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The Leopard Of The Lake Part 2

Season Finale

By David BrandyPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 22 min read
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THIS STORY IS THE FINALE OF A SERIES, CLICK HERE TO READ THE PREVIOUS PART.

ONE

The faint taste of Earth is the first thing to enter Cal's consciousness. The pain of a fractured rib came into mental focus before the headache of a bumped head. His heart fills with fear as memories of mindless parents chasing him and a large man-eating cat roaming the fog around the waters. He snaps to wakefulness with a sudden jerk and winces of pain to an empty corridor.

He sits up carefully to look down the oddly bright hallway. Are those footsteps he hears? His heart rate increases tenfold. His eyes slowly come into focus to see someone in the distance. A dark figure contrasting the brightly lit place.

"Wait!" He calls out to the fleeing figure. He reaches out and tries to stand up but the broken bone in his side brings him back to the floor with pain. The figure looks back and Cal instantly falls in love before she turns the corner.

Cal stammers and winces as he tries to get up quickly, with some effort he finds himself half running and half limping. When Cal makes his way to the turn of the hallway he knows that he lost her. Whoever she was. A million questions flood into his mind. Who was she? Did she save him? Where is this place? How is he going to get out of this and save his family?

TWO

The Agent had never been to this part of this town before, which was strange because he had done so much research into it. As one does when they are trying to pin down a 300-year-old, worldwide gang and you know they have a stronghold in it. Dover doesn't know where he is, but he knows it is the right place when he spots the family car.

The foggy lake seemed straight out of a horror film with its hanging moonlit moss but the vacant car is what gives him chills. Is he too late? The question fills his mind as he brakes hard and the Camry lurches to a stop. He slams the door shut and with The Pig's dart gun drawn, and inspects the car.

THREE

After Cal had decided that he wasn't going to be able to catch up with the girl who ran away from him he decided to double back. Inspecting the hallway closer the place seemed to be somewhere between a maintenance hallway and a hospital. Back where he woke up he notices that there is a hatch on the ceiling.

Focusing hard on the locked hatch he could hear faint banging on the other side. His memory reasserts itself and he can see clearly in his mind what happened. The fleeing figure pulled him through the hatch and locked it behind him. She saved him from his zombie family, the zombie family that is currently pounding on the other side of the hatch.

"She saved me, but why?" He asks aloud, "And what am I supposed to do from here?"

Just as the words leave his lips a faint beeping comes to his ears. What is that? Visions of explosive devices fill his mind and he finds himself whispering, "Don't be a bomb. Don't be a bomb," over and over. His eyes meet the source of the new sound of a computer screen. On the screen are four progress bars.

Three of them are at 100% and are a shade of completion green. The fourth one is at 92% and is the one that is currently beeping an alarming red. Upon closer inspection, he sees the bars are labeled. The three completed ones have his mom's name, his dad's name, and Mel's name. The red incompleted one has Cal's name and he realizes that this must be the progress bars until they turned into zombies.

Cal touches the screen and finds that he can scroll it down. Below the progress bars is a typed message.

"No one is as they seem Cal. Trust no one. Find the truth. Beware The Bull."

Etched into the side of the screen is what looks like angel wings.

Cal nearly passes out.

FOUR

Dover walks through the trees carefully. He isn't sure what he will find lurking in the shadows. The Unluckies never played fair and he knows that this will not be an exception to the rule. Four sets of deep footprints lead from the car into the woods. Dover can tell that it is the family's footprints. He squats down and inspects them with his flashlight.

"They are deep and spread out which means that they were running when they made them." He says to himself, "If only two of them were taken over, did they..." The thought of the parents chasing the kids comes into his mind and a lump forms in his throat.

"Don't stop running kids."

FIVE

"ATTENTION!" Comes a voice from seemingly everywhere and Cal jumps out of his skin.

"ATTENTION!" It booms again, "Cal?" Calls the voice in a sly tone, "It is good to have you in my grasp again. Unfortunately, there have been a few hiccups in my plan tonight but as they say, the torture must go on."

Cal looks around for the source of the voice, but it is too loud and surrounding for him to even take a guess. He doesn't have to guess who the voice belongs to though, he knows this voice, it is The Bull.

"I expected to have four puppets tonight, not three, but your family is still useful. Your sister in particular has quite a strong will. We are having trouble keeping her under control. She is a strong marionette, but we have tough strings attached to her."

Cal's breathing goes faster than the Fugaku and he wishes he had his sister beside him to comfort him. One glance at the message from the fleeing girl causes him to focus.

"For as sophisticated our tech is, we actually don't know exactly where you are at the moment. Seems that there might be someone else helping you that we don't know about. In fact, we can't hear or see you, but we aren't worried. We know basically which maintenance route you are in. You will have to come out sometime."

Cal looks down the only direction this hallway affords him and gulps. Where he was pulled into this hallway is a dead-end that only leads one way.

"I know you don't have a lot of options here, so just start wandering little boy... Or I will send The Wolf after you."

The vision of a wolf tattoo flashes into Cal's mind and he shudders. With that he has to decide to either do as he is told and start walking or wait for The Wolf to come and get him. There was no way that he would ever think of going back out to the zombie family above.

SIX

Faint knocking in the distance told the Agent that he is going the right way. When the knocking stops he knows he is in trouble. Finger on the trigger, Dover sweeps the gun back and forth, scanning the tree line for any sign of life. The urge to call out to the kids is strong, but he bites his tongue, they might have been the ones that he helped The Bull take control of.

A rustle to his left turns into a leaping mom with her teeth shown. She resembles nothing of her normal maternal self, now she looks feral and deadly. Dover takes a hands-worth of fingernails to the face before he can pop off a shot with the dart gun.

"How did I miss?" He asks himself in his head as dad comes from behind to box his ears hard. Screaming, Dover reaches for his now bloody ears with his left hand but somehow keeps focus and shoots mom with his right hand. A glance between his legs tells him that dad is about to throw a kick at the back of his legs.

A sidestep later Dover has the upper hand and aims at dad when Mel lands out of nowhere on his back. The young lady reaches her arms around his neck and very quickly sinks in a sleeper hold. Dover misses the shot he takes at dad and receives a haymaker to the stomach. Dover's body collapses and he finds himself looking up at dad with a right hook coming for his face.

"Sorry Mel," He mumbles before bending further over and allowing dad to punch the side of Mel's head. Both family members let out a scream of pain. Mel's grip loosens and with one motion, Dover sluffs her off and nails dad in the chest with a dart.

Three things come to Dover's mind; One, dad broke his hand on Mel's head and is now swelling badly. Two, Cal might be out there ready to attack, so he aims the gun to the treeline. Three, Mel is sobbing.

SEVEN

Wandering the corridors, Cal finds himself fighting the urge to hyperventilate as The Bull continues to rant on and on about torturing him and his family. He made this non-choice by deciding that he would probably die of fear if he didn't have the task of walking to distract him. His mind drifts from horrifying thought to horrifying thought as he drifts through the hallways like a wisp of smoke.

"STOP!" Booms The Bull, "I see you, little one."

Cal freezes, not out of obedience, although he would have if he could think right now, but rather he freezes because the voice had gotten so loud. His eyes automatically begin their search for a camera and quickly spot it.

"Ah yes, you see me now? Good, let's continue our little chat as you walk forward. Does that sound good?"

A large part of Cal wants to obey but there is a little part of him that sounds suspiciously like Mel telling him to give the camera the finger. Mel would know what to do, again he wishes she is there.

"CAL!" Booms the Bull with angry force, then calmly adds, "Walk forward now, please."

After nearly jumping out of his skin, Cal complies.

EIGHT

After searching the woods a little longer, the agent decided that Cal must not be under their control, or at least not close enough to attack. Breathing a little easier he pulled the handcuffs out of his coat pocket and handcuffs the sobbing Mel with her hands in front of her. To his surprise, she doesn't fight back.

Not entirely sure that she wouldn't turn back into a mindless killing machine, the agent kept the dart gun aimed at her side as he went in search of Cal.

NINE

Before Cal knew it, he was standing in a well-furnished and dimly lit room. It took his brain a second to register this but he is in fact standing in what looked oddly like a restaurant, and a nice one too. He takes in the amazing smells of fresh Irish lamb stew but his nose scrunches when the malt smell of beer reaches his nostrils.

The ceiling reveals a second story by way of a balcony overlooking the main pub. Wooden floors cover the entire place and many pictures hang from the red walls. The place seems completely empty but then, something catches his eye though, or rather someone and he nearly faints again.

The Wolf is sitting at one of the barstools and when Cal first spots him he immediately wants to run and hide. He almost does too, but something stops him, something seems off. The Wolf doesn't acknowledge him at all, rather he just eats his lamb stew as if he and the stew are the only two things in the universe.

After some careful steps towards The Wolf, Cal gathers the courage to look into his eyes. Cal doesn't know what he expected to see in those eyes, but the last thing he thought he would find was sadness. The man looks to be on the brink of tears, but he continues to eat.

"I have more control than you think little boy." Says The Bull, "I can make him do whatever I want, do you want to see?"

Cal can't respond, he doesn't have the words or the breath suddenly. He doesn't need to respond though, because The Bull decides that he is going to make The Wolf eat faster. Suddenly The Wolf becomes ravenous and shovels the stew in massive spoonfuls. His body acts like he is starving, but his eyes scream to Cal in pain.

He watches as the man picks up his bowl and drinks the rest of the broth before standing up and walking around the bar. Cal notices that he is heading for a large pot of steaming stew. The Wolf ladles more of the abundant stew with a shaky hand into his bowl. Cal notices that the man's stomach looks distended and grotesque.

Cal realizes to his horror that his family is under whatever spell this poor man is under right now. This is what is happening to his parents and Mel, and they aren't bad people. Does this mean that The Wolf isn't a bad guy either? The memory of the girl in the shadows flashes through his mind and he thanks her for saving him from this fate.

"You will never believe who helped me," Says The Bull in a loud laugh, "How about you walk through the door and I'll lead you to him."

Shaking with fear, anger, and something Cal can't quite place, he summons all of his strength to walk out of the door.

TEN

Dover wanders in the dark, foggy woods for a while hoping to find Cal in one piece. The sobbing Mel in handcuffs made stealth a near impossibility, so he had shouted out Cal's name more than once on this search. A strange growling sound had come back to him from the darkness. He decided shouting in this disturbing forest is a bad idea.

Somewhat jumpy the agent keeps his head on a swivel as he shuffles through the trees. Nothing but Mel's gentle sobbing makes it to his ears until suddenly he hears a creaking sound. Someone has opened something, a hatch maybe? Running towards the sound in the fastest manner possible when you're pulling a crying tween Dover prays that it's Cal.

He find an open hatch leading underground, but no one opened it. Dover spots a motor and realizes that someone opened this remotely. Is this a trap? Is it Cal trying to get help? Can he afford not to take what he can get? With one last look around he mounts the ladder and carefully climbs down with Mel in his arms.

ELEVEN

The Bull leads Cal through many hallways and doors until he reaches what looks like a movie theater without seats. The room has an IMAX size screen on the far wall and sound-dampening wool curtains on the other three. Something is comforting about this place, memories of family movie trips come to mind and Cal almost smiles. What takes away from the warm feeling is the lack of chairs.

Chills run down his spine as he looks at the empty space and the strange slope of the floor makes him feel dizzy. Nausea is about to set in when the door closes behind Cal and the room goes completely dark.

"So," Says The Bull in a surprisingly quiet manner, "You think you know who your friends are? I have to tell you, you do not."

With this last word, Cal notices that the huge screen in front of him turns on. A slideshow comes up of his nana and his family. Happy pictures of birthdays and Christmases. Park days and snow days, lazy days and water park days. That warm feeling comes back and Cal does smile this time.

Then something changes, first there is a mug shot of nana and she is wearing a smile that is so maniacal that Cal barely recognizes her. He shudders as the pictures slide through countless freeze frames of news reports of theft and murder. All of them imply and incriminate his nana and it very quickly dawns on him that she was a terrible person.

Cal starts to break down crying and falls to his knees. He knew that his nana's past wasn't perfect, but so many were killed and so much stolen. His little mind couldn't handle even half of what he had seen. The screen changes again and this time it stays on a picture. A single picture of a man, a man that the two siblings had come to trust. In front of Cal, the gigantic screen showed a picture of Agent Dover.

TWELVE

Footsteps come from behind Cal and a second sound that is strangely familiar, the sound of his sister crying. He turns around just in time to see Dover stop and say,

"Oh no."

"Glad you could join us, Agent." Says The Bull with emphasis on the last word, "You are right on time for me to air out some of your dirty laundry."

"Don't believe him, Cal," Dover says with what looks like fear in his eyes.

"Oh, it will be hard to not believe this." The Bull says as he puts a document on the screen. Cal takes a close look but it doesn't seem to make sense until he sees the red "X" over Agent Dover's face.

"It is a resignation document?" Asks Cal.

"Yes," Starts The Bull, "He isn't an FBI Agent anymore. He wasn't when he met you either. He is just someone who has flown off the handle and has quite the vendetta."

Cal looks back at Dover with sad, scared eyes.

"Should we move on?" Asks The Bull and continues before anyone could say anything, "Look at these progress bars little Cal."

Cal does as he is told and sees the same progress bars that he saw after that shadowy figure saved him. This time though, something is different, Mel's bar is still full, but it's no longer green, it's yellow.

"You might have already guessed what these bars represent, but let me clarify. These bars show exactly how much control we have over these people. As you can see your bar never filled up completely, we aren't positive why that happened, but we will find out soon enough. Your parents are still fully under our control, but the last thing they saw before taking a nap was your good buddy Dover shooting them with that dart gun in his hand.

"That dart gun is our tech that we let Dover use. The tech inside your head? The tech that is allowing us to control people, well that, that is tech from the FBI. Dover brought it to us willingly."

Cal's breathing doubles and he looks back at Dover with extreme fear. He does something he never thought he would do, back away fearfully from him. He wishes he could go and grab his crying sister, but fear is keeping his legs in reverse.

"Your sister though," The Bull starts again, "That poor crying girl broke out of our grasp. You see, the thing inside your head isn't purely technological, there is an element of hypnosis to it. She broke through with her sheer will. I think she has heard enough to be let go now, she isn't on Dover's team anymore."

Just then, her progress bar dropped to zero and she snapped out of the crying fit. With a swift move, she kicks Dover in the shin and runs handcuffed to Cal. They share an awkward hug that mainly involves Cal squeezing her and both of them crying.

"One last thing before I give you two a choice," The Bull says and all three of them turn to the screen, "Dover gave us access to the tech inside your head using his old connections."

Cal looks at Dover in fear, Mel turns her anger reddened face to him. Dover puts his hands up and starts to speak. The sound that comes out of his mouth would have probably been an apology but The Bull started again.

"Mel, Cal, you have two options," The Bull says as a door opens and The Wolf walks in.

Mel leans to Cal, "Did he put on weight?"

"It's a long story," Cal responds shakily.

"Either kill Dover and join us, we already have a moniker ready, The Leopard or The Wolf will... well. Kill you."

THIRTEEN

Panic fills both the children as the floor seems to open up between them and a theatre seat comes out. On the seat rests a Glock and the kid's eyes lock onto it. In one second, everyone notices the gun, the next second Mel is holding the gun and pointing it at Dover.

"What are you doing?!" Shouts Cal.

"He has a gun too," Mel says flatly and Dover puts his hands up.

The sight of his sister in full attack mode brought instant comfort to his heart. The fact that she was attacking Dover kept his breathing fast.

"Look." Says Dover.

"SHUT UP!" Shouts Mel, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"

"Mel?" Cal asks, now fearful of his sister.

"You," Mel says as visions of Dover fighting her and their parents just an hour ago come to her mind, "You lied to us."

"I," Dover starts, but Mel squeezes the gun handle harder and he wonders if she may actually do this, "I am sorry."

There is a silence, then there is another. This stand-off is at a stand still until Cal puts his hand on Mel's shoulder and she calms down a little. Her rosey red cheeks lose a bit of their color and she gave Dover a nod to say, "Go on."

"I am looking for someone and helping them is the best way for me to find them." Dover says pleadingly, "I am sorry, listen let me handle this and then we can take care of this guy," He says nodding towards The Wolf.

"Wait," Cal spits out, "He isn't a bad guy."

"Who? Dover?" Asks Mel.

"No, I mean The Wolf," Says Cal.

"What? Don't you remember how this all started?" Mel nearly shouts at her brother.

"I do, but I also now know that The Wolf was under the same spell that you were just under," Cal says, pointing to the screen.

"He is being used too?" Mel glances at Cal.

"He is," Cal says.

"So our only choices are to kill the man who has been using us as bait and barganing or face the man who will reluctantly kill us." Mel says.

Cal exhales and looks at his sister hoping that she would have the answers, hoping that she would know what to do. After another second Cal realizes that his sister just might pull that trigger and the sweat on Dover's brow tells him that he is having the same thought.

Just then the screen lights up again and Dover's fear is replaced with pure gladness. Mel mouths the word "What?" as Cal turns to look at the screen. Two large angel wings are on the screen with a backdrop of bright white light. Then the screen shows a progress bar that is very quickly draining.

"My Angel," Says Dover with a tear coming down his face.

"Angel wings?" Cal says to himself as he remembers the little wings etched into the screen.

They didn't recognize the first and second name on the bar but the nickname stood out perfectly, "The Wolf." The Wolf looks as if he is shaking off a hard drukenness then he snaps out of it, vomits, then passes out.

"What is happening?" Mel asks, looking around.

"The person I am looking for just happened." Says Dover.

"Who?" Asks Mel.

"My Angel, my daughter." Dover says with a smile on his face, "That is her monicker," He says, pointing to the screen.

As Cal and Mel look at the screen Dover takes advantage and fires his dart gun. The first dart hits Mel in the hand that is holding the gun, the second lands in Cal's chest. Dover didn't expect Mel to be so ready to fire on him but when a bullet tears through his shoulder he realizes that she means business.

"Shit! You shot me!" He says putting a hand to the wound.

Drifting into sleep beside her brother Mel smiles and says in a low voice, "You swore."

Dover crosses the distance between him and the now-laying kids and kicks the gun away from Mel. He looks down at the barely conscious girl and says, "I am sorry about that, I really am. There are things going on that you don't understand. I will call in a favor, you won't wake up tomorrow like nothing ever happened, but you will be safe. You're involved now, and there is no turning back."

With those words, Mel drifts off to sleep.

FOURTEEN

The Bull bashes the keyboard so hard that keys go flying everywhere. He curses and screams as he rips the microphone apart and sends a piece of it through his monitor. A monitor that just a moment ago had two angel wings on it. He knew that he lost this battle, but he knew he still had a chance of winning the war.

Turning to a very old lady in chains he asks, "So Nana, have you seen enough to talk yet? Or should I keep playing with your family like they are my toys?"

FIFTEEN

Mel wakes up in a room that isn't hostile, but it certainly isn't welcoming. It isn't well decorated, but it seemed to be indestructible. She felt safe like Dover had said she would, but she isn't sure that she would be able to leave if she wanted.

Turning her head from side to side she saw that there are two people in hospital beds beside her. They both are unconscious and have strange helmets on and lots of wires coming out of them. They look like bad props from a really bad horror film and she nearly laughs at them until she realizes that she is wearing one of them herself.

"People sleeping in hospital beds?" She asks herself as she sits up slowly, "Lots of people sleeping in hospital beds." She says when she sees there is a row of three of them on her side of the wall and a row of three on her side.

To her left and right are mom and Cal, directly across from her is dad and to his left is an empty bed, but to his right, lays The Wolf.

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About the Creator

David Brandy

My very first story crafting was an imaginary game that me and my two younger brothers would play when I was 12. My love of storytelling manifested itself quickly. Today I am a husband, father, and business owner.

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