan stood a chance.

  2. ALEX SANS

  Truth be known, I sucked at gambling. I tried it, I loved it; I never won. On that helicopter I finally spun the right combination.

  They didn’t land; they didn’t let us off. They picked up speed, taking us to the ARC. I asked Danny to give me Phoenix. I needed him in my arms until the plan followed through, and Danny obliged. I wasn’t going to take the baby, but Randy whispered, “It won’t work. They’ll shoot you immediately,” and I decided I needed Phoenix to protect my life as well.

  That was all it took. It would work.

  I wasn’t asking for that much.

  It made perfect sense, and I recognized the mountain range as we made our approach.

  Colorado Springs. NORAD. A perfect place to lock down and preserve what was left of humanity.

  The flight took all of fifteen minutes, which helped. The Reckoning, as it was called, would begin in a few hours.

  As we flew overhead preparing to land in a fenced-in area, even though it was dark, it looked like a sea of people was waiting for us.

  They were Sleepers, tens of thousands of them outside the fence. There was no way that fence would hold them back for long.

  Even with the engine of the chopper blasting, the moans of the Sleepers carried like a low electronic hum in the air. It reminded me on a smaller scale of what we’d left at the hospital.

  “How can there be this many here?” I asked, getting off the chopper.

  “At least two thousand of them,” Clipboard Guy answered, “were once inside.”

  I glanced at Randy; he was right. Those in the ARC weren’t fully immune. Phoenix’s price tag had now gone up.

  Do not think for one second that infant child’s life meant nothing to me. It did. My friends’ lives were hanging in the balance, and Phoenix was all I had to save them.

  After leaving the chopper, we walked a short distance to the guarded entrance. We were told that typically there was a processing protocol, one that took hours. It was one long process that the four of us were allowed to bypass. Danny, Phoenix, Randy, and I were immediately escorted to a back room.

  “Wait here,” Clipboard Guy told us.

  The room was stark; it contained a sofa, a table and two chairs, and a soda machine. I wondered if the Coca-Cola was cold.

  I walked to the soda machine. Listened. It was running. “I don’t suppose anyone has change?” I asked. I pressed a button for the heck of it and out rolled a can. “Sweet.”

  Randy paced. “I’m in debate here, Alex.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, snapping open the tab.

  “I mean if they are going to do it, why bring us here? We’re stuck now.”

  “He has a point,” Danny noted.

  I gulped a healthy drink of the soda. Months, it had been months since I had one. It tasted really refreshing.

  “They have us,” Randy continued. “Not saying that your plan won’t work. It might. But what’s to say they won’t lock this door and trap us in here? That’s all I’m … is that good?”

  I noticed him staring at the can of soda. “This? Yeah.” I extended it to him. “Have some.”

  “I’ve never had one. Ever.” Randy took it. He apprehensively took a sip. “Wow.”

  “See?” I nodded.

  “You’re confident,” Danny said. “You have a good feeling in your gut, don’t you, Alex?”

  “I do.”

  The moment I said that, the door to the room opened. Two men stepped in, then an armed guard, and behind the guard … the President.

  I found out through quick introductions that the other two men were scientists.

  “My finder,” the President stated, and I believe he was referencing Clipboard Guy, “told me that you are in a bartering mood.” He smiled.

  I realized now why I didn’t vote for him. There was something untrustworthy about his smile. “Yep.”

  “It seems you’r
e here, and you want to leave and take the immune child.” He shrugged. “You saw it out there, Mr. Sans. Where are you going to go? How are you going to get there safely?”

  “Well, sir,” I stepped to him. “Had your boy with the clipboard lowered the chopper when I asked, we wouldn’t be faced with this, would we?”

  “It seems as though you’re out of bartering power,” the President replied.

  “How many folks here aren’t immune?” I asked.

  “Many.”

  “This child here, he’s your cure. Ask them.” I nodded to the scientists. “His blood holds the key to the cure. You immune?”

  The President didn’t answer.

  “I didn’t think so.” I said. “You need him.”

  “We have him. You are here, Mr. Sans. The baby is now within our reach,” the President said. “I’m sorry, your attempt to blackmail us has failed.”

  The president turned, visually giving an order to those with him to follow.

  “If you open that door before giving the order to stop the bombs, I’ll break his neck.”

  He halted as he reached the door, turned around. “You wouldn’t do that. I’ve read the doctrines; that isn’t you.”

  I braced Phoenix’s head with a grip that would have looked threatening to them; I gave a cold stare, but, dammit, I folded. My head lowered. “You’re right. But you know what? We brought this child. We found this child. If it weren’t for us, you, sir, could very well be one of those people out there. We brought him to you. We are giving you years of life. Years.” I stared at him, instilling my plea with heartfelt passion. “All I’m asking for is one day. One day. That’s it.” I paused. “Sort of.”

  3. ALEX SANS

  There was a glimmer in the President’s eye; one that said, ‘I’m listening’. Those damn scientists weren’t quite as congenial.

  I wondered, though, if they knew they had us, if they knew I was out of bartering power, then why bring us to that little back room? Why bypass the check-in stuff? Like the president said, they had us; they had Phoenix in their grip.