Sleepers (Book 5) Page 14

  37. Alex

  “I think if you figure out the ‘why’,” Michael said as we drove, “you will figure out the where.”

  I shook my head. “I wish I knew the why. I don’t. I can’t even come close.”

  “If I were to take Mera and the kids, long term, I wouldn’t go east or north. Winter is coming.”

  “How far south will they get, is the question. They don’t have the gas for that.”

  “Maybe they have a plan. Maybe this Ed has people outside of Haven.”

  “Why Mera?”

  “Easy. She’s pregnant. The baby so far looks healthy. She also has two little boys that were born when every other child died. Maybe they think it’s a cure somehow.”

  “What do you know about Ed?” I asked.

  “Nice guy. Or kid, he isn’t all that old. Great with the babies. I know he joined us on the way in. We picked him up not far at all from Grace. What do you know about him?”

  “The same as you,” I told him. I realized though at that moment that Michael wasn’t privileged to the information about a grown up Phoenix. Which made perfect sense to me if Ed was the one. He wasn’t though; Levi confirmed that.

  Grown up Phoenix was with Beck. Hence the reason that Beck didn’t return.

  “Alex, I know you hate the time travel stuff.”

  I groaned.

  “Did you ever stop to think that maybe Ed was from the future?”

  I looked over at Michael. “What makes you say that?”

  “I was thinking about Randy. His future was wrapped up in the Doctrines, that what happened to this world was nothing short of a biblical event. Phoenix being the chosen ….”

  “And you, the son of God.”

  Michael grew silent.

  “Sorry.”

  He shook his head. “Keller the Antichrist. What if Ed came through, like Randy, to get the babies?”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Save them, kill them, stop the Sleeper Wars. I don’t know. Maybe, like our future children, a colony arrived.”

  “You read the new Doctrines, do they still stick by the biblical theory?”

  “The Doctrines are interpreted. So no matter what Sonny wrote, it was going to come across as biblical.”

  “I hate this time travel shit.”

  “I know you do, but this is very feasible.”

  “Actually, Padre,” I said, “for as crazy as it is, that’s the best explanation I have yet. Randy came through the first time for Phoenix. It’s just … doesn’t it seem insane that it would be so biblical? Antichrist, chosen, son of God.”

  “Not at all. Man may have made the virus, but God made man. God had a hand in this, I am certain. So what’s to say he didn’t add His own twists?”

  That was where I drew the line. God tossed in His own twists. As if our maker was like, ‘Oh, hey Antichrist, check this out, the world is in disarray, why don’t you go down there and stir things up?’

  Nah.

  I wanted to say that to Mike; I didn’t. I offended him so much in the time since I knew him, I withheld from offending his beliefs at that moment.

  I nodded and kept on driving.

  We were almost at our halfway point for the day before we had to turn around. Nothing had turned up to indicate at all they continued due east. If we didn’t find anything soon, we’d head back to Haven.

  The next day was another day, another direction. They left a trail somewhere. I just had to find it.

  38. Mera

  The batteries that Ed had given me worked perfectly in the old camera and I basked in the moments I held in my hand. A video of Jessie’s sixteenth birthday party.

  Danny watched with me, sharing the view of the small screen.

  I wanted to cry. My children and Daniel were all in it. We had a small party at the house, just us five. Jessie’s slumber party was the next night, but that evening was pizza and a cake.

  Danny looked so young and his voice hadn’t even changed, yet.

  “Mom, can I use that now?” fourteen year old Danny asked, staring into the lens.

  “No, you’ll break it,” I replied.

  I remember being mad at Danny that day. He had cut school again.

  “Should we turn out the lights?” Daniel asked. “Will it show on the video?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mom, that’s a lot of candles,” said Jeremy.

  “Just light them, will you?” I said. “This is awesome.”

  My family.

  Daniel was so handsome and Jessie was talking full sentences. She rambled on about how she wanted to use the camera at her party. My heart thumped at that. I had let her. The video was somewhere. Tiny memory disks were laid out on the table.

  Ed had returned to the kitchen. We finished a late lunch and the babies were napping. He had a knack for getting them to sleep, yet, like the teacher he was at Haven, he took time and worked with them.

  “Ed,” I said, “this is amazing. Thank you.”

  “I remember when you saw them for the first time. I was eleven. That’s when we came back. Most of it was damaged and the camera stopped working though,” he said.

  “Look, Danny,” I pointed to a still shot on the camera. “I knew I wasn’t nuts when I said Sonny reminded me of Daddy.”

  “He does,” Danny replied. “Oh my God! He really does.”

  “I can’t wait to show Alex.” I closed my eyes tightly. I had been so absorbed in the moment of being home, that I didn’t think how our leaving had affected him. “Ed, will we ever see Alex again? Please tell me yes.”

  “Alex is smart. My guess right now, he isn’t thinking clearly. Once he does, he’ll get the clues I left behind and show up here. It's one of the reasons I am waiting.”

  Danny’s voice cracked as he asked, “What about Beck?”

  “Beck isn’t out of the picture,” Ed answered. “He can’t be.”

  “So he isn’t missing in action or dead?” I asked with excitement.

  “Unless something changed, no.” Ed shook his head. “He was missing for a while but came back. He did what he was meant to do. Everyone will be together. I just… I just want to get a head start on the move.”

  “Should I call you Ed?” I asked. “Or do you want to be called Phoenix?”

  “Ed is fine.” He winked. “Less confusion.”

  “You got all of this together,” Danny said. “How did you leave Haven to do so? There’s a lot more supplies than you packed.”

  Ed tilted his head. “We cheated. We have been setting up this place for a little bit. My taking from Haven really wasn’t needed, it was all clues to let them know it was premeditated and without malice.”

  “Then why’d you knock me out?” Danny asked.

  “Because you wouldn’t have come,” Ed replied.

  “My mother did.”

  “I talked to Mera.” Ed looked at me. “I talked to her the day I got out of the hospital. I told her things, not much, but enough to convince her to leave.”

  “So things go bad,” Danny said. “Obviously. It’s more than Jessie that gets killed.”

  Ed nodded.

  “She believed you?” Danny questioned with disbelief.

  “I showed her this.” Ed walked over to the kitchen counter, lifted a discolored envelope and laid it on the kitchen table. “She believed it then.”

  Danny lifted the envelope and opened it, pulling out the sheets of paper. “What is this?”

  “Each time I went through, I wrote a letter. I just kept adding on. No recollection of the previous letter. Apparently, I died each time I traveled. That letter got to Keller. So every time Keller approached me about using Randy’s time travel contraption, he gave me the letters from the previous trips. I took it through, wrote a new one. Got killed. Keller said Mom always had it and she gave it to him.”

  “So going back was Keller’s idea.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ed replied. “We came back lots of times. Each time is new to me except fo
r what I read in the letter. This is the first time we came back at this point in time. Previously, I guess, I came back at points in time farther from here. Long after the events we wanted to change.”

  I had to ask. “What’s Keller like?”

  Ed smiled. “Beck. He’s exactly like Beck. So cool and calm. Believe it or not, I got more of Alex in me. Keller is funny, so military like. He’d say, ‘Look we screwed up here, so we need to do this here.” Ed scratched his head. “I’d say… okay.”

  “So you came back early to stop these events?” Danny asked.

  Ed shook his head. “I came back early, for the same reason I came back before... to stop this shit from going any further. I know there is a respite of Sleeper attacks. I know this. Randy’s future. That’s not how it is in the time where I live. It’s bad. The Sleepers are on their third generation. The ones my age are having babies. Our intention is to stop it now. Right now. The Reckoning has to continue, but to stop the Sleepers we have to stop the source.”

  All of what Ed said to Danny was news to me. He hadn’t gotten that in depth. “The source, you mean the virus?”

  “The virus mutates. Javier once likened it to Parkinson’s disease. That it’s there but the longer it’s in the body, the worse it gets. The first generation Sleepers eventually get to a very intelligent point. The Second generation is born that way. The third generation is the one that retreats, populates, then emerges to eventually take over. We need to stop it here.”

  “How?” Danny asked.

  Ed exhaled heavily. “According to those letters, we kept coming back and failing. We brought on Sleeper attacks so you could kill them in large groups. We thought that was the answer. Kill the Sleepers. It wasn’t. According to Keller, he gave up sending me back. Then he discovered why they were so driven. We discovered the source. Problem is, the source is so powerful in my time, it’s untouchable. Keller then realized the key wasn’t to come back to destroy all Sleepers, it was to come back and destroy the source that drives them and controls them. Once we do, the Sleepers will have no direction. They’ll be easily killed. The source is driving them now, they just don’t realize they’re doing it.”

  Danny shook his head with a complete look of confusion. “How is the source driving them now?”

  “Like a beacon. Remember the Parkinson’s disease analogy? The longer the source lives the more it’s driven. Twenty years from now the virus completely consumes the source.”

  “I take it you know the source,” I said. “So why haven’t you killed it yet?”

  “It?” Ed emotionally chuckled. “We just discovered his identity. I thought he was dead. For years I believed him to be dead. He had such an impact on our lives. Why haven’t I killed him?” Ed folded his hands. “I can’t. That’s why I moved you guys. I couldn’t stop Jessie’s death. I can stop the other things by moving you away until I finish my mission. And I will. It’s just that… I had been without him in my life for so many years, that I forgot how important he was. How amazing he was. Until I saw him.”

  “I take it you know him well,” I said.

  “I know him very well. He hasn’t a clue he’s the source. It breaks my heart. I’m seeing him through adult eyes now and he’s all I remember him to be growing up. He’s not a monster yet. He will be. I have to remember that. I just can’t yet.”

  “Maybe there’s another way,” Danny suggested. “Another solution.”

  “If there is, we have four months to find it. If we don’t, then I will finish this mission. At any cost. I have to. As good as he is right now…” Ed lowered his head. “His life isn’t worth the loss.”

  Intersect – Keller

  30 Years Post Event

  When I was thirteen years old Alex Sans came up with the brainstorm idea that our next destination was a placed called Graceland. Some musician man who achieved idol status had built an ego fortress—as Alex said—as his home. What better place to go?

  At that point in time, before we found out about the colonies, it seemed we moved every two years. Settle, get food growing, get hit by Sleepers, move on.

  I think Graceland was the longest place that we stayed. Danny’s wife gave birth to Maxwell. It was Danny’s second child; his first child fell victim to the virus that was still in the air.

  I firmly believed that had Javier not died so early on, the entire Sleeper virus would have been cured. My brother would not have lost his daughter to the Ivory Baby curse.

  I was told that Javier never knew the direction to look for the cure. Time was his enemy. Ironically, time became mine was well.

  There were many events, and they all happened at different times. All of them would have been avoided had the one single source of the Sleepers, the source that moved and called them, been eliminated early on.

  It just never happened because it was inconceivable that he was responsible. I always remembered receiving the letters from my mom. She would say, “Glen had these on him when he died.”

  She read them before handing them over with such a look of disappointment on her face.

  Of course, each time trip he changed his name. The last batch of letters was given to me in Graceland. My brother used the name Glen and I remember how I somehow knew he was my brother and had a reason to come back in time. Shortly after ‘Glen’s’ death, my mother gave me the batch of letters. He told me, “I write letters to you each trip. Why I came, when I came, what I think we were doing wrong. You hold them, and when you get older, you’ll send me back again with those letters. Hopefully when you do so next time, you’ll fix it.”

  I was mature for thirteen and that was my problem. I read those letters each trip, and I could imagine my older self reading them. I wondered if I had the same thoughts that I was having the last time. Apparently not, because I changed things up.

  Only my mother and myself knew about those letters. Until I told Phoenix.

  Each time I sent him back, it was at the same date. We were young. He only went back ten years. What was the reason that I sent a twenty-two year old Phoenix back in time ten years?

  A lot of events had already happened. A lot of good people had already been killed. Horrible things had occurred long before that ten year mark.

  Why that point in time? The Sleepers were already strong and massing. Why, shortly after Phoenix’s twenty-second birthday did we go back?

  I kept all of that on my mind, as I probably did each of the other eight trips, and then Phoenix’s birthday arrived. Before that, my mighty warrior brother fell in love.

  And he was the mighty warrior. While physically, I could not see him, in my mind I did. What I envisioned was confirmed by my mother.

  Phoenix was chosen to battle. Sleepers or Palers never came to him, never attacked him. He walked among them without fear. He slaughtered them with purpose and ease.

  We celebrated his birthday, he was overjoyed. He was happy and let his guard down. It was the one and only time my brother failed at being a hero and it took from him the woman he loved.

  Phoenix was ready to give up.

  That was it. That was the point in time he went back to stop the Sleepers.

  In our minds, that Graceland hit was the biggest attack we suffered. I believed that perhaps that was the point in time that had we found where they were massing we could have finished the Reckoning.

  Just as I was ready to approach my brother about the time travel aspect, I stopped. Eight previous trips had all been made from the same point in time back ten years. All eight trips were emotionally driven and planned by two very young men.

  It was time to change it up.

  So I waited. I waited and watched my brother sink into despair. He stopped battling the Sleepers. For two years he was of no good use. He even took off.

  During his absence I focused on the Sleepers. The older I got, the better I knew them and realized, without a doubt, they were being driven and controlled.

  But by whom? By what?

  When Phoenix returned he brough
t news of the colonies. More knowledge we didn’t have on the previous time trips. The reason we failed in our previous attempts is we went too soon in our current lives.

  Then the waiting paid off. Just as we were about to join the colonies, we realized we couldn’t. We could not put those colonies, who had never experienced a Sleeper attack, at risk. We had a large group that followed us no matter where we went.

  Randy was killed in what I figured to be a very calculated Sleeper ambush. I was with him. I didn’t ‘see’ it coming. I warned Randy it was going to happen. I know he tried to turn us around. They hit us, and it was as if the Sleepers didn’t see me.

  I was able at that moment, to see the source. The vision of him took over my mind and it all made sense. He had transformed, not died, like we believed he had years earlier.

  He didn’t even know me. He wasn’t human.

  The virus mutated internally and physically. If the battles were truly God inspired, then before me the source was hell. I knew then what we had to do.

  We couldn’t go back ten years, we had to go back farther. We had to go back before the fall of Haven, before Beck gave up the Reckoning, and before the source became too powerful. Take him down while he was still just a man. Before he was killed he had to be handed to Javier, because he is not only the source for the Sleeper attacks, he is the source of the cure.

  The plan was, once he was stopped, all that remained would be mindless Sleepers easily killed in a continuance of the Reckoning. Problem was, Beck stopped the Reckoning and the source grew stronger.

  Lack of maturity and lack of information caused us to fail in our previous attempts. I was certain, if we changed things, there would be no more Sleeper wars. Javier would live and cure the virus that continued to infect in the future.

  And when I approached my brother with the prospect, I knew it really would be the last time I held those letters in my hand.

  39. Sonny

  So Ed wasn’t the twisted, psychotic serial killer I had in my mind. A part of me hoped that when Randy and I went into his room, we’d be like cops on an old detective show, finding disturbing images plastered on his walls.