Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire (42 page)

           
“Father.”

           
Trevor sat up in bed. His movement stirred Ashley, who groaned and opened her eyes.

           
The master bedroom connected off Trevor’s office, the room that originally served as the “command center.” Two figures stood in that doorway, their features hidden in the dark.

           
Trevor instinctively reached for the Beretta M9 under his pillow. He froze when he saw a flash of moonlight flicker off the blade held to his son’s throat.

           
“Ah, ah, ah,” the shadowy figure teased.

           
Trevor let the pistol be, and held both hands palms up and open.

Ashley wiped her eyes and realized she did not dream.

           
“JB? Trevor? Oh my God!”

“Quiet now,” the man raised a finger to his lips. “We’ve got some talking to do. So the two of you need to get out from underneath those nice warm sheets and come on out here. I have better manners than to stand here and watch the misses, but I’m afraid it’d be in all of our best interests for me not to let you out of my sight. You might just do something stupid, isn’t that so?”

           
Trevor, wearing navy blue sweat pants, cautiously rose from bed, still holding his empty hands aloft. Ashley wore considerably less. She grabbed a robe and tied it on.

           
The assailant led them to the office where he walked behind the desk, the knife never leaving Jorge’s throat. Trevor and Ashley stood on the opposite side.

           
“Go ahead, turn on a light. The smaller one,” the man directed.

           
Trevor switched on the desk lamp. Ashley gasped.

           
A human man held a knife to JB’s throat, but the scars he wore made him appear more creature than person.

           
“What’s wrong, honey? I don’t look appetizing to you?” The intruder reacted with sarcasm to Ashley’s shock. “Shoot, this stuff is a couple of years old. You should have seen me when the skin melted. Felt like jelly on my cheekbones for a couple of weeks. Still, I tried to dress myself up for our big get together.” He ran his free hand through his hair—what remained of it—in mock grooming. Flakes from old scabs fell off a cracked scalp.

           
Trevor saw more than scars. He saw starvation. The dirty coveralls the man wore hung loose on emaciated shoulders. Spindly fingers with chipped nails clutched the knife at Jorge’s neck. The man carried a stink of body odor and rot.

           
“You should put down that knife,” Trevor said as his eyes searched for openings; searched for counter-moves.

           
“Oh, I’m thinking
no
on that one, Dick.”

           
“You’re not going to get out of here. There are guards all over the place.”

           
“A few less. The dogs, they aren’t around. I sort of sent them off on a wild goose chase.”

           
Jorgie said, “Father, he killed the man in the hallway.”

           
“Carlos,” Trevor spoke the man’s name. He deserved as much.

           
The intruder said, “You can forget about the guy in the basement watching the cameras.
Wilson
, I think that is his name. Anyway, he’s got a good bump on the noggin’ and is going to be tied up for a while.”

Trevor’s mouth worked but the scarred man said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. In twenty minutes or so, someone is going to notice
Wilson
hasn’t checked in and then they’ll send folks this way. I expect to have things settled up by then, so don’t give it another thought.”

The wind rattled against the sliding glass doors that hid behind drawn curtains.

“What is it you want? Let my son go!” Ashley demanded.

“Oh now honey, you know I can’t do that so don’t waste your breath. Besides, you’ve got nothing to fear. I mean, we’re all family here.”

Trevor and Ashley glanced at one another.

“Not yours honey,” the man said.
“His.”

He meant, of course, Trevor.

“My name is George. That’s George with a ‘g’. But you could just call me Junior.”

Trevor’s father had been named George.

“George…George
junior
?” Trevor forced the words.

“That’s right. I’m your brother, Richard. Your older brother.”

“Bull shit!” Trevor spat. “I never had an older brother. I was an only child.”

“I suppose I should add the ‘half’ part. I’m your half-brother, Dick.”

“What?” Ashley exhaled.

“Ole’ papa bear lived a lonely life on the road.”

“No! No! My father loved my mother. He wouldn’t have been screwing around on her. You are full of shit.”

“Easy, easy does it,” George waved the knife. “You need to control those emotions, Rich. You might just spook me into doing a little carving and none of us want that.”

JB scolded, “My father’s name is Trevor.”

George looked down at the boy and said, “Usually I don’t take that kind of lip from a three-year-old kid. Why, if I had had that mouth when I was a boy my mother would have back handed me.”

“Don’t you touch my son,” Ashley spoke through clenched lips.

Trevor saw her shake. Part of that shake came from fear, certainly. Much of it came from anger; the primal rage of a mother protecting her child. Trevor realized that, given the opportunity, Ashley would rip this man to pieces maybe as lethally as could
Nina
Forest
.

Nonetheless, George ignored her and remained focused on JB. “But you, you’re special. You’re special just like
Richard
is, right? That’s what it’s all about. That’s why I’m special, too.”

“You’re not special,” Ashley growled. “You’re just another monster who looks like a man. No real man would hold a knife to a little boy’s throat.”

“Would you like me to hold a knife to your throat, honey?” The man smiled. “I can think of lots of things I’d do if I had you under my knife. You’d sure as hell find out how much of a real man I can be. Might be a little rough, though.”

Ashley wavered but only slightly. “You’d damn well need the knife.”

“You are not my brother,” Trevor stayed on point.

“Yeah, I knew you’d have problems with that. Don’t worry, Dick, your dad didn’t go messing around on your mother. He met my mom long before he married. I’m a good eight years your senior, little brother.”

“You’re lying,” Trevor said with certainty. “My dad would have told us about you. He wasn’t the type to run away from his responsibilities. I know that.”

“He isn’t going to tell you about something he don’t know about. That’s right; my mother didn’t even know your pop’s last name. They met at a truck stop way back when. It gets lonely on the road, you know. She was a waitress. It was his first time through. Next thing you know he goes driving off into the sunset and nine months later she’s got a nice little surprise. Life can be funny like that.”

Trevor shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Yes you do. You believe me. You went to my place out there in
Virginia
and saw it yourself. You know I found you because I could see visions of who you are, of how far you’ve climbed in this new world. When you stood in my cave, you felt a connection with everything there. Just like I feel a connection with everything here. Do you want to know why, Dick?”

“My father’s name is—”

“SHUT UP YOU BRAT”

George smacked the boy’s skull off the desktop then immediately placed the knife at his throat again. He moved so fast that Trevor managed only a half step before he had to abandon any thought of attack.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Ashley roared.

“No more words out of you, boy. No more from your lips. This is time for grown ups to talk. Not
freaks
like you, hear me?”

Jorgie sniffled and held a hand to his head. He appeared dazed, possibly suffering a concussion.

“You do that to my son again, and I’ll kill you,” Trevor stated a fact.

“Oh Dick, who are you kidding? You decided to kill me long before I woke you and the misses out of bed tonight. The real question here is how bad do you want your son and wife to live? That’s the real question.”

“What do you mean by that?” Ashley’s voice trembled from that combination of fear and anger.

“You see, right now you’re thinking that the big revelation here is that Richie has himself a half-brother. You’re thinking, who really cares if his dad knocked up some minimum-wage waitress a long time ago. I mean, it’s not as if he was cheating on his wife, right? The point isn’t that I’m Richie’s half-brother. Oh no. That’s no big deal. That’s just the way of the world. The point here is what pieces of the puzzle does this put into place for you. The real revelation is right in front of your eyes and you’re not seeing it. Why here I am, only
half
of what my little brother is and I have it all figured out. Why, I thought me being here would give you all those answers you’ve been wondering about. I mean, you do have questions, don’t you…Trevor?”

George smiled as if he did everyone a favor by calling his half-brother ‘Trevor’ instead of Rich or Dick.

“Yes, I have lots of questions. Like why are you holding a knife to my son’s throat?”

“Oh, c’mon now, I mean the real good questions. Like, why did you get the shit job of running this whole comeback show? Why is it you can order around dogs a lot easier than most folks can order around their kids? Questions about why this little brat of yours is so special.”

“A link…” Trevor spoke soft as he remembered the Old Man’s words. “…a link on a chain…”

“A link on a chain, huh?” George offered a better description. “More like a code for a combination lock, brother.”

“You’re not making sense,” Ashley complained.

“Oh honey, you need to start paying attention,” the brute said. “We’re talking big concepts here and you can’t see beyond the front of your nose. Hard to believe you’re such an important part of all this.”

That sparked Ashley’s attention.

“Me? What? What do you mean?”

“You still don’t get it, do you? Oh honey, you need to understand something. All of this,” he waved his arm—the one that
did not
have the knife to Jorgie’s throat—around the room but his motion referred to the nightmarish world in which they lived. “All of this, it’s on
your
shoulders.”

“What?” Ashley quivered.

The man finished, “You and Trevor here. You started this.
You caused Armageddon.”

Ashley’s jaw dropped. Trevor’s eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, let that soak in real good. Let that sting for a bit,” the man smiled evilly.

Trevor tilted his head as the dots of understanding connected. “The other half of the equation. I was half, and Ashley was the other half. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s good. Yeah, A plus B equals C. You had to be A and her as B. That’s how nature’s been planning it all along. Now you’re thinking. Think some more for me. Tell your honey what I am. Go ahead, Dick.”

Trevor licked his lips.

“You are a mistake.”

Surprisingly, George nodded in agreement.

“You were never meant to be. Your mom wasn’t the right mix with my dad.”

“Yeah! Yeah! Keep on going.”

“My dad was meant…was meant to be with my mom. The same way I was meant to be with Ashley.”

George said, “A genetic code, Rich! All through history. I’m not so sure about this whole ‘meant’ thing, but you two had the ingredients for the recipe for Jorgie here.”

Dad and mom looked to their son. Jorgie stood but his head wobbled side to side, his eyelids fluttered. The blow left him dazed and unaware of the conversation.

Ashley asked, “What about my boy?”

George said to her, “Let me bet you a dollar that you were starting to get sick and whatnot before all hell broke loose.”

Trevor remembered how Ashley felt nauseous at about the same time people started disappearing and monsters started creeping around in shadows. He remembered waiting for her on the porch with her father while Ashley got sick upstairs. At the time, he dismissed it to nerves. However, more than a year later when they pulled her out of a green gooey cocoon with the initial batch of ark-riders, they realized she carried a child.

The doctors calculated she conceived not long before disappearing, but it was hard to tell exactly when given that they had been having sex almost every night. Richard loved it at the time. He attributed Ashley’s
eagerness
to her nerves about the wedding, too.

Ashley unconvincingly insisted, “You are crazy.”

“Think about it, honey,” the man enjoyed horrifying her. As he did, a nasty edge built in his voice. “Think about when the creatures started appearing. If you go back and check them old newspaper clippings, you’ll see. Not
The
New York Times
or something. Check out
The National Enquirer
. Shit like that. Sometimes the tabloids get it right. Hell, they were ahead of everyone this time around. They got the last, best scoop.”