Refuge Book 1 - Night of the Blood Sky (8 page)

13

Dodge had remained quiet for the first few minutes of the ride, but Rule could see him growing antsy. She really didn’t want to get into an argument with the man. It wouldn’t do anyone any good.
So don’t argue
, she told herself.
Let the man speak his mind and just nod.

Dodge pulled his eyes away from the green and brown blur of the pine forest they sped through and swiveled toward her exactly when she expected him to. But his words nearly caused her to yank the steering wheel and plow the police cruiser into a tree. “I want to apologize.”

She glanced at him. “’Scuse me?”

“You heard me,” he said, willing to apologize, but not repeat the words. But then he elaborated, and Rule felt like she’d been transported to another world. “I overreacted.” The words came out slowly, begrudging more than thoughtful. “I jumped to conclusions. I haven’t ruled out the supernatural, mind you, but I should have withheld judgment until I had all the facts.”

Rule nodded slowly, waiting for a punch line, but it didn’t come. “Appreciate you saying that, Pastor.”

She wondered how honest she should be with him, and she decided that now, while he was feeling open, was the time to forge a functional relationship. “This town needs us both. You know that, right?”

Dodge stared at the floor for a moment. “I think that’s accurate, yes.”

“And the town’ll be better off if we’re not bickering.”

“Absolutely,” he said without hesitation, which made her worried he’d insist on something like her being baptized again as a public expression of faith. But she didn’t think he’d suggest anything like that after she finished speaking.

She took a moment to gather her thoughts and realized she was squeezing the steering wheel. She loosened her grip and let out a breath. “I still don’t think we’re dealing with the supernatural—not because it’s not a possibility, but because it doesn’t make sense. The devil is most dangerous when we don’t know he’s there, right? So why announce his presence with a church bell?”

She let Dodge digest that for a moment, and when she saw the first hint of a nod, she continued, “But I do think something...large is happening. Something that’s going to frighten people. And frightened people sometimes make poor decisions. They react instinctually. And...” She looked at Dodge, “...they’re easily led.”

“Are you saying I would take advantage of people’s suggestibility?” Dodge asked, a trace of fire and brimstone in his voice.

“Not at all,” Rule said. “Just requestin’ you use the pulpit to keep people calm, which will help
me
keep ’em safe and alive.”

“Alive?” Dodge’s eyes grew wide.

Rule didn’t soften the blow. “I think something’s gone wrong in the world. Don’t know what. Could be war. Could be some kinda cosmic event. There really isn’t a way to know right now. But my gut tells me something bad is coming.”

Dodge pursed his lips hard, turning them white. Through clenched teeth he admitted the truth, “Me, too.”

The two-way radio crackled, and a broken voice filled the police cruiser. Rule couldn’t understand a word of it, but recognized Frost’s voice. She and Winslow were in the cruiser behind them. They were headed south on Main Street, which led all the way to the Ashland border. No one lived in this part of town, not unless you counted the deer, moose and bears.

There were only two intersecting streets. Lakeshore Drive on the left was a dirt road that ran out and around the lake. There were a few cabins and nicer new homes out that way, but none held a candle to Renford Ellison’s mansion at the end of the street. It was a three-story affair with sweeping views of the lake and surrounding area. She’d seen it only once, while it was being constructed, because two of the contractors got in a scuffle. She wasn’t even sure if Ellison lived there. Never saw him around town. In fact, it’d been at least a year since she’d seen him. He could be dead and rotting in that skyscraper of a home, and no one would ever know.

The second street was well paved and gated. It led to a National Guard storage depot. Like Ellison’s house, she’d been back there just once—a courtesy tour for the new Sheriff. Wasn’t much of a tour. All she’d seen were the exteriors of six large, metal buildings and an empty helicopter landing pad. She glanced at the chain-link gate, topped with razor wire, as she picked up the radio mic. She didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean the small base was deserted.

“Say again, Frost,” Rule spoke into the mic. “Did not copy, over.”

The voice that replied was not Frost. “The sky. Look at the sky.” Winslow’s voice came through loud and clear, projecting the fear hidden just beneath the surface of his words. Rule and Dodge both leaned forward looking up through the front windshield. The sky behind the curtain of undulating red was still dark...but not.

It was no longer black.

It was purple.

The sun was rising behind the crimson curtain. Part of her hoped the phenomenon would be burned off or muted by the sun’s light, but the rising sun presented a problem of its own.

“Shit,” Rule muttered. It had only been an hour since the sun went down.

“Missing time,” Dodge said. “We must have all passed out at some point.”

“If we’d all passed out, we’d all remember waking up on the ground,” Rule countered.

“We could have been in a trance-like state,” Dodge said.

“So we were just standing around all night, staring up at the church bell?”

“It would explain how the moon got so high in the sky. It would explain the rising sun.”

Dodge was grasping at straws, trying to make some sense of what was happening. She didn’t blame him. It was freaky as hell, and it didn’t feel like a supernatural event. “Doesn’t explain how a half moon became a full moon.”

With a frown, Dodge echoed her feelings, “Shit.”

“Did you see?” Winslow asked, his voice booming from the two-way.

Rule leaned forward again, looking at the lightening sky—the sun was rising fast—and held the mic to her mouth, but Frost’s voice exploded into the car. “Look out!”

Before seeing the danger, Rule slammed on the brakes. Tires squealed for just a moment, before the anti-lock brake system kicked in, rumbling them to a quick, but controlled stop. Rule leaned back in her seat. Looked at Dodge. “You okay, Pastor?”

But the man didn’t respond. His eyes were wide and facing forward. His lips moved slowly, and Rule could read a litany of curses being spoken between him and the good Lord. She didn’t want to look, but craned her head forward.

“What the fuck?” she said, giving voice to Dodge’s whispers.

Stretching out before them was a golden desert, where there should have been road. And forest. But it was all gone. The road just ended, cut clean. She opened the door and nearly stumbled from the car. She looked back at the thick, New Hampshire forest, full of pines, maples and oaks. She could smell the familiar leafy decay mixed with the scent of miles and miles of dried pine needles. But when she faced forward, that world, and every familiar thing about it, disappeared. It was like someone had scooped the town out of New Hampshire, carried it half way around the world and deposited it amidst the golden waves of the Sahara Desert.

On weak legs, she stepped to the sand, knelt and scooped it up. It was coarse, warm and smelled of salt. She turned her head to the right. The forest ended along the same line as the road. A tall pine had been sliced in half vertically; its pale flesh was exposed and bleeding sap.

Next to the tree was an orange reflective road marker. It was fairly mundane, but she’d never seen an orange road marker. It only stuck out to her now because it was right on the edge of town, precisely where the world had been cut away. A half inch further and it would have been cut in half, just like the tree.

Dodge crouched next to her and put his hand on the sand. “This can’t be real.”

“It is,” Rule said. “I don’t know how, and I don’t want it to be, but we’re seeing, touching and smelling it. It’s real.”

“Hey, boss!” Frost called out. She sounded upset, and not in a ‘what happened to the road?’ kind of way.

Rule spun around. Winslow stood atop Frost’s cruiser, looking into the distance through a pair of binoculars. Police issue. Frost must have given them to him. Rule nearly barked at the man for standing on top of the cruiser, but she honestly didn’t give a shit any more. She was more concerned with the desert behind her and whatever Frost had found.

Frost rose up from the side of the road and waved. Her face was ashen. “Over here.”

The side of the road angled down toward the forest a good ten feet, so Rule didn’t see the wrecked truck until she was close to the edge. She’d missed it driving past, because her eyes had been on the sky.

“That’s Monty’s truck,” she said, quickening her pace. “Is anyone—”

“Susie,” Frost said, tears in her eyes. “It’s bad. Probably don’t—”

Rule knew Frost was telling her not to look, but she had to see for herself. It took just a second for her to see what used to be Susie Beaumont inside the truck, but it was enough to permanently claim a leading role in her nightmares.

“No sign of the girls or Monty,” Frost said, her voice forced, almost robotic. “But his shotgun is missing.”

Frost and Monty both loved guns. Hell, most people in town owned a gun, mostly for hunting, but Monty was the type to carry weapons for personal defense, which seemed a bit excessive for their low crime area. They were all legal, so he’d never had a problem, but he occasionally showed off his mobile collection to people like Frost, who appreciated such things.

“Sheriff!” It was Dodge this time, his voice two octaves higher. “Sheriff!”

She ran back toward the desert, her hand going to the gun on her hip. But there was no danger in sight. Dodge stood in the sand, five feet from the side of the road. He pointed down. “Footprints. They head off into the desert.” He crouched and picked up a small red cylinder.

A shotgun shell.

Monty
. He’d gone into the desert.
But why?

There was only one reason the dedicated father would leave the crash site and head away from town.

The girls.

She yanked open her car door, sat behind the wheel and grabbed the radio mic. “Griff, are you there? Over.”

After a pause, Griff responded. “I’m here.... Just looking at the view. Listen, you need to turn around. Come back to town. The road to Ashland isn’t passable. Over.”

“You can see the sand from Main Street?” Rule asked. “How far does it go?”

“For as far as I can see,” he said, sounding stunned. “Are you guys okay down there?”

“Not even close,” she said into the mic. “We found Monty’s car wrecked on the side of the road. Susie’s dead, but the girls and Monty are missing. We’re going to look for them, but...”

A shotgun blast echoed from the distance. And then again. It was followed by a scream. Rule dropped the mic, leapt from the car and drew her side arm. “Let’s go!” she shouted to Frost, and she charged into the desert that had appeared overnight.

14

Griffin stood in the back room, hands wrapped around the bars of the cell that held his daughter. Wasn’t long ago that he would check in on her like this at night. She slept with a stuffed dinosaur then. Had always been a different sort of girl. Tougher. Strong willed. Interested in things that would cause most girls to turn up their noses. While other kids collected ribbons and trophies as proof of an athletic childhood, Avalon collected scars.

It was nerve wracking being her parent. He’d grown accustomed to the sight of blood during his years in the military, but when it covered his daughter’s body...even the memory of their frequent emergency room visits made him squeamish.

But he would exchange any of those bloody experiences for this, watching his daughter in a drug-withdrawal induced, comatose state. She occasionally shook, and her forehead glistened with the sweat of a breaking fever. When she woke up, she’d be in a world of pain, as her body screamed at her for the narcotic it had come to crave, but at least she’d be lucid. She’d still crave Oxycontin, but would hopefully have a mind to resist the craving. If not, he’d have no problem keeping her in this cell until she came to her senses. Of course, if the world had really gone to shit, finding Oxycontin might be a challenge. The pharmacy in Soucey’s might have some in stock. If she became desperate enough, she might try to steal the drug. But he was determined to not let that happen.

He leaned his head against the cold metal bar and closed his eyes. If Jess could see him now, what was she thinking? Had he failed their daughter? Had he failed his wife? Even considering these possibilities was too much. He stepped away from the cell, wiped the moisture from his eyes and looked up.

The black sky, partially masked by the red haze, had turned purple. A sense of relief filled him. Life always looked better in the clear light of day.

Day...

Griffin barreled out of the back room and tripped over a waste bucket. He spilled to the floor along with Deputy Sweeney’s collection of empty Snapple bottles, which sounded like angry wind chimes as they rattled across the aisle. It wasn’t a soft landing, but he barely noticed the impact on the hard linoleum floor. He scrambled back to his feet and tore toward the front door, a little more careful of the room’s detritus.

Two sets of doors later, he was outside, head turned up. The full moon still hung in the sky, but it had faded in brightness, fighting for attention against the quickly rising sun and the obscuring redness. The purple sky had grown lighter already, but had yet to take on a shade of blue. And the red phenomenon showed no signs of fading.

“Mr. Butler!”

He quickly recognized Lisa’s voice and scanned Main Street in the direction of her house. She emerged between two brick buildings, Radar in tow. Both were looking up at the impossible sky. He descended the stone staircase and started across the street. They met him half way.

For a moment, they all stood there together, looking up. Radar broke the silence, “Umm, we were thinking we’d like to stay with you.”

“Yeah,” Griffin said. It wasn’t the most detailed or reassuring of responses; the kids could have probably used some kind of pep talk, but Griffin felt just as lost as they did, and frankly, he was equally thankful for the company. He slowly lowered his gaze, admiring the different shades of purple, which turned pink toward the horizon, blending with the warbling redness in a way that was almost pretty. Almost, but not quite. He spun around slowly, lowering his eyes until he was looking straight down the tree-cleared line of South Main Street.

He staggered back.

His knees went wobbly, and he planted his hands on them to keep from falling over.

The view from Main Street had been the same for as long as the road existed—the endless trees of a state that was 90% forested. But now...

Lisa saw it and screamed.

“Oh my God,” Radar said, but then he focused on helping Lisa not fall to the ground. He wrapped his arms around her protectively. “I have you. I have you.”

But as Griffin’s mind imploded, no one had him. He fell to his knees. His vision narrowed. Pinpricks of light flitted back and forth.

Breathe
, he told himself.
Breathe!

He sucked in a deep breath, held it for a five count and let it out slowly. His vision cleared. He repeated the process once more and then stood again, unable to take his eyes from the view.

The most obvious feature was the sand. The endless forest had been replaced by dunes of sand stretching off to the pink horizon. The world beyond had been replaced somehow. Perhaps remade.
Or destroyed.
But the new world wasn’t completely featureless sand. There was something else on the horizon—miles away. It made his stomach twist in tight knots. It was a structure, that much was clear.
Straight lines like that don’t exist in nature.
Three dark spires, like Egyptian obelisks, rose up into the sky, one pointed straight up, the other two leaning at opposing 45 degree angles. He’d never seen anything like it, but it wasn’t the odd design that bothered him most, it was the size. The curve of the Earth allows people to see three miles before the land disappears over the horizon. That’s at ground level. From a tall hill, such as the one upon which Main Street had been built, you could see further—four or five miles. At that distance, the Empire State Building would look like the nub of a well-used pencil.

But this thing...he held up his arm. The central spire of the distant structure was barely covered by his forearm, stretching from his elbow nearly to the tip of his middle finger.

“It must be a mile high,” Radar commented.

“Bigger,” Griffin said. “Much bigger.”

Out of habit, Griffin reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, aimed the camera at the view and snapped a photo. He frequently took photos of things he thought would look good in a painting.

The radio on Griffin’s hip crackled to life, making all three jump. Rule’s voice came next. “Griff, are you there? Over.”

“Shit,” he said, pocketing the phone. He unclipped the radio and pressed the call button. “I’m here.... Just looking at the view.” He realized Rule wasn’t going to make it to Ashland or anywhere else. “Listen, you need to turn around. Come back to town. The road to Ashland isn’t passable. Over.” It sounded stupid, but he couldn’t think of any other way to explain, without sounding insane. Turned out he didn’t have to.

“You can see the sand from Main Street?” Rule asked. “How far does it go?”

“For as far as I can see,” he said. “Are you guys okay down there?”

“Not even close,” she said. “We found Monty’s car wrecked on the side of the road. Susie’s dead, but the girls and Monty are missing. We’re going to look for them, but…”

A sharp retort coupled with static burst out of the small speaker. Then it repeated. The gentle static of a transmitting signal disappeared. The radio went silent. He waited a moment, hoping Rule would press her call button again. When she didn’t, he pressed his. “Becky, what happened? Over.”

No reply.

“Becky? Please respond.”

Nothing.

Griffin looked back at the frightened faces of Radar and Lisa. He’d heard enough gunfire over a radio to recognize the sound, but he didn’t think either of the teens would have. Of course, they didn’t need to know someone was shooting a gun to feel afraid. The giant alien structure stabbing out of the horizon could do that on its own.

“You two follow me,” he said, knowing that one of the best ways to calm people down was to give them something to do. “I need your help with something.”

Griffin ran up the police station steps and opened the front door. “Hurry,” he said, waving them inside. Lisa was still pretty shaken up, but Radar looked alert and helped her inside the station. Griffin took one last look around. The town was quiet. Probably still asleep. He drew his pistol, looked at it for just a moment and chambered that first round before sliding it back in place.

“Damnit,” he said, and then he slipped inside the station.