Sleepers 3

  A PERMUTED PRESS book

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-2-185

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-2-192

  Sleepers 3 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

  Prologue – The Teacher

  The Doctrines 13: 9-11

  Part One – The Second Year

  1. Mera Stevens

  2. Alex Sans

  3. Mera Stevens

  4. Alex Sans

  5. Mera Stevens

  6. Alex Sans

  7. Mera Stevens

  8. Alex Sans

  9. Mera Stevens

  10. Alex Sans

  11. Mera Stevens

  12. Alex Sans

  13. Mera Stevens

  14. Alex Sans

  15. Mera Stevens

  16. Alex Sans

  Part Two – A New Order

  17. Mera Stevens

  18. Alex Sans

  19. Sonny

  20. Mera Stevens

  21. Alex Sans

  22. Mera Stevens

  23. Alex Sans

  24. Sonny

  25. Mera Stevens

  26. Alex Sans

  27. Mera Stevens

  28. Alex Sans

  29. Mera Stevens

  30. Sonny

  31. Alex Sans

  32. Mera Stevens

  33. Alex Sans

  34. Mera Stevens

  35. Alex Sans

  36. Mera Stevens

  37. Alex Sans

  38. Mera Stevens

  39. Sonny

  40. Mera Stevens

  Prologue

  The Teacher

  25 PE (Post Event)

  I am not my brother’s keeper, nor he mine. Despite what we have been taught and how we have been raised, we are individuals bound not by blood but by circumstance.

  Our parents are not even the ones who created us. We were found.

  One of us was tossed aside to die like a deformed animal, the other caught in the seconds following his birth in the grasp of the woman he would know to be his mother.

  Both of us are anomalies.

  We were both born in a world where all children died, when the unborn lost their lives in the womb.

  A virus raged throughout the world, taking the young and transforming most of the others.

  Our mother was not touched by the virus, nor was our brother Danny. Our sister, though, was infected, but our mother praises the fact that she was saved.

  Was our sister really saved? Or was she condemned to live a tortured life, never knowing what she was or could have been.

  None of us, the young, the few who remained in the beginning, know anything of a green world filled with happiness and laughter.

  We know hunger and sickness, and we know fear.

  Fear is not a fictional tale to us; it is reality every night when we close our eyes to sleep.

  We are trying, all of us, to make the world a better place for those who are now being born. For the children who defy the odds of the virus that still lingers in the air.

  Not all who are conceived gasp their first breath of life in this world.

  They are born without breath, life, or a soul.

  Things have to change.

  Growing up, we were coddled within a parental shelter. The love of our mother was never questioned. She taught us to be strong; she protected us when we were weak. Fought for us. More than anything, she instilled the basic human values in us both. She made me believe that I could be whatever I wanted and could do whatever I needed to do.

  She never treated us any differently, yet I know when she sees us now, she knows.

  She knows my brother and I want two different things.

  We fight for two different things.

  We, as brothers, are as divided as this world, one side against the other.

  I will do what I need to do to ensure this world goes on, that this place becomes better for the generations to come.

  They have taken this world and destroyed it. They grow in numbers and their offspring will be just as deadly to us.

  Because of that, I will lead the battle. It will be a war that has only been imagined yet never waged.

  For the woman who bore me that I never knew, and for the mother who loved and raised me… it is time.

  It has gone on for decades and must stop now.

  The so-called Doctrines of the future, a guidebook to us all, predicted the outcome.

  I put no stock in the Doctrines because I know who wrote them. I was there as his pen moved across the page and his eyes glanced to the ceiling, thinking of words he could use to create a false story.

  Even if they do hold some truth, they are words from a future.

  The future can be changed.

  I was destined to do it… and I will.

  The Doctrines 13: 9-11

  The Reckoning failed. The land around The New Jerusalem was poisoned by the fire. Food could not grow there for a long time, and life there was not possible. The New Jerusalem had done to itself what Man had done to the earth. And because of that, those who lived within The New Jerusalem began to leave.

  PART ONE – THE SECOND YEAR

  Still Remembering

  1.

  Mera Stevens

  18 Months PE

  I called it the day the laughter stopped, but it really didn’t. It was only muffled for a short time. It returned, not as loud, more of whisper really, and I hope that one day it will grow louder.

  We live in a place we have now named Grace. Often, Alex Sans jokes about it being Graceland. His infatuation with Elvis, I suppose.

  He does well by us as a leader and a fighter. He wasn’t supposed to be a leader, but anyone who knew Alex knew he would not idly sit by and let someone else take the reins of his life.

  I remember the day that Beck followed Alex’s dictate and told me it was because Alex was the leader, not him.

  I didn’t get it or agree until we moved into Grace.

  Grace is a small taste of normal. Well, normal to those who lived in the 1800s.

  We grow our own food, mend our own clothes. Although I don’t get that because there’s a Wal-Mart and a mall not fifteen miles away.

  Occasionally I’ll whine enough where Alex gets annoyed and has Sonny take me and a few other women out with a security team.

  We are still dangerously outnumbered.

  In a desolate world, you’d expect quiet. The world is not quiet. Sure, there isn’t the sound of traffic, or the annoying young person playing his stereo too loud. No planes. But there is one sound that carries through the dead silence of the night.

  The call of the damned.

  The Sleepers.

  They are there. Always there. They’re everywhere.

  There are so many nights where I sit in bed longing, not just for the old days of turning on the television or listening to music, but for my old life. Every single day I miss and ache for my son Jeremy. He was taken in The Event. His life withered before my very eyes. I crave Daniel’s type of companionship, my husband who was no less than my best friend. My daughter Jessie, though still alive, had to, in a sense, begin life again. At twenty years old, she is no more than four years old mentally.

  She is also a S
leeper.

  I yearn for a life of normalcy and opportunity for my son, Danny. That kind of world is a world he will never know. He’ll grow up knowing only struggle, running, work, and death.

  I miss Gavin Beck, God, do I miss him. A man who was a hero in my eyes after The Event. A man I loved and believed would always be there with me and my surviving children. He died so we could live.

  He died so Phoenix could live.

  Phoenix was one of two babies born after The Event when all others were stillborn. It was believed that Phoenix held the cure for the virus, that he could save the future of mankind.

  The truth was, or at least we were told, that if allowed to live, Phoenix would actually eliminate the future.

  His blood was thick with the Sleeper virus. He seeped it. He exhaled it. Now, after months of testing, failures, and some success, Phoenix is coming home, or at least back to me. That’s what I heard.

  It’s the gossip hotline in Grace. No phones, just word of mouth, ‘I heard this’ and ‘I heard that’. So many times people talked about Javier being en route that I stopped believing it.

  Javier is the doctor who worked on Phoenix. No, he saved Phoenix after his tiny body was shot.

  Last I heard, he had contained the virus within Phoenix, whatever that meant.

  Miles was coming, too; he was Phoenix’s caretaker.

  A part of me was scared. I mean, poor Phoenix spent fifteen months in a lab and under the guidance of a former prison guard. He didn’t have a mother’s love, and I vowed once I had him with me, he’d be inundated with it.

  I was on my way home from the Reflection Area when I started hearing the rumors. I didn’t think much about them though everyone had something to say as I passed them. Until I went to security to tell them about the two Sleepers I saw near the field.

  My son informed me, and I rushed home to find Alex. If Alex said it, then it was true.

  He confirmed it. Still, I didn’t allow myself to get too excited. Not yet. I focused on my daily tasks, which mainly were caring for not only my children, but others as well.

  Alex and Sonny shared in the child rearing duty. We all lived together like some weird commune. We were friends with the same goals, so it worked.

  After getting my confirmation regarding Phoenix, I rescued Keller from Alex. I hated when Alex was in charge of watching Keller, even for an hour. Not that he was reckless or careless; he just was weird. He constantly felt the need to teach him. In my eyes, impaired or not, Keller was still a baby.

  Keller was now my own child, having found him when he was a few weeks old. He was born with no eyes, no ears. He was deaf and blind. At first, looking at him brought to mind the many stillborn children who were born without features. We called them Ivory Statue babies.

  That was at first. Keller’s smoothed-over eye sockets became normal and we no longer saw him as a reminder, but as a blessing.

  Of course, I hated that Alex kept putting that stupid beanie over his head to cover his eyes. He looked like a throwback from the seventies cartoon, Fat Albert.

  It was a normal day, with the exception of waiting for Phoenix. I took the baby into the kitchen with me while I prepared lunch for the masses. We had a huge kitchen table that seated twenty, and we almost filled it.

  Lunch and breakfast were easy meals, something fast, simple.

  I had prepared the soup earlier in the day and just had to pull it from the fridge and heat it. I set Keller on a chair, guided his hand to the crackers, and then gave my signal to him to stay put. He was a smart baby, and I was proud of how well he was doing, despite his disabilities. I attributed that to all the kids around him and to Alex being relentless about teaching him.

  Opening the fridge, I pulled out the pot. Soup and buttered bread would work just fine. Too many mouths to feed.

  As I carried the huge pot to the stove, I heard, “Mama.”

  My head cocked at the young voice.

  “Mama? Milk?”

  The voice was young. Very young. I set down the pot and slowly turned around. I gasped, and my heart thumped hard in my chest. Stunned, I jumped back, hitting the stove.

  “Mama.” Keller stood before me, holding up a baby bottle.

  My eyes widened. I heard his little voice. I heard him clear as day and loudly, too.

  “Mama? Milk?” he requested again, holding that bottle to me. I watched him speak. I watched and heard him speak his request.

  Yet… his lips did not move.

  Stunned, I stumbled back and yelled, “Alex!”

  2.

  Alex Sans

  How in the heck were my feet getting bigger? It took a struggle to get into my boots. I’d had them off while doing my annoying daily calls out.

  Each time I made the calls, I got annoyed. I know, as weird as it sounded, it was my own voice that called to us when we were trying to find Grace.

  Okay, let me see if I can sum this up in forty words or less. The folks from the future who came to this time just after the onset of the plague were looking for the other parties in their group. They hid a code that only the young could hear, which provided the directions to Grace or, as they called it, New Jerusalem. They used an archived recording that supposedly the original people of Grace made to call out for survivors. Recorded in the ‘now’ time, they had it in the future and brought it with them. A tweaked, electronic voice, but it was me.

  That was more than forty words.

  In any event, because I felt I had to, I placed those calls. They helped, brought some people in, but this place, at least for me, is temporary.

  I never wanted to be a leader; I just wanted to live my life.

  Sonny, our resident electrician and gospel taker, said he wanted to venture out to find a new place for the kids and us. Kids, you know, that weren’t born in this time, but came from the future for a better life.

  Really? If this, right now, is a better life, then I hate to think of how they lived in their time.

  Levi was a man who came with them from the future, along with my friend, Randy, who passed away.

  Levi said they had one time trip remaining where we could physically go back in time. That was a scary thought. There was also one ne cerebral time trip. It was a mental thing, like astral projecting. It was conceivable to go to the future just to check how things turned out and use the other for something else. That would be cheating.

  Plus, what the hell is a cerebral time trip? Is that like astral projecting or something? Who knows? Who cares? I hate time travel shit and hope it doesn’t come up again.

  Even with the Doctrines.

  The Doctrines, brought from the future, penned in the now. Sonny deemed himself the Doctrine writer because he swore he was the one. So now he sits daily, writing the events that happened, even if they really hadn’t.

  The scary thing is, Sonny didn’t look at the Doctrines brought from the future. I did. And they are eerily similar.

  I wonder why he didn’t mention my feet getting bigger.

  I got my second boot on; it was tight too. I wanted to grab something to eat and head out to the Reflection Area where a few people had spotted two Sleepers.

  It wasn’t uncommon. More and more showed up, lingering, lurking, and staring. Most of our residents didn’t know. I wanted to clear those Sleepers and check for more.

  Javier and Miles were on their way to Grace with Phoenix, and the last thing I wanted was for them to be caught in a Sleeper attack.

  Only a few of us ever ventured outside of the perimeter of Grace. What we’ve seen, done and learned is known only among a select few of our group.

  I want the people of Grace to feel safe. They are safe. But if they only knew ….

  “Alex!” Mera screamed.

  I ignored her, and laced my boots. Mera screaming my name was nothing new, especially the way she just had. Sharp, shocking, maybe even angry.

  “Alex!”

  I shook my head and stood up. My feet were gonna hurt, I could feel it. What the h
ell was up with my feet?

  “Hey,” Sonny said, poking his head into the office. “You don’t hear Mera calling you?”

  “Yes, Boots, I do. And I’m ignoring her. Lenore made those pickles and I know Mera has been saving one.”

  “You ate it.” Sonny smiled, shaking his head.

  “I did. I’m betting that is why she’s screaming. If you’re concerned, go find out.”

  Sonny scratched his head, ruffling his always-pretty blonde hair. “You know what? I’m writing.”

  “I figured.” Just as Sonny started to leave, I called for him. “Hey, Boots? You ever heard of someone’s feet getting bigger overnight?”

  He gave a weird smile and shook his head. “Maybe your feet are swollen?”

  “Nah, I must be imagining it. Go write for the future, I am gonna need you, though. Soon.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Well,” I exhaled. “I’m thinking—”

  “Alex, I swear to God. Come here!” Mera yelled.

  “Son of a bitch.” I stomped my foot for that final fitting. “I’ll talk to you, I want to see what the hell she’s screaming about.”

  I stepped from my office and walked directly to the kitchen. When I walked in, Mera’s back was plastered against the sink. Keller stood before her holding his bottle.

  “Mera,” I said as I walked in, “what the hell is the matter?”

  “Keller.”

  “What about him?” I leaned down and sniffed him. “He smells fine. What did he do?”

  “He …” Her eyes shifted. “He… spoke.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tugged my ear. “Say again.”

  “He spoke.”

  “He spoke?”

  Mera nodded.

  Now, granted, she did have a scared expression. Her eyes were wide, and she wasn’t moving. It was almost the exact same look she had when a rat wandered into the kitchen one morning.