Sleepers (Book 6) Page 2
“I can protect you Mera,” Beck implored.
“But—”
“Do you hear me?” Beck asked. “I can protect you.” He faced Ed. “Is there anything in these letters about Michael?”
“No. We always made the trip when I was twenty-three, and we went back ten years. Waiting until we hit thirty gave us the knowledge we didn’t have. We have to move forwar—”
“No.” Beck shook his head. “You said four months.”
“Yes,” Ed nodded. “But waiting means we run into bad weather. The attack will occur at the onset of spring. We lose more than we bargained for.”
“Where was I?” Beck asked. “Where was I when this happened?”
“The Reckoning.”
“So I wasn’t around.”
“According to my knowledge,” Ed shook his head. “No.”
“So it happens on Alex’s watch.”
My eyes widened and I looked to Alex. “That’s not fair, Beck.”
“Not fair? I leave and Jessie dies. You are done. It was on Alex’s watch. Phoenix comes from the future to tell us that he is taking you before something occurs in four months. Another event I am not there for. Simple enough, Mera. I don’t leave you again. I can protect you.”
“You can’t stop the Reckoning, Beck,” I argued. “That is the mistake you make in the future.”
He looked at Ed again. “Why do I stop the Reckoning in the future?”
Ed replied, “Because of what happens at Haven.”
“So, correct me if I am misunderstanding,” Beck held up his hand. “While I’m gone for the Reckoning, something devastating happens and then I don’t continue. Maybe the Event is what causes me to stop. Maybe my guilt causes me to stop. Maybe the fact that I wasn’t there. If I am, maybe I am the key to stopping it.”
Alex chuckled sarcastically. “Yeah, you’re the savior of all, why don’t we switch your title with Michael?”
Beck swung a hard point at Alex. “What the fuck, Alex?”
“No, what the fuck, Beck?” Alex shot back. “Did you think for one moment that this thing could be bigger than you and it won’t matter if you’re there or not?”
“What are you suggesting, Alex? Just let Mera go?” Beck asked.
“I say let her do what she wants to do.”
“No,” Beck said. “Sorry, Ed. Sorry Mera. No. Mera, get what you need. Sonny, get the babies. Danny—”
Danny stepped up to him. “This is my mom, Beck. She is the most important thing in the world to me. Don’t put her in danger.”
“Danny,” after a heavy breath, Beck said passionately, “with my life, I will protect her. Don’t lose faith in me. Please. Not you. There is more to consider. This shouldn’t be a situation we rush in to. We need—”
“I’m not going back,” I stated emphatically.
“Mera, you’re not looking at it all. You’re not thinking clearly.”
Perhaps I wasn’t thinking clearly overall, but for that moment, I was. I was thinking clearly enough to feel insulted and angry. “How dare you?” I sneered. “How dare you tell me what I am and am not? How dare you!”
He reached for me. “Mera…”
I backed up and swatted his arm. “No. When you are thinking clearly enough that you aren’t jaded and angry, then find me. Until then, this discussion is done.”
Beck roared, and barely took a second for rational thought. He stated it wasn’t a rushed decision, well neither was dismissing what Ed had planned.
Finished with arguing and tension, I stormed away.
THREE – SONNY WILSON
There were a series of steady hard ‘stomps’.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
And then … slam!
All of us jolted, eyes lifted to the ceiling.
Maybe it wasn’t the best of timing for Alex to laugh and make a comment about how Mera was a door slammer back at Grace.
“Alex,” Beck said, “I am really not in the mood.”
“And you think I am?” Alex asked. “You come blasting in here with your angry Clint Eastwood shit.”
“I am still pissed at you.”
“Let me add that to the list of things Alex does to piss you off.”
Beck bit his lip. “Alex, how was I supposed to be with you on this? You found her, you found out where she was, and you didn’t tell me?”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t think about you, Beck. You beat the hell out of me, so forgive me for carrying a chip on my shoulder.”
“Chip on your shoulder or not,” Beck argued, “that shouldn’t make you want to put Mera in danger.”
“I’m not putting her in danger. I want to do what’s best for her!”
“So do I!” Beck bellowed. “This is my family, I need to protect them. I need to be the one, not you. She is my wife. She is carrying my child.”
“Oh, yeah,” Alex said sarcastically, “the one you fathered from a thousand miles away with your psychic sperm.”
“Dude, come on,” Danny commented.
Beck glared at Alex. “You wanna go there, Alex? Right now? You wanna go there?”
They stared each other down intensely, then Alex looked at me. What did I have to do with it? Damn it. It was at that moment, I knew it. Beck was just denying the father’s paternity. When he said I wasn’t the baby’s father, he was covering.
Alex lowered his head. “No. I’m sorry, Beck. That was wrong.”
Beck asked in a softer voice, “What is this standing in the way, shit, Alex?”
“Me?” Alex squealed. “How am I standing in the way?”
“Sight unseen, you want to follow Ed’s lead and whisk Mera, Danny, and the babies off to Vermont.”
“If this Vermont colony is the safest bet, then yes.”
“How do we know!” Beck yelled.
“We take that chance!”
“Enough!” I stepped up. “Enough, both of you. This is insane, out of control. The constant tension, bickering, fighting. It stops now.” I looked at Ed. “Are they like this in the future?”
“No.”
I exhaled. “Thank God. I thought …” I paused. “Wait. Is it because one of them dies?”
“Sonny!” Beck snapped.
“Sorry.” I held up my hand. “May I give my opinion? And before anyone says I can’t, I will. Beck, why is Vermont out of the question? Just curious.”
“Because we don’t know about Vermont. Ed, have you been there?”
“Not in this time period. No.”
“Then how do we know it’s there?”
“Because they told me they were there since the onset.”
“We still don’t know for sure, though. And we want to just go there on a whim?”
“It’s not a whim,” Ed defended. “Keller and I planned this.”
“Twenty-eight years from now,” Beck said. “You made this plan based on events that happened, not on what could happen if you changed things.”
“Is that what you want to do?” I asked Beck.
“I don’t know, Sonny, I don’t. I only know that taking Mera and the kids right now isn’t the right thing to do. Throwing Michael under the bus based on what could happen isn’t the thing to do. He’s our friend. We can’t forget that. He’s one of us. Maybe… maybe I’m not thinking clearly.”
“Like Mera?” I asked.
Beck looked at me.
“You know what we need to do?” I said. “We need to talk about this. We need to sit down, you need to listen to Ed and what he has to say, and maybe with our heads together, we can come up with solution to this whole ordeal. All of us. Mera included. That means not telling her what she needs to do.”
Beck nodded. “I’ll go get her.”
“No,” I said. “She’s still mad at you and will take what you say wrong.”
“I’ll go,” Alex offered.
“No, she’ll think anything you say to her will be to piss off Beck,” I told him and walked to the stairs. “I’ll go, since I’m the neutral, i
nnocent party in all this.”
Beck looked at me from the tops of his eyes. “You think you’re neutral and innocent?”
I didn’t answer. I hadn’t a clue why Beck would make that comment unless he knew something I didn’t.
In my journey up the steps, I noticed the photographs on the wall. There were some blank spots, clean areas where photos had been removed. Even with the ones gone I could see Mera’s life with Daniel spanning the length of those stairs. I also noticed how much Daniel and I looked alike.
It wasn’t hard to determine where Mera was. Only one door was closed, and I knocked on it once calling out, “It’s Sonny.”
“Come in.”
I walked into the room. It was obvious it was a master bedroom. Mera sat on the side of the bed rummaging through a nightstand drawer.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Daniel used to come home from work and toss things in this drawer. I was just looking. He …” she lifted a piece of paper, “ate McDonald’s for lunch the day before everything happened.”
“Wow. That’s… I don’t know what to say.”
She smiled. “It’s okay. I’m being sentimental.”
I walked over to her and pointed to the bed. “May I?”
She patted the spot next to her. “What’s going on downstairs? I heard more yelling.”
“Beck and Alex.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
“Was it bad, Sonny?” she asked. “Were you there when he beat up Alex?”
“I was. It was pretty bad. Not defending the beating, but Beck was upset, and you know Alex. He says things.”
“Yeah, he does that to us all. Beck… doesn’t know that side of Alex that well,” she said.
“I think he kind of took your spot since he returned from the ARC.”
Quickly, Mera looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Mera, come on. No one fought more than you and Alex. God. It drove me nuts.” I paused. “Listen, I know you’re going through your things here, we’re all gonna sit down calmly and talk about this.”
“I should be going to Vermont. What is there to talk about?”
“Without you biting my head off? I have to ask if you are thinking clearly?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s lots to think about, Mera. Lots to consider. Michael. Bonnie. Randy. Miles. Don’t make me name all nine kids we’ve been caring for.”
Her hands and head dropped.
“We have to consider them. If you disappear, how will that affect them? And is it right just to leave them all behind?”
Mera exhaled, blowing slowly through her mouth. “Despite what people say, you can be pretty smart, Sonny.”
“Thanks. I try to be…wait. Who says I’m not smart?”
She looked at me with a smile, then closed the drawer. “Thank you. I mean it. Thanks for coming up here. I’m better now. I think I do need to talk it out.” She ran her hand across her stomach. “The baby hates the tension. She’s kicking up a storm.”
“There was a moment of tension about that downstairs.”
Mera chuckled. “Yes, the one thing about this house is I could always hear everything. I heard their exchange.” She stood. “Beck already loves this baby. He needs it and this child is his in every way. We discussed it. Even though we know who the father really is, Sonny, don’t we?”
She really stared at me with that statement.
I swallowed and nodded.
Mera held out her hand to me. “Come on, let’s go downstairs.”
I took her hand and as I stood, I looked around the room. “I’m kind of jealous. You have a lot of memories here.”
“Yeah, yeah, I do. And having you standing in this bedroom,” she slipped her hand from mine and winked, “brought back some really good ones.”
She didn’t explain that comment, and as she left I had a tiny moment of panic over what she meant. Before I walked out, I caught glimpse of a picture of her and Daniel, and with a nervous laugh, I chalked up her awkward bedroom comment as a reference to my resemblance of her husband and nothing more.
FOUR – ALEX SANS
There was still tension in the air between me and Beck as we sat at Mera’s kitchen table. I promised myself I wouldn’t play into it. A lot of my inner tension didn’t just come from the fact that Beck had kicked my ass, it started to bother me when he called the baby his.
There was nothing I could do about it. I would swallow my pain and know I was going to be part of the baby’s life whether she called me dad or him. Plus, Danny didn’t need the tension. And after hearing Ed tell about him and Keller as babies, they didn’t need it either.
Ed explained how Keller has a psychic sense, could still communicate with some of us telepathically, but for the most part, he used his words.
“Keller eventually starts talking,” Ed said. “For the most part he’s a man of few words, until he gets on a roll, and you cannot shut him up.”
“Is he funny?” I asked.
Ed laughed, then turned serious. “No. He thinks he is, he’s not.”
“I would think,” Beck stated, his hand playing with the bowl of fresh fruit on the table, “he would be. I mean, not that I think Alex is all that funny, but he can be and Keller is around him all the time.”
“It’s funny, we were around both of you. Keller kind of rolled into your traits and I picked up Alex’s. We both acknowledge you as fathers to us. I call you, Dad, and Keller calls Alex Dad.”
That made me immediately choke up. I would hear Keller call me ‘Dad’. “So, I have a question, do any of the blind tricks we teach him work?”
Ed smiled. “Yeah, I’ve been starting some things early. Danny discovered that Keller has that ability, and some of us— though not all—are able to think of a vision and Keller can see it. That’s why he walks so well when you hold his hand, Alex. Not that little left and right thing you do to his palm, it’s that he’s tapping in. Danny realized this when Keller told him.”
“Dude,” Danny sat back. “I guess I’m cool in the future.”
“You are,” Ed said. “You are the best big brother anyone could ask for. We love you to death. And man, are you and I a force to be reckoned with on the Sleeper front.” He then looked at me and Beck. “But we’re tired and we need to stop fighting. We should never get to the point we are.”
“How did you get all this?” Beck asked of the fruit. “Oranges, plums?”
“Bill Logan’s credit card and time travel,” Ed replied. “Of course, all that was Danny’s idea.”
Danny threw his hands up in a gloating manner. “See?”
Beck shook his head. “Yeah, I see. Alex has influence on you, too.”
“Beck,” Danny said seriously, “Alex is a good guy.”
After a brief hesitation, Beck nodded. “I know.”
“We have our tense moments,” I said, reaching for some fruit. “And how about Sonny suddenly growing a pair?” I cleared my throat. “No pun intended to the small plums I hold in my hand.”
Beck nodded. “Yeah, he yelled at us.”
“And,” I added, “took you on when you were having your way with me. Again, no pun intended to the small plums I have in my hand.”
“Wait. Wait. Wait.” Ed said. “That happened already?”
We all looked up.
“That’s like a story that’s told forever. The time Sonny took on Beck and beat him up.”
“Who told you?” Beck asked.
“Sonny tells it,” Ed replied.
“There you have it,” I said. “Sonny the storyteller who doesn’t always get the stories right.”
“But you just said he took on Beck,” Danny said.
“He did. Jumped on him, got him in a choke hold.”
“Whoa.” Danny exhaled. “Seriously?”
“Yep,” Beck said. “And down I went.” He paused then looked at me. “No pun intended to the small plums you hold in your hand.”
Beck held up his hand with a faint smile. “That’s fine.
“Now that the mood is better,” I said, “we need to get Mera down here.”
Ed cocked his head. “Is she still up there with Sonny? Maybe that’s not such a good… I mean …”
“What?” Beck asked.
Ed shook his head. “Never mind.”
Danny stood. “I’ll go get them.”
“I’ll check on the babies,” Ed said, leaving the room behind Danny.
Beck turned to me. “Something happens in the future.”
“Well, she has that weird, ‘he looks like my dead husband’ infatuation with him.”
“And Sonny?”
I shrugged. “Maybe he’s the reason we don’t fight in the future. No Mera thing to fuel us.” No sooner had I said those words when I realized my error and cringed.
“Is that our issue?” Beck asked. “Are we in some way fighting over Mera? Because I didn’t know that.”
“No, we’re not fighting over, Mera. Bad choice of words.”
“Let me ask you something,” Beck said softly. “I appreciate honesty. Sonny had this idea that he was the baby’s father. Did something happen between them?”
“Not that I know of.”
“He said he had no basis, just that it made sense.”
“Sonny has got to be the smartest dumb person I ever met.”
“I heard that,” Sonny said, walking into the kitchen. “And I’m here, so you can stop talking about me now.” He pulled up a chair and sat down. “Oh, wow, purple fruit.”
I wanted to tell him they were plums. I didn’t. In a way he reiterated my last statement. Beck cracked a genuine smile and excused himself from the kitchen.
I sat back and waited on Mera.
FIVE – MERA STEVENS
After Danny hollered up the steps, he joined the boys on the floor. Keller and Phoenix were doing something really odd when I came down stairs with Sonny. Both boys were sitting there, Phoenix held Keller’s hand and in his other hand, a ball.