The Devil's Dream: Waking Up (20 page)

T
he explosions
from outside spoke as loud as Rally and Morgant. The explosions said more than either of them could. The explosions said that the cavalry had arrived, that they were here to kill Matthew. Here to stop him.

Matthew pushed the body onto the bolts, blood falling down in streams, falling to the floor below. There hadn't been any time to perform the necessary procedures to keep the blood flow at a minimum. The bodies were here, hanging, and he would just have to hope that the new ones didn't bleed out before he set everything off. One more to go. One more. Joe Welch, the man that had arrived hoping to kill him.

Don't do this,
Rally said.

You're fucking crazy,
Morgant said.

Matthew thought that Morgant finally realized what all this was about. Before, he must have thought Matthew took over just so that he could live again, so that he didn't have to die. It wasn't until now that he understood the end game.

Matthew moved down the ladder, slowly, only his right arm working. He could feel Morgant trying to force himself to the front, could feel him trying to take over. If he did it now, if he gained control, all of this was over. The police would make their way in and they would find a black man raping an Asian woman, and they would fill him with bullets and the whole ordeal would be something on the nightly news for the next three weeks before they moved to another subject.

Matthew reached the floor. Sheeb stood in front of him, her hand extended in a stop gesture. He sidestepped around here, ignoring whatever she said. He didn't have time for her. He didn't have time for Morgant. He didn't have time for Rally. He had time to nail up Welch and then he had time to move to the lever and end everything he had built.

He walked to Welch and looked down at the man. He wasn't the same person Matthew had tied up in a house years ago. This man weighed fifty pounds less and looking like he'd been wrapped in barbed-wire, then dragged through hell. He had come here to kill Brand, had somehow discovered Brand's plan and then came by the only route he could figure out. Came here to avenge his wife. To avenge his child. To avenge his father. Matthew could understand that.

"You failed," Matthew said. "You're not going to be able to kill me."

Welch didn't say anything. He just looked up from his spot on the floor, bound, his eyes wet with tears.

Listen to me, Matthew. Just listen for a minute,
Rally tried to break in but he threw her from him in a way that he never did when she lived.

He heard the sound of a muffled gun shot, only one, but didn't hear the bullet break through the stone. The barrier held it off. The mines had stopped them for a minute, too, but not for long. They would figure out the way through and then they would batter down the door and this whole place would be under siege. No weapons in here. Not this time. He only had the mines outside.

Did he need to nail up Welch? Was it that important? Was it worth not succeeding? That was only pride talking, one body wasn't going to make a difference. Matthew looked over to the lever on the wall, the one that began the extraction of energy from the people hanging around him. He needed to pull that down and then it wouldn't matter what happened outside. It wouldn't matter what happened inside his own head, wouldn't matter what the voices said, what Morgant did. Once that lever was down, it would be too late for anyone to do anything.

What you're doing. God, what you're doing, Matthew, it's worse than Hitler. It's worse than anything I could have dreamed of. You're killing them all. You're killing everyone, the entire human race,
Rally said.

You let me out right now. You stop this bullshit and let me out,
Morgant said.

Matthew started shuffling forward. His body hurt. The whole entire thing ached with each step, with each monumental pull of his left leg behind him. Just a few more feet and then he could rest. He could put this body down on the ground and watch as the lightshow started. Welch could watch too. He came to murder, and if he couldn't do that, maybe he could see Matthew expire sitting on the ground, watching his masterpiece. Welch needn't die. He had his fifty-five bodies in here, hell, he had fifty-six if you counted Werzen hanging up there, nearly dead now.

Matthew, would you ignore me if I was in front of you? Or would you just push me aside and continue on?
Rally asked.

I'd continue. Until the end. They're all going to pay.

Step. Drag. Step. Drag.

NONONONONONO!
Morgant raged from inside.

He heard Sheeb yelling from behind him. He heard the bullhorn outside announcing something. Noise everywhere, inside and outside his head, but he had his goal. He'd reached the finish line and was about to cross it.

"Brand," Welch said from behind him.

* * *

J
ake stared
at the gravel driveway that had led him all the way up here. He was missing something but didn't know what. Art stood at his side, holding a radio and talking with someone, trying to figure out a way to get some landmine detectors up here or something. Jake wasn't paying attention. There wasn't time for that and everyone here knew it. Brand knew they had arrived and he wouldn't sit around, waiting for them to find a way in. He had heard the explosions, heard the bullhorn shouting at him. No, there was no time for landmine detectors to be driven up that same gravel driveway and then slowly scope the area. Jake watched as a few SWAT officers were slowly testing the ground around them, holding their helmets over their knives as they slowly pushed the blade into the ground, feeling for resistance, and if finding none, moving forward a few inches. Even that would take far too long, though.

What were they missing? What was no one paying attention to? The explosions had blinded them, everyone, including him. The death around them, the bodies lying face down in disheveled dirt, the blood staining the ground—all of it created chaos in their minds that they couldn't see around. He had to focus. There was something, something he wasn't seeing—

Brand had entered. Brand had walked inside that place without blowing off his own limbs. How? How did he do it when no one else out here could? He had stepped out of that van and...

The van was still in one piece. It hadn't exploded, hadn't rolled over any hidden mines. Oh dear God, how simple it was. How fucking stupid they all were standing outside calling for landmine detectors.

Jake took Art's gun, which he had laid on the roof of the car when he began talking into the radio. Jake didn't look over at him, just took the gun and started walking. He circled around the front of the police cruiser, but didn't stop. He heard Art scream something at him, but paid it no mind. There wasn't time. There wasn't time for him to pussyfoot around either; he had to move fast and get to that door. He walked straight behind the van, the front of it facing him, as Brand had backed in to make the drop off easier.

As he reached the van, he hugged the side of it, walking as quickly and closely as he could to the doors. Not daring to venture out. He just had to get to the back, and from the back, there wouldn't be any mines to the door. There couldn't be because Brand had walked the steps himself.

He found the back of the van. The gun in his right hand shook but he didn't pause. He stepped forward, realizing that Art wasn’t screaming anymore. That the entire place was still, no one screaming, no one moving, everyone watching him move towards the lighthouse door.

One foot in front of the other, Jake made his way across the last ten feet of gravel, separating him from Brand's fortress.

* * *

"
B
rand
," Joe said. "Why are you doing this?"

Joe watched Brand stop his diseased shuffle.

He didn't turn around, didn't take his eyes off the wall, but he did stop.

"Why? What will you get out of this?"

Joe knew what happened when the man got to the wall. He knew that once the lever was pulled, the world ended, at least according to Brand's theory. He didn't know what would happen specifically in this place, whether everyone inside the lighthouse would light up in flames or whether they would simply watch as Brand destroyed the sun. Death awaited everyone, regardless, but Joe didn't feel panicked about it, didn't feel any desperate need to stop Brand. He had come here to kill the man and he no longer felt that need either. The cops were outside, not Manning, and Joe didn't know what all that meant. They could kill Brand if they got inside, but they didn't seem to be able to.

Joe didn't feel any animosity towards the creature in front of him. For all Joe had gone through, this man went through worse. Whether he lived or died, he sold his soul in a way Joe hadn't known possible. The years of drug abuse and the forsaking of his family couldn't match whatever was happening here, whatever Brand traded to be in this position.

"They have to pay. You have to pay," Brand said. He might have been answering Joe or talking to one of the voices that Joe couldn't hear.

"What are they paying for, Brand? What are you taking from them that you haven't already? Listen outside. It's silent. They can't get in. Look around you. Look at what you've created." Joe stopped, taking in his surroundings again, trying to find the words. "It's ghastly. Have they not all paid enough? Have you not paid enough? Have we all not?"

Brand turned around, partly, his left foot not able to stand correctly on the floor anymore, but only the corner of it dragging across the stone. "They haven't paid out there. They—"

"YOU JUST BLEW THEM UP FROM THE SOUNDS OF IT!" Joe shouted, laughing, tears falling from his eyes. "You just killed God knows how many men with families. A trail of bodies follows you for twenty-five years, Brand. A trail of bodies and a host of lives ruined. And look at you. Just fucking look. You're grinding along in some rotting shell, talking to people that don't exist, and trying to kill the rest of the world. You got a fucking kid hanging from a cross like he's Jesus Christ." Joe stopped for a second, unsure what he was even saying, or why he was saying it. He didn't care. Not really. Not if this whole place went to hell or lived forever; he had no stake in it. He had sold his life and this is what he bought. To spend the last few minutes with this creature. "Is this what you wanted? Is this why you killed my dad? Because if so...you missed the point of your own message."

Brand stood looking at him for another few seconds, his lip twitching.

Then, he turned, and started his walk again. Joe watched him go, still smiling, bound on the floor but free for the first time in a long time.

* * *

M
atthew made
it to the lever. His whole life had led to this moment. From being tested at four years old for an IQ greater than 170, to graduating with his first degree at some ridiculously youthful age, to marrying Rally, all the way up to sitting in the court room and watching those cops smile at the non-guilty verdict. Everything he had ever done brought him here.

He raised his hand to the lever.