The Devil's Dream: Book One (4 page)

He turned the
television on.

Jeffrey blinked three
times in rapid succession, trying to clear whatever was in his eyes
causing him to see things. Five years ago was the last time anyone
had mentioned that name on television. Two years since anyone had put
it in print. So why was Good Morning America showing it? The blinking
didn't help and the words Matthew Brand didn't disappear from the
screen. Jeffrey left his glass on the coffee table and rubbed his
eyes, trying to get rid of what simply couldn't exist in front of
him.

When he brought his
hands down, the words were still there.

He put the three
together.

Matthew
Brand Escapes.

Jeffrey took the glass
from the table and pulled long and hard from it, downing half its
contents in one sip. He set it on his knee, took a few deep breaths,
and then put the glass back to his lips and finished it off.

He hadn't heard a word
of what was being said on the television. His heart boomed and his
lungs trying to catch up with the massive gulps he used to finish
what was supposed to last him all morning.

His phone rang,
somewhere far off in another universe. It rang and rang, and then the
answering machine picked up.

"Answer the phone,
Jeffrey. I know you're there and I know you're seeing this."

Lecia. Matthew Brand's
name on the television and Lecia on the phone.
He
was out, free, after Jeffrey had assumed him the same as dead all
those years ago.

He stood up from the
couch and walked to the phone in the kitchen, Lecia's voice still
yelling at him to pick up, to listen to her for just a second.

"Hello?" He
said, feeling both dazed and slightly buzzed.

"You're watching
this right? Your man is out. Running across the country, apparently.
This is your book, right here, Jeffrey. You don't have to wait until
he's caught to write it."

Jeffrey turned and
looked at the television across his house, different pictures of the
murderer being thrown up on the screen.
This
is your book.
He hadn't drunk his life into a state of
semi-retardation yet. He hadn't trashed his computer upstairs. He
could still write.

"Brand's not
finished," Jeffrey said.

"That's even
better. I mean that in the kindest way I can, but for your writing,
it's a blessing. What do you think? Is this book material?"

He didn't listen to
anything she said. He was inside his own mind, remembering, recalling
what he had written about Brand, what he learned from him. The man
wouldn't stop, not ever. Brand wasn't going to go away. He wouldn't
slip into Mexico and live out the rest of his life quietly, maybe
teaching a college class somewhere. Brand's life, at least the ten
years after his son died, were dedicated to that boy. He hadn't
repented. He wasn't remorseful for the people he killed or the
families he ruined. He was single minded like a shark, except instead
of blood he wanted his son. He had no other purpose for living, no
other reason to be outside of the science-fiction cell they kept him
in. He was out and...where was he heading? Where would he go first?

"Lecia, I have to
get off."

"Wait, wait! What
are you going to do?"

"I have to figure
out where he's heading."

* * *

Jeffrey pulled into the
self-storage unit (Climate Controlled in large orange letters written
across the building), parking his car in front of the garage he had
rented for the past eight years. Everything he'd ever collected on
Matthew Brand was inside it, filed away with a large tarp of plastic
covering his notes in order to keep dust from settling. He hadn't
been here since he locked it all those years ago, hadn't had any
desire to dredge up the glory days. He collected checks and that was
the only reminder he needed about his time spent learning of Matthew
Brand. Coming in here would simply have reminded him of what he once
was and would no longer be.

He stepped from his
car, his buzz full on now from the drink he chugged at the house. It
made him happy, sure, but that wasn't the only reason he felt like
today was the best day he had seen in some time. He felt reborn, like
opening this garage was going to allow him a resurrection, the same
as Christ when someone rolled away that huge boulder from the garage
they kept him in. He
could
find
Matthew Brand; the answers were all filed away inside the storage
unit—meticulously filed. If Brand was on the mission his arrest had
stopped him from completing, which he was, then where he needed to go
would be housed inside here. No one in the world knew the man, knew
what he wanted, better than Jeffrey.

He walked to the garage
door, put the key in, unlocked the deadbolt, and lifted.

The smell of paper and
dust long forgotten flooded out. Air that hadn't moved in years
finally having a bit of freedom, yearning to mix with its family
outside.

Jeffrey walked in,
turning the light on by flicking a switch on the wall. A large, clear
tarp covering boxes that went twenty feed deep, plastic things with
lids on top of them. A few were stacked on top of each other, but he
had tried to keep from doing that too much in case—

Well, in case he needed
to look through some of this stuff.

He placed his hand on
the plastic tarp stretched across everything and pulled, using both
hands to open up the part of his life he'd left so long ago. He
pushed the tarp out into the parking lot, not concerned a bit if it
blew away.

He walked into the
weeds of paper and opened the first box.

"Go home, Dr.
Riley. We'll talk tomorrow," Allison said, putting her cell
phone to her ear.

Tom Riley didn't even
nod. He stood up from his chair and walked from the room without
speaking.

Allison looked over her
shoulder at the clock on the wall. She'd been here seventeen hours
and only used the restroom once. The clock said it was eleven at
night and Riley had been with her almost the entire day. Art calling
her was probably for the best, otherwise he might not have left until
she did.

"Agent Moore,"
she said.

"Hey, how's it
going there?"

"There's a lot we
don't know, Art."

"It's time to tell
the media. Put it out everywhere. We did get a look at where he's
heading though. His wife, her name's Rally Hunter now, received a
call from him at three this afternoon. We tracked down the number, it
was a pay phone in Texas, so it looks like he's heading east. Took
seven hours for the information to find us because we haven't told
anyone what's going on."

Allison leaned back in
her chair.

"His ex-wife?"

"Yeah, apparently
he couldn't keep from calling her. This guy is a confident prick. So
tell your people we're going to hold a press conference tomorrow
morning, let them tell the news outlets, and get his picture out
right now. We've got men out at the ex's house, but you need to make
contact tonight or tomorrow. We have a patrol car outside of her
place now, and she gave us permission to listen to her phone. After
how much she helped last time, she knows the routine."

The man was talking as
if he hadn't just worked all day and night, like he'd either just
ripped a line of cocaine or woken up from a refreshing nap. She
squinted her eyes and nodded. "I'll get the message out to our
people in the media immediately."

"It gets worse,
Allison. He's not running just to run, like we hoped. Hunter said his
exact words were 'I'm going to get our son back.' He's trying to keep
going."

"That's
impossible. It took him ten years to build the place last time. All
of it was confiscated," Allison said.

"It took him nine
years to come up with the science behind it. It took him a year to
build all of that and to kill those cops. I'd bet he didn't forget
the science behind it all."

"Jesus."

"What are the
scientists able to tell you?" He asked.

"Riley's the guy
in charge. Tom Riley. He's explaining how all this stuff works right
now, spent all day talking to me about what they know, what they
don't know, and what he thinks he can find out. He says Brand's brain
should be pretty much completely mapped out, they just have to begin
breaking the data down."

"I don't know how
much time you want to spend in that area. Remember, Brand's not
inside that test tube anymore; he's out here, with us. Let him do the
research and if he finds something fine, otherwise you're not living
in the land of computers, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"There's someone
else you should talk to as well. His name is Jeffrey Dillan. I don't
know if you remember, but he wrote a book on Brand the first time
around. Supposed to be a pretty good journalist, and supposed to be
pretty much an expert on Matthew Brand too. I imagine he's going to
want something in exchange. If it's too high, let me know and we'll
try to put some pressure on him."

"What's his name
again?" Allison asked.

"Jeffrey Dillan."

"Alright. I'll
make contact tomorrow."

"Anything you need
from me?"

"No, I'm good
right now."

"Talk tomorrow
then," Art said.

Allison placed the
phone on her lap. Seventeen hours, maybe twenty-two for Matthew
Brand. How was he holding up? Dr. Riley said that it would be tough
for him during the first couple of days. Bouts of fainting, a lot of
sleeping, maybe some nausea. She hoped he was puking all over
whatever car he'd found. Hoped he fell asleep at the wheel and plowed
off a cliff somewhere. She didn't want to admit it, wouldn't say it
out loud, but wondered if she should be here. What Riley told her
today took
hours
for
her to understand. You needed a PhD in something or other to even
begin to spell the words he said.

She had been on
manhunts before, even directed them. This wasn't the first time
someone escaped from prison and planned on doing something bad, so
why did she feel like she was barely keeping the tide from pulling
her head under? Why did she feel like this was bigger than her,
bigger than the doctor, bigger than any bestselling novelist?

He
called his ex-wife. He told her what he was going to do.

Brand could be riding
across the country without anyone knowing where he was, but instead
he let everyone in the world know. If it had been anyone else, she
would have just written it off as stupidity, but she couldn't do that
with this man.

Not even a little bit.

* * *

He didn't mind the
dreams. There had been a lot at the beginning of all this, twenty
years ago when Hilman had actually been murdered. Dreams every night.
The dreams, if he was honest, had been the reason Matthew got down to
business about all of this: the thought that led him on a ten year
chase and then a ten year slumber—he could have his son again. At
night, he had been able to see him. In dreams, he could be with
Hilman all the time. Why couldn't reality be like that?

Once he'd started
working twenty-hour days on this project, the dreams slowed down.
Once a week, then once a month, and the closer he got to
accomplishing what he had set out on, the less he saw Hilman at
night.

Then Matthew got
himself arrested, thrown in handcuffs and thrown in jail. Thrown
away, into the cold cell that both froze him and kept him alive. The
dreams came back then, came on as fresh and hard as ever. It was
good, the beginning of the ten year sleep, because he saw Hilman all
the time. Matthew thought the cold wore on his brain though, the
synapses inside shutting down and the creative piece that generated
dreams slowing just like every other part of his body. The dreams
stopped and he was left alone in that cell. Alone to himself and the
cold that everyone said didn't hurt, couldn't hurt because the humans
kept inside the Silos felt nothing. The cold hurt though, not his
body, but his mind. He breathed it in and everything he knew became
crusted with ice and the pain of tattoo needles.

Matthew lived by
himself in that world of frozen pain for a decade.

So waking up in the
middle of the night now, sweating, having dreamt of both Hillman and
the machine that had imprisoned him wasn't much of an imposition. He
didn't mind it at all.

His heart rate slowed
and he started breathing again, letting out the air he held in his
lungs. He didn't need to look around, didn't need to reorient
himself. He was sleeping in a hotel off the side of I-75, having
almost made it to his destination. He watched the news for a bit when
he arrived, seeing that the manhunt had begun in earnest; they were
going to use everything they could to stop the cop-killer. He watched
for five minutes before turning it off and then climbed into the
first bed he'd seen since the cot he used in jail—the steel springs
dug into his skin every night.

Matthew slept and he
saw his son, heard Hilman ask in a dream when he would see his dad
again. The boy appeared as nine years old, not the young man he had
been when he was gunned down. He could appear anyway he wanted in
Matthew's dreams, they were all his son. Matthew knew the dreams were
only that, not his son reaching out from an afterlife—they were his
inability to give up Hilman. His brain's inability to move on.

Awake now, he stood up
and walked to the window, pulling back the cheap curtain. The moon
still shone out across the nearly empty parking lot. The sun wouldn't
rise for another three hours and then Matthew would figure out how to
get through the last leg of his trip. How long would he wait before
starting? That was the most pressing question. There were reasons
beyond the sun that he was down here in Florida. People he would need
to see soon, but how soon? How quickly would the police figure out
where he was going? Was it too early to strike now?