Deadfall: Hunters (29 page)

I’m not really going to spend too much time on the entry tonight. It’s been a kind of celebration here, and I’d much rather get back to it.

As can be surmised, were back home. My home. The drive up was uneventful, except for Sarah and Clayton, who had never visited the mountains of North Carolina before. On the Blue Ridge Parkway, I heard the telltale sounds of oohing and aahing. Just a hint of it, but it was still there. It was a clear day, with just a hint of clouds, but since it was still early in the morning, that traditional mist was billowing in the valleys and up the sides of the mountains. Just barely, but enough to impress.

We surprised the heck out of Dawn. She was sitting in the main living area and when we came bouncing in, well, the look on her face was priceless. If I didn’t know any better, I’d thinking she didn’t expect to see us, ever. She had changed things around a bit. There were a few computers set up all over the place. She said she had gotten bored and was trying something. Not that I cared. It wasn’t messy or anything. On her part, Dawn said shed kept busy mostly taking walks in the woods, and reading. Lots and lots of reading.

That sounded great to me.

Now, just because there was a bit of urgency, I went into the control room and logged into the main database. I had a few more search parameters this time around. There were over one hundred different files and digital books that came up. When I looked closely at the time stamps on the database, I saw that the last time they had been pulled up were before Deadfall. Only my father would have done that. There would be plenty of time to go over this, but in the meantime, I plugged a thumbdrive in and copied all of the documents over. That way I could just look at them whenever.

Now, I’m gonna wrap this up. There is plenty that needs to be done, but in the meantime, I am going to fulfill my promise to myself. I am going to whip up some pancakes and destroy them in gallons of syrup. Then, I’m going to sleep.

Hopefully, tonight, I won’t dream.

Brian gave me this journal. I am not him. I cannot write like him.

I feel I must.

I feel lost and I don’t know where to begin.

We arrived at this hideout in the mountains yesterday. I could see the relief in his eyes. He was home. There was a smile, a bounce in his step. We just didn’t know what we had walked into. From what he told me, there was no way of knowing. We walked into a trap, of some sort. We were captured by men dressed in black, like the ones that controlled the zombies back at that walled city. They had been waiting for us, but hadn’t been there long.

It was because of her.

There was a woman Brian had left behind. An older woman, blonde hair. She had been part of their group some time back, but she had remained behind at the hideout. Her name is Dawn. Mild-mannered, almost too quiet. But there was a look in her eyes. Something else.

Brian let me know while we were locked up that something about her had changed. She had reached out to these men and invited them to the hideout. They were looking for something in the computer systems but had triggered some kind of internal security measure that even Brian wasn’t aware of. It appears that Brian’s father was aware of these individuals. When they went digging in the system, everything locked down. That is why they had setup computers all over the living room. They were trying to gain access to the main database. From the beating Brian took, I don’t think they had managed to get in.

They were angry about this and had been waiting for Brian to return. He took the brunt of their anger. Last night, while we slept, she let them in. We never had a chance.

That Dawn lady had us all gathered up in the living room, tied up, of course. The black-uniformed men seemed to follow her orders. I overheard Tague talking with Aaron, wondering if she had been part of them the whole time. According to Dawn, she hadn’t.

She told us about how she had stayed behind. She went on walks in the forest and claimed to have come upon a clearing and seen some rabbits. Then she claimed she started hearing voices. Now, she tried to make it very clear that it wasn’t like a crazy person. They were clear voices. I guess that’s exactly what a crazy person would say. She tried to explain it to us, that she could hear the voices, and that it was something great and glorious. She mentioned names, supposedly, of these voices she heard. They told her to do things, to call them out. And so she had.

They beat him up good, then asked him to unlock everything, which he couldn’t because he didn’t know how to. Then they beat him up again. Tague offered to help and then he got a beating. The whole time, they had Blevin tied up and drugged with something, or he would have been rampaging. Thankfully, they didn’t touch us women. It was good too, because Lucy was having a really hard go at her pregnancy. I’d only just met her and I already liked her a lot.

They left us alone for a while, I think to try to figure out what to do about the lockdown. I took that time to tend to Brian. He was a mess. His face was mangled, his left eye was swollen shut and he had several broken teeth, possibly his jaw. His chest was covered in deep bruises by now and he probably had several broken ribs. Somehow, through all that, he managed to joke about how this wasn’t that great of a homecoming.

They came back a while later with a new plan. The lady, Dawn, said she was going to introduce him, Brian, to the voices. So they injected him with that dust stuff in a liquid form. They then dragged him out to the kitchen where all the computers were. I watched from the back of the room as this Dawn lady kept pacing around him, leaning in and whispering things into his ears. There was no way for me to see what she was saying. All I could see were his glazed-over eyes and his head lolling back and forth. A mix of drool and blood ran out the side of his mouth. I couldn’t hear if he was saying anything back or not. They kept trying to push him in front of the computers, but he couldn’t do anything.

I’m not sure how long he was going to make it.

He won’t be able to tell me, but I’m not sure if they never captured him to begin with or if he just slipped out of the hideout at some point. An alarm blared out throughout the compound and the black clothed men jumped up in shock. Chris, the teenager, came through the side hall shooting a rifle, shouting, “Go!” Several doors had opened up behind us. They looked like secret doors, as cheesy as that sounds. The wall had just slid away, and there were two hallways there now. Aaron grabbed Lucy and along with Evan they darted through one of the doors. The four of us that remained had to drag Blevin through the door on the left. Luckily for us, he was already sitting next to it. As soon as we were behind the doors, I could see that it was just one big hallway and that both the doors opened up to it. I saw Evan hitting something on the wall. I’m not sure, but no one was shooting at us. Chris was keeping them busy.

I peeked out from behind the doorway. The teenager was behind a couch, but the bullets were hitting his makeshift shield left and right. The doors began to slide down as I saw the men in black rushing toward the exit, dragging Brian with them. There were many of them dead or dying on the floor, but the boy was running out of time. I shouted at him, telling him to hurry up. But when he looked at me, I knew he wasn’t coming. The men opened up fire on him again and I saw his small body slump as the door slid shut.

Brian had given me his journal earlier when I was tending to him. He smiled as he told me he had copied some things onto a drive the night before. He had given me these items, and told me to keep them safe.

Tague told us to go down that hallway. At the very end, we would come to a giant hole in the mountain. We found it, and followed it for miles down into the ground, until we came out at the bottom of the mountains, in a valley. The other four had remained behind. They said they needed to get some things and then they would meet us there as well. There were some buildings where we exited the mountain, and we took up in one of them.

It was a whirlwind of a day. I still don’t know what happened. This place was supposed to have answers for Brian, and now he is gone.

Tague and Evan showed up a few hours later, towing several large bags behind them. Blevin was finally starting to come out of his drug coma and he was pissed. Evan tossed the bags down and unzipped them, showing me what was inside: guns. Lots of guns.

He said that Brian saved them once and it was time to repay the favor.

We had to find Brian and bring him back.

Brian was looking for answers, but I think
he
is the answer.

Evan said it’s time for a hunt. I agree.