Dreamcatcher (52 page)

“I don't give a shit
what
you think,” Jonesy says, his voice so harsh that it startles them all. “It was a
dream,
and I'm going to forget it. We're
all
going to forget it, aren't we, Henry?”

Henry nods at once.

“Let's go back in,” Pete says. He looks vastly relieved. “My feet're free—”

“One thing, though,” Henry says, and they all look at him nervously. Because when they need a leader, Henry is it.
And if you don't like the way I do it,
he thinks resentfully,
someone else can do it. Because this is no tit job, believe me.

“What?” Beaver asks, meaning
What now?

“When we go into Gosselin's later on, someone's got to call Duds. In case he's upset.”

No one replies to this, all of them awed to silence by the idea of calling their new retardo friend on the phone. It occurs to Henry that Duddits has likely never received a phone call in his life; this will be his first.

“You know, that's probably right,” Pete agrees . . .
and then slaps his hand over his mouth like someone who has said something incriminating.

Beaver, naked except for his dopey boxers and his even dopier jacket, is now shivering violently. The Tootsie Pop jitters at the end of its gnawed stick.

“Someday you'll choke on one of those things,” Henry tells him.

“Yeah, that's what my Mom says. Can we go in? I'm freezing.”

They start back toward Hole in the Wall, where their friendship will end twenty-three years from this very day.

“Is Richie Grenadeau really dead, do you think?” Beaver asks.

“I don't know and I don't care,” Jonesy says. He looks at Henry. “We'll call Duddits, okay—I've got a phone and we can bill the charges to my number.”

“Your own phone,” Pete says. “You lucky duck. Your folks spoil you fuckin rotten, Gary.”

Calling him Gary usually gets under his skin, but not this morning—Jonesy is too preoccupied. “It was for my birthday and
I
have to pay the long-distance out of my allowance, so let's keep it short. And after that, this never happened—
never happened,
you got that?”

And they all nod. Never happened. Never fucking hap—

3

A gust of wind pushed Henry forward, almost into the electrified compound fence. He came back to himself,
shaking off the memory like a heavy coat. It couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time (of course, the time for some memories was
never
convenient). He had been waiting for Underhill, freezing his katookis off and waiting for his only chance to get out of here, and Underhill could have walked right by him while he stood daydreaming, leaving him up shit creek without a paddle.

Only Underhill hadn't gone past. He was standing on the other side of the fence, hands in his pockets, looking at Henry. Snowflakes landed on the transparent, buglike bulb of the mask he wore, were melted by the warmth of his breath, and ran down its surface like . . .

Like Beaver's tears that day,
Henry thought.

“You ought to go in the barn with the rest of them,” Underhill said. “You'll turn into a snowman out here.”

Henry's tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. His life quite literally depended on what he said to this man, and he could think of no way to get started. Couldn't even loosen his tongue.

And why bother?
the voice inside inquired—the voice of darkness, his old friend.
Really and truly, why bother? Why not just let them do what you were going to do to yourself, anyway?

Because it wasn't just him anymore. Yet he still couldn't speak.

Underhill stood where he was a moment longer, looking at him. Hands in pockets. Hood thrown back to expose his short dark-blond hair. Snow melting on the
mask the soldiers wore and the detainees did not, because the detainees would not be needing them; for the detainees, as for the grayboys, there was a final solution.

Henry struggled to speak and could not, could not. Ah God, it should have been Jonesy here, not him; Jonesy had always been better with his mouth. Under-hill was going to walk away, leaving him with a lot of could-have-beens and might-have-beens.

But Underhill stayed a moment longer.

“I'm not surprised you knew my name, Mr. . . . Henreid? Is your name Henreid?”

“Devlin. It's my first name you're picking up. I'm Henry Devlin.” Moving very carefully, Henry thrust his hand through the gap between a strand of barbed wire and one of electrified smoothwire. After Underhill did nothing but look at it expressionlessly for five seconds or so, Henry pulled his hand back to his part of the newly drawn world, feeling foolish and telling himself not to be such an idiot, it wasn't as if he'd been snubbed at a cocktail party.

Once that was done, Underhill nodded pleasantly, as if they
were
at a cocktail party instead of out here in a shrieking storm, illuminated by the newly installed security lights.

“You knew my name because the alien presence in Jefferson Tract has caused a low-level telepathic effect.” Underhill smiled. “Sounds silly when you say it right out, doesn't it? But it's true. The effect is transient, harmless, and too shallow to be good for much except party games, and we're a little too busy tonight for those.”

Henry's tongue came finally, blessedly, unstuck.
“You didn't come over here in a snowstorm because I knew
your
name,” Henry said. “You came over because I knew your
wife's
name. And your daughter's.”

Underhill's smile didn't falter. “Maybe I did,” he said. “In any case, I think it's time we both got under cover and got some rest—it's been a long day.”

Underhill began walking, but his way took him alongside the fence, toward the other parked trailers and campers. Henry kept pace, although he had to work in order to do it; there was nearly a foot of snow on the ground now, it was drifting, and no one had tramped it down over here on the dead man's side.

“Mr. Underhill. Owen. Stop a minute and listen to me. I've got something important to tell you.”

Underhill kept walking along the path on his side of the fence (which was
also
the dead man's side; did Underhill not know that?), head down against the wind, still wearing that faintly pleasant smile. And the awful thing, Henry knew, was that Underhill
wanted
to stop. It was just that Henry had not, so far, given him a reason to do so.

“Kurtz is crazy,” Henry said. He was still keeping pace but he was panting audibly now, his exhausted legs screaming. “But he's crazy like a fox.”

Underhill kept walking, head down and little smile in place under the idiotic mask. If anything, he walked faster. Soon Henry would have to run in order to keep up on his side of the fence. If running was still possible for him.

“You'll turn the machine-guns on us,” Henry panted. “Bodies go in the barn . . . barn gets doused
with gasoline . . . probably from Old Man Gosselin's own pump, why waste government issue . . . and then
ploof,
up in smoke . . . two hundred . . . four hundred . . . it'll smell like a VFW pig-roast in hell . . .”

Underhill's smile was gone and he walked faster still. Henry somehow found the strength to trot, gasping for air and fighting his way through knee-high snowdunes. The wind was keen against his throbbing face. Like a blade.

“But Owen . . . that's you, right? . . . Owen? . . . you remember that old rhyme . . . the one that goes ‘Big fleas . . . got little fleas . . . to bite em . . . and so on and so on . . . and so on
ad infinitum
?' . . . that's here and that's you . . . because Kurtz has got his own cadre . . . the man under him, I think his name is Johnson . . .”

Underhill gave him a single sharp look, then walked faster than ever. Henry somehow managed to keep up, but he didn't think he would be able to much longer. He had a stitch in his side. It was hot and getting hotter. “That was supposed . . . to be your job . . . the second part of the clean-up . . . Imperial Valley, that's the . . . code name . . . mean anything to you?”

Henry saw it didn't. Kurtz must never have told Underhill about the operation that would wipe out most of Blue Group. Imperial Valley meant exactly squat to Owen Underhill, and now, in addition to the stitch, Henry had what felt like an iron band around his chest, squeezing and squeezing.

“Stop . . . Jesus, Underhill . . . can't you . . . ?”

Underhill just kept striding along. Underhill wanted to keep his last few illusions. Who could blame him?

“Johnson . . . a few others . . . at least one's a woman . . . could have been you too if you hadn't fucked up . . . you crossed the line, that's what he thinks . . . not the first time, either . . . you did it before, at some place like Bossa Nova . . .”

That earned Henry a sudden sharp look. Progress? Maybe.

“In the end I think . . . even Johnson goes . . . only Kurtz leaves here alive . . . the rest . . . nothing but a pile of ashes and bones . . . your fucking telepathy doesn't . . . tell you
that,
does it . . . your little parlor-trick mind-reading . . . won't even . . . fucking touch . . .
that
 . . .”

The stitch in his side deepened and sank into his right armpit like a claw. At the same time his feet slipped and he went flailing headfirst into a snowdrift. His lungs tore furiously for air and instead got a great gasp of powdery snow.

Henry flailed to his knees, coughing and choking, and saw Underhill's back just disappearing into the wall of blowing snow. Not knowing what he was going to say, knowing only that it was his last chance, he screamed: “You tried to piss on Mr. Rapeloew's toothbrush and when you couldn't do that you broke their plate! Broke their plate and ran away!
Just like you're running away now, you fucking coward!
”

Ahead of him, barely visible in the snow, Owen Underhill stopped.

4

For a moment he only stood there, his back to Henry, who knelt panting like a dog in the snow with melting, icy water running down his burning face. Henry was aware in a way that was both distant and immediate that the scratch on his leg where the byrus was growing had begun to itch.

At last Underhill turned around and came back. “How do you know about the Rapeloews? The telepathy is fading. You shouldn't be able to get that deep.”

“I know a lot,” Henry said. He got to his feet and then stood there, gasping and coughing. “Because it runs deep in me. I'm different. My friends and I, we were all different. There were four of us. Two are dead. I'm in here. The fourth one . . . Mr. Underhill, the fourth one is your problem. Not me, not the people you've got in the barn or the ones you're still bringing in, not your Blue Group or Kurtz's Imperial Valley cadre. Only him.” He struggled, not wanting to say the name—Jonesy was the one to whom he had been the closest, Beaver and Pete were great, but only Jonesy could run with him mind for mind, book for book, idea for idea; only Jonesy also had the knack of dreaming outside the lines as well as seeing the line. But Jonesy was gone, wasn't he? Henry was quite sure of that. He had been there, a tiny bit of him
had
been there when the redblack cloud passed Henry, but by now his old friend would have been eaten alive. His heart might still beat and his eyes might still see, but the
essential Jonesy was as dead as Pete and the Beav.

“Jonesy's your problem, Mr. Underhill. Gary Jones, of Brookline, Massachusetts.”

“Kurtz is a problem, too.” Underhill spoke too softly to be heard over the howling wind, but Henry heard him, anyway—heard him in his mind.

Underhill looked around. Henry followed the shift of his head and saw a few men running down the makeshift avenue between the campers and trailer boxes—no one close. Yet the entire area around the store and the barn was mercilessly bright, and even with the wind he could hear revving engines, the stuttery roar of generators, and men yelling. Someone was giving orders through a bullhorn. The overall effect was eerie, as if the two of them had been trapped by the storm in a place filled with ghosts. The running men even
looked
like ghosts as they faded into the dancing sheets of snow.

“We can't talk here,” Underhill said. “Listen to me, and don't make me repeat a single word, buck.”

And in Henry's head, where there was now so much input that most of it was tangled into an incomprehensible stew, a thought from Owen Underhill's mind suddenly rose clear and plain:
Buck.
His
word. I can't believe I used
his
word.

“I'm listening,” Henry said.

5

The shed was on the far side of the compound, as far from the barn as it was possible to get, and although
the outside was as brilliantly lit as the rest of this hellish concentration camp, the inside was dark and smelled sweetly of old hay. And something else, something a little more acrid.

There were four men and a woman sitting with their backs against the shed's far wall. They were all dressed in orange hunting togs, and they were passing a joint. There were only two windows in the shed, one facing in toward the corral, the other facing out toward the perimeter fence and the woods beyond. The glass was dirty, and cut the merciless white glare of the sodium lights a little. In the dimness, the faces of the pot-smoking prisoners looked gray, dead already.

“You want a hit?” the one with the joint asked. He spoke in a strained, miserly voice, holding the smoke in, but he held the joint out willingly enough. It was a bomber, Henry saw, big as a panatela.