Awakening (45)

It was a long pathway, Billy saw. He ran toward Simon, not knowing if he could really travel with so little sunlight coming through the bars. They may even have to stand on the beds. How was he going to open the jail cell? that was the problem. Once he was in the hallway, the prisoners were surprised to see him still wearing his black clothes. For once, a desperate hope shone in their eyes. "Don't leave us here," some cried while others said, "How is it you're here?"

Billy ignored them until he reached Simon's cell. Others in adjacent cells were poking their hands out, wishing for assistance.

Then, the jail cells began to disappear. Black metal curtains were draping over them downward like a blade. This made most prisoners step away from the bars. The curtains were getting dangerously close to Simon's cell and what was worse they were blocking out the sunlight. Could Billy travel without sunlight? He doubted that.

He didn't wait to find out. He grabbed a hold of Simon's hand through the bar. "This will either work or you'll be left without a hand," Billy warned.

"What are you going to do?" Simon asked, eyeing Billy with surprise.

"Same old, same old."

The curtain came over Simon's cell and it pulled itself downward with a crushing might.

Blink! They were in the library.

Blink! They were inside a jailhouse.

Blink! They were in Billy's school.

Blink! They were back in the library.

Francine stared at Billy. "What just happened?" Billy had transported them to the exact same spot before Francine's counter twice before getting a steady hold on his traveling.
Simon ran at her and gave her a hug. Billy was shaken. He looked around. "I have to get more control over daylight traveling," Billy said. "It's much easier to do than at night."

"You can travel during the day?" Simon asked him.

"Well," Billy said, "Mark could have been clearer as to his intentions. I got caught by the council."

"Wait, wait," Francine said, now un-gripping Simon's hold of her neck, "You can travel during both day and night?"

"You really should talk to Mark, miss," Billy said, "He knows more than he lets on."

Francine frowned. "That man is getting on my very last nerve."

"Well," Billy said, "He won't be here much longer or, rather, I won't be. I only came to leave Simon here."

"Leave me here?"

"I have to go off, adventuring, as you say," Billy said. "I mean, that's what you call it."
"You're forgetting the first rule of Space Dreg, again."

"You're safer here," Billy said, "I can't let you come to this. There's going to be vampires in that dimension and probably not so nice people."

"Let's go," Simon said, "We shouldn't have come here. You're wasting time."

Billy thought about this. He didn't want to take Simon with him and be worried about him all the time but this seemed like a battle he was fated to lose. "We have to rescue him."

"Why?" Francine asked, "Why are you so intent on rescuing that annoying failure?"
"Because," Billy said, "That annoying failure knows everything about traveling that I don't. And I won't be bested by him again."

Simon smiled at this.

"Come, then," Billy said and he threw the dimensional book at Francine. "Keep it. I memorized Mark and my coordinates. I should be able to get back, if we live."

"Simon," Francine said to him. Billy stopped glowing for a second, "I need you to consider what Billy said. This isn't going to be an adventure. It will be dangerous and hard."

"Sounds like fun," Simon said, with a smile.

"He's not the same Simon that went with you," Francine said, "That's for sure."

Billy considered this and said, "He's from this dimension, if that's what you meant."

"I don't think that's what she meant," Simon said.

Billy smiled, walking with Simon out of the library.

Across the street from the library was his old neighborhood, so full of white houses and cars passing by on the main streets. He was even happy to see a local store and people walking out with white bags full of groceries in their hands. Also, Meryl was there coming closer from across the street. She waved at him desperately. Billy smiled and waved back. Then, Billy and Simon vanished.

She saw the darkness behind the walls. Light tried to shine at these but there was some foul magic stopping it from coming in. The streets were illuminated by a witch behind her and her companions. One of them was called Chris, a tall black man wearing camouflage gear. She could barely see him but she could sense him there, as though she were a lion, able to smell the fear in her companions.

It wasn't like she thought. The witch's plan was too simple. They walked the streets.

Los Angeles was a beaten city. Some of the buildings were shattered in half, cut where the construction had begun or cut at the seams leaving pointy edges poking out at pedestrians. She didn't see any of these, though. There was too much darkness for them. The witch wore a red robe and black boots. The robe was cut short at the sleeves. It showed the witch's brown elbows. If she didn't know better, she'd think they were related somehow.

Mark walked behind her, almost at a menacing pace. She couldn't look at his eyes. They were too focused on something. Something she couldn't quite see but that he saw clearly. Was there a dimension where Mark was not supremely talented at something? She doubted that, although in her life she'd never heard of another person with the last name Piersley. Maybe, it was French.

As they walked, glass crunched under their feet. They were near an abandoned junkyard where cars had been crushed for profit. Now, it seemed desolate and empty. All the gates were closed. Ahead of them lay a blocked street. Or rather a street with a large building fallen across it sideways. They would have to climb over the rubble. The smell here was of burned tires but the witch had explained it was something more sinister. For some reason, she refused to remember what it was at this time.

She fought hard to ignore it. Too much was riding on this one event. Yet, with the light that Chris was making above them, everything looked a sickly color green, although still better than complete darkness. She remembered the buildings now, marked with red, tagged in crimson, probably an innocents blood. Some of the letters were purple now from how dried the blood had gotten. "Live Dracula!" The half-buildings proclaimed. "The Master will Return!" Was written on others. Most of these were obviously written by claws, as the letters zig-zagged like static. It was hard to believe at first, that the world was full of vampires.

It had been hard for her to accept the first time, when they took her away in the dark room.

"Steady," the witch said. "Steady."
Mark saw something, that much they knew. The witch was brazing herself for the worst.

Mark was smiling. Smiling! Was he insane?

They stopped walking, then. The crunchy sounds of glass stopped. She heard a noise, distant and zooming. Missiles!

Suddenly, the whole street was white. A tearing blast or explosion caused the side-ways building to explode sending debris and dirt everywhere, blinding them. Red eyes, she saw. Red eyes through the dust.

She was glowing, then. They were safe for the moment. It was their last resort. If the enemy got the drop on them, then she'd have to use her talent and they'd retreat and come back another time.

The problem was, Mark was gone.

Then, she realized the problem. The vampires scattered, she heard. Thousands of click-click-clicks as claws scraped on the walls, looking for an escape. She got so mad that the light burned through the streets, expanding. It left her but stayed alive, as though she could send it at them. When the light was gone, she saw Mark in Teresa's hands. She was crying. A sword was poking through his chest. And Chris was a vampire.

Keya woke. She was sweating. Brenda held her hand. Her unsettling eyes kept her in sight. Keya looked away, not wanting to fall into her spell. "What's wrong?" Brenda asked.

"Bad dream."
"You had a nightmare?" Brenda asked, looking concerned.

"Yes," Keya said, "Why?"

Keya was on a black couch in the middle of the control room, which they used to sleep in when they had the chance. Keya had been so tired that she was given almost a days time to rest but she had had more than one nightmare about how it was going to go. The last one was at least merciful to her. In most of her nightmare scenarios, Keya had died.

Brenda got up and went to the front desk, about fifty feet away. Here she pressed a button which Keya guessed turned on the microphone because she could hear Brenda's voice, "Hey, lovebirds, get over here."

Teresa and Mark showed up promptly. Keya saw that Teresa was wearing the black and red robe from her dream, except this robe was full-sleeved. "It seems, she's been keeping something from you," Brenda said.

"Just bad dreams," Keya said.

"Nightmares," Mark whispered, a hand on his chin.

"She's from a different dimension. They shouldn't affect her like they do us," Teresa said.

"You die in these nightmares?" Mark asked.

"Yes," Keya said, "How did you know that?"
"So they can manipulate dreams, those bastards!" Mark exclaimed. He pushed some papers off the main control desk to Brenda's discontent.

Chris came inside the control room a moment later. Keya almost took a step back but remembered that he wasn't really a vampire. Still, he wore almost the exact same black outfit with bulletproof vest and black boots that he had been wearing in her dream.

Teresa looked like she was about to growl. "What do we do now, then?"

"Nothing we can do," Mark said, "We have to go with the plan. It's a plan, at least."

"What's wrong?" Keya asked, groggily. She grabbed her head, as it was still a little shaky.

"They know part of the plan now, girly."
"Well," Keya said, "Unless we were planning on walking there, they don't know much."

"We were walking?" Mark asked, "What else happened?"

"Well, I don't remember much from the other dreams, except that maybe I died once or twice. But in my last dream, we walked into an area with half-buildings. It was a trap. Missiles hit a building and hid the incoming vampires. Mark died. Teresa was crying. And Chris was a vampire. I think he stabbed you with your own sword."

"Oh," Mark said smiling, "Good old reliable Chris."

"So," Teresa said, "Fifty percent of the dream is true."

"Less," Mark said, "Let's consider that less is true."

"That still leaves us with one dead, either one of us gets turned into a vampire or we're dead. I'm not sure if I want to take the risk now."

"You're scared?" Keya asked, looking up at her teacher with a measure of surprise. She'd never thought that Teresa was scared of anything.

Teresa and Mark exchanged a look.

"Stubborn is more like it," Mark said. "I'll be fine."

"The one without magic is usually the one hurt. You can see how this affects me," Teresa said, looking to Keya.

"A lot of love in the room," Chris said. "But I'm still in, if you guys don't mind. Vampire or dead is fine with me, so long as I get out of this hell-hole. Do you know how tired I am of those damned sloppy joes?"
Keya laughed but Brenda didn't seem to find Chris's attitude all that humorous. She even hmmfed a couple of times.

"If you'll excuse me," Brenda said, walking away from the control room. Chris followed her down the ladder.

"Is everyone here together?" Keya asked, "Because this whole high school in a box thing is getting super-annoying."
"She's just itchy to get her slingshot back," Teresa said. "But no, she's much too dangerous with it. You'll get it back before we leave. Trust me. Now that there seems to be no objections except for me but since I don't seem to count--We leave in the morning. Prepare yourself, Keya."
Teresa stormed out of the room. Mark followed after her quickly. He didn't even bother to look at Keya. Keya frowned. Great. Another day full of bad dreams.

Blink! They were in what looked like the inside of a bank, except there was no tellers. Billy opened a drawer and took out a ten dollar bill. Blink! They were inside a fast food restaurant.

A mother and her three girls were in line, waiting to order. "What's this?" Simon asked. "And did you just steal that from a bank?"
"I'm hungry," Billy said, trying to justify the crime, "Besides, if you're about to save the universe, I'm sure people will not look down on you for choosing to eat some greasy food before you go."

This restaurant encompassed the basic necessities for people to eat. The seats weren't fancy, just plain plastic chairs and the tables were flat and not evenly spaced out. The mother and the girls were ordering everything on the menu, it seemed, although all four of them looked to be as thin as poles.

"Six Premiun Burger Dogs with chili, an order of Fries with the special sauce, a--is that a new toy? Oh, I have to order the cream-puff cheesecake and it comes with it, shhhh, Marlene, okay, we'll take two then, oh and a what? Right four milkshakes, strawberry, vanilla, chocolate and...hmmm, I guess I'll take a chocolate-chip shake with banana. Yes, that's it. No, wait. Do you have onion rings?"

As this happened, a television above the menu was reporting current news. The woman on the television was an international correspondent from Japan, "As you can see, the ocean waves are just disappearing. Well, as of now, sources in Japan say it could be just a natural phenomenon, Phil, but if it keeps happening, well, it may just prove Christopher Columbus wrong, as the world may end up being flat."

The lady was ordering something else. When she saw this....Pause.

"Isn't that something?"

Billy cleared his throat.

"Oh, right, sorry, dear, I guess that's, Alexa! Oh, that's right. A chocolate chip cookie, also, please. And..."
Pause.

"Look, look," the Phil on television said, "A whale just went into the void and vanished. Wasn't that something?"

"Oh, my!"

Billy cleared his throat again.

"Right, right. Of course. No, no that's it."

The mother and girls finally walked away from the counter.

Simon and Billy exchanged annoyed glances with each other.

The girl behind the counter greeted them with a nonchalant attitude but she looked like she was about to refuse their orders.

"What are you two some kind of young rock group?"

This was a remark aimed at Billy's all-black gear and Simon's all-yellow jail suit.

"Just give us four burgers, two fries and two drinks."

"Ohmygod, you're going to eat all that?" The teenager at the counter asked.
"Please," Simon said, "We're hungry and we're tired."
Billy looked out through the revolving doors. Out in the street a swirling purple and black void had formed the size of two-cars side-by-side but round. It ate a car up as it zoomed through the streets.

"For here or--?"

"To go, make that to go!" Billy interrupted of a sudden, catching the attention of the customers nearby.

"Bad day, ey?" the girl asked.

"Just long."
After a few minutes of waiting, while no other customers showed up, the girl finally handed them their food. Before traveling away with food tray and all, the news woman on television began to report, "And in other news...two local youths rob the Lionheart's National Bank for ten dollars. Authorities are still dumbfounded by how they managed to do it. The alarms were set off just after they vanished."

"It's you!" The teenager exclaimed.

"Of course," Billy said, and they vanished.

In the fields of yellow where a lion had once pounced him with his claws on the chest, Billy and Simon sat talking about Space Dreg and how the rules of the game were not the reason for the foundation of their friendship.

"Well," Billy said, taking a burger and biting it, "It's because of Space Dreg that we met the first time but it's because of the free lunches that I stayed your friend."

"It's because of my charm," Simon said, "Even the ladies like it."

Billy laughed.

"These are the best burgers ever," Simon said, eating his second one hungrily. Billy was amazed at how fast he had eaten the first, almost with an animal-like hunger. He even thought he saw something like a fang come out of his mouth. Were Simon's teeth different now? How exactly had the people at the council cured his friend? Sure, he wasn't the same Simon as before but he was still his good friend.

"How was it?" Billy asked, "With the scientist and junk?"

"Weird, actually. Six months passed, you know."

"Really?" Billy asked, surprised, "Not that much time passed for me, trust me."
"I figured that when I saw you were still wearing the same jacket. Have your bruises from the beating we received disappeared."

Billy poked at his stomach and winced. "No, but this new bruise may be from that Fred kid's punch. Not that I'm not a kid but he acts like one more than I do."

Simon raised his burger, "Sure, I see your point."
They laughed.

The sunlight in this world seemed to provide a perfect mood for things. Billy liked the place. He may have to come here again. Maybe, with Keya. At the thought of her, he shook his head, not wanting it to become about her just yet.

"What was the pretty girl telling you?" Simon asked him, as though it were of no consequence.

"Hmm?" Billy asked, mouthful. "Never mind her," he said after a few seconds, "She went on her own adventure."

"I see," Simon said, "So now you know how it feels."

"Not that it was for vengeance," Billy said, "But because of some weird thing she went looking for."
"You mean you?"
Billy shrugged, "Maybe. Girls have done crazier things. Remember Meryl? She wanted to get back together with me. Came all the way back to the library, too."
"What happened, you left that girl?"

"Turns out she was with Cal all along, was tricking me."

"Oh," Simon said, "I'm glad I'm not old enough for all that. It tends to get confusing, you know."
"What about your sister?" Billy asked him, teasing.

Simon shrugged, "I got over her. With science, you can get over things. They showed me how to do some pretty neat things in the council. I mean before they took everything away and put all of us in jail."

"Oh, yea?" Billy asked, "Like what?"
"Well, you know those things I was throwing at you in jail that burned like all-heck but didn't really make marks on you?"
"Yea," Billy said, eyeing him, "I remember. By the way, I owe you a punch on the shoulder for that."

Simon waved it off. "Sure-sure, later. Well, we called those things sparkies. They used to spark but now I just make them for fun."

"How do you make them? With rocks and then magic. It's always like that with those sparkies, rocks and magic."

"Magic, where'd you get magic in the jail cell."

"Well, we had a wizard, you know," Simon said, "But the lab was all hush-hush about him. We weren't supposed to tell anyone about where he was or what he was doing. When the council sent for all of us to go to jail, the wizard just vanished. His name was Henry and he wore glasses and had funny long white hair like Merlin with a sight problem. He didn't wear any funny hats or anything like you see in the movies, just dressed normal or as normal as scientists get in their white lab coats and protective gloves. He made magic dust out of rocks. So we just built the sparkies out of regular rocks and magic dust."
"How'd you hide magic dust from the council?"
"We didn't," Simon said, smiling, "That's the trick. When the council found it on our person, they just littered it on the floor. I just picked it up with my hands. I have a knack for seeing things that others can't."

"How do you build the sparkies?"

"I don't. I just place a rock in my hand and put it next to the dust. They build themselves. That's the magic part. But that's not the important bit. One day, our leader, the man you left me with, his name is Greg, told us that we had to build a gun. So we did, except it didn't look like a gun, that was my doing. It looked just like, well a bullet holder." Simon dug inside his yellow clothes. It turns out that they had a pocket sewn into them on the thigh. Simon sipped it down at the seams. The zipper seemed to be made of loose string but it zipped back up almost as if by magic by itself. "It's neat what you can do with magic dust," Simon said, pulling out what looked like a bullet clip. It was blue and translucent and about eight inches wide. "You don't need a button," Simon said. "You just point it and it responds to your reflexes. If you're scared and want it to shoot, it will shoot."

"Wow," Billy said, examining the thing with awe, "And you built this just like that, because this Greg man told you?"

"Not just like that," Simon said, looking insulted, "He gave us instructions, you know like that we should be careful about what we build because the council is always suspicious of creativity. Imagine how most of the scientist felt about that, when their whole thing is creating new things and making cool new inventions."

"So," Billy said, "Did you guys make anything else. This gun seems like it would be useful but if all it does is shoot sparkies, then we're doomed against those vampires."

Simon smiled, "The gun's bullets are sparkies of a, special type. Watch."

Simon grabbed a hold of the bullet clip which was all encosed and didn't look to have an opening from where to shoot. Suddenly a small circle appeared on one of the edges. Something red flew out of it from the side and launched forward. "Crap, duck, Billy!"
Billy ducked in time. The red rock missed him by inches.

"Phew!" Simon said, "A second too late and you would have been cooked."

The rock flew high into the air and exploded in an at least ten foot wide area of fire, as though a napalm bomb had dropped in mid-air and halted right above them. Billy could feel the heat of it in his eyes.

"What the hell was that?" Billy asked. "And you almost killed me! Um, again."

"Relax," Simon said, "I almost killed Henry, too and he didn't get all fuzzy about it. It's the nature of science that when you build something everyone wants to criticize and call it dangerous."

"Well," Billy said, "It definitely has some use against the vampires but, um, just try and keep a good distance from me when you use it, please."

Simon laughed. "You sure are the same old Billy. I shouldn't have changed so much but six months is a long time. When they put me in jail, I blamed you but now I think about it, you're not to blame for what the council decided to do. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have learned how to make this."
"Well," Billy said, finishing the last of the fries, "It's time we left. But before that, a little more crime won't hurt. After all, I can't have you fighting vampires all in yellow. I'm not a girl, so I don't mind tacky but I do mind if you get claws on your chest. Let's go get us some bullet proof vests. Maybe your magic dust can turn the things our size."

"How did you know I still had some?"

Billy smiled, "I imagine that magic bag can hold an infinite number of things."
Simon smiled, "We're not just getting bullet proof vests, are we?"

"Well," Billy said, "Although the vampires aren't our problem, per say, let's make sure that they're, at least, less of a problem to the guy we've got to and are on our way to try and save."

"Fair is fair," Simon joked.

Billy smiled, remembering old times.