“All of them,” Danielle continued, “the sad old man, the little brat, the raging beast, they’re not real. They’re something you create, aren’t they?” She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have her own emotions personified, but judging by Dwayne’s arm slashes, not very good.
Through his episode, Dwayne fought for control to nod.
She jilted from the loudest crash yet as the tire-less car from the abandoned lot next door punctured the dining room wall. Fragments of roof pulled away from above as the howling wind and rain deafened her to all else. The demon, Fear, now within arm’s reach, tilted its head in a patronizing what’s the matter notion. She swallowed hard and turned to Dwayne.
“Dwayne, you’re scared. I know I am too, but you have to snap out of it. Now!” She grabbed his collar and shook him.
The car, propped against the splintered wall, teetered with the threat of falling on them. A large portion of the roof collapsed onto the table. Danielle shrieked in terror and clutched Dwayne. The legs on the far side of the dining table caved, tightening the space for Fear, Dwayne, and Danielle. Danielle glanced and cowered at the demon, Fear, one more time, then pulled Dwayne’s face to hers.
“Don’t be afraid, Dwayne. I’m here with you.”
She landed a kiss. If they were to die, her last moments here and now, she was sure her notion would mean everything to Dwayne. In that collapsing beach house, in the turmoil of a ravenous hurricane, they shared a moment when all was positive, and doom had uplifted.
And Fear subsided.
A shifting of debris punctured the darkness. A large fragment of rooftop lifted away from them, held at waist length by a well-built man in a grey superhero costume. His chiseled face beamed a shining smile, fearless of the engulfing hurricane overhead. Balancing debris with one hand, he twisted the fallen hutch face down, extending his free hand to Danielle.
She offered Dwayne a bemused smile. “Seriously?”
He jittered with sweat, but his aura was on top of the world. Confident.
“My lady, your hand, please? There is not much time,” the hero asked.
Danielle followed his direction, climbing under the shelter of the toppled hutch. The hero helped Dwayne to his feet and reached again for the hutch.
Creak!
The sound of twisting metal deafened her. The tumbling car replaced both pairs of feet next to the hutch.
She screamed. My God, were they crushed? Blown away? The lime green roof of the car blocked her view from all else. She cried out for Dwayne, Evan, anyone. Her eyes watered. She was alone, and afraid.
Relentlessly, the storm pressed on around her. She whimpered for what felt like hours until fatigue claimed her.
* * *
“Over here, check this stuff over here!”
Danielle awoke to muffled voices and sounds of moving objects. Sunlight penetrated a small crevasse. She struggled onto her back, pounding fists on the backing of the hutch. Voices reacted to her signal. Several minutes later, the hutch was lifted away by a pair of firefighters. Midday sun blinded Danielle. She accepted the aid to stand, hugged the firefighters, and was directed to a group of emergency vehicles at the turn onto Topher’s Cove Lane. The neighborhood lay in ruins; shutters and roof shackles were scattered across yards, and the uprooted weeping willow had penetrated the front of the red house. Evan emerged from the crowd by the vehicles at a sprint, followed by their parents.
“Thank God yer safe, Dannie!” Evan embraced his sister. “I thought we had lost you.”
“I thought I lost you too,” Danielle said in relief. “What happened to you?”
Evan scratched the back of his head. “When you got knocked out by that pan, I lost it. That biggun was pretty strong. Threw me to the wall. That was the last I remembered. That was ‘til I heard some glass breaking an’ I realized where I was. The storm was on top of us! The wind had everythin’ in the kitchen goin’ crazy! Blender, knives, an’ pans flying all about. I wanted to look for you, but I had no choice. I hid myself under the kitchen sink cabinet. I jus’ waited it out from there ‘til it was safe. I was lookin’ for ya myself, but help arrived an’ I was weak, so they kept looking. I would not let ‘em stop ‘til we found you!”
Danielle smiled, elated that Evan was safe. She looked back upon the rubble of Five Topher’s Cove Lane. “Has Dwayne been found?”
Evan shook his head. “They’re still lookin’. I told ‘em there’s more to find. So, what happened to you anyway?”
Danielle recounted the events in her head. Her family would think she were crazy if she shared the truth. “Dwayne helped me safely under the hutch. That was the last I saw,” she said.
Evan sat her down. “Well, let’s git ya some grub. I’m sure yer dying for something.” He departed for the trailer.
Danielle faced her parents, deaf to their words, staring beyond them at the broken house she had been buried under. She hoped Dwayne was alive. He’d have given his life for her if not, and that would be a harsh guilt for Danielle to live with. She scanned the rubble with mustered energy.
No life essence detected.
She rubbed her temples and tried again; she would not accept Dwayne was dead. Perhaps she didn’t scan hard enough. She still had much to learn about her heightened intuition before she could fully trust it.
For Dwayne’s sake, Danielle hoped her intuition was wrong.
* * *
In the deep dune grass of the beach, a good distance from the commotion on Topher’s Cove Lane, a bloodied and broken scruffy man laid with his face in the sand. He coughed and spat, arms and legs failing to offer support to turn him over. He shifted his head. Penny loafers stood by his side. He gazed up to the frumpy face of old man Misery, admiring the ocean. The gentle Atlantic breeze rustled the grey cardigan against his frail body.
“Please, help me?” Dwayne grunted, his words agonizing to speak. “I think my arms and legs are broken.”
Misery set cold eyes upon Dwayne and spoke in a monotone voice, “You’ve no need to worry for long. The tide is coming in.”
The Machine
By Linna Drehmel
Anthony Stewart knew this new assignment was going to be dangerous as he sat waiting in his supervisor’s office. This awful feeling crept up on him more and more with each second that passed. It was the kind of feeling that made him want to run. He knew this feeling. He had it many times when he was in the military, and he was teased for it. He has led many missions and paying heed to this feeling even though he hated it; it had not only saved his sorry ass from a miserable death, but many good soldiers, as well.
He remembered one such instance. It was a recon mission in the Gemiinon system. It was a tiny, yet compatible planet that humanity desperately needed. Their orders were clear and simple: get in look for intelligent life, collect samples of animal and insect life, soil and water samples, a standard science mission.
His team was good. They did find many different species of insects, all of which his team took samples. They also found a good deal of peaceful cattle-types of animal, along with a many other smaller animals, but nothing remotely intelligent or humanoid. But they kept looking until the small white sun began set in the sky and they made camp.
That’s when the feeling showed up in his gut. Something was wrong. He had to get them out of there. He knew it.
“Break camp,” Anthony told them.
“What is it sir?” asked his science officer Captain Davis.
“I have a really bad feeling. We need to get our asses out of here now!”
“Commander Tony Tingles strikes again!” Privet Sully joked.
“Check the attitude, Sully!” yelled Davis. “He is our commander and his ‘tingles’ have saved your nasty ass on more than one occasion, so pack it up!”
“Squiers, Browning, Parker, you set the transport pillars. Sully, you can break camp alone for your little bit of insubordination,” Commander Stewart ordered them.
“Ahhh, sssshit!” Sully sw
ore.
“Step lively, men. We need to get the hell out of here!” he said, as the feeling in his gut got stronger.
Sully was almost done breaking down the camp, and the transport was just about ready when they all began to hear this low hum that grew steadily.
“Movie it soldiers, move it!” yelled Davis, feeling nervous at the growing sound, knowing it can only be some kind of subterranean life, and it did not sound friendly as the hum began to sound more like a screech. “Go get the equipment off! Go!”
In a flash of blue electrical light, their equipment was gone and in a few long seconds the transport captain on board the shuttle responded over vox. “Equipment received. Why the hell are you coming back so early? And what is that god-awful interference?”
“No time to explain, captain. Prepare six to transport back ASAFP!” Anthony yelled as all six scrambled for the transport. No sooner had they made it into the center of the transport, they saw what was making all that noise in the light of the double moons.
They flew in swarms. They were each the size of a human child around six years old. They had no hair, but large bat-like wings. The closer they got to the team, they could see the creatures had sharp fang-like teeth and wore scraps of clothing-like fabric and beaded necklaces that they could see were actually bones.
“Go, go, go!” Screamed Anthony as one of the creatures reached for him. He could feel it’s cold flesh touch his as the transport button was pushed and they were all taken to the safety of the shuttle.
It was a good thing he went with that feeling. Those creatures would have ripped them all apart. This time, the feeling was so strong. It almost seemed to scream death at him, but he could not heed it. He had to stay. He had a contract to fulfill and his family to support. Besides, what could possibly be dangerous about Mr. Clayton’s office? It is not as if his stapler is going to turn into a werewolf and attack him.
He was not a military commander anymore. He was little more than an errand boy for Deep Tech. The big bad company had all of humanity by the balls. They had him, and they knew it. He was in debt up to his eyebrows with a family to support. He needed this job.
Clayton’s dark clad security officer finally opened the door to the inner office. “He is ready for you, Mr. Stewart.”
Anthony stood up on legs that felt shaky with the feeling that doom was upon him and walked into his boss’s office.
“Anthony Stewart, thank you for coming to my science offices.” Mr. Clayton’s smooth voice seemed welcoming, but only intensified the feeling in his gut that something was very wrong.
“Of course, sir,” Anthony said, trying to hide his trepidation. “What mission do you have for my team?”
“I have several of my archaeologist teams uncovering different sights on the planet that could be of great worth,” he said with a gleam in his eyes. “Technology that is millennium old yet so very far ahead of where we are at today. We need as much of this here at Deep Tech as we can so we can research it and put it to good use.”
“This is great news, sir,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “What would you like my team to do? We are not archaeologists. When my team was military, we were biologists and recon.”
“Recon is all I need here, Mr. Stewart.”
“I don’t…” He hesitated.
“I am prepared to pay you triple your usual salary.” Mr. Clayton offered. “I…we need this!”
Anthony wanted more than anything to tell him to screw himself and walk out, but he needed this money. It could really help his family get out of debt and perhaps move into a real home. “When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow.” He answered with a smile, handing Anthony a thick packet. “Here’s everything you need to know about the mission. You can brief your team on the shuttle.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, taking the packet. “Thank you, sir.”
“No, Mr. Stewart,” he said with a polite smile, “thank you.”
Mr. Clayton’s words seemed kind, yet Anthony felt as if a spider was walking down his spine.
* * *
The chamber was carved from the natural grey and green bedrock of the planet. The rock walls had been cut with a precision that only a high-powered plasma beam could accomplish. All surfaces were smooth and flawless, with no trace of tool marks. The chamber was deep and narrow with an arched ceiling. Small dim lights were evenly spaced along the entire length of the room. Two aisles separated four rows of opaque grey exam tables. Two were head-to-head in the center and one against each outer wall. There were hundreds of them in this chamber; some contained mutilated and unrecognizable bodies and some were empty and coated with a fine layer of dust. This was just one in perhaps thousands of similar chambers scattered across the planet, all designed for one dark purpose.
A steady dripping sound invaded Anthony’s semi-conscious thoughts. He forced his eyes open, trying to get his bearings without success.
Everything was a blur: the shuttle trip, the recon, and how he came to be strapped on this table. His head was pounding as he laid on the edge of consciousness, trying to recall what was happening to him.
“I need to get up,” he thought, and struggled to do so, but found that he was being held firmly in place.
“What is holding me down?” he silently wondered. Looking down, he realized it was the bed restraints; he was connected to the machine. He focused his thoughts for a moment and remembered that he was attacked from behind and hit on the head with something hard and unforgiving. “Fracking cowards,” he mumbled.
The pain in the back of Anthony’s head continued to throb, making it hard to think. He remembered someone had dragged him to one of the extraction tables and forced him on it. Anthony knew the restraint bars were set to automatically close when the machine detected his life energy.
The machine had already begun to siphon the life out of him as if it looked for something. “I’m a dead man,” thought Anthony. He knew that once it starts, no one can stop it.
Anthony continued to drift in and out of coherent thoughts as the metallic arms of the bed squeezed him in a deadly embrace. There was a slight vibration and soft electric hum in the air. The sound was almost comforting, soothing. The bed was warm and inviting, like the builders of this abomination wanted their victims to be lulled, like a child in his mother’s arms.
Anthony was just about to slip into warm, dark oblivion when the pain came. This was a pain like he couldn’t have imagined. Nothing in his experience would compare to this. He convulsed as the pleasant warmth was replaced by searing heat over his entire body. Inside, it felt as if a thousand knives shredded organs, muscle, and bone. His blood turned to acid and burned through his veins. No single part was spared from the agony.
He could hear a voice through the pain. “I’m sorry, Anthony.”
Pain. Heat. Pain. On and on it went, for what seemed like hours.
“It was not supposed to be like this. I never intended to harm you or the team, but I need the power you have.” A shadowy figure gestured toward the nearby tables where several bodies, or what was left of them, laid.
Anthony rolled his pain-filled head to look at the tables and moaned. “Oh no, not my team.” He recognized some of the remains on the other table; he wanted to vomit. He realized the dripping he heard earlier was coming from the fluids oozing from his friend’s bloated body. Some of the others looked as if they were baked from the inside too long and split open. Anthony could smell the charred and rotting flesh.
“We didn’t know how to work the machine. We weren’t even sure of its purpose, ‘til we found the audio and video files.” The shadowy figure went on to explain, “The race that created this device was very thorough in their documentation of the local inhabitant’s reactions to it.”
Still looking at the mangled remains of his team, hot anger boiled up inside of him. “I don’t care! Screw your machine!”
“I’m sorry about the team Anthony, but I needed data to compare to yours. We needed test s
ubjects, lab rats so to speak. They were convenient.” The voice sounded anything but sorry.
“Screw you! Let me go!” He screamed as he struggled against the restraints.
“No, I need to find your power. I know it is in your life energy and this machine will find it and extract it from you,” said the tormenting voice as his dark hand reached over and turned a knob that began to increase Anthony’s pain.
“What power?” He screamed through the pain. “I don’t have any power. I’m just a regular man.”
“No, Anthony. You’re special. It is how you always knew if my hunches were right. You are more powerful than any of us knew, and Mr. Clayton needs it.”
“Let it end!” He screamed.
“Sorry, commander. I can’t let you die just yet. Not ‘til I get what I am looking for.”
“Then show your face. Have some respect, man, and let me see the face of my murderer!” He challenged.
“You won’t like what you see,” the voice warned.
“Show yourself!”
Anthony carefully moved his pain-filled head so he could watch as the figure moved from the shadows where he sat at the control to the artificial light. Anthony gasped in shock as he got a good look at the face of the man who had tormented and killed his friends…and was trying to kill him.
“Captain Davis!”
“Yes, commander, it’s me. I see you’re a bit shocked.”
“How could you?” He yelled. “We were all your friends!”
“No, I really was not.” He sounded frustrated. “I am not who you thought I was.”
“You’re not a scientist?” Anthony asked, confused.
“I am most definitely a scientist.” He sounded menacing. “I was never really a captain in the military. See, Mr. Clayton is also my boss. He has been for a long time. He placed me in there to watch and see if anyone might have something he would need or could use.”
“I will not let you, and your filthy boss use me!” He said as he struggled against the beds restraints.
“You know, Anthony, this would not hurt nearly as much if you would quit struggling. You always fight against everything, even your own power. Just let go for once and see what happens. You might even survive this.” Davis advised. “You will not be walking out of here alive if you give me any more trouble. If you settle down and cooperate with me, I will be sure that your family gets the full pay you were promised…plus fifty percent.”
Dark Light Book Three (Dark Light Anthology) Page 18
