Those That Wake (11 page)

"You say you need me and only me," Mike explained. "You say this is all about why things suck. Fine. Let's go."

"Let's," Remak said.

Lights were on in the school halls. They stayed on all night, every weekday, weekend, holiday, and snow day. Even during the summer recess, lights stayed on in these halls. It gave the impression of occupancy, supposedly making potential burglars and vandals—and there were many of these, quite a few among the student body itself—less anxious to ply their so-called trades.

However, for much the same reason, the doors were locked. This didn't stop Remak, though. His cell somehow possessed the cellock codes, and he ushered Mike quietly in.

Mike didn't care for the way the school felt just now. It was never his favorite place, never filled him with optimism or pride, but now, with lights on but the halls empty, it vibrated with the disembodied bad will of all who had treaded its tiled floors, infected by their apathy.

The door to the basement was also locked, but Remak's cell had the code for that, too. When Remak pulled the handle, though, it came off in his hand. He turned to Mike as though he might have some explanation, which in fact he did.

"This place is crap."

Remak nodded, having gotten more or less the reply he expected. He put the knob on the floor and pushed the door open. They stepped through, flicking on the inadequate lighting, which served to do little more than highlight exactly how dark the basement actually was. Remak did not lock this door behind him, but he did step in front of Mike. That relieved Mike, because this was Remak's show and Mike would just as soon let this assclown take whatever spray of machine-gun lead, lash of hellfire, or blast of death ray they doubtless had coming. But it also annoyed Mike, because what was he, a little girl? This was his school's goddamned basement after all.

They walked down the dark, humid hall, stepped over the upturned box of books, and stopped short of the maintenance closet, directly in front of the rectangle of blank wall in question.

"Right here," Mike said, indicating nothing with a pointed finger. Remak looked at it and then back at him. "I came down, and there was a door. Gray with a shiny metal handle. It was a little bit open, so I pushed it. Like I told you on the way here, what was behind it I have no explanation for. Why it's not here, the same."

Remak was nodding and pressing his hand to the wall.

"Well," he said, stepping back and shrugging. "Try opening it again."

"Opening what?"

"Imagine there's a door there and try to open it."

Mike breathed out and shook his head, but stepped over, envisioned a door,
the
door actually, and—feeling very silly about it—mimed reaching out, turning a door handle, and pushing a door inward.

Naturally, nothing happened. Slit-eyed with annoyance, Mike turned to Remak and, over Remak's shoulder, saw with a start that the other end of the basement hall was filled with figures. They were silhouettes only, backlit by the dull light.

"Jesus freaking Christ," Mike said.

Not hesitating for an instant, Remak spun and saw the figures. He grabbed Mike's arm and pulled him back the way they had come. They turned the corner, and coming down the hallway toward them were more figures, clogging the passage.

Remak's hand went into his jacket and came out with a gun. The figures behind them were advancing now, too. Mike could make them out as they passed beneath a pale yellow pool of light. They were students, every one of them. But they were virtually silent, and they walked with a calm and a sense of community that none of these kids had ever experienced in their lives.

Remak also saw that they were students and pulled his gun away just as the figures were upon them. Remak put the first down with a chop to the neck and the second with a stomach strike. Behind him, Mike grunted and flailed. The figures made no noise at all.

One caught Remak across the jaw; another grabbed an arm. His useless gun hit the floor. He threw one off and put stiff fingers into a solar plexus, then one had him by the head and others were going for his legs. He cracked one across the nose, chopped another's arm away as it reached for him.

Mike shouted, groaned, then stopped making any noise at all. The figures kept coming, washing over them like a silent, irresistible tidal wave, until Remak and Mike were swept away by darkness and into oblivion.

MAL OPENED HIS EYES
and the first thing he saw was the last thing he was expecting: a tree. The limb, dry and lifeless, hung over him in the foreground of a flat, pale sky. He raised himself on his elbows and found himself merely one of an array of bodies littering the ground. Only one other person was awake, sitting with his hands planted on the ground, ready to push himself up, but still blinking the daze out of his eyes.

He was smaller than Mal, but compact, wiry-quick and whipcord strong, and beneath wire-rimmed glasses, his sharp eyes began collecting every detail. Just the sort of opponent Mal hated fighting. The man was wearing slacks and a sports jacket, torn in places.

"Remak," the man said to him. "Jon Remak."

"Mal." His voice came out rough, and he felt the tightness in his throat where the thing had grabbed him ... i f that had really happened and was not the figment of some nightmare imagination.

Remak extracted a cell from his pocket, examined it, and almost immediately put it away. Mal searched for his own and was surprised to find it. He was not surprised, though, to see the words "no signal" scrolling joylessly across the screen.

"Mal," Remak said, "do you know any of these other people?"

There were four others in a small enclosure of trees so thick on three sides as to be impenetrable. The trees opened up on one side to a cliff edge, and down beyond that, a flat granite plane, cracked and unwelcoming, spanning a long way across to another mountain, granite-gray, short, and squat.

The sky looked more like a ceiling, low and without depth or color, just a blank wash of dirty white. The trees around them gave a sense of greens and browns, but they were vague, muted, as if they had been put through the wash too many times. Even the short, prickling grass Mal was sitting on, growing out of hard, packed earth, felt stiff and brittle, more like twigs than plants. There was a disturbing stillness here. No breeze trickled through the dead branches or blades. There wasn't a single sound of life here, either—no birds, no crickets—just his own breathing and the rustle of Remak coming to his feet. The entire place communicated a sense of being used up, and filled him with unease.

"I know him." Mal nodded at Brath, who was prostrate some five feet away. "And I've seen her." He pointed at Isabel as he came unsteadily to his own feet. "You?"

"Him," Remak said, indicating another figure. The still form was an adult, big and a little overweight. But as they turned their attention to him, Mal saw that he was not actually still at all. He looked as though, alone and unconscious, he was under attack.

He looked, in fact, as if his brain were being eaten by a dream. His eyeballs flicked madly back and forth beneath his lids, and his jaw worked and clenched as something seemingly alien in his head appeared to tear into his gray matter, feasting through the channels and on the electrical flashes of his synapses, threatening to gorge itself on his mind. The big body was becoming smaller, tightening into a fetal ball.

"What's wrong with him?" Mal said. "Is he having a seizure?"

"I don't think so," Remak replied.

Their voices appeared to have an effect. The mind within the struggling body seemed to grab hold of the voices and use it to pull himself free of the sucking maw inside his head. With a heavy, leaden resistance, the man's eyes opened.

Remak let the madness leave the man's eyes. Once he shook his head and sat up, Remak addressed him.

"Mr. Boothe," he said, his hyper-focused eyes studying the man through thin glasses."Are you all right?"

"Screw you, Remak. What the hell have you gotten us into?"

Remak looked at Mal, eyes half-hooded. He turned around and walked away.

The guy roused himself as if he were coming out of a bad hangover, rubbing his temples and working his jaw. He touched places on his body gently, and Mal recognized the aftereffects of a fight.

"Stay down until you're sure everything works okay," he advised the man, who scowled up at him as if he had had enough punk kids spouting off at him in his life.

Mal watched him find his cell and, as soon as he saw there was no signal, cram it back into his pocket and look around at where he was.

Mal looked about at the others still on the ground. Brath, his dangerous face odd to see in repose, wasn't stirring yet, but Mal could see he was breathing. There were two others, both girls and both roughly Mal's own age. Isabel had dark hair and a deep olive complexion, and even asleep, her face looked hard and defiant. He could see part of a tattoo creeping up her hip where her shirt was pulled up. The last one looked softer, as if there was some kind of peace for her in sleep. Her hair was jet black and in a ponytail that flopped out from under an old Mets cap. She was in jeans and a sweater, rumpled but clean, comfortably worn and not inexpensive. Mal's eyes were fixed on her, and even when he heard a soft moan from Isabel, Mal had a hard time pulling them away.

"She's waking up," Mal said, pointing at Isabel, whose eyes were beginning to flutter. Remak, returning from his investigation, came over.

"Take it slow," Remak said to her as her eyes opened. "My name is Jon Remak. We're trying to figure out where we are."

She came up on her elbows, made a face at Mal, and took in the world around her. Even confronted with this bizarre place, her eyes were more angry at the strange trees than scared of them.

"You were better off asleep, right?" the big guy said as her eyes passed him.

She pulled out her cell, checked it, and scowled.

Inside two or three minutes, Brath roused and Mal helped him to his feet. He stood up and started flexing his arms and legs, exchanging names with Remak.

Finally, the other girl woke with a start. Mal kept checking on her and so was the first to offer her a hand. She steadied herself against a tree and looked around, clearly confused and scared, but somehow managed to summon a soft smile for him. For some people, smiles were instinctive. Mal knew it but had a hard time believing it until now. Her eyes were vivid blue, almost like strobes, definitely the brightest thing in this place. Even now, they made her face, heavy with worry and confusion, somehow bright and hopeful.

"Whoa," the big guy said, pointing at Brath, who had pulled his gun from under the leather jacket and was checking the clip. He took his time to make sure it was done right before he snapped it home and looked up at the others looking at him. From the stoic expression on his face, there was no explanation forthcoming and no sense that he owed one.

"Is it fully loaded?" Remak asked after an instant of uncertain silence.

"No. Five rounds. Clip holds six, but I think I got one off, before"—Brath waved his hand at the place around them—"all this."

"That's hard to figure," Remak said.

"Yeah," Brath agreed. "Just our good luck."

"I'm not sure. I had a gun, too, but I don't have it now." The two looked at each other as if something was unsettled between them. "Look"—Remak's face was tight, not liking having to say it—"maybe you should let someone else hold your weapon."

"No chance."

"Why leave you with a gun and not me?"

"I suppose you want to hold it?"

"That's not necessary. Why don't you let your friend Mal hold it?"

"No. Sorry, Mal."

Mal shrugged.

"Who did you fire it at?" It was the other girl, not Isabel but the bright-eyed one, pushing away from the tree she'd been using for support and rubbing her upper arm as if she'd discovered an ache there.

"What?" Brath said.

"Who did you fire the one shot from the gun at before you ended up here? It wasn't Homeland Security agents, was it?"

"Homeland Security? No, nothing like that. No, it was"—he looked at Mal—"big. And fast."

"And strong," Mal said.

"How did you get here?" she asked.

"How did
you
get here?" Brath shot back.

"All right," Laura said. "It looks like none of us knows why or how we're here, but maybe we each know, like, a part of it. Why don't we go around and say who we are, how we got here?"

"Okay," Brath said. "Him first."

"Fine. My name is Jon Remak."

"He works for the CIA," the big guy said.

"No, actually." He didn't even look over. "I don't work for the CIA. I work for a cooperative of interests. They study anomalies in group behavior, incidents of crime, suicide, things like that. I was sent to a school in a neighborhood undergoing a sudden, extreme rise in such incidents. I was trying to get a look at a door, which someone said had appeared but had never been there before."

"A door?" Mal said. The idea of doors made Mal's stomach hollow.

"Yes," Remak said. "Before we could find it again, a group of students attacked us. I mean, dozens of students, working together like a trained army. They worked toward a clear goal and didn't get in each other's way. We lost consciousness. Now I'm here."

"Who was with you?" Isabel asked. "When you said 'us,' I mean."

Remak looked at the big guy, and then so did everyone else.

"I'm not telling you people my name," he said.

"Why not?" Brath asked, his voice even, letting his eyes give the attitude.

"I don't know any of you. I'll tell you how I got here, that's all."

"Why don't you just tell us your first name?" the bright-eyed girl said, and just in asking it, she made it sound reasonable. "I'm Laura."

"Mal," said Mal, feeling an urge to show his support.

"Isabel." The three syllables conveyed an extreme sense of being unimpressed.

"Nikolai Brath." His accent showed on his first name, and he raised his sharp eyebrows at the big guy, who stared back with naked distaste. It was a personal thing now.