“I know that. But the designer … oh, oh.” I smiled. “Levi Strauss.”
“That is him.”
“Yeah.” I turned my back to him and showed him the label on my blue jeans.
“Oh, my. I never …” Levi reached out his hand and touched it. “This red tag. Do you think there are any more of these in this world?”
“I would venture to guess a lot, yeah.”
“Then I must get some.”
I laughed. “Just ask Alex, that’s all he wea…” I cringed. “My God. A moment and I forget.”
“His impact was great. Alex will always be with us. Sadly, I haven’t a clue what this will do to the big picture.”
I nodded and placed my hands in my pockets. “Which brings me to why I am here. Where are The Doctrines?”
“Is that what you thought I meant by the big picture?” Levi asked. “Oh, Sonny, I know you have deemed yourself the official writer, but I do not subscribe to the spiritual or historical fraction of The Doctrines.”
“I realize that, but I need to see them.”
It was the first time since I walked in that Levi stopped completely moving. “Sonny, you swore you would never read them.”
“Yes, I know I swore I would never look at them. But I think I need to see them now. Do you have them?”
“No. Michael carries them on him at all times. He won’t be here for two days.”
“Then I guess I have to wait. Thank you for your time. Are you sure I can’t help you?”
“I’m sure.”
I started to leave.
“Sonny,” Levi called me. “Can I ask why all of a sudden you want to read The Doctrines?”
“Alex … Alex told me something before he died. He said I had to know. And because of that, I need to read The Doctrines.”
“What was it?”
“I was sworn to secrecy on a deathbed disclosure. No one is getting that from me.”
“But it is clearly important enough for you to break your vow to not look at The Doctrines.”
“Yep.” I nodded. “It also could be part of the ‘big picture’ that everyone missed.”
“Then you must tell.”
“This isn’t something that can be told and believed, it’s something that has to be revealed to be believed as a truth,” I said solemnly. “And trust me, it’s something I pray is not true.”
4. MERA
Everything was gray. I know I was spoiled by living in Grace. When we arrived there it was bright and green. This place is just… gray. Overgrown, it looked and reeked of death and the windows are so dirty I couldn’t even see through them.
It would get better, I supposed.
But for now it’s gray and dismal.
Quite the reflection of how I felt.
Most of the children didn’t do anything. When we first met them, they were accustomed to death and didn’t show emotion, but the loss of Alex hit them hard.
We were set up in the corner of some main room. I don’t even think we had enough supplies to make beds. To be honest, I don’t know what they packed in that bus.
Beck and Danny were in charge of that. Alex … Alex was too.
I saw Bonnie immediately when I walked in. She looked so tired and drawn. She was that Montana cowgirl, reduced to a woman who started to show her age, and that had all happened in the span of a couple of days.
She closed her mouth tightly, walked to me, and embraced me.
I wanted to fold. But I couldn’t. I had cried so much, I was fearful I had no more tears.
As I pulled from her embrace, I looked over her shoulder to my daughter Jessie. Jessie sat in an old green chair, her legs brought to her chest, arms wrapped tightly round them, nose against her knees.
I walked to Jessie, kissed her, and tried to place my arms around her. She shunned me, shaking her head.
I was devastated.
Bonnie took hold of my arm. “Leave her be. She’s processing. Come over here with me.”
I nodded and reluctantly followed bonnie over to the table.
“From here you get a good view of all the kids.”
She was right. That little card table against the wall was a great place to watch them all. But they weren’t doing much.
“Has she said anything?” I asked.
Bonnie shook her head. “She cried and then sat there. She’s staring at the door, waiting on Alex.” When she said his name, her voice trembled.
“Will she okay, Bonnie? I mean, I know what Levi said about her physical condition, but mentally… You spend a lot of time with her. What do you think?”
“Children are resilient,” Bonnie said. “While she has an adult body, she is still a child. I really do think she’ll bounce back. In fact, I’m positive she will. I’m not leaving her side though.” Bonnie pointed a finger. “I can’t. I … I can’t.”
I never knew Bonnie’s story. Really, in the year and a half that I knew her, all I heard was that she was waiting and hiding in a family member’s home, and when she finally emerged, she’d found Jillian and the children.
Then Bonnie told me something she never had.
“She reminds me of my own daughter at that age.”
“Bonnie,” I said softly, “you never mentioned you were a mother.”
“I wanted to forget it. But I can’t. I watched my husband and my daughter turn into those things. I couldn’t put them down. I could only run. And knowing that it hit the brain, I would never think my daughter would have turned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lucy, my daughter…” Bonnie pushed a glass toward me and then from under the table lifted a bottle. “Never too early in the day when you’re sad.” She poured me a drink.
“Thank you.”
“I wasn’t always born and bred country. My husband was a rancher. I think I told you that. I did not want to leave the city, I’ll tell ya. I married young, like you. Nineteen. We met on a family vacation when I was young. And because I didn’t want to leave the city, my husband worked sales for his father’s beef business.” Her hands fiddled with the glass. “When Lucy was sixteen, she was out with her friends and was in a terrible accident. A head injury. She survived but it left her in a childlike state.” Her eyes shifted to Jessie.
“That’s why she reminds you of your daughter.”
“Looks, innocence. Age. Events.”
I looked up from my glass.
“When Lucy was nineteen, she and I went on a mother daughter weekend. Three men broke into our hotel room. We were beaten and they had their way with us.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“That was thirteen years ago.” Bonnie shook her head. “I never recovered. I never let my husband touch me again. It plagued me. Still does. Keeps me cold and distant. Except with your girl. See my Lucy, she didn’t understand much more than bad men did bad things to her. She smiled and loved. She recovered, much better than I did. That’s why I can say Jessie will get through this. We all will.”
I reached across the table and squeezed Bonnie’s hand. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
Bonnie lifted her glass, we clinked. “To Alex Sans.”
“To Alex.” His name peeped out with hurt, got caught in my throat a moment and I downed that drink. It was no sooner that I set my glass down on the table when I felt a hug to my legs. A tight hug, as if someone was holding on for dear life. I peered down, it was Keller. “Oh, sweetie.” I lifted him into my arms and immediately he held on to me.
“He knows,” Bonnie said. “He doesn’t need to hear or see to know his father is gone.”
His father. I cradled Keller and he absorbed it, I could tell. His father. For some screwed up reason, I never thought of it that way.
“The way Alex was with that boy …” Bonnie said.
She was right. Alex was with him all the time. Toting him here and there, feeding him, changing him… teaching him.
Alex even got him that stupid cap.
“Alex, what t
he hell?” I said the first time I saw Keller with that black beanie cap with the edges folded down across his missing eyes.
“What? He likes it.”
“He’s one.”
“It makes him look ‘G’.” Alex did this old world gangster gang sign thing with his hands and tilted his head with an ‘Alex’ style smile.
“What?” I laughed. “Oh my God, Alex, take it off, you’re gonna give him a complex because he doesn’t have eyes.”
“He doesn’t have eyes.”
“Alex.”
“Fine.”
Alex won. Every time I turned around, Keller was sporting that cap, and before long, by the time he was eighteen months old, Keller would extend his hands and search it out when it wasn’t on his head.
Oh, Keller. How Alex loved you, and you will never know the man that watched you, loved you and protected you. I felt horrible for Keller, because I could only imagine how much of an influence Alex would have had on Keller’s life.
But that would never happen.
It wasn’t fair. It really wasn’t fair. Not to Keller. Just the difference between him and Phoenix. Phoenix was born perfect, smart. Actually, his intelligence was that of at least a three year old, and Keller was born with such a disadvantage. The one thing he had going for him was the tough love and teachings of Alex, and that was gone now.
Phoenix knew Beck as a father. Beck would be an awesome role model for Keller, but as I thought that, I opened my eyes and searched out Phoenix. He was across the room, standing on a box, staring out the dirty window.
Staring out like Jessie.
I felt horrible. I hadn’t even thought about how everything was affecting Phoenix. Holding Keller, I walked over to that window and to Phoenix.
“Hey, Sweetie.” I ran my hand over his blonde hair.
“Mommy.”
I smiled and kissed him. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“Waiting?” I tilted my head in curiosity. “Waiting for what?”
“Him.” He turned from the window and looked at me.
My heart broke. Immediately, I remembered he was so far advanced for his age, yet he didn’t understand everything. How should I tell him. Would he understand?
“Phoenix, sweetie. He isn’t coming.”
“Yes he is.”
“Honey, Alex is gone.”
Phoenix looked at me, his blue eyes so bright. “Not Alex. Him.”
“Who?”
“He’s the first. He was called.”
“Who, Phoenix? Who was called?”
“The Sleeper man.” Phoenix returned to looking out the window. He placed his hand on the dirty pane of glass. “They’re coming.”
5. SONNY
I felt bad for Beck, really bad. He was a leader in every sense of the word, but hated claiming that position. In fact, he preferred to delegate authority elsewhere. Just like he did when we were on the road. He’d placed that responsibility on Alex.
I suppose when he was at the ARC for eighteen months, because of the military setting and regiment, Beck got into the swing of things, and when he returned to his family in Grace, while he was still Beck, he was tougher. Focused.
But not this night.
Not the first night he would spend in the new camp and the first night after Alex had left us.
Our resident bright boys, Javier, Noah and Levi, tried their hardest to make dinner go smoothly, but Mera had to jump in. She was an expert at that. After all, she fed one third of the children in the community.
No one ate, instead only picked at their food.
Including me.
Miles took watch, until Danny was too bored not to. Danny stayed busy, cleaning out rooms. He grabbed a map and marked down nearby towns we could to hit for supplies. He kept bringing up the nearby Walmart.
Beck was the one, while everyone was falling apart, who tried to be strong. He was the reassurance and the comforting arms, the argument of reason to Mera when she insisted that Phoenix was psychic and that blind, mute, and deaf Keller could speak.
Mera would be an emotional mess for a while.
Beck took a bucket of water, warmed it over the fire outside, carried it in and washed off every single child.
Of course he told me, that before supplies, we needed to ‘get the damn power back on’. I think I would argue that food was more important than power, but I opted against arguing with Beck.
Things quieted down and I hadn’t a clue where Beck went. I was cleaning a back room, gathering up old sheets and blankets from storage. There was a lake nearby; I would wash them there the next day. When I came out to tell Beck of my plan, he was gone.
Mera had fallen asleep, Keller on one side of her, Phoenix on the other.
I thought I had an idea where Beck went, and it turned out I was right.
The small guard tower in the center of the compound. I hated leaving the group in the main building but Miles was there, so I knew it would be fine.
I heard their voices and announced, “It’s me,” as I walked up.
“Hey,” Beck said. He was sitting in a chair, while Danny never turned around. He stared out in his watch.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Thought you’d try to sleep.”
“Hanging with Danny, getting a good look at the grounds,” Beck said. “This place is huge. Hell, how many wings are there in the other building?”
“Four,” I answered. “No one except you has really looked beyond the first building. There’s a school here.”
From his watch position, Danny said, “It’ll take a lot of work, but this place is going to be great.”
“That’s what I thought,” Sonny said. “I lived here.”
“Dude, what did you do?” Danny asked. “What crime did you commit?”
“Can I not talk about it?” I asked. “One day I’ll tell you.”
Beck nodded. “Works for me. I’ll accept that. So, while you were at the other building, we got a check-in call from Michael.”
My heart sunk. “Did you tell him?”
“No.” Beck lowered his head. “He asked about Alex and I told him I’d tell him when he got here.”
Danny exhaled loudly enough that I heard him. “Mike is gonna be so upset. Or rather, as Alex called him, the padre.”
I nodded. “I know. They had this love-hate relationship.”
Beck softly and sadly chuckled. “Spoiler alert.”
We all laughed at that.
I asked Beck, “Did you make any contact with men from the ARC?”
“No. But they’re out there, doing the reckoning.” Beck motioned his head toward Danny. “So how did he end up so good at security?”
“Miles and Alex trained me,” Danny answered. “I wasn’t very good at farming.”
“Can track a Sleeper though,” I added.
“Yeah,” Danny said. “Once and a while they’d get into Grace and hide. Weird. I’d find them. You can smell them a mile away.”
“There have to be millions upon millions of them,” I said. “If half the country turned, we are so severely outnumbered. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to believe we’re a hundred percent safe here. I mean, I haven’t seen a Sleeper in days. But still...”
“Randy always told us,” Beck said, “the East was a safe zone.”
“Maybe we won a war against them or something,” I suggested.
“Or the ones on the East never survived and the divide kept the others away. That’s what I like to think.”
“Think again,” Danny said calmly. “Sleeper.”
I raced to the lookout window and Beck jumped up.
“Twenty yards outside the fence. See?” Danny turned on the red laser beam on the sniper rifle. It bounced about on the forehead of the male Sleeper. “He’s just standing there watching us. I’ll take him out.”
“No.” Beck said. “If there’s more, the gunfire will draw them.”
“What? Should I let him go?” Danny asked.
Before Beck or I could answer, I heard the door open and the sound of Beck’s thumping boots on the staircase.
“What’s he doing?” Danny asked.
“Keep watching the Sleeper. I think I know.” I headed to the door. “And Danny, if he moves or retreats, shoot him, despite what Beck said.”
“Got it.”
I looked once more at Danny, then I left the security tower to follow Beck.
Since I was in the other building I had a flashlight. I reached the bottom and saw Beck run through the gate, closing it behind him.
I looked up and saw the red beam from Danny’s laser; Beck was following it. For a big man, he ran fast. I wanted to call his name but didn’t want to draw attention to any more Sleepers.
So like Beck, I followed the beam as well.
I ran, not as fast as Beck, and I never saw Beck arrive at the Sleeper.
I did, however, hear a crack. A loud crack that gave me shudders.
Crack.
Groan.
Thump.
I expected to see Beck emerge from the darkness and say it was over. What I didn’t expect was to hear the grunts and sounds of hitting, like someone slamming a slab of meat. I followed the sounds as fast as I could.
When I arrived, the beam was no longer there. Beck was illuminated by the bright moon. He knelt above the motionless Sleeper pummeling him with fist after fist.
“Beck.”
Beck kept hitting. He hit with all his might, every strike was emotional.
“Beck, stop, he’s dead.”
Beck kept hitting.
“Beck!” I said, and stepped to him. “Please, it’s over.”
“It’s not over. It will never be over.” Beck hit the dead Sleeper again. “I hate them.” He struck down at the body with every emotional statement. “I hate them all.” A hit. “They took it.” A hit. “They took Grace.” Another hit. “They hurt Jessie.” Hit. “My wife is a broken woman.” Another strike. “They… (hit) killed (hit)…Alex (hit). So it will never be over until last of them die.”
With a final emotional growl, Beck lifted the Sleeper and tossed his limp body as if he weighed nothing. The Sleeper landed and rolled like a dead animal.
Sleepers (Book 4) Page 2
