Apocalypse Weird: Genesis (The White Dragon Book 1) (15 page)

“Can you go faster, Blair?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied.

“How about we go slower,” Kasey said.

“Slower?”

“Yes. If they want us to go toward the water, and as long as we’re going in that direction, couldn’t we drive slower?”

“Why would you do that?” Blair asked.

“To save us time. To come up with a plan.”

“Once we’re on the water, there are plenty of places to hide,” Blair said. “Fire Island is long and they can’t get there unless they drive all the way around it. We have to get to the water as fast as we can. That’s our only chance.”

“Deer Park Avenue is continues on your right,” Kasey said. “That’ll lead straight to the harbor.”

There was a moment when nobody spoke. The riders had backed off and held their speed about a hundred yards behind.

“We can’t leave the island,” Jack said. “We have to find another way.”

“What are you talking about?” Blair said. “The boat is the only chance we have.”

“No. It’s not. You have no idea… You don’t know what all this is. Neither do I but I’ve spent the last sixteen hours tied to a pole around my neck and…” Jack looked at Kasey who held his gaze. She saw him struggle to say what he needed to say. “If this, whatever this is, wants us in the water, that’s the last place we want to go to. We should drive the opposite direction,
away
from the water, away from everything. We have to get away from it!”

Jack’s voice cracked.

“We’re on Long Island,” Aarika said. “We’re surrounded by water.”

“We’ve got nowhere to go,” Jack said quietly. “We’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Watch out!” Kasey shouted when a man walked into the road right in front of them. Blair pulled the Humvee to the left and missed him by an inch. The man screamed at them in utter rage as they passed. His face was bloody and his clothes were in tatters.

“This is not good,” Jack said. His face was a mask of terror. He began to shake.

“It’ll be all right,” is all Kasey could think to say. She didn’t believe a word of it.

“There’s something ahead,” Jennifer said.

As they drove toward an underpass that went below the train tracks, Kasey saw it.

“Oh shit!” Blair said.” Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

A person hung from the bridge’s supports, a rope around their neck. The body swung slightly in the breeze.

The Molotov cocktail missed the Humvee by a few feet and crashed into one of the cars on the other side of the street. The fuel ignited the car in a fiery explosion.

“
Go!
” Jennifer shouted.

Blair pushed the gas pedal down and the Humvee jumped forward. Behind them, a few people ran into the street. They didn’t see the riders behind them. The shotgun fire echoed eerily through the street as the riders shot them down.

There were several more abandoned and turned-over cars on the road. Some of them were on fire. From some of the houses, black smoke rose up into the sky. And then they saw them. A few hundred feet ahead, Deer Park Avenue ended in downtown Babylon. There were clothing stores and cafes, art galleries and gift shops. Because of its closeness to Fire Island, a large number of tourists visited it every summer.

They lay on the sidewalks and in the street. Some sat, confused and bleeding, others stood or paced back and forth. Children cried for their mothers, a man screamed the name of a woman over and over while looking around, dazed. Two men were fighting, punching each other and shouting.

“We have to walk from here,” Jennifer said. “It’s only a half mile to the harbor and we can’t drive through here.”

When Kasey looked up the road, she saw another group of riders approaching the underpass.

They grabbed the rifles. Kasey took her backpack.

“Can you walk?” she asked Jack.

“I don’t know.”

The two guys that were fighting stopped and looked toward them. They didn’t speak to each other. There was no agreement. The hatred and rage was simply redirected to someone else.

“They’re coming toward us,” Aarika said. “What are we gonna do?”

The man who was shouting his wife’s name stopped shouting. He turned toward them, too.

“You took her!” he screamed. “You took her from me!”

He ran toward them. Jennifer raised her rifle.

“Stop right there!” she shouted.

He continued as if he didn’t hear her. Jennifer fired into the air. He was ten feet away now and running directly toward Jennifer. Just before he reached her, Blair hit him with the baseball bat. He had aimed low and hit the man in the stomach. A couple of doors in the nearby stores opened. One man came out, shotgun in hand, aiming at Aarika who stood closest to him. Jennifer shot him before he could pull the trigger. More and more doors opened and people came out.

“Run!” Jennifer said.

Kasey and Blair flanked Jack and half carried him as they ran down the street. Jack could barely walk and they had to lift him up each time he used his right leg. The screaming intensified as the people attacked the riders who either shot them or sliced them open with their swords.

The intensity of emotion was overwhelming. The hostility was pure and powerful. Kasey felt dizzy and was afraid she was going to pass out any second. More and more people spilled into the street, their faces filled with rage.

Something caught Kasey’s eye on the left side. It was a sign.

The Surf

A door opened and a man appeared. He must have been in his seventies. His long white hair was thin and fell to his shoulders. When she looked from the man back up to the sign, she saw the second part.

The Loneliness of Time

She didn’t put it together consciously. She heard the screams behind her and Blair’s shotgun went off twice right next to her. The old man waved at her, signaling her to come inside. Instinctively, Kasey moved Jack toward the door. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t something she thought about.

“Jennifer!” she heard herself say. “Come this way!”

Jennifer looked at her in disbelief for a moment but followed her through the doorway and into the store. Aarika was next and Blair last. The man shut the door and pushed a massive steel reinforced bar into the brackets.

The first thing Kasey noticed was that there was no window. From the outside it had looked like a regular oversized display window, like you find on most stores. From in here, she saw the windows were filled in with cinder blocks covered with large, colorful tapestries.

“Looks real from the outside, doesn’t it?” the man said.

Kasey felt a hint of déjà vu. It disappeared quickly.

“We need some water, and I don’t guess you have any antibiotics,” she said.

“Funny you should ask,” the man said. “But come this way. Unless you want to look for surfboards and vintage clothes. We’ve got shoes too.” With that, he looked at Blair. “Buy one pair, get the second one half off. It’s the deal of the day. Or week. Come to think of it, I believe that particular deal was always available to my customers.”

Kasey registered the English accent. She had lived in this town all her life, had walked this street hundreds of times but had never come in here. It smelled a bit like mothballs. Her grandmother’s house in Queens had the same slightly sweet smell radiating from her bedroom closet. The man led them through yet another door into a dark room. He turned the light switch and closed the door. A heavy-duty steel bar reinforced this door as well.

“Bring the patient back here,” he said.

This room was twice the size of the store. The left side was basically a woodworking shop. There was a band saw, a large table saw, several work benches and wooden boards of all sizes leaning against the back. The wall on the right side of the room was covered in shelves. There were thousands of books, not only lined up on the shelves but also stacked on the floor, piled on top of each other. A few chairs stood randomly amidst the chaos. The wall adjacent to the door held another set of shelves. Those had everything on them from several dozen one-gallon water bottles to canned beans, toothpaste, boxes of oatmeal and large containers of spices and tea.

“What the heck,” Aarika said while holding an oversized can of tuna.

“You better ask before you take anything,” Blair said.

The back corner held a small half bath and another shelf. This one was filled with first-aid products. Everything from gauze to peroxide to antibiotic cream.

“Sit and let me take a look at you,” the man said. “The rest of you, take whatever you need. Eat, drink, use the restroom. We’ve got fifteen minutes. And then we’ve got another hour, roughly.” He looked at Kasey when he said it and at that moment she recognized him.

“You’re the man who gave me the amulet.”

It became quiet in the room. Aarika, on his way to the shelf of food, stopped and turned around. Everyone looked at the man who had taken a few items from the first-aid shelf and was spreading them out on a large book that lay on top of a stack of other books.

“Yes, I did.”

“I don’t understand,” Kasey said.

“Let me take care of this young man first, and then I’ll explain everything to you. Well, probably not everything but some of it at least.”

“I can help Jack,” Jennifer said. “I’m a doctor.”

He looked at her as if sizing her up for a second, then nodded.

“Why don’t you all take a seat.”

“I’d rather stand,” Kasey said. “But I’d really like to know what’s going on.”

She couldn’t decide if his eyes were gray or blue, but they showed the wisdom of his years and revealed a deeper understanding of things, a sorrow that resonated with her. She was sure he’d seen his share of hardship. It looked as if his hair hadn’t been touched by water or soap in a while. His face was weathered and his back bent slightly forward as if he had stood too long crouched over his work.

“It’ll probably take them another ten minutes to gather before they’ll attack the outer door with everything they’ve got. By now they must be in possession of some military vehicles. An M2 can do some damage. Those are two inch steel reinforced doors but they have their limits.”

Blair was leaning against one of the stacks of books and Aarika had sat down in a chair and was unwrapping a power bar.
How fast we can accept as normal something that would have been impossible to comprehend only a few days ago,
Kasey thought.

“Then it’ll take another half hour for the second door before they’ll be in here.”

“Is there another way out?” Jennifer asked. She was cleaning Jack’s face and swollen eye with a wipe.

“No. Yes. And no. Both answers apply, depending on where you are.”

He looked as if he had just made a joke and now waited for a reaction from his audience. When his eyes found Kasey’s, his face changed. It became softer. It was as if he knew that what he was about to say should be said in kindness.

“I gave you the amulet,” he continued. “It was necessary. Trust me, I would not have brought this into your life if it wasn’t of the utmost importance. And you have yet to accept it as yours. NechhRuhd has not been forged in this world. In fact, it has not even been forged yet, if you look at time as linear.”

Everyone was quiet. Then Aarika coughed.

“Sorry, wrong pipe.” He coughed again. “I didn’t get that last part. Could you repeat it?”

“NechhRuhd. That is its name. Now, you gotta understand that in the place it was made, forged, where it was brought into existence, nothing is named unless its power has been recognized.”

The man cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said. He pulled a flask from one of his pockets and drank from it. He handed it to Blair. “You look like you could use one.”

Blair took a sip. He started to cough. His face took on a dark red tone. “What is that shit?”

“I made it myself,” the man replied. “Do you have any questions?”

“You can’t be serious,” Blair said. He was still coughing. “Of course we have questions. The first of which would be who the hell are you? I mean, don’t get me wrong. Your timing was impeccable but…”

The man silenced him with a gesture.

“My name is Douglas McNamara. Kasey, I apologize. Again. For what I have done and for what I am about to do to you.”

Jennifer looked up. She had been bandaging Jack’s wrists with gauze. Now she looked like she was readying herself.

“When I gave you NechhRuhd, when I gave you the necklace with the… amulet, I didn’t come from um—”

“Douglas,” Kasey interrupted him. “May I call you Douglas?”

“Yes,” he nodded.

“Please tell me what’s going on. And stop apologizing.”

He let out a sigh.

“You are not just your basic humdrum eighteen-year-old teenager. I didn’t come to you ten years ago because you were the only person on the beach that morning.”

“Okay…” Kasey felt hot all of a sudden.

“I came specifically to you that day.”

The heat rose from her stomach through her chest and into her face.

“For God’s sake, spit it out!” Blair said. His eyes were still watery.

“You are a weapon, Kasey. Well, not quite yet but possibly in an hour or so, depending on if you agree to do what I am about to ask you.”

Blair threw his hands in the air. “Could you be more vague?”

“Let him speak!” Aarika said.

“The world as you’ve known it, as we’ve known it, changed yesterday morning. It will never be the same. And not just here. Everywhere. In this country, Texas, L.A., New Hampshire, New Mexico, Florida, Louisiana, the Arctic Circle, overseas, everywhere. Something happened that… set in motion a series of events which caused me to travel back here and give you the NechhRuhd. But the amulet is only one half. You are the other. One without the other has very limited power. But both together can yield a force that might… help us.”

He took another sip from the flask. “But you’re not ready. Nowhere near ready. And in an hour or so, they’ll come through that door. And if what you’ve seen so far has scared you, you will not want to find out what’s next. The blood riders were scouts. The weakest link in a chain of—”

“What do I have to do?” Kasey was surprised at her own question. She didn’t think before she’d asked it. And now she almost regretted saying it out loud.

Douglas took out a handkerchief and wiped sweat from his brow. Then he walked to the center of the room and moved a small Persian rug to the side, revealing the square outline of a trapdoor. Everyone stared at it for a moment.

“I’m assuming that doesn’t lead to your wine cellar,” Aarika said.

“That depends on who you are. Kasey, tell me what you see,” Douglas said.

Kasey took a few steps toward the open trapdoor. She looked over at Jack. He didn’t look as bad as he did when they came in. His face had a little more color and his left eye seemed less swollen.

“Smoke,” she said. “Fog maybe? I can’t see anything. What is it?”

“You with the glasses, what do you see?” Douglas asked.

Aarika got up and peered into the opening.

“A ladder. A cement floor.”

“What?” Kasey asked. “Are you sure?”

“Some kind of a crawlspace,” Blair added.

Douglas gestured for Jennifer and Jack to come over.

“Crawlspace, yes,” Jennifer said.

Jack nodded.

“Neither of you sees the fog,” Kasey stated.

They shook their heads no.

“This down there,” Douglas said, “or up there, however you wanna look at it, is a place where time is thinner than usual. Space folds into itself. It’s a door. A gateway.”

“To what?” Kasey asked. Jack, who stood next to her, took her hand. She took comfort in his touch and she felt the urge to tell him how much she had missed him and that she was glad they were together now.

“The amulet without the carrier is worthless,” Douglas continued. “But the carrier has to able to wield the power that both together brings forth. In order for you to help us, you need training.”

“Training? What kind of training?”

“You’ll have to go through extensive physical training. And I mean extensive. You’ll have to be able to withstand pain. Heat. Cold. You’ll have to go past your fear. Far past it. You’ll have to learn how to discipline your mind. That’ll be the hardest part. That which you will invite and which you will become will obliterate you if you’re not prepared. It will take over and nothing of you will be left.”

Kasey remembered the encounter in the dark basement from this morning all too well. And when she had tried to free the horses and couldn’t control whatever it was that had come to her.

“And you want me to do all that in an hour?” Kasey asked.

“No. Not an hour. That would be impossible. Three years.”

“What?” Blair exclaimed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“There is an ancient training ground. Not here. Not now. In a distant past. Somewhere else entirely. It’s there solely to train those who can be used, formed, forged if you will, into weapons to fight... to help us fight.”

“Come again?” Blair said after a moment of silence.

“Here, in this room, one hour will pass. But there, three years will have gone by before… before your training is completed and you can come back. To us.”

The heat in Kasey’s chest had turned into a block of fast-freezing ice. She had trouble breathing.

“I’m sorry,” Douglas said. “But the white dragon is vast and powerful and you have to become its equal before it can become you.”

“What’s the white dragon?” Kasey asked.

“The white dragon is the purpose of your journey. To find it. To tame it. And to bring it back.”

There was no sound in the room. Kasey looked into the fog just below the floor.

“Where do I find it?”

Douglas shrugged. “I don’t know. No one does.”

Kasey looked from one to the other. She had trouble wrapping her mind around what Douglas had said. She had so many questions but none of them had to do with what she felt she needed to do.

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

“I’m coming with you,” Jack said.

Douglas smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that. The one who has been touched by love knows pain. But, unfortunately, if you jumped in there you’d most likely break your ankles on the concrete floor.”

“And me?” Kasey asked.

“I don’t know where you’ll land. Or when.”

“How do I get back?”

“There is a way but if I tell you now — which I can’t because I don’t know it — you wouldn’t be able to make any sense out of it.”

“What do I take with me?”

“Nothing. No possessions. No clothes. The amulet is the only thing you can keep. It’ll be your guide.”

A loud bang shook the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. It was a single blow.

“If you are willing to do this, you have to do it now. I don’t know how long it will take them to get through the doors, but if they do and you’re still in there, they can shut the door and seal the entrance and you’ll be stuck in there forever.”

Kasey realized that she had been squeezing Jack’s hand the whole time. He didn’t say anything.

“Okay.”

Douglas nodded. Kasey hugged him. “I’ll see you in an hour,” he said.