COMPLETE! The Wasteland. A woman screams in the night. Spotlights flash on a pile of dust in the desolate patch of land that lay just beyond the tall crosses that picket the boundary of Encampment R-34. A group of curious students leave their bunkho...
Instead of scaling the outer wall from the second floor window, Bryne and I took the route we had discovered that first week. He led me down a cluttered hallway to a stairwell, and then through a bulkhead door. The passage emptied into a massive indoor community space that is now little more than an open-air cave of rubble. Half of the furthest concrete wall opened to what appeared to be a Calisthenics Yard, though most of the equipment is hidden under a forest of shrubs and trees. We stopped running when we reached the entrance to the cave of debris. Waiting there, with his back to us, was Luther Priest.
"Lenny!" Bryne exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
Our short, frail friend turned casually and raised his eyebrows, looking fearless. "Followed you. I heard Rufus mention something about a book when we got out past the pickets, and I knew you'd come here. It's going to be night soon. That's when they come out, you know. You're being foolish. And this place?" He paused to look up at the ruined ceiling high overhead. "It's not safe. You...are not safe. Not without help."
"And garlic? How about holy water?" I asked, with a little too much irritation. It's not Lenny's fault that he knows more than us, but I was still in shock over what I'd heard from Rufus.
Lenny narrowed his eyes. "Where did you hear about that?" he asked, craning his neck. "Hmm...I don't care, really. The important thing is that we leave."
Luther Priest reached out for me and I started walking forward, glad to know he was there to protect us. Then, I noticed that Bryne wasn't beside me. We turned to find him glaring down at the screen of the Chrono-tablet.
"What's wrong, Bryne?"
"The index. It's completed," he muttered. "But...I'm confused. This is a bunch of...personal letters. And much older than what we saw in the book. The machine must have compiled a chronicle of events, connecting the content of other Notes Books with the one we entered." He shook his head, looking mesmerized. "This...this is it. We've done it! The machine is making sense of how we got here. See, I told you, Lenny!"
"You are going to leave it here. I am a Priest, and you must listen to me. You do not know what I know, Bryne," Luther commanded, revealing a brashness that we had never seen from him. "Trust me about this. We need to leave."
Bryne took my other hand and pulled me away from Lenny. "What you know doesn't matter. Our ancestors did all the work for us centuries ago. It's right here. In my hand. You weren't upstairs with us, Lenny. You didn't see how the Chronoscope treated the book. What Rufus found is important. It filled this tablet device with information for us to read. With clues...so we can figure out how to set things right. I know it in my heart."
"What if this tells us something we wouldn't want to hear?" I asked, worried that Luther knew more about the Chronoscope than we did. "Or what if it means nothing?"
Lenny inhaled slowly through tightened lips. "I cannot say for sure."
"Mell, I trust you more than anyone. Take it. Look for yourself." Bryne shoved the tablet into my hands. "If what you find means nothing, then we'll stop all this and...go back to being Generals."
I looked to Lenny and then back to Bryne. When Lenny nodded, I felt safe enough to agree, though the tablet suddenly felt a hundred times heavier. As the three of us left the deserted encampment and snuck back into our own, I found a private moment to look down at the tablet screen. There, in light green text on a dark background were three bold words followed by an instruction:
THE DRACULA INDEX Click here to review content
It was that simple. And now, as I write this in the dull green light of the Chronoscope tablet, in the shared closet of Bunkhouse Generals, I abandon my fear and press the screen. The first entry has come up. It is a letter, almost eight hundred years old, from a man with a peculiar name.
Elder Priest help me. I begin to read.
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