Sleepers (Convergence Book 1)

by Stephen Landry

  “They want our life force,” said Emily.

  “What?” exclaimed Nate.

  “Think about it. Everyone falls asleep but a few of us somehow get extraordinary powers. We somehow know everyone falling asleep and the daemons are two things that are not coincidental. They even used the sleepers to deliver us a message. They aren’t planning to attack us or wipe us out, they want to enslave us. I think they feed off fear,” she said.

  “Rot,” said Nate.

  “What the hell did you say that for?” said Michael.

  “I think she’s right, if this is a prison, if somehow they are feeding off our fear then they are just using us to strengthen themselves. Every attack they have made has been more psychological and strategic then an alien race hellbent on annihilation. If they wanted to destroy us they could easily. Hell if this place is something they can create and control then there is no reason they couldn’t sling an asteroid into Earth or just straight up infect our minds in such a way that we blow ourselves to hell,” said Nate.

  “Ok, so if this is a prison how to do we break out,” I asked.

  “Perhaps we just have to wish there was no place like home,” said Todd.

  “This isn’t a joke, I’m dead serious, if they feed off fear we can’t be afraid of them, not anymore,” said Nate.

  “We’re at war, we’re going to be afraid,” I said, “not to mention they can and have really killed millions of us.”

  “Okay, it’s a balancing act. We can be afraid but we can’t be too afraid. We have to stand our ground without showing them that we are afraid without letting them infect us, without letting them get inside our heads,” said Nate.

  I leaned forward staring at the gray stone surface as it began to fade in the evening light. I stroked the surface of the stone with my hand. Some differential weathering of on the surface had made small rings tangible. Small almost impossible to see with the human eye. I felt like they were vibrating around me. I felt like I could feel the air move through my fingertips. I moved slowly away from the rest of my team and towards the yokai. I felt like I was inside a puzzle. The jungle that was there. Behind that the ruins of the moon rabbit. Beyond that what was there? If this world was a prison could there be allies? If there was a way in then there must have been a way out.

  I started going through the satchel that was attached to the yokai. The smaller daemons must have used this beast as some kind of mounted animal. Was that really necessary for them? I crouched on the ground. I could feel the dirt beneath the grass against my knees. The temperature was dropping. Nowhere near freezing but just cold enough that you wanted to cover up. There was something hidden inside the dark gray satchel. I moved towards it. Inching my way passed the smell of rotten flesh. There were small flies hovering the air around the creature. Strange how strong the smell seemed now when it was barely notice able near our camp less than fifty yards away. Like there was some kind of repellent in the air near the ruins and the farther away you went the more disgusting the world became. I reached inside the darkness and grabbed the familiar shape. I tried to avoid the small bugs that had began coming close to me. They were like roaches or large ticks. They seemed to have attached themselves to the creature draining it of whatever was left. I suppose they had never seen anything like us. I could only imagine what horrors would await us if they got a taste for human blood. I used my knife to kill one of them. It practically exploded. The others seemed to pick up that I was a threat and they scattered leaving me to my own. I picked up the object. Up and held it up in front of me. I recognized it immediately. The sword of Lü Dongbin or at the very least something similar.

  I brought the sword to Nate. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. For it seemed it was either an exact replica or the same sword.

  “Impossible, that sword was on Earth,” he said.

  “I think we need to make a trip back to the moon rabbit,” I said.

  Rabbit

  Michael was sitting in one of the ruined buildings. There was just enough there to provide an exterior wall and a part of a ceiling. It looked like some kind of creature had torn it’s way through.

  “Yea, Jake?” he said.

  “Nate, Emily, Cassandra, myself. We are all planning an excursion to the moon rabbit. We are going to be taking the hover craft. We haven’t asked Lt. Barker or Jackson yet. This is my idea and I wanted to come and get your support,” I said.

  “Why the moon rabbit?” he asked.

  “Nate recovered some interesting things there. Something about this place isn’t adding up and we think it has something to do with the wreckage, we are going back to recover the missing logs so that not just Lt. Barker but all of us can find out what truly happened,” I said.

  “I felt there was something wrong with this place since we arrived I’m in,” he said. He gestured back up before grabbing his rifle and following me out. We next asked Jackson and Todd. They both said yes. Last thing we had to do was ask Lt. Barker. We were going no matter what but it didn’t feel right to rebel against him. When we opened the dropship door we found him meditating silently.

  “You want to go see the rabbit for yourselves?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I responded on behalf of our group. Michael and Nate were standing behind me. We thought we had a better chance of convincing him if there were at least three of us present.

  “You have my blessing just be aware that you won’t find anything good there,” he said turning a computer screen towards us and showing us the last recording of the moon rabbit. We stood in the damp dropship as moisture from the night before lingered in the air around us. We had barely slept. We watched silently as a camera panned around the moon rabbit. A young Chinese man stood with his rifle out. It looked like a first person shooter. In front of him were feral daemons. Some were small, others large like the yokai. He was firing round after round ducking from one hallway to the next. His power allowed him to create some kind of force field that the creatures couldn’t pass. They boxed him in. They starved him out in the corner of a room for what looked like days.

  “The moon rabbit crashed only a few hours before we came here, why does it look like several days have passed?” Michael asked.

  “If we traversed inside another world or even possibly traveled through some kind of event horizon it’s possible that time slowed down for us. By the time we landed time dilation took effect and days, months, maybe even years have gone by,” said Nate.

  “Time stamp shows that the moon rabbit was down for a whole week before my logs ended. You’re right though you have to go back. One of the last entries I watched said they had found something. Buried near the ship. Something they said might get them out of here. The moon rabbit has the coordinates but we weren’t able to recover that information in time. It’s in the center terminal on the bridge. What’s even more interesting is that the record belongs to our old friend Chiru,” said Lt. Barker.

  “Chiru did go through the fissure first, it’s possible he might have met up with the moon rabbit. He may even have survived if he was away from the ship, he could still be out there!” said Nate.

  “I thought you were the pessimist of the bunch,” laughed Lt. Barker.

  “We might have a chance at this,” he said smirking.

  A few more hours. Half a day’s hike.

  “Are you nervous? You look nervous? You’re sweating,” said Michael towards me. I was carrying about a week’s rations in my backpack along with my rifle, a pistol, several smaller grenades, and a few other necessary survival items such as a small first aid kit, rope, a knife, zip ties, and a box of matches.

  “I’m nervous and I’ve been there before,” interrupted Nate.

  “Well hopefully things go a little better this time around,” I said, “by the way, I’m not nervous. If you say it will be alright I will believe you.”

  “It should be,” said Michael smiling.

  We made it to the moon rabbit by nightfall. We dec
ided against taking the hover craft because we were worried it would make too much noise. Only Michael, Nate, Emily, and myself and Jackson had come. The ship looked just as I had imagined. Massive, very streamlined. It looked like an aircraft carrier with enormous engines mounted to the back and several guns on the front and side. The bridge wasn’t on top. It was there of course just on the inside along with several dozen other rooms such as a mess, recreation, bunks, stasis chamber, armory, engine rooms, control, communications, navigation, etc, etc. We found an opening in the side of the hull. The same opening Lt. Barker had led the others inside the the last time they had arrived. Inside we found no bodies. The ship seemed to have been cleaned up. There were several blood stains on the grey floors and walls but it was something that you had to look for to really notice. They had been scrubbed away to the point the rot had made everything just a shade darker then others. My breathing, my heart beats, the wash of stale air inside my chest. The tunnels led deeper like we were making our way down through a maze.

  “This doesn’t help us end the war, you know,” said Nate.

  “It does help us get out of here so come on,” said Michael lighting his flashlight and leading us into the dark below.

  “I don’t think the daemons will give in like we think they will, even if we manage to causes a severe amount of damage to their society, their state of being, I think they will keep fighting till the last. I think they want us to be fighting them, I think they enjoy this, like a game to them,” Nate continued on and on. We couldn’t shut him up. Some of what he was saying seemed to make sense. The deeper inside we walked the longer it felt like we were walking into some kind of trap. I felt like they were going to close the door on one end and lock us inside. There would be no point in that. If we were on the daemon’s homeworld then they would have the numbers. They could have come for us anytime but instead they watched as we killed the feral yokai. They watched as we ate protein bars and slept in the ruins. They were even watching now as we made our way through the ruins of our own Earth ship.

  “That’s too negative an attitude to bring to war, to bring to anything. There are going to be moments in life were you have to take a leap of faith. Sometimes you’ll fail but other times you’ll find yourself on a new path, a new journey that is more hopeful and exciting then anything you could have ever imagined,” said Michael.

  “Sounds like you are almost having fun,” said Emily.

  “No, but I will do anything to protect my sister and that king rat over there named Jake that I know even in the dreaming she loves,” he answered.

  “There is something making noise up there,” I said pointing my gun towards the stasis chamber.

  “Withered,” said Nate.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Trapped in stasis, the sleepers all reverted to that state, probably something about being on this world or something the daemons did while they were here. They are all zombies now,” said Todd.

  “I hate the Z word,” said Michael.

  “Sorry, I forgot about that,” said Todd.

  Todd had grown up in the city streets of Philly. He was as tough as they come but he had very little tact. When the event happened he was crashing at some of his friends. He thought he had been given some kind of bad drug. That the whole thing was some laced up trip gone wrong. When it never ended and his powers started to show themselves he fell into a depression. He began experimenting with different psychoactive drugs like LSD, Acid, and shrooms. He even took several high doses of EMT once and created a Mandela fortress out of several abandoned warehouses. When the withered appeared he used his powers to build traps for them. He had no empathy not like Michael and I. He didn’t care who lived and who died. He had created a castle out of the urban jungle that surrounded him. Eventually he drew the attention of the U.E.D who captured him and convinced him to serve our cause.

  There were two or three lights flashing in the bridge control room. They seemed to flash with every single breath I took. I felt like something was pushing me back holding me in place as I tried to move towards the control panel to download the missing data. I felt something else anchoring me in place. There was a cold in the air. Part of the ship had been torn apart. An opening to the outside world. Cursing, the darkness gathered behind my eyes and I shot forward. I found the circuit breaker and began dialing up a connection. For the hell of it I tried communication but they were down. Everything was in flux even life support. There was something calming about being able to see outside. There were no stars, no moons, no clouds. It was like staring at a pitch black wall hoping that somehow light would shine through. I shoved my face agains the edge of the control lever and powered up the computer. Lt. Barker had apparently shut everything down before leaving. I’m sure a part of him thought long and hard about destroying the whole ship but who knows the level of devastation that would have caused. He also knew that somehow there had to be something more here. I moved my hand so that it would not slip away. I pressed the keys and downloaded the last of the logs.

  I closed my eyes just for a second to rest. The next thing I knew I was falling. Out the window. Something had pushed me. I heard gun fire as I hit the ground below me. I lost my rifle. I was beginning to roll down a hill. Everything went still. At first it happened so fast I didn’t have time to react. All at once everything stopped. I was falling in slow motion.

  A daemon leapt out after me from the opening in the ship. Another right after. The first one looked just how you imagine a daemon looked. Dark black eyes, veins and wrinkled skin, horns, spikes, tail, claws, teeth. Just like the grunts back home. It fell right next to me. For the next several seconds I tried to fight it off but I felt it break my ribs. I felt it’s claws tear my skin. Wounds so deep I knew I would need medical attention immediately and if I didn’t get it I would bleed out. I felt it at my throat. I could smell the iron and copper in it’s breath. There was a sulfur like odor that lingered off it’s body. The second daemon landed on top of it. It had similar features but it was smaller. It’s body a lighter gray. It’s limbs seemed more human. A part of me thought it looked less like a raptor and more human. One of it’s arms seemed to have a bone protruding from it like a blade just above the wrist. Before I lost consciousness I watched as it impaled the larger daemon and began making it’s way towards me.

  Shadows

  PART 1

  I just took the longest shower of my life. It’s been two years since you died. Two years and I still haven’t stopped crying. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think you are going to return. That any moment you are going to walk through the door and smile at me. That you will ask for a kiss or a hug. That we will talk about our day. Eat dinner and stay up talking or watching our favorite television shows. Maybe we’d even make some art together. What happened to me after you left is where this story begins. Since that day I felt helpless. Empty. Like living in a state of decay. Sometimes I feel like I’m sleeping like I am only a small part of a larger whole compared to whatever is happening out there. What I lived through. I wish I could share it with you.

  I miss you Jake. I miss you everyday since you died.

  What began as a cold Saturday morning quickly turned into a bright and sunny day. I lived around the equator not even a mile from the beach. I moved here from Chicago. I couldn’t stay there. Every place was a reminder. Dr. Leer, my psychiatrist told me it would pass. We tried several dozen exercises. Nothing helped. I couldn’t move on. Eventually I decided to start taking medicine. It numbed the pain. Then it came to me in a dream. We loved traveling. So I traveled. Leer suggested I stay in one place. That I stay in Chicago and try to ignore the fear and anxiety I felt every single day. I couldn’t. I left without saying a word. In my dream you were calling out to me. Telling me to search. I began searching. Hoping to find my soul somewhere beneath the waves. Eventually I found myself on the coast.

  Every weekend I would pack my gear and head down to the shore to look for shells and shark tee
th. Collecting shark teeth had always been your hobby but it was peaceful. While none of this was of any particular value to anyone but me this was something that I enjoyed and for every beautiful conk or fossilized tooth I found I felt proud inside. I felt like you were smiling looking down on me. This particular morning I grabbed my morning coffee and bagel as soon as I awoke. I sat on the couch with a headache, a vicious one. The more I sat the more I began to wonder how long my head had been hurting. It seemed like forever. I began to wonder if it would go away at all. ‘No matter the cost’ I thought as I grabbed my gear and stepped out the door.

  Before diving under the water I took several careful breathes. Cautiously and against the tide I closed my eyes and plunged into the depths below. Wary of the pain that pounded against my head I opened my eyes. I thought I had been in shallow water but everything around me was dark and never ending. Quickly I began to make my return to the surface imagining the clear blue sky but there was nothing. When I should have come up for air I hit a wall. I turned my head pushing against the surface of the water but the more I pushed the more the tide seemed to pull at my legs. I felt like something was pulling me down. I felt as if I was trapped under a sheet of ice.

  ‘I can’t die like this’. I held my breath for as long as I could. I had been an excellent swimmer and could hold my breath for over a minute the last time you had timed me. Alas, nothing I did seem to matter. The tide pulled at me once again as I feared for my life knowing death would come the moment I opened my mouth. I made peace. I thought this was it. I thought about your face. The dimples you had when you smiled. I felt so much older now. You seemed so young. I thought I would see you soon. Be with you on the other side. When all was lost I let go and swallowed. It came as a shock that the moment I inhaled expecting to taste the salt water there was crisp clean air.