Sleepers (Book 6)

  SLEEPERS 6

  Jacqueline Druga

  A PERMUTED PRESS book

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN: 978-1-61868-553-7

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-554-4

  SLEEPERS 6

  copyright ©2015 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.

  Permuted Press

  109 International Drive, Suite 300

  Franklin, TN 37067

  http://permutedpress.com

  CONTENTS

  Prologue – Keller

  One – Alex Sans

  Two – Mera Stevens

  Three – Sonny Wilson

  Four – Alex Sans

  Five – Mera Stevens

  Six – Sonny Wilson

  Seven – Alex Sans

  Eight – Mera Stevens

  Intersect – Keller

  Nine – Sonny Wilson

  Ten – Alex Sans

  Eleven – Mera Stevens

  Twelve – Sonny Wilson

  Thirteen – Alex Sans

  Fourteen – Mera Stevens

  Fifteen – Sonny Wilson

  Sixteen – Alex Sans

  Seventeen – Mera Stevens

  Eighteen – Sonny Wilson

  Nineteen – Alex Sans

  Twenty – Mera Stevens

  Twenty-One – Sonny Wilson

  Twenty-Two – Alex Sans

  Twenty-Three – Mera Stevens

  Twenty-Four – Sonny Wilson

  Twenty-Five – Alex Sans

  Twenty-Six – Mera Stevens

  Twenty-Seven – Sonny Wilson

  Twenty-Eight – Alex Sans

  Twenty-Nine – Mera Stevens

  Thirty – Sonny Wilson

  Thirty-One – Alex Sans

  Thirty-Two – Mera Stevens

  Thirty-Three – Sonny Wilson

  Thirty-Four – Alex Sans

  Thirty-Five – Mera Stevens

  Thirty-Six – Sonny Wilson

  Thirty-Seven – Alex Sans

  Thirty-Eight – Mera Stevens

  Thirty-Nine – Sonny Wilson

  Forty – Alex Sans

  Forty-One – Sonny Wilson

  Forty-Two – Alex Sans

  Forty-Three – Mera Stevens

  Forty-Four – Alex Sans

  Epilogue – Keller

  About The Author

  PROLOGUE – KELLER

  Thirty Years Post Event

  My brother is a unique and complicated individual. As a child he exhibited more intelligence than most adults. His speech patterns were years above his age. All attributed to the ARC. When he was a mere infant, he was injured early in the Sleeper Attacks, and taken to the ARC. There, with Beck, he was not only nursed back to health but placed in a program that did nothing less that utilize his ability to work every portion of his brain.

  In short, Phoenix was a genius.

  He was also was believed to be the cure to the Sleeper virus, a virus that had infected ninety percent of the Earth’s population. It was intended to be a treatment for traumatic brain injury and other neurological disorders, however, it mutated into a lethal virus that to this day it is still unknown how it reached the masses.

  In a single day it took the lives of every living child and infected most of the remaining population. The infected went to sleep and woke up in a state of reaction. I am told they were mild at first, just moving aimlessly about. Then within days the virus took hold and the Sleeper infected were nothing more than mindless, murderous beings.

  Through the years it continued to mutate, and while the Sleepers were still violent, they did regain some brain functions, which was the original intention of the drug.

  They were smarter, psychic in a way, and they were being led.

  Phoenix was not the cure.

  He and I were both anomalies; born alive when all other babies were stillbirths. Physically, Phoenix encompassed beauty and perfection, whereas I encompassed hideous and dark.

  On the inside we were normal children, though for the beginning of our lives we were viewed as monsters and curses.

  Everything our forefathers believed about the virus was wrong. We learned that through the years. Through running, hiding, fighting and other revelations.

  That knowledge was key to changing the world as we knew it. To do so, we had to go back.

  Allow me to explain.

  There were two things that heavily influenced the way my parents and other survivors fought and lived in a Sleeper world: The Doctrines and Randy Briggs.

  They say it takes a village to raise a child, and part of that village was Sonny Wilson. He helped raise me. In his own way, Sonny was intelligent, but from what I knew of Sonny, he either just didn’t care or didn’t get it.

  He kept a journal of all events. These journal entries would survival hundreds of years and during the course of time were rewritten, tweaked, and manipulated to become some sort of spiritual guide or bible to the future generations.

  I never saw it because it happened way beyond my time.

  The Sleeper virus was never cured, therefore, like an old world disease it was always there. Fifty percent of all babies born still died. They were Ivory Statue babies. Gestation was normal until the end when they pretty much turned to stone in the womb. Of those babies that lived, only half would see past their thirteenth birthday.

  Randy lost his children to the Sleeper virus, and in an attempt to stop it from ever happening, used the ability to time travel. Guided by what he believed to be historical value of the Doctrines, he went back. It was his word and the Doctrines he brought that were like the guidebook to the future. What to do, what not to do.

  My parents and others followed his word, but they were wrong. Things Phoenix and I learned never made it into the Doctrines. If it had, Randy Briggs, for as smart as he was, would have stopped things from ever happening.

  Now that we knew, it was our time to make the change. Hundreds of years before Randy Briggs was even conceived, Phoenix and I would make the attempt to change the future.

  Aside from events we wanted to never happen, there was a driving force behind the Sleepers. If we got that force, we could end the Sleeper wars before they began. Plus, there were other factors, such as the cure.

  At some point, the future me sent Phoenix back to change things. When he went back, he kept a journal, letters, he gave to our mother, who then gave them to me.

  Each time he went back, Phoenix took those letters, added more, what he did differently and eventually failed. That was evident in the letters. I wouldn’t have them if he succeeded. The letters gave me information, they prompted me to approach my brother, to send him back, time and time again.

  I was born with a gift that gave me the ability to have ‘impressions’ of knowledge. They were more like dreams instead of memories. So I had impressions of sending Phoenix back. Then again, notations in the letters helped.

  Eight times I sent my brother back. I could only imagine when he didn’t return, how I would mourn him. Because if he didn’t return in a few seconds after he left, then Phoenix died in the past. Dying in the past, gone from the future. I am grateful that I hold no impressions of what life was like without Phoenix. I love my brother dearly and can’t imagine a day without him.

  I suppose the cycle would repeat, the lett
ers getting longer, until we fixed things.

  I was certain we would succeed.

  On every single trip I sent Phoenix back ten years after the Event, which we discovered was too long. Too much had been done. Too much time had passed and the Sleepers had evolved.

  Finally my senses kicked in and made the decision that the next trip would only be two years after the virus hit. The time period during which we sent Phoenix back had to be the key.

  Eventually we would get it right. We had to. And I was certain we would.

  ONE – ALEX SANS

  The big news, the slap of reality, the ultimate cliffhanger and Beck… knew it? No way. No how. Not even I expected it. He acted that way when he was told that bit of information that stopped him from putting a bullet in Phoenix.

  There were two game changers in the situation. One of them I don’t think a single person thought of except me.

  Michael and Mera were the game changers. The padre. Man.

  So, Phoenix comes from the future. Yeah, there’s that time machine shit that I hate. He comes here to make a change. Granted, the Doctrines paint the boys at times, less than favorably. I don’t know if it was Sonny or the interpretations, but in any event, Phoenix came back. I had a hard time believing that he was coming back to do any harm to his mother. Unless, of course, Mera suddenly took a turn, became a violent alcoholic, and beat him. Though the alcoholism wasn’t so farfetched, the beating was. If Phoenix came back, it was to protect his mother.

  Ed was grown up Phoenix. While annoying at times, he was a pretty good guy and damned if I didn’t see Sonny’s influence in him once I realized who he was.

  I couldn’t however, see any influence I had in his life. In fact, after he told me the night I arrived injured, I asked him. “Hey, Ed, did I die? Or is Keller just more like me?”

  “No, Mom calls me your mini me.”

  “Really?” I found that hard to believe. Then again, I didn’t spend enough time with Ed to get to know him.

  Apparently the boys had done this before. Came back, failed, and tried again. Two factors played into their failure. They always returned too late in the timeline, and too early on their side of the time scale. Meaning, they needed to grow up. They did, came back to an earlier point in time, and there we stood.

  When I arrived and found Mera tucked away in her home, her starting point in this whole screwed up journey, things got a little fuzzy. After all, I was still injured from my one sided confrontation with Beck.

  Phoenix had come back to get Mera, Danny, and the babies out of Haven and to some colony in Vermont. Something was to happen in a few months that was devastating. We don’t die, but it was devastating on some sort of grand scale. The boys knew Javier dies in some attack on Haven. Their plan was to get Mera, get her to safety, stop the attack, save Javier, have him continue his work to find the cure, and get Beck out there to keep going on the Reckoning. In the original timeline, due to the death, the attack, and the devastating event, Beck quit the Reckoning and kept everyone on the run.

  With no Reckoning and no Javier to cure the virus, the Sleepers take hold.

  The plan was in motion. But wait... like a bad infomercial, there was more.

  It wasn’t so easy to do because there was a driving force. Someone calling the Sleepers. This person had the virus, and as time rolled on he would eventually become so strong, he became like Super Shredder and nearly indestructible.

  The virus mutated with time. The Sleepers got stronger and smarter, according to Phoenix. However, the source, the person, had another strain.

  Here’s the kicker, we couldn’t kill him, he also holds the key to the cure in his blood.

  So we get Javier to cure the virus using him and then kill him before he could become dangerous. We couldn’t just kill him, however; it had to be done a certain way. Suicide or something like that.

  Phoenix said he knows how.

  It was a ton of information to take in and I was certain I would ask a million more questions. Discovering the identity of the source was a game changer. It was Michael.

  When Phoenix told Beck the source was Michael, Beck lowered his weapon as if he were about to say, Oh, yeah, makes sense. I knew it all along.

  The padre was the one with the special strain of the virus. He wasn’t just infected, not only the Doctrine proclaimed son of God, he was our friend. One of us.

  It was hard for me to register and process. There had to be another way. There had to be a reason for such a good man to turn so bad. I was certain something had to be missing, something we were not yet aware of. It didn’t sit right with me, and my gut swirled with angst.

  Phoenix and Keller had to be missing a vital part of knowledge. It sounded too simple: Michael is the bad guy, let’s kill him. The entire concept that he was calling the Sleepers had to have another reason behind it. It was only the fact that it was Michael who was the game changer.

  The other was Mera. I knew her very well and I saw it, something in her was different. She now had the home field advantage. Mera was back at her own house and had come full circle. She had a sense of closure now and gathered strength in a place she loved.

  Beck could scream and order all he wanted. It didn’t even matter what I did. Mera was home and in doing so, got back something she lost two years earlier. An essence of who she was.

  Things would be interesting.

  TWO – MERA STEVENS

  “Then tell me who it is, and I swear to God it better make sense or I pull the trigger.”

  Beck was holding the gun directly to Ed’s head. The tsunami of emotions that rushed over me at that second were hard to decipher, anger, fear, and annoyance only a few.

  Ed – or Phoenix, in my opinion— had taken me, Danny, and the babies from Haven with our best interests in mind. While the main reason was for my protection and safety, I felt it was an emotional rescue I didn’t even know I needed until I got home.

  Beck stood in my living room, gun pointed to the older version of a child he and I both would eventually raise, threatening to take his life if the information he was about to give didn’t make sense.

  Wasn’t that a matter of opinion?

  Admittedly, I feared for Ed. I feared for what I would do if Beck pulled the trigger.

  Before that moment in the living room, I had briefly forgotten the world and what it had become. I was Mera Stevens, married to Daniel, mother of three awesome kids. The woman who tied to keep a part time job and lost them as often as a teenager loses socks.

  I was me again. The person I was before the world went to shit. It wasn’t long, it wasn’t extended but every so often, in my house, a brief moment of relief from the world horrors hit me.

  I wanted to cook, clean, fold laundry.

  Wearing my old jean jacket, I had ventured to the garage to find all the winter coats and gloves. I also wanted to grab Daniel’s fishing gear for Alex. Though I had never been there, I had heard Vermont was supposed to be cold.

  I was relishing in the moment when Beck and Sonny arrived. In fact, I was deep in thought, thinking of Christmas and other special occasions. Daniel always hid my gifts in the garage. Never did I let on that I knew he hid them there. Birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, he hid them in the garage. I always pretended that he was so cunning with his gift concealing.

  I was lost in that moment, digging in the boxes, when Beck and Sonny showed up.

  It wasn’t the reunion I had hoped for. The embrace was quick and Beck was furious. He didn’t want to reason, he only wanted me and the kids in the truck, and Ed dead.

  “Get in the truck,” Beck snapped. “Sonny, grab the babies.”

  I pleaded. Danny pleaded. Alex tried to intervene only to be told, “I’ll deal with you later.”

  Order this. Order that. He was ordering us without listening to us and I blasted him. But I didn’t get a chance to get a thought out because Ed walked in the room and out came the gun.

  “Then tell me who it is, and I swear to God it be
tter make sense or I pull the trigger.”

  Ed did.

  Beck lowered the gun and turned away. I saw it on his face.

  “Beck,” I said softly. “Is this something you knew?”

  “No. No.” He shook his head. “I suspected it was someone in our group that was calling them. My money was on Michael or Sonny.”

  “What?” Sonny squealed out. “Me?”

  “Sonny, we’ve had Sleeper problems since you have been around,” Beck told him.

  “Still,” Sonny barked.

  “Beck,” Ed said, “I know this is hard to take in. I had to get my mother and brothers out. Right now, everything is fine, but in four months—”

  “Wait.” Beck held up his hand. “I read the Doctrines. Nothing in them suggests four months from now. We had our three days of death.”

  “Well, no offense to Sonny,” Ed said, “but he omitted a lot of things or left them out on purpose.”

  “Messages,” I chimed in. “According to the letters, Sonny was sending messages to the future. That’s why the Doctrines kept changing.”

  “Letters?” Beck asked.

  “Yes. Ed carries letters. Each time he and Keller tried the time trip, Ed died. Before he did, he logged what occurred, gave the letter to me and I gave it to Keller when he was old enough. Then Keller sent Ed back, again and again. Only this time, he came back now. Not ten years from now.”

  “And that,” Ed added, “is why I think this can work. This point is pivotal, according to Danny. But not Danny now, Danny in the future.”

  “I hate this time travel shit,” Alex said.

  Beck snapped, “Yes, Alex, we are well aware.”

  “Beck,” I said with some irritation, “Alex is just commenting. And the letters are crucial. Ask Danny. Keller picked this point in time because of their knowledge and because they wanted me to come here before nature destroyed it. They made a lot of trips this time to make sure this all went smoothly. All so he can protect me.”