Part Four

We drove into Braxton from the north on the main highway. I’d wanted to ask more questions after the things Holliman had said, but I decided to wait and see instead. Whatever this place was, whatever all of this was, I couldn’t just keep blindly following whatever my employers told me. This was no longer just about my job. It was about my life.

So instead of asking questions and swallowing whatever answers I got, I kept quiet and paid attention as we traveled into the city limits of Braxton. There was a large building coming up on the left, and squinting, I could just make out the sign running along the roofline five stories up. It was a hospit…

“Oh my God.”

That was Mrs. Graves, her voice soft and trembling with enough fear that it derailed my train of thought and caused me to follow her gaze to a large, dark mound out on the grounds of the hospital. Mr. Holliman was slowing down now as he sucked air between his teeth and muttered “Goddamnit” under his breath. I only noticed his reaction distantly, however, as I squinted out the window and tried to understand what we were all looking at. When I did, my stomach twisted into a cramp as my gorge began to rise.

It was bodies. A large heap of bodies that had obviously been partially burned at one point and then left rotting for weeks or months—there were still patches of clothes and hair and desiccated flesh, but mostly it was a mound of bones melded into a bleak little hill by time and decay. A few more people were scattered about, some obviously dead, but others almost like…

“A…are some of those people sleeping? Are there people out there in…in that still alive and fucking sleeping?”

Mrs. Graves met my eyes before putting her hand on Holliman’s arm. “We don’t need to stop here. This isn’t a good place to start.”

He shot her a dark look, his tone harsh. “I’m not an idiot. I know…” Stopping himself, he let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry, Gracie. I’m afraid and that makes me short-tempered, but I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

She patted his arm. “I know. It’s okay. But let’s go on into town and see what we can see.” She turned back to look at me. “You okay with that too?”

Heart pounding, I forced myself to stop glancing out the window and sit back in my seat. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s got to be better than here.”

We drove on toward the town proper, Holliman taking a slow and cautious route that cut up and down the occasional side street before moving back to the main road on a trajectory toward what street signs said was “Downtown Braxton”. None of us talked as we went, but I could feel our collective fear and anxiety growing every mile we drove deeper into that place.

There were people laying in cars, sprawled out near or sometimes in the streets, slumped against buildings and curled up in yards as we passed. I couldn’t say for sure with all of them—only some would occasionally twitch and so were obviously alive—but most of them didn’t really look dead. Just…asleep. The surreal strangeness of it all was made a hundred times worse by some of the other things scattered around amid the slumbering citizenry of Braxton.

Wrecked cars. Burned out buildings. Bodies that definitely were dead because they’d been torn apart and were rotting. Amid all of this were numerous dark splashes and stains that looked like the faded remnants of old horrors—a slaughter that happened here before the survivors decided to curl up and take a long winter’s nap. It was all terrifying, but even worse, it was impossible.

“How…how could any of this be happening? Didn’t you say this started months ago?”

Graves nodded as she glanced back to the rear seat. “Or longer, yes.”

I frowned at her. “So how does that make sense? The bodies and stuff? Maybe they’re decaying like they would over that much time in the elements, because how would I know, right? I’m no expert, though to me even that stuff seems like it’s fresher than it would be after that long outside. But let’s set that aside.” I leaned forward and pointed to the closest sidewalk, where a pair of cops were laying against each other outside of a downtown store called “You Sew and Sew”. “How are these people still alive? How haven’t they starved to death? Frozen to death? Been eaten by bugs or wolves or whatever the fuck? It makes no sense.”

Letting out a sigh, Holliman pulled into an empty parking space and turned off the car. “Clint…”

“And…and…why wouldn’t people know about this place? Why wouldn’t it be in the national news if everyone just started killing each other here and then fell asleep?”

He turned to face me, his voice hard but not cruel. “Clint. Stop. Listen, please.”

Sucking in a breath, I nodded. “Okay. Yeah. I…yeah. Listening.”

Holliman glanced at Graves and then back to me. “Good. First off, we don’t have all the answers. We know this is where we’re supposed to go and have some idea of what we’d find here and what we need to do. But we don’t have answers for everything.” He paused for a moment before going on, his words softer and more measured. “That being said, this…phenomena is being caused by something in or near this town. An infection, for lack of a better term.” Seeing my eyes widen, he raised his hand. “Not that kind of infection. I don’t know that it’s contagious anymore, and even if it was…well, the three of us should be inoculated against its effects.”

“Inoculated? What’re you talking about? I haven’t had a shot for this shit.”

Graves gave me a small smile. “Not a shot. Your service. Your work with us. It grants you a measure of protection too. It keeps you able to do the work that’s needed.”

I had a hundred questions, but I had to be smart and selective if I was going to get anything useful out of them. “Okay. So we’ll just let that go for now. What about the other? Why don’t people know about this and how are these people all still alive?”

Holliman pursed his lips. “When this first happened, I think it really was like an infection. Spreading throughout the town and anyone who it came across. But once it had enough people, the infection changed. The people it had driven crazy, they started to sleep. To sleep and to dream. And the reality around this place began to thicken and harden like a pearl. In the world but not of it. Forgotten except by those that stumbled upon it by accident.”

“Then why wouldn’t one of those people…” I trailed off as I looked at my phone. No signal. I could hear fresh fear in my voice when I spoke again. “This place is a trap, isn’t it?”

Graves was looking out the window when she spoke. “It certainly looks that way. I don’t know that it’s meant to be specifically, but I think it’s removed from normal reality in such a way that the effect is largely the same.”

I felt my tongue growing thick in my mouth. “So you can get in but not back out? Like a fucking roach motel?” I asked the next question afraid I already knew the answer. “Can we leave?”

Holliman gave a slight shake of his head. “As things stand at the moment? No. But there is a way to stop what’s happening here. To reconcile this place back into our world. Then we’ll be able to leave again.”

My jaw was clenching as I stared at him. “Why didn’t you fucking tell me we couldn’t leave before we wandered in here?”

Graves did turn and look at me then. “We honestly didn’t know for sure. And we think we have to have you with us for this. For this all to work properly.”

I grimaced at her. “What is ‘this’? What do we have to do to unfuck this place and get to leave?”

“It’s our understanding that there is a mine underneath this town.” She pointed her long, thin finger down and bored through the air like a drill headed for the heart of the earth. “A very old and deep hole that for some reason the people of this town started mining again awhile back. They dug up, and woke up, something even older than the hole down there.” Licking her lips, she gave a nervous laugh. “And now we have to find it. And kill it.”

Part Six