Welcome to the Dream (A Celeste Cross Book, #1) (16 page)

Chapter 11

Jack West

It was going on nine o'clock
at night. The Yaoguai had been at Gresham City Base for almost four
days now, and they still weren't prepared to move it. Because there
was a problem: every single time they touched the old, dog-eared
King James Bible that the Yaoguai infection had come from, it
crackled with blue energy.

It was clear that the
infection wasn't properly contained, and if it wasn't contained,
they couldn't risk loading it onto a helicopter. The very last
thing Jack wanted was for a Yaoguai to pop out on him
mid-flight.

They had to do something
though. Knight was keen to get their hands on this one and Jack
hated the idea of keeping a live Yaoguai around for too
long.

He was pacing back and forth
in the locker room, arms crossed in front of his chest. He was
trying to think, figure out some kind of solution to this problem,
but it wasn't working. He just wasn't the right man for the job.
Granted, he had a lot of strategic and tactical information on
them, but he needed a science boffin or a library guy to come up
with this solution. Jack had no idea why they couldn't contain the
infection. So all he could do was pace around, waiting for other
people to figure out the solution.

He was never the less on
guard in case something went wrong, because that was a possibility.
With how erratic the containment on the Yaoguai appeared to be,
there was the potential that it could burst forth again, and he
needed to ensure his team were prepared to take it down again if
that occurred.

There were methods for
containing a Yaoguai in its live form, but they never lasted very
long, and Jack was always wary of them. Technically Yaoguais, or at
least the weaker class of them, could not simply walk through walls
and force themselves through solid matter. A human Yaoguai could,
but Jack fortunately didn't have his hands on one of those right
now. He could keep one of the weaker zoological forms contained
behind very, very thick glass for a finite amount of time.
Eventually the Yaoguai would find some way to escape though,
probably bashing repeatedly against the glass until its tail broke
through.

Still, Jack would be far
more comfortable if they could just take the infected relic back to
Knight, and let them deal with it. They had a more measures in
place to study live Yaoguais, and they didn't have a sodding great
civilian population several kilometers to the east.

Just as Jack tried to
convince himself to calm down, even walk over to the basin and
splash water on his face, he heard the last thing he ever wanted to
hear: red alert.

It blared. In a second, the
room around him droned with the sound of the klaxon.

Jack stiffened, he pushed
away from the basin, he twisted on his foot, and he ran to the
door.

Celeste Cross

Celeste had eventually lost
the battle. Her curiosity getting the better of her, she’d gone to
Gresham city. Though she hadn’t been desperate enough to go inside
the church, she had walked past it several times.

Now she was driving home,
the night already dark around her. Her windows down, she let the
cool breeze blow through her hair. A happy smile plastered over her
lips, she was enjoying the drive. A little too much perhaps, as she
suddenly realized she’d taken the wrong turn
again
.

Letting out a beleaguered
sigh, she pulled her car to the side of the road, intending to do a
U-turn, but as the tires grated against the gravel next to the
ditch, she heard something.

It was a strange
noise.

She twisted her head towards
the forest, listening carefully. In another moment, she leant over
and wound down her passenger-side window.

It sounded like cracking, or
something like it. Almost as if a heavy branch or an entire tree
had just fallen down.

Lips gently parted, her brow
pressing down into her eyebrows, she pushed herself towards the
passenger window until she was as close as she could get without
taking her seatbelt off.

Once again, she heard a
cracking sound. It was getting closer.

Though Celeste stiffened
slightly, a quick sensation of fear clutching her gut, she just as
soon tried to ignore the sensation.

It's a forest.
Branches simply fall down.
She tried to convince herself.

She waited there on the
side of the road listening for a while, but soon got bored. She
wasn't about to ferret through her trunk for a torch and then
trudge through the forest in the middle of the night in these shoes
– the noise hadn't been
that
interesting.

She shrugged her shoulders,
finally pulling the car around.

She didn't get
far.

She saw
something.

Celeste jammed her foot onto
the brake, snapping her head hard towards the forest next to her
following the origin of the sound.

She'd seen someone moving,
hadn't she? There was a person out there. Just between the long
branches of the spruce next to her.

Celeste wound her window all
the way down and popped her heat out, staring through the trees,
trying to catch a glimpse of them again. She stopped. Because she
remembered where she was. This was the road that led to the army
base, and all of this land belonged to the army. They were probably
out there doing some kind of army-type training, maybe blowing up
trees with rocket launchers or teaching each other how to become
better lumberjacks.

She quickly darted her
head in, shaking it as she admonished herself for how stupid she'd
been. She wound up her window so fast that the handle
squeaked.
God, I hope they don't think I'm spying on them.
She thought quickly, an uneasy
feeling slithering across her stomach. This was absolutely the last
place she should be, considering a little over two weeks ago she'd
been at the base, not as a guest, but as an unofficial
prisoner.

Before she could pull away,
and hope like hell the soldiers out there hadn't taken down her
number plate, or heaven forbid, taken a photo of her, something
moved on the road before her.

It was incredibly quick, so
fast in fact, that all she saw was a blur. Celeste snapped her
attention towards it, bring her head around, darting her gaze
across the road. But in a second, whatever it was had jumped
towards the opposite section of forest.

Celeste's hands froze on the
wheel. It took five seconds, her heart beating in her ears, until
she could move again. Before she could convince herself to drive
away at least at the speed of light, whatever had jumped into the
forest jumped again. Except this time it jumped right in front of
her car.

Celeste's first instinct was
to scream. She followed that instinct, her voice high, sharp, and
terribly frightened.

Then she heard bullets,
coming from the forest on the left, directed at the creature. They
were fast, loud, and sharp.

She screamed again, covering
her hands over her head, ducking herself down as much as she
could.

After a second, the bullets
stopped, and she heard scrabbling, followed by something that
sounded like a snapped jump. For a good 20 seconds she just stayed
there, frozen, hands locked over her head, until she forced herself
to peer up over the dashboard of the car. There was nothing there.
No soldiers, no creatures, nothing.

She waited, hands trembling,
until slowly she opened the door, undid her seatbelt, and forced
her shaking body to stand.

Am I
hallucinating?
She
thought to herself, as she let a cold, sweat-covered hand run down
her neck and fall flat against her chest.

She couldn't hear any
bullets or scrabbling any more. Neither could she see fantastic
creatures snapping over the road like sand hoppers.

She tried to get a hold on
herself. She forced in a very deep breath, settling her posture
until it was heavy and solid.
You're fine.
She tried to tell herself.
Get back in your car.

Celeste turned, latching a
hand to her open door. She didn't get a chance to sit
down.

Something snapped through
the forest. It was loud and sounded massive. Several branches
cracked and dropped with heavy thumps, rolling from the forest and
lodging in the ditch.

That was the least of her
problems though, because that something landed three meters away
from her.

She stared at it. It
crackled with electric blue energy, the light of it washing around
a nebulous form, pulling up around and twisting above it like
smoke.

She didn't scream. She just
looked at it. For just a moment, it looked at her too.

Then, before she could
scream, it screamed. It began to back off from her, its claws
scrabbling against the bitumen, its moves jerky and quick. It
screamed again, and the sound of it pitched high, the tone arcing
up with distress and fear. It moved with twitches, and it was
obvious it was wracked with fear. Then it turned sharply, and
pelted away from her. Before it could get far, a group of soldiers
burst out from the forest, all shooting at it.

Though she'd frozen on the
spot seconds ago, staring at the creature as it had backed away
from her – she now crumpled close to her door, covering her head
protectively.

The shots roared out, fast and
violent, and she couldn't believe how much they made her ears
ring . . . then they stopped.

Celeste was stuck there, one
hand locked onto the side of the car door, the other crammed over
her head.

She could have been shaking,
she could have been perfectly still, but she just couldn't tell. It
wasn't until someone walked up to her, and a gruff voice told her
she was okay that she finally moved.

Twisting around, breath
short and fast, she stared at the boots of the man before her. They
were army boots, she could tell that even in the reflected light
from her car's headlights.

Slowly she looked up at the
man, past the army fatigues, past the utility belt, past the
assault rifle held in his arms, and then up to the night vision
goggles that he had just tugged off his face.

It was Jack

‘
Celeste?’ he said, voice quick
and tight with surprise.

‘
Jack?’ her mouth opened limply,
her jaw slack.

‘
You're alright.’ he moved his
assault rifle around his hip, obviously trying to hide it from
view.

She looked at it, then past
Jack and back towards the front of her car, back to where the
creature had been.

Her brain was starting to
catch up to what had just happened to her. It had been a Yaoguai,
hadn't it? That crackling blue energy, that form, she'd seen it all
before. She straightened up and forced herself to take a deep
breath

‘
It's okay,’ Jack said as he took
a step towards her, head ducking down as he tried to look up into
her face.

She couldn't look back at
him; she was still staring at the section of road where the Yaoguai
had been.

Get a handle
on yourself.
She thought
quickly.
The
threat is over; Jack's right here.

She brought a hand up,
brushed it through her hair, then rested it on her head, closing
her eyes. When she opened them, she saw that Jack was still, eyes
wide as he obviously tried to assess if she was fine.

After a while, she realized
it was more than that; his eyes were locked open with surprise, not
just concern. Then she looked to her left and saw that the two
soldiers approaching over the road were not looking at Jack – they
were looking right at her. Their movements were slow, steady, but
also poised, pressured even. She couldn't see their faces, as their
helmets were down low, but she could see their lips pressed into
thin lines. They reached Jack, and they all exchanged a
glance.

‘
What's going on?’ she asked.
Though she realized it was a stupid question; she knew exactly what
was going on – a Yaoguai had just appeared and Jack's team had
dealt with it. But what she really wanted to know was what was
going on with them. Why were they all looking at her like
that?

‘
It ran from her,’ one of the
soldiers behind Jack said, his tone low and cautious.

Celeste stiffened up, her
back suddenly cold.

Jack turned to the side,
glancing at the soldier.

‘
I know what I saw,’ the soldier
said. ‘I was right next to her car, and I saw it turn and
run.’

Fear clutched at her spine,
and it was different than the shock she’d had at seeing the
Yaoguai. This was far more intense. She didn't like the way they
were talking about her, their hushed tones, their tense moves,
their looks.

‘
I've never seen one of those
things run from anything before,’ the other soldier
added.