Dreamcatcher (47 page)

“The civilians who appear clean? What about them?”

Kurtz leaned forward, now at his most charming, his most persuasively sane. You were supposed to be flattered by this, to feel yourself one of the fortunate few to see Kurtz with his mask (“two parts Patton, one part Rasputin, add water, stir and serve”) laid aside. It had worked on Owen before, but not now. Rasputin wasn't the mask;
this
was the mask.

Yet even now—here was the hell of it—he wasn't completely sure.

“Owen, Owen, Owen! Use your brain—that good brain God gave you! We can monitor our own without raising suspicions or opening the door to a worldwide panic—and there's going to be enough panic anyway, after our narrowly elected President slays the phooka horse. We couldn't do that with three hundred civilians. And if we really flew them out to New Mexico, put them up in some model village for fifty or seventy years at the taxpayers' expense? What if one or more of them escaped? Or what if—and I think this is what the smart boys are really afraid of—given time, the Ripley mutates? That instead of dying off, it turns into something
a lot more infectious and a lot less vulnerable to the environmental factors that are killing it here in Maine? If the Ripley's intelligent, it's dangerous. Even if it isn't, what if it serves the grayboys as a kind of beacon, an interstellar road-flare marking our world out—yum-yum, come and get it, these guys are tasty . . . and there's plenty of them?”

“You're saying better safe than sorry.”

Kurtz leaned back in his chair and beamed. “That's it. That's it in a nutshell.”

Well,
Owen thought,
it might be the nut, but the shell is something we're not talking about. We watch out for our own. We're merciless if we have to be, but even Kurtz watches out for his laddie-bucks. Civilians, on the other hand, are just civilians. If you need to burn em, they go up pretty easy.

“If you doubt there's a God and that He spends at least some of His time looking out for good old
Homo sap,
you might look at the way we're coming out of this,” Kurtz said. “The flashlights arrived early and were reported—one of the reports came from the store owner, Reginald Gosselin, himself. Then the grayboys arrive at the only time of year when there are actually
people
in these godforsaken woods, and two of them saw the ship go down.”

“That
was
lucky.”

“God's grace is what it was. Their ship crashes, their presence is known, the cold kills both them and the galactic dandruff they brought along.” He ticked the points off rapidly on his long fingers, his white eyelashes blinking. “But that's not all. They do some
implants and the goddam things don't work—far from establishing a harmonious relationship with their hosts, they turn cannibal and kill them.

“The animal kill-off went well—we've censused something like a hundred thousand critters, and there's already one hell of a barbecue going on over by the Castle County line. In the spring or summer we would've needed to worry about bugs carrying the Ripley out of the zone, but not now. Not in November.”

“Some animals must have gotten through.”

“Animals and people both, likely. But the Ripley spreads slowly. We're going to be all right on this because we netted the vast majority of infected hosts, because the ship has been destroyed, and because what they brought us smolders rather than blazes. We've sent them a simple message: come in peace or come with your rayguns blazing, but don't try it this way again, because it doesn't work. We don't think they will come again, or at least not for awhile. They played fiddly-fuck for half a century before getting this far. Our only regret is that we didn't secure the ship for the science-boffins . . . but it might've been too Ripley-infected, anyway. Do you know what our great fear has been? That either the grayboys or the Ripley would find a Typhoid Mary, someone who could carry it and spread it without catching it him- or herself.”

“Are you sure there isn't such a person?”

“Almost sure. If there is . . . well, that's what the cordon's for.” Kurtz smiled. “We lucked out, soldier. The odds are against a Typhoid Mary, the grayboys
are dead, and all the Ripley is confined to the Jefferson Tract. Luck or God. Take your choice.”

Kurtz lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose high up, like a man suffering a sinus infection. When he looked up again, his eyes were swimming.
Crocodile tears,
Owen thought, but in truth he wasn't sure. And he had no access to Kurtz's mind. Either the telepathic wave had receded too far for that, or Kurtz had found a way to slam the door. Yet when Kurtz spoke again, Owen was almost positive he was hearing the real Kurtz, a human being and not Tick-Tock the Croc.

“This is it for me, Owen. Once this job is finished, I'm going to punch my time. There'll be work here for another four days, I'd guess—maybe a week, if this storm's as bad as they say—and it'll be nasty, but the real nightmare's tomorrow morning. I can hold up my end, I guess, but after that . . . well, I'm eligible for full retirement, and I'm going to give them their choice: pay me or kill me. I think they'll pay, because I know where too many of the bodies are buried—that's a lesson I learned from J. Edgar Hoover—but I've almost reached the point of not caring. This won't be the worst one I've ever been involved in, in Haiti we did eight hundred in a single hour—1989, that was, and I still dream about it—but this is worse. By far. Because those poor schmucks out there in the barn and the paddock and the corral . . . they're
Americans.
Folks who drive Chevvies, shop at Kmart, and never miss
ER.
The thought of shooting Americans,
massacring
Americans . . . that turns my stomach. I'll do it
only because it needs to be done in order to bring closure to this business, and because most of them would die anyway, and much more horribly.
Capish?
”

Owen Underhill said nothing. He thought he was keeping his face properly expressionless, but anything he said would likely give away his sinking horror. He had
known
this was coming, but to actually
hear
it . . .

In his mind's eye he saw the soldiers drifting toward the fence through the snow, heard the loudspeakers summoning the detainees in the barn. He had never been part of an operation like this, he'd missed Haiti, but he knew how it was supposed to go. How it
would
go.

Kurtz was watching him closely.

“I won't say all is forgiven for that foolish stunt you pulled this afternoon, that water's under the bridge, but you owe me one, buck. I don't need ESP to know how you feel about what I'm telling you, and I'm not going to waste my breath telling you to grow up and face reality. All I can tell you is that I need you. You have to help me this one time.”

The swimming eyes. The infirm twitch, barely perceptible, at the corner of his mouth. It was easy to forget that Kurtz had blown a man's foot off not ten minutes ago.

Owen thought:
If I help him do this, it doesn't matter if I actually pull a trigger or not, I'm as damned as the men who herded the Jews into the showers at Bergen-Belsen.

“If we start at eleven, we can be done at eleven-thirty,” Kurtz said. “Noon at the very worst. Then it's behind us.”

“Except for the dreams.”

“Yes. Except for them. Will you help me, Owen?”

Owen nodded. He had come this far, and wouldn't let go of the rope now, damned or not. At the very least he could help make it merciful . . . as merciful as any mass murder could be. Later he would be struck by the lethal absurdity of this idea, but when you were with Kurtz, up close and with his eyes holding yours, perspective was a joke. His madness was probably much more infectious than the Ripley, in the end.

“Good.” Kurtz slumped back in his rocker, looking relieved and drained. He took out his cigarettes again, peered in, then held the pack out. “Two left. Join me?”

Owen shook his head. “Not this time, boss.”

“Then get on out of here. If necessary, shag ass over to the infirmary and get some Sonata.”

“I don't think I'll need that,” Owen said. He would, of course—he needed it already—but he wouldn't take it. Better to lie awake.

“All right, then. Off you go.” Kurtz let him get as far as the door. “And Owen?”

Owen turned back, zipping his parka. He could hear the wind out there now. Building, starting to blow seriously, as it had not during the relatively harmless Alberta Clipper that had come through that morning.

“Thanks,” Kurtz said. One large and absurd tear overspilled his left eye and ran down his cheek. Kurtz seemed unaware. In that moment Owen loved and pitied him. In spite of everything, which included knowing better. “Thank you, buck.”

7

Henry stood in the thickening snow, turned away from the worst of the wind and looking over his left shoulder at the Winnebago, waiting for Underhill to come back out. He was alone now—the storm had driven the rest of them back into the barn, where there was a heater. Rumors would already be growing tall in the warmth, Henry supposed. Better the rumors than the truth that was right in front of them.

He scratched at his leg, realized what he was doing, and looked around, turning in a complete circle. No prisoners; no guards. Even in the thickening snow the compound was almost as bright as noonday, and he could see well in every direction. For the time being, at least, he was alone.

Henry bent and untied the shirt knotted around the place where the turnsignal stalk had cut his skin. He then spread the slit in his bluejeans. The men who had taken him into custody had made this same examination in the back of the truck where they had already stored five other refugees (on the way back to Gosselin's they had picked up three more). At that point he had been clean.

He wasn't clean now. A delicate thread of red lace grew down the scabbed center of the wound. If he hadn't known what he was looking for, he might have mistaken it for a fresh seep of blood.

Byrus,
he thought.
Ah, fuck. Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

A flash of light winked at the top of his vision. Henry straightened and saw Underhill just pulling the door of the Winnebago shut. Quickly, Henry retied the shirt around the hole in his jeans and then approached the fence. A voice in his head asked what he'd do if he called to Underhill and the man just kept on going. That voice also wanted to know if Henry really intended to give Jonesy up.

He watched Underhill trudge toward him in the glare of the security lights, his head bent against the snow and the intensifying wind.

8

The door closed. Kurtz sat looking at it, smoking and slowly rocking. How much of his pitch had Owen bought? Owen was bright, Owen was a survivor, Owen was not without idealism . . . and Kurtz thought Owen had bought it all, with hardly a single dicker. Because in the end most people believed what they wanted to believe. John Dillinger had also been a survivor, the wiliest of the thirties desperadoes, but he had gone to the Biograph Theater with Anna Sage just the same.
Manhattan Melodrama
had been the show, and when it was over, the feds had shot Dillinger down in the alley beside the theater like the dog he was. Anna Sage had also believed what she wanted to believe, but they deported her ass back to Poland just the same.

No one was going to leave Gosselin's Market tomorrow except for his picked cadre—the twelve men and two women who made up Imperial Valley.
Owen Underhill would not be among them, although he could have been. Until Owen had put the grayboys on the common channel, Kurtz had been sure he would be. But things changed. So Buddha had said, and on that one, at least, the old chink heathen had spoken true.

“You let me down, buck,” Kurtz said. He had lowered his mask to smoke, and it bobbed against his grizzled throat as he spoke. “You let me down.” Kurtz had let Owen Underhill get away with letting him down once. But twice?

“Never,” Kurtz said. “Never in life.”

1

Mr. Gray ran the snowmobile down into a ravine which held a small frozen creek. He drove north along this for the remaining mile to I-95. Two or three hundred yards from the lights of the army vehicles (there were only a few now, moving slowly in the thickening snow), he stopped long enough to consult the part of Jonesy's mind that he—
it
—could get at. There were files and files of stuff that wouldn't fit into Jonesy's little office stronghold, and Mr. Gray found what he was looking for easily enough. There was no switch to turn off the Arctic Cat's headlight. Mr. Gray swung Jonesy's legs off the snowmobile, looked for a rock, picked it up with Jonesy's right hand, and smashed the headlight dark. Then he remounted and drove on. The Cat's fuel was almost gone, but that was all right; the vehicle had served its purpose.

The pipe which carried the creek beneath the turnpike
was big enough for the snowmobile, but not for the snowmobile and its rider. Mr. Gray dismounted again. Standing beside the snowmobile, he revved the throttle and sent the machine bumping and yawing into the pipe. It went no more than ten feet before stopping, but that was far enough to keep it from being seen from the air if the snow lightened, allowing low-level recon.

Mr. Gray set Jonesy to climbing up the turnpike embankment. He stopped just shy of the guardrails and lay down on his back. Here he was temporarily protected from the worst of the wind. The climb had released a last little cache of endorphins, and Jonesy felt his kidnapper sampling them, enjoying them the way Jonesy himself might have enjoyed a cocktail, or a hot drink after watching a football game on a brisk October afternoon.