The Devil's Dream: Waking Up (16 page)

Matthew started pouring the gasoline from the first canister, dousing the woman in it, the clear liquid rinsing away the blood from her face.

* * *

T
he apartment burned
in his rear-view mirror. He watched the smoke beginning to exit the kitchen window. Soon, the tiny cracks along the edges of the window would billow out black smoke, unable to hold it back, and then the glass would burst and the heat from inside would roll forward. The entire building might burn down before the fire department made it out, and if not the entire building, then certainly a lot of people would no longer have apartments to live in when the fire finally finished.

Brand's body ached. He remembered thinking a month ago, when he caught Moore, how this body was nearly perfect. That it could do whatever he wanted with a simple thought, and do it with efficiency Brand had never known. No longer. He limped out to the van, sweat pouring off him, almost unable to reach the bottom of the stairs in his apartment building without collapsing.

He could still press down on the accelerator and that's all he wanted right now—just to drive. To drive away from the apartment, drive away from the dead girl that he somehow helped rape, drive away from everything if possible.

It is,
Rally said but he threw her thought away.

It wasn't. He would drive away from the fire, but he couldn't drive away from his life, from the choices he had made. Was he going to be able to finish this? That was the question he had to answer right now, on this drive. Were things too far gone for him to gather the last of the bodies? To hang them in the lighthouse and then ignite the world? Because if it was, if he couldn't finish it, then why keep trying? Why keep walking around in this ragged body, struggling just to stay conscious and not let the monster inside him out.

The monster inside him.

That was a funny thought, really. How many times had people said that about Brand? How many news anchors had called him a monster, had thought that inside the flesh and bone, a monster lived? Brand knew the truth so it didn't matter. He was a monster, to them, to everyone he knew, and that was fine. He was a monster with justification. The thing growing inside him now, the thing that wasn't him, had no justification—whatever happened to Morgant as a child was lost on Brand. Morgant had no idea why he felt the compulsive need to rape, no clue as to what it meant and where it came from. He was a monster without justification. He was a monster without purpose.

If Matthew wasn't going to make it, if he morphed into Morgant permanently, then why not just press down on the accelerator and end up with his head through the windshield, his brains leaking out onto the roof of the van? Why keep going?

His mind went to Art. Arthur Brayden, the only man involved in this who had been there almost since the beginning. Everyone else chasing Matthew right now was new, was looking for him because they had been told to. Art, though, why did Art keep going? Why was he still here chugging along after all these years? Moore had been different. Moore wanted to catch him but only because she wanted to further her career. She wanted to climb the ladder of the FBI until she reached the top, and perhaps she thought once there were no rungs above her, she would be able to reach up and touch heaven, have God tell her that yes, she was a success and He loved her for it. Art was different though; Art didn't need any more success. Art probably couldn't find any more success, not on that FBI ladder. He had reached the highest rung he would ever reach, and while he might be able to see the top of the ladder, he would never, ever arrive there. And still he kept on after Matthew. He knew little of Matthew's condition, knew little of his entire operation. As dim as things looked for Matthew right now, they must look equally dim for Art. He must be wondering what it's going to feel like to starve to death in eternal blackness. To feel cold like no human has ever felt when the sun stops burning. To know that the entire world was ending, and that he had been the man charged with stopping it.

That was a despair as close to Matthew's as anyone could get.

But Art hadn't quit. He hadn't signed papers resigning. He hadn't gone into hiding, shirking the limelight. He blitzed onward, struggling daily to find more information than he woke up with.

Why?

His faith. That was the only answer Matthew could come up with. The man's faith in God, the faith that if he did what was right, things would work out. Faith that his God would protect him, protect them all, and perhaps if he didn't protect them, and Matthew won out, that still didn't excuse Art from doing the duty God put before him. Art was going to try, was going to keep trying day in and day out, and if he died at the end of it all then so be it.

Matthew was the one sitting here wondering whether or not he should continue. Not Art. Art probably made his decision when he first showed up at Moore's house and saw her blood streaked across the wall. He made the decision that he would chase Brand until one of them died. And Matthew was about to stop the chase. He was sitting here wondering if a high speed accident might be the best course of action, because of a high probability that Morgant was going to take over. The FBI wouldn’t find Matthew; he only lost if Morgant wrestled control away permanently. Art had his own definition of failure, quantified by the sun's ability to keep burning. Right now, Art's chance of success had to look just as bleak as Matthew's, because he didn't know Matthew's struggles. He kept going though. He wasn't driving a van and thinking about suicide. He was continuing onward.

Are you going to let this cop, this man who serves the same system that killed Hilman, outlast you?
He thought.

J
ake chewed on his sandwich
. If it tasted good, he couldn't tell. He ate because he hadn't in thirty-six hours, no other reason. He looked past Art, out the glass window of the restaurant. A band rested on his ankle, and a twin one on Art's. Both were on house arrest, he supposed, and their houses were each other. If either one ventured more than two hundred yards from the other, the cops would be notified, and then the cops would come arrest Jake, who was still an appointed FBI Agent.

Things were...gray. That was the only word that could really describe the world Jake saw. The sandwich, the people walking on the sidewalk outside, the man sitting across from him, his own future. All of it lacked color. Just a hazy, unfocused lens of loss.

They still monitored Welch, waiting on him to move, and that was all they had. Nothing else. But still, a man was in critical condition because of Jake. He couldn't shake that.

Had he turned into the person they were hunting? Was he the same as Brand, just without the brain power? He had trapped someone and then hurt him horribly—and even now, he didn't feel any intrinsic guilt about it. Was this how Brand felt? Manning would live, but they were unsure if he would walk again. His knees were shattered and the reconstructive surgery didn't guarantee anything. They would have to wait and see, that's what the doctor told Jake.

"Would you do it again?" That's all his father asked.

"Yeah."

"Then don't worry about it. You do what you have to do in life. That's what no one tells you. They give you bullshit about morality and justice and the common good, but they never tell you that sometimes those things don't mix with the world you're seeing. They don't tell you that sometimes those things and reality are oil and water."

Oil and water
.

He was the oil now, black stuff floating atop the clear blue.

"You alright?" Art asked.

Jake looked over at him, having to recall the question just asked.

"Yeah, I suppose."

"There's nothing you can do about what happened, so I need you to stop worrying about it. I need you here, even if it's just at this table and eating that fucking sandwich. I don't want you in your head, Jake. You're useless to me there. You're out of jail so that we can finish this thing. We'll worry about jail when this is over."

"There's not much else to do right now except wait. That and think about the shit I did."

Art nodded, sticking his fork in his eggs but not lifting them to his mouth. "Then wait, but don't think. Not about that."

"It's all in his hands now, isn't it? The whole thing, because we just played our last real card. If Brand decides not to get another shipment of people, if he decides he has enough right now, or he decides to use another supplier, there's nothing else in our pipeline, right? There's nothing else we're even considering," Jake said.

"We're still looking. Cops are still combing through the northeastern states, but it's hard going because of the power. They could still find him though, in a barn or something."

Jake laughed. "They're going to just happen upon Matthew Brand, huh? That's our plan, close our eyes and walk around the wilderness, hoping we bump into him."

Art dropped his fork on his plate. "Goddamnit, man. You're going to need to stop sounding so hopeless. We're in this thing. All that shit you're talking about happening, it's possible, but what are we going to do?"

Jake shook his head and looked back out the window.

"What you did won't be for nothing, if that's what you're worried about. We're close. You know it as well as I do. We're as close as we've ever been, and it might feel like that's a million miles away, but it's not. He's going to make a move and he's going to make the same move he's been planning to make, and when he does, we're going to get him. It won't be for nothing, Jake."

* * *

M
atthew parked
his van and sat looking at the building. He didn't know how many hours he had just driven. He really didn't even know when he made the decision to start driving. He was here now though and that made him think back to Rally.

He didn't remember the actual feelings, but he knew what he had done, and he knew what he felt now, so because of the stupidity of this act, he imagined the feelings would be similar. He had stepped off the bus, that Greyhound bus which brought him all the way to Florida after he walked away from The Wall, and went to a pay phone. He had called Rally and he must have known that it was a stupid, stupid idea. That really, it was the worst idea he could possibly come up with, but he had called anyway.

How did that end up?
Rally asked.
I can tell you, not well for me.

She was right. It ended up with her neck broken and a knife in his gut.

Here he was though, about to do something even more stupid—maybe the dumbest thing in his entire life, but he just drove four hundred miles and he wasn't about to turn around and head back to his lighthouse. Back to his home, back to the people hanging in it, back to his family. From Jeffrey to Henry. His nameless brothers and sisters. No, he wasn't going back there yet. Not before he spoke to Art in person.

He stepped out of the van, the moon shining down but not illuminating anything like it did outside of his lighthouse. He started his shuffle-stepping to Art's office.

* * *

A
rt Brayden opened
the door to his office, flipped on a light and saw The Devil.

* * *

"
S
hhhh
. Don't scream. Don't make a sound," Brand whispered.

Pain throbbed in Art's forehead, stretching up to the crown of his head and back down to his nose, like someone had put a mask full of bees over his face. But no, that hadn't been it. He looked over at Brand, his head falling lazily to his right as he did. Brand had hit him. With what?

The butt of a knife. That's what he remembered seeing before everything went dark.

Questions started flying in his mind now, faster than Art could answer. Where was he? Where was Jake?

"You look like you're about to panic, Art. We don't want that to happen. You see this button here?" Art watched Brand—and he assumed it was Brand, but God, this person looked like someone's nightmare—lift up a tiny pen looking contraption, with a button on the top. "If I press this down, your buddy, Jake, will explode. Just like that. Limbs and guts and everything else decorating the office down the hall. If you scream, or make any noise louder than the whisper I'm speaking in, I press the button."

Half of Brand's face drooped, melting like Dali's clocks. He whispered, but his words slurred as he did, the word button sounding like a raspy buhhhton. He stood over Art—and Art realized where he was now, in his office, taped down on his desk in much the same way Marley Moore had been taped to her father on their trip to Florida—but standing was a stretch to describe what Brand was doing. Brand's left shoulder sagged at least three inches lower than the right, and the left hand hung limp, not moving at all as the right one showed off the contraption. His nose bled, dribbling over his lip and down his chin, but Brand didn't bother to wipe it away.

Does he even know?
Art thought.

"You think you're going to catch me? I'm here, right now. Why don't you stop me?"

"Untape me and I will," Art said.

Brand walked to the chair on the other side of Art's desk, his step hitching as if he had some old war injury. He sat down and let out a long, bubbly sigh—Art could hear the fluid in his lungs.

"Why do you keep going? I need to know."

Art creased his brow. "What do you mean?"

"Look around you, Art. I broke into the FBI headquarters at two in the morning and taped the person trying to find me to his desk. You can't stop me. You can't do anything to me. So why keep going?"

Art understood the question, but not why he was asking it. Brand hadn't driven here to find out that answer; he couldn't have. The risk, the goddamn risk this created was beyond even the realm of insanity.

"What the fuck are you talking about, Brand? Why am I doing my fucking job? That's what you're asking me right now?"

"YES, YOU MOTHERFUCKER. THAT'S WHAT I'M ASKING." Rage erupted from Brand, only tempered by his whisper.

The person in front of Art was insane. Not the calculating criminal he thought he had been chasing, that he had chased before. The man standing here—that had somehow made his way through the multitude of security on the lower levels—risking his life, was asking Art about his job.

The blood from Brand’s nose started flowing heavier, now dribbling down to his shirt, and he didn't have any idea.

The rationality Brand once possessed had been consumed, eaten by whatever cancer seemed to plague him now. Brand might kill Art right here. Taped to his desk.

Fuck him,
he thought.

"Because I'm going to kill you," he whispered, his voice lacking Brand's rage. "Because I'm going to put a bullet through your head and you're never going to hurt anyone again. That's why I'm doing my job. Because I want to watch you die."

Brand smiled, or rather, the right side of his face did, revealing white teeth beneath his lips. The blood flowing from his nose rolled across them before continuing on its path down his chin. "You're going to kill me? Do you see how crazy that sounds? You can't even move right now."

"I'd kill me right now, if I were you, Brand. Because if you don't, I promise I'm going to kill you when I get up. I'm going to find you, wherever you are, and I'm going to fucking murder you."

Brand's smile widened, the blood smearing across his teeth. "No. I'm not going to kill you. I want you to see it when it happens, when the sun dies. I don't mind hurting you some, though." Brand stood up, awkwardly, and shuffled to the desk.

After the first few punches collided with his face, Art wondered how such a broken body could hold so much strength.