Cathedral of Dreams (21 page)

“Hold on,” Keith said. “I've never seen money.”

Sam handed him the cash. “We can't use terminals out here. Especially us. They're traceable. Like I told you, people went backward in time out here, by choice. But that was a long time ago. My great-grand parents returned to using cash.”

The girls walked out from the side of the building, and Keith handed the cash back to Sam who walked toward the cashier's window.

“In the car,” Stacy said in a nervous tone. “Come on, it's them. Sam!”

She was right. Three of the men they'd seen grouped in town had pulled into the station and parked near the building. They jumped from the car and were headed toward the van.

Sam shoved the cash toward the cashier and rushed back to the driver's side door of the van.

One of the three men stopped in front of the van to prevent Sam from pulling away. The other two men approached the sliding door. “Not from around here?” one of them said.

“Passing through,” Brent said while ushering Stacy into the van first. Only he and Keith were outside.

Keith read the t-shirt of the man closest to him. It said Morning Light under a picture of the sun rising over a hill. He had seen that image before and recognized it immediately. “You provide produce to Newcity,” he said.

Brent reached for Keith's shoulder. “Get in.”

The young man with the Morning Light shirt knocked Brent's hand away and grabbed Keith's wrist. He pulled Keith's arm forward and turned it. The stitches puffed above the normal smoothness of his skin. “You're newly escaped,” he said with a mixture of question and answer in his voice. “What are you doing heading toward Newcity?”

Until that moment, Keith had sensed no danger whatsoever. Now, the tension spiked in an instant and he didn't know what to do, so he searched the parking lot and station's drive-through for the boy with the bullet hole in his forehead.

“What the fuck you looking for?” the Morning Light man said. “Harry, get the jeep.” His cohort took off for their vehicle in a slow jog.

Brent's energy changed too as he ripped Keith's arm from the man and swung Keith toward the van door. “In the van,” Brent ordered. Then he swung around and stepped closer to the Morning Light man, who had been left standing alone, with one of his crew in front of the van and the other one retrieving their jeep.

Morning Light snatched Brent's wrist before Brent could pull away. “Another one? The whole van is filled with ex-Newcityers,” he yelled to the man in front of the van. “You're going the wrong way,” he said to the van's passengers. “You'll get caught.”

While Brent and Morning Light exchanged shoves and tugs, the man in front of the van opened Sam's door and slammed him into the space between the front seats. “Get out of the way.”

Keith sat next to Stacy, but poised himself so that he could rush out at any moment. The anger he felt blinded other sensations, yet it wasn't him in danger at the moment.

Morning Light reached up and gripped Brent by the neck. The man from the jeep leaped out, a knife in his hand. “You're coming with us,” he said, and the two of them dragged Brent toward the jeep and forced him inside. “Let's go,” Morning Light said as he dragged the van door closed. Then he jumped into the driver's side of the jeep and drove onto the road.

The new driver of the van yelled back to everyone, “Try anything and I run this van off the fucking road and most of you are dead meat. Got it?”

Some of them nodded. Keith steamed at the arrival of emotion, not understanding where it had come from and why it escalated so quickly.

They followed the jeep off to the right and down a few side streets where there were fewer and fewer houses. The road became bumpy and they bounced in the back as they sped along, turning sharply without warning. When they came to a two-story farmhouse they pulled close to the porch. Several other men and women exited the house and stood on the porch. Two of the men had rifles.

“What's going on?” Keith said.

“Shut up,” the driver said. He jumped from the van.

Several men came to the side of the vehicle and slid the door wide. “Out,” Morning Light said, Harry standing next to him, the knife pulled and ready. Brent stood between tow other men, his arms pinned to his sides.

The men who came from the house were older than the three young men who had apprehended the van and the escapees. One of them looked at Sam once everyone was out of the van and cracked him in the jaw with the butt of the rifle. Sam went down hard, sliding over the gravel of the drive, his hand and arm out to break the fall. “You thought you'd get away with this?” The man looked at the others. “Get 'em into the house.”

Chapter 15

S
am's mouth bled down his shirt as he stood next to Keith. Molly tried to attend to him, but one of the women pulled her away and shoved her onto a couch with the other girls. Robert, Brent, and Will were told to sit on the floor with their backs together. One of the rifles had been handed over to the man who had driven the van, and he sat in a chair and pointed the gun at them.

Keith's emotions swirled like a tornado, angry and natural at the same time. The men and women in the room pulsed fear and fury, aggravation and angst at levels that practically produced pain for Keith.

The man who appeared to be the leader acted surprised that Sam would be with the escapees. They stood face to face. “Sam,” he said.

“John,” Sam said, mocking the other man's delivery.

“You are no longer needed, you know,” John said.

“This is almost over,” Sam said.

John's eyes narrowed and Keith experienced a foreboding feeling creep inside him. To break the confrontation, he said, “What are you going to do with us?”

John turned to Keith and drove his face even closer than he had with Sam. “You don't look so special to me.”

John's breath smelled thick with rotted food and stale air. Keith turned from the words. But the man didn't appear to know why. He scoffed and stepped away.

The room was large and filled with odd pieces of furniture, including the couch where the four girls had been forced to sit; three chairs, one occupied by Robert, Brent, and Will's guard; and several hard-backed wooden chairs that looked as though they'd been dragged in from somewhere else. Some of the other men and women sat on those chairs. Then there were side tables near the couch, desks pushed against the walls, chests of drawers. None of the furniture matched. In the corner of the room, one of the desks held electronic equipment similar to the equipment Keith had seen in Bradley's tent.

“Anybody hungry?” A woman's voice came from behind John.

When John turned to answer, Keith saw around him. It was his mother. “My god,” he said. “You're here? Mom?”

“Your mother's dead,” Sam said. “That woman's a fake meant to lure you…” But he didn't get to finish his sentence before John backhanded him to the floor.

Molly sucked in a breath and began to get up. One of the women standing behind her slapped her shoulders and Molly collapsed into the cushions.

“Kill him,” John said.

“No,” Molly attempted to get up again, but this time the woman grabbed her hair to drag her back into the seat. Molly let out a screech and reached for her head.

Sam scrambled to get up as one of the bigger men lumbered over and grabbed him by the arm and lifted. He half dragged, half carried Sam outside, shoving him through the doorway. Keith heard Sam fall onto the floor of the porch, then the sound of rustling feet and footsteps on gravel.

John was just turning back to look into Keith's eyes when a shot was heard.

Molly began to cry.

Stacy and Rebecca turned toward her, both of them with tears in their eyes. Amanda sat petrified, staring at nothing.

“Anyone else want to get smart with us?” John said.

The man watching the other three men shook the barrel of his gun at them. “How about you guys?” All three of the escapees lowered their heads in answer.

Keith felt pain in his neck and shoulders. His muscles stretched like rubber bands near the breaking point. His head swam and his stomach churned. He liked Sam, even if he didn't agree with their plan. And now Sam was gone. But he didn't feel gone, only changed, as though Sam had not died, but shifted his energy into something else. Keith looked over at the woman he had thought was his mom, knowing that Sam was right about her. That was the reason he had felt no closeness to her when they first met. He should have paid attention to his feelings.

She shrugged her shoulders to dismiss Keith's glare. “Well, anyone hungry?” she asked again, as though nothing had happened.

No one spoke up. Not even their captors. So the woman left the room.

John wandered to the equipment in the corner and picked up a microphone. “Bradley, come in.” A crackling sound came through the speakers and a voice that was too low to hear. “Got your loner. What you want me to do with him?” Bradley responded. Another muffled sound came through. “Roger.” John dropped the microphone and turned back around. “I don't know why we need any of you. Least of all you.” He pointed a dirty finger at Keith and strolled back into the center of the group. “Link or no link. I say we do the job and get this shit over with. We're ready.” He strolled the length of the couch, offering each of the others a look of authority and satisfaction.

Keith closed his eyes and tried to calm his emotions, the torrent that ripped through his veins, the undecipherable currents. If he could relax, the boy with the bullet hole in his forehead would return, the angel with one wing would tell him what to do, or the spirit of his father would help somehow. But there was too much going on. A man had been killed. The presence of violence lay thick in the air. Even the furniture provided a place for hatred and futility to collect.

A jerk came to Keith's chest as someone shoved him. He stumbled backward onto the floor and fell on his elbow, cracking it against the hardwood.

“Didn't want you to fall asleep standing up,” Morning Light said from above Keith.

The urge to strike back arrived without much fanfare at first. It was just a thought that concerned rolling to his side and kicking Morning Light's knee. Then, not a moment later he realized that Bradley must have told John not to harm them, which led to his decision and the impulse to go through with the attack. He rolled to place both hands flat against the floor so that he could push to his hands and knees. He leaned back, lifted his leg, and smoothly shot it toward Morning Light's knee. It hit squarely.

The knee cracked. The contact produced a terrible sensation that Keith felt as it transferred from his foot to his leg. Something inside Morning Light's knee not only broken but stretched like a string drawn taught. Keith imagined the string fraying into dozens of strands before popping apart and snapping in opposite directions.

Morning Light screamed. The rifle he held went off and the floorboards near Keith splintered and flew. The man crumbled to the ground and lay across the rifle he had been holding. In his rage, he tried to maneuver the gun out from under him and into a usable position.

John ran over and stepped on the barrel. “Help him up,” he told the others.

A man and woman came to Morning Light's rescue. He flailed at first, then succumbed to their help, hobbling away and swearing back at Keith.

John kicked Keith in the side, throwing him onto his back a foot away from where he was.

Without thinking, and through the pain, Keith pulled his leg back to kick at John's knee as well. It worked once. But John sidestepped and grabbed Keith's foot as it shot forward. He lifted the foot so that Keith's butt was off the floor and he had no thrust. Then he dragged Keith toward the door. “Outside with them all,” he ordered.

John dragged his captive by one leg.

Keith felt splinters enter his butt and when he fell backwards to get it off the floor, splinters entered his shoulders. He rolled and tried to use his arms and hands to walk himself forward as they crossed the porch, but John moved too quickly. At the stairs Keith's body knocked against the old wood so hard that he found relief when he finally reached the stones and ground.

John dropped the leg.