Forest of Dreams

by Bevill, C. L.

  It took my beleaguered brain a little while to run through my options. First, it occurred to me to search Theo for the keys to the padlock and the lock on the manacle. What I found was that he didn’t have any keys on him. He didn’t have anything on him except his sackcloth shirt and his sackcloth pants. (Who knew there was a Sackcloths “R” Us in San Fran?) His feet were bare. He wore a rope for his belt. There wasn’t anything that might help me. Even his stinking handbell was located elsewhere.

  I checked the range of the chain again. I had done this so many times before that I had lost count. I couldn’t reach anything that would help me particularly. There were some psalm books, various pamphlets, and a half-empty pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum in the book racks behind the pews I could access.

  I unwrapped a piece of the gum and put it in my mouth. I had to chew on one side because Theo had been somewhat excessive with the other side of my face. (He was right-handed, and the left side of my face attested to that fact.) The gum tasted pretty darned good for something that had been in the back of the pew for months or years. It was almost nice for a small moment.

  I finally sat on the pew, wincing at all the bruises and cuts that protested the action. I looked at the bolts again, but I already knew that most of them were very tight…markedly, frustratingly tight. My fingers couldn’t loosen them. I checked the padlock, too. It was a big solid model. A Brinks hardened stainless steel type in a disc shape. The tumbler was brass, and lock picking wasn’t something I’d taken in college. Even if I had, I didn’t have anything to pick the lock with. Ditto the smaller lock on the manacle.

  I sighed and chewed carefully on my gum. I could have tried screaming, but I knew that it was unlikely that anyone would hear me. Maybe the dragon would hear me, but then, maybe the dragon would decide that I was tasty morsel on a chain. The chain could be used afterward for flossing.

  I tapped my foot and tried to ignore all the pain, which meant that I focused on it more. My back was the worst. Theo had again broken out the plum flower chain whip and fixated on my back in particular. (That back was a sinner, to be sure.) I cursed at him as he lay nearby. Sure I had passed out, but he had taken the time to go get some wine and put all his stuff up before coming back to drink and look at me while I lay unconscious or whatever it was that he had done.

  I looked up at the gigantic chandelier above me. There were three in a row hanging from chains. Their lights were dark, but the sunlight coming in the leaded glass window made them twinkle. There wasn’t any help up there: not from the massive light fixtures or from the chains to which they were fastened.

  The chains. I glanced down at the chain that bound me. The chains. The bleeping chains. I looked at the pew again.

  The chain was strong. The bolts were steel. The padlock was massive. The small lock was resilient. The keys were unobtainable. There wasn’t a convenient set of bolt cutters nearby. I didn’t have the strength to yank the bolts out of the floor.

  There were two other options here. I could cut off my ankle, but I didn’t have a knife or anything that would cut through my flesh and bone. Or, or, or, I could break the wood of the pew. I had my legs. I had my fists. I had a long enough length of chain to use as a battering device. I could hit it until it cracked. I could hit it until I made it break. Wood wasn’t exactly soft, but it wasn’t as indestructible as the chains.

  I spit the gum out and gathered the chain up. I doubled up the length so that I had a respectable four feet of length in a solid loop of metal that was almost guaranteed to eat away at the bench. The sides of the pew weren’t as thick as the seats, so I aimed the chain at them and went to town.

  The Nightmare Before Lulu

  The Past – San Francisco, California

  It sounded easy, but the reality of hitting a bench with a chain was torturously grueling. It especially wasn’t easy when one’s back was already torn to ribbons. I imagined that pew had the face of all those who had thwarted me. It was Theo’s face and Richard’s face and even my father’s face for not swooping in to rescue me. It was everyone who had done Louise wrong, and there were more than I cared to admit. Furthermore, I didn’t want to admit that some of that was my own stupid fault. After a bit, I began to envision Louise’s face as the target for the chains. Sadly, that worked the best.

  After a long time, the muscles in my shoulders, back, and arms felt like hot zones of extreme pain. If they could have spoken, they would have begged me to stop. I let myself fall to the floor of the church, and the chains clanked next to me.

  Panting, I glanced at Theo. Still there. I glanced at Bathsheba. Still there. Neither had become zombies. It might have very well been the only plus of that day.

  I rested for a while. I hit the side of the pew for a while. With bare feet, I kicked the support for a bit. I bounced up and down on the bench’s seat for a few minutes. I actually got airborne like I was jumping on a trampoline. I came down hard on the side of the bench, bending my knees for maximum effect. When that didn’t work, I again slammed at the side with the chains.

  It became a pattern for the hours that followed. Chains, kicking, jumping. I began to hate that damn pew. Despite that hatred for the pew, Louise’s pretty face was my ultimate target. She was keeping me from being free, from having a drink of water, from taking a bath and easing some of my wounds. That rotten bitch. I detested her.

  It came as a huge surprise when the pew finally cracked. I had just jumped on it with every bit of my hundred pounds and change, stressing the drop by tensing my thighs. My feet connected with the section of the seat closest to the side, and there was a loud noise that reverberated through the church like a death knell. I plunged right through the pew and hit the hardwood floor with enough force to make me scream. For a long moment I thought that I had broken one of my ankles, but the pain quickly dissipated.

  A few more kicks with the other foot freed me completely. I looked at the chain and giggled nervously, fully aware that I sounded like a madwoman. I still had a chain, but I wasn’t attached to a bench. The first thing I did was go to the church’s holy water font and drink my fill. The water was stale, but it did me a world of good. I didn’t even look back as I left the church and dragged the chain down Bush Street. It took me a few minutes to figure out what church I had just exited. I comprehended that I was within a mile of my parents’ home in the Heights. I knew exactly where a locksmith was located, and I knew if I broke into the business, I would find what I was looking for.

  It took me a few hours, and the sun began to go down before I finished. (Figuring out how to use the equipment that didn’t require electricity was somewhat problematic, but I was determined to get the manacle off my ankle.) The sound of opened manacle hitting the linoleum floor of the locksmith shop made me squeal in joy. That was almost immediately followed by the abrupt grasp of the situation I found myself to be in. I was alone. I was unprotected. There were untold dangers out in the world.

  For the first time in my life I was paranoid. I decided that I couldn’t go to my house because it was possible that Theo was still alive, and he had previously asked me about where I’d lived. (Although I told myself that strangling him with a chain for over ten minutes probably didn’t help his rates of survival, I still had those wretched feelings of suspicion and terror.) I picked a house at random and broke a window at the back where someone wouldn’t see if they happened to be looking. I took a bath in an interior bathroom by candlelight. The electricity still didn’t work, but the water spigots were running. The water wasn’t hot, but I dealt with it. I barricaded a door to a third floor bedroom and made sure the windows weren’t accessible by anything human. The medicine cabinet conveniently had oxycodone, and I took two pills with some warm Gatorade that I found in the pantry. I finished the Gatorade and went to sleep on the still-made bed. It took me a while to doze off even though my body was completely exhausted.

  The next morning I moved stiff, my muscles screeching at me. I borrowed some clothing from the house I had br
oken into. The t-shirt hung on me. The pants were two sizes too large. I used a belt to keep those up and found some tennis shoes that were only a half-size larger than my foot size. Then I found a big sharp knife in the kitchen. I had to stop at a pharmacy to get some bandages for my back. Wrapping them around my body seemed to help, although I had to trade the borrowed t-shirt for a touristy one from the pharmacy with a picture of Alcatraz and “Property of Alcatraz: #85” on the front. (#85 was Al Capone’s prison number for the more discerning tourist.) I had bled all over the first t-shirt.

  I rummaged around for some antibiotics because who knew where Theo had stored his plum flower. (Not in an autoclave for certain.) I had to check their Physician’s Desk Reference to make sure of the dosage, but I figured it out while sipping on a bottle of Sobe Lifewater. I had to stick to soft stuff like pudding cups for food, but I hoped that would get better in a few days.

  The next locale on my big to-do list was a gun shop. It was a little harder to break into because of what it was: a gun shop. There were bars on the windows and doors, so I had to go find a crowbar from a hardware store. I had to use some techniques that I hadn’t thought about for years. The crowbar didn’t work. What did work was a scissor jack from a nearby car. It popped the bars very efficiently, and I cheered myself for ingenuity. Yea, Lulu!

  The downer part was that the guns didn’t work. I read two manuals and decided to practice in the back with the gun I had selected. (A Smith & Wesson pistol with wooden grips. It looked large in my hands. It looked threatening. I really liked threatening.) I loaded the magazine all by my lonesome, then inserted it into the pistol. I checked everything and aimed at the target in the shooting range. I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I grunted with dissatisfaction and checked everything again. I aimed and pulled the trigger again. Nothing again.

  I tried another gun. This time it was a Sig pistol. I repeated everything twice. I aimed and pulled the trigger. I swore viciously. I tried again. Then I tried a third pistol. I tried a Glock, a Ruger, and a Walther-PPK because I needed a little laugh. That was followed by a Semmerling, a Heckler & Koch, and a Colt. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. I eyed a slingshot because I couldn’t imagine that not working.

  At some point in time it all clicked in my head. People had vanished. Clothing had been left in the streets as if simply dropped there. There was a dragon flying around San Francisco, electricity was off, Theo was completely bonkers and probably dead, and guns wouldn’t work.

  But knives would. So I got some knives. No on-or-off switches on them. I found a large one I particularly liked. I read the little sign next to it and discovered it was a combat knife first approved by the Marines in 1942. The blade was black so not to be reflective in a combat situation. The blade itself was seven inches long and stamped with KA-BAR and Olean, NY. The sheath was leather, albeit made in Mexico, but perfectly serviceable. I used some other leather straps from the gun shop to fix the KA-BAR with its sheath to my upper thigh where I could get to it without issue. My father would have approved. Louise would have been appalled.

  I tried out some of the other weapons, but I couldn’t figure out the crossbows, and the leather saps seemed like I would have to be a little too close to a threat to use it capably. The store even had a hidden cache of what had probably been heavily illegal weapons in California. There was some mace, CS gas, expandable batons, brass knuckles, throwing stars, and some things I had no idea what they were, much less how to use them. I did take some smaller knives whose sheaths were designed to be strapped to a person’s forearm and covered with a shirt or a jacket. I was thinking of what to have down the road. I would have taken a few cans of the mace except I wondered if they would work. I didn’t want to count on them and have them fall short. Of course I could have tested them in the store, but I didn’t want to accidentally mace myself, either.

  Outside the day was growing to a close again. I didn’t know where it had gone. I stopped in a small bodega for a snack. (Apple juice and Twinkies because I still couldn’t chew very well.) I found a backpack and loaded up with stuff like mini donuts and jumbo honey buns. I added a bottle of V8 Fusion for the serving of veggies and fruit. I even threw in a bag of plantain chips for when my jaw no longer hurt. I scored big-time when I found three perfectly ripe apples near the cash register. I might have to mash the apples up to consume them, but it sounded good to me.

  I stopped by the door and looked over my shoulder hoping that there wasn’t anything else that I was desperately forgetting. I had taken my antibiotics. I had pain meds just in case it got unbearable. I had knives. I was okay for the moment. I just had to make some decisions about where to go and what to do.

  ”Find someone normal,” Louise said to me. “Find someone who will have your back.”

  Shut up, Louise, I said silently to myself. But she had a point. Someone normal would have my back. Someone normal wouldn’t pound me or try to “save” me or beat some poor girl to death because she was clever enough to realize that Theo was crazy sauce heavy.

  There was movement from outside and I froze. I didn’t cater to superstition, but thinking about Theo meant that the devil might very well appear on my doorstep.

  It wasn’t Theo. It was a herd of something that looked like a cross between goats and sheep, except they had bright sky-blue wool. They also had three eyes, and their bleats sounded like bugles. They were about the size of Shetland ponies and looked about as threatening, but I wasn’t in the mood to tempt fate. I stayed in the bodega until the herd was well and thoroughly gone.

  I concluded my day by finding another empty house to hole up in. The following day was going to be challenging, both emotionally and physically. It wasn’t going to be nice or pleasant or easy (as if anything ever would be again). I was going back to retrieve Bathsheba’s body and bury it. The poor girl deserved a proper burial.

  Chapter 8

  Lulu Has a Discovery of

  Something New and Unusual

  The Present - Colorado

  What I really wanted was to find the exit door to Cheyenne Jr. I’d also take finding a few more weapons to include a rifle, pistol, or bazooka, perhaps. Finding possible self-defense items in tech bubble form would make me feel much better even though Tate hadn’t hurt me. (I wasn’t counting the pit, but perhaps I should have.) I did have to give a teensy bit of credit for warning me not to move.

  Credit, shmedit. Tate killed and ate people. I don’t have to give him an ounce full of crap in a dainty little teacup. He might be wearing a mask that made him seem like an apocalyptic Mr. Rogers, but it was still a mask, and I had met men with masks before.

  Don’t wander around in here, I thought. Sounds like Tate has a secret. Sounds like Lulu has a need to know what the secret is. Exits, weapons, and/or secrets.

  The FB status of the moment popped into my head: Exploring the old abandoned Air Force base tunnels to see if I can find my old friend Albert Fish and his buds, Ed Gein, and Jeffrey Dahmer. What fun! There could be a barbeque!

  The tunnels reminded me of the hallways in a hospital. Certainly, an underground hospital, but a hospital all the same. There were signs that pointed out helpful facts. Cafeteria #3 was this way. Project Arrowguard was that way. Administrator General in Command was down there. Operations Command was in that direction. (No exit signs were forthcoming. What had they been thinking?)

  There were colored lines on the floor like one might find in a prison. For example, a death row inmate might follow the red one to his eventual destination. I didn’t know what color to follow because there was a virtual rainbow from which to choose.

  These tunnels weren’t the vaulted kind of urban legend, but fairly narrow and painted white. Occasionally the granite would be exposed to show that this wasn’t a typical place to be. This had been carved out of a mountain, just as the other Cheyenne had been. The even scrape marks in the rock at the end of the hallway attested to the people who had excavated this place out of solid rock.

  I came to a tunne
l that branched off in three directions like the end of Poseidon’s trident. I limped down the right-hand one and found a cantina and another lunchroom. It was strange seeing an entire building plunked down in the middle of a hollowed out cavern, sitting there alone but happy. There was a bar on the side of the cantina that had been decorated with various military minutiae. The taps looked shiny and well used. A drip of beer showed me that they were still being used.

  I backed away from the building and took a moment with the lantern to survey the area.

  The cantina building sat on a series of huge springs. If enough people jumped up and down on it, the springs might bounce. It wasn’t something I was unfamiliar with since I was from California; it was made to survive an earthquake. Or a bomb tossed at the side of the mountain that would feel like it was a mind-breaking 9.6 on the Richter scale. The lunchroom on the other side of the cantina was similarly constructed. The buildings didn’t touch the mountain’s walls because it was assumed that the mountain would someday be attacked.

  My gaze went back to the bar and where people once sat to have a brew and wind down from a hard day’s work of keeping the world from becoming radioactive on a global scale. It had been two years since the change. The place should have been dusty, but it wasn’t. This was more than Tate could have accomplished, even if he dusted nonstop 24/7 and with a madness to which Super Donna Reed couldn’t aspire.

  Tate wasn’t alone down here.

  I looked around again, leaning heavily on the crutch. The Tylenol-3 had made me a little blurry, which was the opposite of what I needed to be. It wasn’t enough that I wanted to lie down and take a snooze in the middle of Cannibal Central, but I wasn’t my normal on-the-edge self.

  With a heavy sigh I admitted that I had made a mistake in taking the pills, but I could alleviate some of the effects. The cantina had a small kitchen, and lo and behold, there was a selection of energy drinks. They weren’t cold, but the black can with the green Monster Energy logo was more than able to ramp up my game.