Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (30 page)

W
ren listened
to the two kids, listened with a sense that none of this could be true—that none of it could be happening. The entire time Michael and Julie talked, his back pocket burned like a lit coal sat in it—and though it was a cold, steel flask, the want was the same: to pull it out. The strange words these kids spoke brought it on, the almost foreign nature to each one of them, as if they weren't really speaking English. Perhaps that wasn't right though, because the individual words made sense, it was the combination of putting them into sentences that lost Wren. The sentences were a different language, because none of it was possible.

Wren looked over at Glenn throughout their explanation. His eyes were filled with tears the entire time, but they never fell onto his face. Wren didn't know how he felt outside of those tears, he didn't speak much, but only listened, and Wren couldn't imagine how Michael and Julie's story affected him. His son was possessed by some kind of alien? That was the truth here, the reason the man showed up at Wren's trailer to kill him?

His back pocket was so goddamn warm as these thoughts snaked through his mind.

"Where are they?" Glenn asked after a few seconds of silence. The one-way conversation had ended a half minute ago, with everyone sitting in silence after, until Glenn spoke.

"Bryan and Thera?" Michael asked.

"Yes," Glenn said, his voice low, almost a whisper.

"I don't know. I don't think anyone knows, which is why this whole thing is happening."

Wren stared at Glenn, thinking that Michael's answer wasn't satisfying him in the least, that he was barely keeping from screaming at the two of them, demanding that they tell him where his child was.

Wren was just happy he had gone back to the trailer. He didn't know where else to go, but he thought there might be a chance Michael had returned. No phone calls from his son, no attempts to make contact, and the only other thing they held as a real connection was their home. So he went back, without much conversation from Glenn on the matter, and found his son. He hadn't hugged Michael like that in years, maybe ever, but he hadn't been able to help himself. Neither of them had said a word about it since, and neither of them dared touch the other either.

"What do you want to do?" Michael said, looking at Glenn, and that wasn't lost on Wren. Much of the conversation had been focused on Glenn, from both of the kids, with only cursory glances given to Wren from time to time.

"I don't know," Glenn answered, leaning back in the passenger seat and tilting his head up to the ceiling.

Emotions flooded Wren; he couldn't sit here and say that the ease with which everyone discarded him didn't have an affect. He had been the one to get them this far, the one to plan every move up until now, and yet all eyes fell on Glenn, the man that Wren had rescued from his house, sobbing and unable to pull himself together. What was he going to do, though? Scream at the people in his truck, demand that they take him as seriously as they were Glenn?

The sad fact, whether Wren had wanted to acknowledge it for the past ten years, was that his reputation had slowly deteriorated until there was nothing but a skeleton remaining. He couldn't fix that, not here in this truck, not right now. So he had moved heaven and earth to find Michael, and Michael looked at another man—another son's father—instead of Wren.

The life you made
, Linda said.
The life you wanted.

She didn't sound mocking, but sad. Wren felt the emotions in him brimming to the surface, ready to spill out across this truck the way a tsunami would. He had to do something, anything to take his mind off these thoughts.

"The motel is empty?" Wren asked.

"It was when we left."

"Do you think they're looking for you?"

"I would imagine so; those people don't seem like they enjoy losing someone."

"Do you want to go back?" Wren asked, looking over to Glenn.

"Go back to where they just ran from?" he asked, his head lifting from the headrest and his eyes widening.

"I'm not saying we need to check in at a room, but if we saw what was going on there, it might give us…more pieces of data to make our decisions from."

"Pieces of data…" Glenn said.

"Do you have another idea?" Wren asked. "Do any of you?"

"I don't want to go back there," Julie said. "I don't want to go anywhere near that place."

Wren looked at Michael. "You?"

"I'm not sure what you think we'll get from going there."

Wren didn't say anything for a few seconds. "I'm not sure either, but I know that we're not going to get anywhere sitting here. Driving by isn't going to get us caught. People drive by the thing all day."

"We won't stop?" Julie asked.

"No. I just want to look at the place."

"Fuck it," Glenn said. "Let's go take a look."

W
ren sat
in the back of the room. There were people to his left and right, because apparently he had picked the most popular Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the entire world.

Wren was drunk.

He was always drunk now. Work. Home. Driving in between. He did his best to stay drunk, and so far he was succeeding beyond all measure.

Wren came to this meeting because he could see rock bottom. He wasn't there yet, maybe thirty feet from it, but he could see the end of this fall with perfect clarity. The only thing keeping him from finally landing against those jagged stones was his job, but that would probably fall apart within a few days. One couldn't be drunk at work, that was kind of a necessity, but Wren couldn't help himself anymore. He wasn't able to wake up and make it to his car without a pretty strong screwdriver.

What was the saying?

Go to a meeting, stop drinking, get a sponsor?

So here he was, at a meeting, and listening to people talk. The solution was the higher power, that's what they said. He had showed up to this thing three times and been drunk the other two as well. It was the higher power, that's what everyone placed their success on. And there was some success. Wren couldn't sit here, booze on his breath or not, and try to say that years of sobriety wasn't success.

The higher power though.

That's what got to him. What made him sit in the back of this room with thirty other people around him, and not say a word. Wren had done a lot of thinking about this higher power business over the past three or four years. He had come to two conclusions, but they were more like forks in the road. Either you believed one or the other, but both couldn't exist simultaneously.

Either God didn't exist, or God was evil.

If God existed, then holding him to the same moral standards that he held humanity to certainly revealed him as the most evil entity to ever live. However, there was a pretty strong case that God simply didn't exist. That this higher power nonsense which went on and on ad nauseum in these rooms was simply people talking out of their asses. Wren wrestled with which one of these two paths he wanted to move down. Currently, really for the past year, he stood at the fork, looking down both sides, and trying to figure which one he would take.

Neither of the paths coexisted with the talk inside this room, though, and he couldn't make himself fall into line with these people's beliefs. If God existed, then He took Linda. Wren wouldn't go so far as to say that God put this disease, this goddamn alcoholism, on him—but Linda? Yeah, God needed to own that. So fuck Him. And if he didn't exist, if there wasn't any God to take Linda and it had simply been cells proliferating due to what added up to bad luck, then fuck this place.

So why was he back here?

"Thank you for letting me share," someone said. Wren was staring at him, but hadn't heard a word.

"Thanks," Wren said, mimicking everyone around him, except forgetting the man's name.

Why was he here?

He didn't realize the words were coming out of his mouth until it was too late. He hadn't spoken a word besides the necessary thanks and chants, yet here he was listening to his mouth say, "I'm Wren and I'm an alcoholic."

"Hi, Wren," the room said in unison.

He looked at them and wondered if his eyes were red. He wondered if they knew he was drunk and if they had known he was drunk the entire time. The room ceased to be full of individual people, but of a single entity, one that Believed. The entity was inside that Belief and he was outside of it.

"I'm drunk," he said and then waited. No one said a word, just silence across the room. "My wife died. She's dead." He looked down at his feet. He didn't know where he was going, didn't even know why he was speaking. Wren shook his head. "I…" His words failed him and tears came to his eyes. They couldn't understand. He couldn't make them understand during two minutes. "Thanks."

Wren stood up and walked out of the room.

He never went back to that room, or any others where people discussed a higher power.

A
ndrew stepped
from the back seat of the vehicle.

He didn't wait on Will or Rigley to get out of the front. He heard the gunshots and couldn't help himself. Every few seconds something exploded in the woods before him.

He unholstered his weapon, holding it so that the barrel faced down and his finger wrapped lightly around the trigger.

Andrew had been listening to Will and Rigley argue for the past five minutes as they drove here. He didn't know what was wrong with her, though something clearly was. Everyone felt the stress from this operation, hell, Lane was lying dead back in that motel room—but this woman was coming undone. Will wasn't. Andrew didn't know about himself yet, but if so, he felt pretty sure he wasn't letting it be known like Rigley.

If Will heard the gunshots, he hadn't given any sign. He was still in the car, arguing.

Andrew knew he shouldn't be hearing any of this. Everyone here, besides the thing they were hunting, played for the same team. All of them should be looking for a single being, or at most, two—the girl and the boy. What Andrew heard out in those woods wasn't one team. It might be two, but it could just as well be every man for himself out there.

"It's spreading," he said quietly, not knowing if the two in the car could hear him through his open door. All of those guns weren't firing at two entities, not at such sporadic rates. If there was one thing out there, all guns would be pointed at it and all bullets firing rapidly.

"Will," he said, his voice lifting. "Listen."

Andrew heard the conversation inside the car stop.

"Christ," Will said.

"What do you want to do?"

Will's car door opened but Andrew didn't look over at it. He didn't take his eyes from the woods in front of him.

"What the fuck do you think I want to do? We're going in. Stay here, Rigley."

Andrew heard him address the woman, knowing that some line had just been crossed with those words. Rigley was his boss, was everyone's boss in this whole place and one didn't address her like that.

Rigley's door opened anyway, and she got out, standing next to Andrew. Will walked around the front of the vehicle, putting his phone to his ear.

"Have you gotten ahold of anyone?" Will said into the phone. "What do you mean no one's answering?" After a few more seconds, he hung the phone up. "We're going in blind. Are you sure you want to go in there, Rigley?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Alright then. Here we go."

Andrew started walking right behind Will. He waited until he reached the edge of the woods before he brought his weapon to eye level.

T
hera had thought
their mind was empty. She had thought that Morena was gone, was out in the woods with the other bodies she now possessed, but that only showed how little Thera understood about the happenings around her.

She had wandered out into the blackness, thinking that she might be able to do something while Morena was gone. Might be able to make some kind of change that would give her power, that could save her and Bryan. She couldn't feel Morena, just as she hadn't been able to feel her when they were in that other, gray place. Now though, Thera knew with complete certainty, that Morena was always here. That Morena never left, not completely, that whatever powers she possessed stretched for eternity.

Thera still didn't understand how she saw what was in front of her; perhaps it was her mind's way of relating the information around her. It didn't matter though, not really —Thera couldn't change it if she wanted. She saw what she saw, and to her, it was the only reality she knew anymore.

She saw Morena, for the first time.

Beautiful
, she thought, the word stretching out like a lone piano key in an empty room. The thing before her—and no one could ever confuse what stood before Thera with a human—was glorious, magnificent. Thera had seen pictures, scenes that were supposedly the greatest feats of achievement humanity ever accomplished: The Great Wall, moon landings, Hong Kong at night, the Pyramids. She had viewed pictures of The Great Barrier Reef, the Sahara Desert, the jungles of South America. Everything that was supposed to prove how glorious creation, both divine and human, could be.

All of those were the playthings of children when one looked at the being in front of Thera.

Thera wanted to turn around, not to run, but to scream for Bryan. She wanted him to come up here and see this, to view something so heavenly that it felt wrong to think anything negative about such a creature. Someone needed to see this, to bear witness. Thera couldn't though; she couldn't call for Bryan. Only she was able to witness this, and if she pulled back from what she saw, giving herself a bit of mental space for just a moment, she hoped no one else would ever see it. She hoped that she could do something here to kill it. To keep Morena from ever venturing out of this mind to the real world.

Morena somehow still controlled everything from this consciousness, but most of her power was out in the woods. She hadn't left this place, not fully, but she was closer to a meditative state than anything resembling awake.

Thera had to do something here, do something now.

Could she kill her? Could she attack the creature in front of her and somehow overpower her?

No. The answer came to her like the bullets exploding outside of this small cave, sure and allowing no dissent. She couldn't kill this thing. Nothing could. Not all the weapons on Earth and certainly not an eighteen-year old girl.

She turned back around, looking into the darkness behind, back to the hole that Bryan rested in, the hole Thera had come from. She couldn't return to it. If she went back there, she wouldn't ever make it out again. When Morena returned, regardless of the kindness she showed bringing their parents back, she was going to kill them. Whatever was happening here, outside of the pit, was happening for a reason. Morena wanted something here and when she had it, Thera and Bryan would be useless to her.

She couldn't kill this beautiful creature, but she had to try.

Thera started walking forward, her hands shaking. One foot in front of the other, trying not to hear the deafening silence all around. She saw Morena's back, the beautiful green swirling around her like some kind of magical dress. Morena faced a multitude of controls, just projections that Thera's mind put here to show how Morena could do what she did, though the truth of the matter probably rested in whatever she injected into Thera and its control over her synapses.

Morena's hands were off the controls now, at her side while she dealt with those outside of this consciousness.

Thera didn't want to do this. She didn't want to try, but there were no more choices. The last choice she made was to enter Bryan's house. This goddess had ordained everything since. And if Thera thought about it like that, then Thera should be doing exactly this. Trying to kill the goddess.

Standing five feet from her, Thera had to squint, such was the bright beauty before her. Before she took that final step, Thera felt completely sure that something out there had to love the human race, had to love everything it created, because the thing she saw was so beautiful.