Beneath the Veil Page 4

  Willow burst in and leaped on the man, beating him with thin white arms until he grabbed her hair and slammed her against the wall. She recovered quickly and was back on him. Jen took her opportunity and ran past them into the hallway, feeling the wall for guidance in the dark. Behind her, the sounds of the fighting stopped. She lit her lighter and found the man just feet behind her, frozen in place. Willow moved in front of him.

  “It’s safe,” Willow said. “He can’t hurt you now.”

  The walls of the hallway were visible through their skin, as they had both changed into something more human, but strangely translucent.

  “You should go now,” Willow said with her voice reduced to a faint whisper.

  Jen found a set of stairs and bounded up the uneven stone steps. She pushed open a metal door and walked into a once grandiose room where a chandelier had fallen onto a stained marble floor. A vine covered grand piano lay collapsed with water dripping on it from a hole in the plaster ceiling. She ran to the front door and pulled it open, then stepped outside into the warm embrace of the rising sun.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

  Barry and Jackson walked the mountain road until they found a trail leading into the woods. Barry kneeled to examine a set of tire tracks in the mud. He stood and faced Jackson.

  “I think we should check it out.”

  “Is it the Rover?” Jackson asked.

  “No, but these could have been made by the truck we saw last night, the one driven by the men in that graveyard.”

  Jackson nodded in agreement and followed Barry down the trail. Two miles in, a rusty gate was chained shut and blocked the way. A sharp metallic sound broke the silence as Barry walked around the gate. An animal trap, hidden in the grass, snapped the end off his walking stick.

  “Holy shit, what was that?” Jackson asked.

  “A trap,” he answered.

  “Damn, that could’ve messed you up,” Jackson said.

  Barry examined the ground and then continued around the gate to a set of tire tracks.

  “Stay in the tracks Jackson,” he said.

  Barry tapped his stick in front of him as he walked, realizing even a minor injury could be a death sentence in these mountains. In the woods, a branch snapped followed by rustling leaves.

  “Look there,” Jackson said, relieved.

  A grey squirrel hopped across the road and then disappeared from sight. They started walking again when a shot rang out hitting the ground in front of them. Jackson spun to take cover, but Barry grabbed him by the arm.

  “Don’t run,” he said. “The traps.”

  Jackson looked around wildly then joined Barry in surrender, raising his hands over his head.

  “Follow me, very carefully,” Barry said.

  The two men turned around and began walking away when another shot rang out blocking their retreat.

  “Oh shit,” Jackson said.

  “If they wanted to shoot us, they would have,” Barry answered.

  He turned and took a step further down the trail with no reaction from the shooter.

  “I guess this is an invitation,” Barry said.

  “To what?” Jackson asked.

  Barry didn’t answer, he continued walking the tight rope of the tire tracks carefully avoiding a second trap, covered in blood stained leaves. They walked until a building situated on the edge of a quarry came into view. A mine car, knocked off its tracks and lying on its side, blocked the front door. The truck they saw the night before sat parked behind a barricade of timbers. A barbed wire fence wrapped the perimeter forming a rough compound. A Vickers machine gun was positioned within a ring of rocks and sand bags. Although unmanned, the old gun was aimed in their direction.

  “Looks like some kind of camp,” Jackson said in a low voice.

  “Yes,” Barry agreed.

  A bank of solar panels mounted on a tin roofed shed looked oddly out of place next to rusted mining equipment. Two newer motorcycles were parked in the shed near a stack of crates.

  A voice from a PA system shouted a command.

  “Get down on the ground and put your hands over your heads.”

  Jackson looked to Barry who nodded and then climbed to the ground. Jackson followed, placing his hands over his head.

  C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N

  “Search em.”

  Barry and Jackson lay on the ground while they were patted down.

  “Stand up.”

  They climbed to their feet and came face to face with three armed men. One of the men, wearing jeans and a camouflage jacket, trained an M-16 on them. A hand rolled cigarette dangled from his lips.

  “What’s your business here?” an older man asked.

  Barry stepped forward.

  “We are looking for my sister. She was taken.”

  “Well, she ain’t here,” the man in camouflage said, swinging his weapon for emphasis.

  “Hold on, Cal,” the older man said in a calm voice. “Sorry. We don’t have your sister.”

  “How’d you all get here anyhow?” a third man asked. He was middle aged, wearing tattered jeans and a leather jacket.

  “We arrived two nights ago,” Barry answered.

  “Where’s your car, then?” Cal asked.

  “Stolen, they got my truck when they took my sister.”

  “Cal, do you mind?” the older man gestured at the M-16.

  Cal lowered his weapon.

  “Well, welcome, beneath the veil,” the older man said. “You eaten lately?”

  “Not much,” Jackson offered quickly.

  “Well come in and we’ll see what we can rustle up for you. My name’s Don Randolph, my friends call me Doc. This here’s Fred Fortner.”

  “Good to know you both,” Fred said with a nod.

  “And that’s Cal Huckabee,” Doc said.

  “Hey,” Cal said, staring down at the ground.

  They followed the men into a fortified building where Doc turned and pointed back towards the front of the building.

  “Anything off that road is off limits. The lot of its booby trapped, you wouldn’t make it ten feet in either direction.”

  “You boys are lucky you found us when you did,” Fred added. “Weather’s coming in and it could dump a lot of the white stuff on us.”

  “Fred’s our resident weatherman and he’s pretty good at it,” Doc added.

  “It’s not me. Fred responded. “It’s my storm glass, it never fails. Small stars are what it’s showing.”

  “Well, we appreciate your hospitality,” Barry responded.

  “Sorry about the cool welcome,” Doc said. “We can’t be too careful.”

  They followed the men through a darkened hallway to a bank vault hidden behind tattered burgundy drapes. The door to the vault was swung open and bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. A hole had been bored into the floor of the safe and a wooden ladder was propped inside.

  “Took a while to get this dug properly,” Doc said, gesturing towards the hole. “Our mining equipment’s seen better days and kept breaking down on us.”

  “Give me a hand, will you, Cal?” Doc asked.

  Cal helped Doc pull the door of the safe closed behind them.

  “We modified the door so we could lock and unlock it from the inside,” Fred said.

  Cal climbed onto the ladder and descended through the opening in the floor.

  “After you, fellas,” Doc said.

  They climbed down into in a dimly lit storage room below the vault. The walls of the room were lined with cans of food.

  “Nothing fancy, but it does the job,” Doc said. “Right this way.”

  They followed the men into a machine shop where warehouse doors were open to let cool air inside. A blacksmith pounded on a piece of flat iron, while others worked on a generator. A vintage tractor with a flat front tire was parked along the back wall.

  “There are others here?” Barry asked.

  “Oh sure,” Doc answered. “Nearly thirty people in
all.” Doc led them outside onto a wooden platform that overlooked the quarry. Large crops surrounded the rim and the floor of the quarry teemed with activity. Cows were grazing in a nearby pasture, bordered by a protective fence.

  “Past them crops is where the serious stuff is set-up,” Cal chirped in. “Rocky and Frank brung us a truck full of claymores and ammo a few years back.”

  “Those boys helped us real good,” Doc said. “They came to us a few years back driving an army supply truck. They got themselves lost here like you fellas, separated from their unit and ended up with us.

  “Unfortunately, they decided to start hunting the things that were hunting us and it didn’t end well,” Fred added.

  Cal suddenly walked back into the machine shop without saying a word.

  “It was pretty tough on Cal. He was still a kid when those guys showed up and he really looked up to them,” Doc said.

  “Snows starting,” Fred said, excitedly. “I told you all.”

  Doc walked over to a speaking tube mounted on a brick wall in the shop. The tube consisted of a flared brass cone connected to pipe leading into the ground.

  “Gus, you there?” Doc asked.

  “I am,” a voice answered though the pipe.

  “Better get those animals inside for the night. Fred says we got a storm coming.”

  “Got it, Doc,” Gus answered.

  “We got this thing piped to key areas,” Doc said patting the tube. “It comes in handy when the power goes down. We make our own with the panels and the geni, but electrical things can get real touchy here.”

  “We’ve seen that,” Barry said.

  Jackson pulled his cell phone out and looked at the black screen.

  “Forget those things, Doc said. “No signals can make it past the veil and anything with a battery gets sucked dry. We’ve got to push start the trucks anytime we need to drive anywhere.”

  “Doc, let’s get these boys some food. They look a fright,” Fred interrupted.

  “That would be great,” Jackson said.

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y

  Jen stumbled off the porch of the antebellum mansion where she was held captive. Two rotting pillars rose to the roof where white paint, chalky and faded, peeled off in sheets. A balcony connected the center of the house with balusters that looked like broken teeth. She turned and looked back at the place, harmless now in the light of day. A dull gray sky dropped a dusting of snow onto the ground. She crossed her arms and shivered, it was cold but she needed to get out to the road where Barry and Jackson might find her.

  A gravel drive lined with brown grass and overgrown with weeds led away from the house. She moved quickly, trying to escape the sight of the decomposing mansion, then spotted Barry’s truck in a ditch and covered with vines. She climbed down to the truck and cleared the growth away from the back door, then climbed in and sat behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition but the battery was dead. Remembering how Barry started the truck, she reached under the passenger seat and found the crank. She climbed out and cleared the vines away from the front bumper, but found the hole for the crank buried in a dirt embankment.

  Having given up on the idea of driving out, Jen reached into the back door and grabbed her brother’s duffel bag then took a few bottles of water, protein bars and medication and placed them into her backpack. She sat on the rear bumper and ate two protein bars with a bottle of water. Starved and dehydrated, the food had never tasted so good. With a change of clothes, she threw the backpack over her shoulder and began walking. It was twenty minutes before she reached the end of the drive and finally left the barren grounds of the estate. She walked a hard packed dirt road past defunct farms and abandoned cottages. The sun momentarily peaked through the clouds and shined across tall fields of unharvested wheat. A crossroads came into view with four intersecting dirt roads stretching for miles in all directions.

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E

  Barry finished the last of his food while Jackson worked on a second plate. They sat in a tent lined with picnic tables. Doc sat across from them drinking coffee.

  “How’s the food?” Doc asked.

  “The best thing I ever ate,” Jackson replied. Barry nodded in agreement.

  “We do pretty well for ourselves,” Doc said. “We grow most of what we eat and don’t waste much. And occasionally, luck throws us a bone. Doc pointed to a man, wearing an orange vest and Dickies, busy stacking boxes.

  “Last year Donny Green got himself lost in a storm and ended up here. Luckily for us, Donny was driving a semi full of dry goods headed for a distribution center in South Carolina,” Doc said.

  Cal and Fred sat down and joined them at the table.

  “I’m confused.” Barry asked. “Why don’t you just leave?”

  “There ain’t no leaving mister, not once you’re under the veil,” Cal answered. He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and examined it.

  “This place is like a spider’s web,” Fred added. “If you’re unlucky enough to end up here, you won’t be leaving anytime soon.”

  “But you have vehicles out there,” Jackson said.

  “Don’t you think we’ve tried?” Doc asked. “This place won’t let us leave, all the roads end up circling back where they started.”

  Doc stood and walked over to a beaten up rolltop desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out a note pad, then sat back down at the table. He fished a hand sharpened pencil from his shirt pocket and put on a pair of reading glasses.

  “We tried to find a way out using a map we found in the mining office, but each route ended up bringing us back to where we started. According to that old map, all of the routes should have connected to other towns,” Doc said.

  He slid the pad across the table to Barry and Jackson. It contained a list of routes with mileages and dates recorded under a hand drawn map.

  “In the center of this town is a crossroads where four roads come together. The map we found has no reference to it whatsoever. These roads all end up curving and connecting to one another like the spokes of a wheel,” Doc explained.

  “Only the wheel changes,” Fred added. “See all the scratch outs on that pad? Each time we drove one of the routes, we ended up coming back a different way through the crossroads.”

  “The map is mostly accurate for smaller roads,” Doc said. “But all the main roads end up back where they began.”

  Barry picked up the pad. November 16, 2001 was scrawled next to one of the entries.

  “How long have you all been here?” he asked.

  “Some of us have been here for a long time,” Doc answered sadly.

  Cal looked down at the floor and Fred didn’t answer.

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T W O

  Jen’s backpack bounced against her shoulder as she walked towards a twisted oak tree. She recognized the tree and spotted the shirt she wrapped around a branch as a marker. After walking for nearly four hours, she was back at the crossroads.

  “Dammit.”

  She stood in the middle of the intersection contemplating her next move. Beyond a field of switchgrass was a cottage with smoke pouring from its stone chimney. She left the road and walked into the field, struggling to keep sight of the cottage through the tall grass.

  “Jennifer,” a voice whispered.

  “Who’s there?” she asked, looking behind her.

  A rogue breeze rustled the grass. She began walking again, faster this time.

  “Jennifer,” the voice spoke close behind her now.

  She spun and ran until she caught sight of the cottage. Nearly clear of the field, she smashed into a wooden post with the weather-beaten remnants of a scarecrow still attached. She caught her breath, then scrambled to her feet and ran to the cottage. The front door was boarded up and covered with symbols. A small hole was smashed into the wall nearby. She squeezed through the opening into a room with three chairs arranged in front of a fireplace. A fire smoldered in the hearth and partially eaten meals had b
een hastily dropped onto the floor.

  “Hello?” Jen called out.

  No one answered as she walked through the house. The upstairs was inaccessible; the roof had collapsed onto the staircase. In the kitchen, she turned a white porcelain knob and opened a door to a root cellar.

  “Hello?” She called down into the darkness.

  No one answered, but hushed voices rose from the cellar below. She descended halfway down the wooden staircase when a hand reached through the steps and grabbed her ankle. She tumbled down the stairs, landing on a dirt floor. Darkness turned into a flash of white as a shovel hit the back of her head.

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E

  Jen lay unconscious on the dirt cellar floor. A young boy kneeled next to her, examining her face in the light of his lantern. His two sisters stood close behind him.

  “Is she dead, Daniel?” his sister Tonya asked.

  “No, she looks like a regular person,” he answered.

  “I mean is she dead now?” the girl added.

  “I think she’s still breathing. Get her back, Tonya, she shouldn’t see this,” the boy said.

  Tonya grabbed the hand of her younger sister, who clutched a soiled doll, and pulled her back into another room.

  “Come on now, Katy. We need to wait a minute,” Tonya said softly to the girl.

  Daniel turned up his lantern and illuminated the low ceiling and stone walls of the cellar. He removed his jacket and placed it under Jen’s head. He had a difficult decision to make before the sun went down. Either drag her into the storeroom and take his chances, or leave her out to be ripped to shreds by the bad ones. He peeled back her eyelids and looked at her pupils. They seemed normal enough, but he had never been this close to one before. He jumped to his feet and wielded the shovel when Jen began to groan. She opened her eyes, reached for the swollen lump on the back of her head, and started to get up.

  “Stay right there, lady,” Daniel said. “I’ll crack you again.”