The Sleepwalkers (39 page)

Moments like that, Ron and Dan will just stare at each other. They
were never really friends before. The friends each of them hung around
with most are still lying in the jungle somewhere. But in those wordless
moments when death is only a blink away, they share more with one
another than Ron has ever shared with another human being in his life.

Now he’s staring at the little rings the raindrops make in the water all
around him. He reaches absently into his pocket and takes out a lighter.
It should have run out of fluid days ago, that or the rain should’ve killed
it, but like the Hanukkah miracle, somehow it still works. Ron can’t
remember for sure, but that might be the first thing he ever thanked
God for. He takes out a soggy cigarette and starts to light it. It takes a
few flicks, but finally a flame pops up. Ron inhales deep and puffs out a
big batch of smoke. It’s only then that he sees Dan, staring at him with
wide, wild eyes. Dan jerks his head to the mouth of the hole.

And then Ron hears it, though it’s too late now. Voices, chopped and
harsh, and the click of a bullet filling a chamber. Ron drops his cigarette
and swallows hard. He puts his finger on the trigger of this rifle, and his
eyes dart back and forth around the rim of the hole.

Dan sees it first, and he turns fast and faces the mud wall of the hole,
pressing his body and face against the muck for protection.

Then Ron sees it. A hissing Chicom grenade seems to drift through
the sky like a kite before dropping into the water just at Dan’s feet.

Half the time it seems like Charlie’s grenades are duds, but the other
half they blow you to pieces. Ron won’t take that chance with Dan. He
drops his gun, jumps over, and thrusts his hand into the brown murk at
Dan’s feet. All he gets is a handful of mud, then more mud, then finally
the grenade. He pulls it out—surely this thing must be a dud; it should
have gone off by now, plus it’s drenched—and he cocks back sidearm to
throw it out of the hole, and there’s a sound, just like a firework.

All Ron can think of is the Fourth of July when he told his mother
he wasn’t going to Canada; he would stay and fight and be a hero, and
his mother shrugged and lit another cigarette and popped another beer.

When Ron wakes up, it’s later. He’ll never know how much later. All
he knows is he’s on a stretcher. Somebody’s passing him out of the hole.
He looks down over his left shoulder and sees Dirty Dan. His helmet
is missing and the side of his head is gone. His lips are blue. The eyes
that had confessed so much are crawling with bugs. And Ron hears the
thunder and rush of a chopper and blacks out.

When he wakes up, there’s nothing but a pus-soaked bandage where
his left hand used to be.

And the only thought that goes through his head for days is “so
much for being a hero.”

For some reason, that thought goes through Ron’s head again now. But this time it’s not steeped in bitterness. It’s just a thought. An acceptance. So much for being a hero. He wonders where Keisha is.

Still falling. His ears pop again, and the pain is catastrophic. He thinks his head might actually rupture.

Still falling.

This must be a natural spring; some of them are hundreds of feet deep. This one seems like thousands.

Way too far to swim back up now. Even if he could get free, he doesn’t have nearly enough air or strength to make it.

So he prays.

Lord,

I know you can hear me,

Even way down here.

I’m scared,

But I feel you.

I just wish I had been able to accomplish something.

One big, world-changing thing.

But I guess old Ron Bent never had what it takes

To change the world.

His thoughts are interrupted. The falling has stopped. He hangs upside down in strange weightlessness. His eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and he’s surprised to see that the moonlight permeates this deep. He can make out shapes around him, black, shadowlike shapes floating like jellyfish. He strains to make them out in the half light.

Then he realizes what they are: bodies. He can’t tell how many, but he thinks there must be at least fifty. Bodies, floating upside down in eerie blue suspension, just like him.

A big bubble escapes his mouth. He has a horrible cramp in his stomach.

Maybe one of these is Keisha.

Maybe we’re finally together again.

I hope she ain’t too disappointed I couldn’t save her,

Praise God.

His air is completely gone; his thoughts fragment and dissolve. He blinks fast and claws at the rope, at his face. He flails his arms and expends the last of his energy in panic before joining the sixty-five bodies floating around him in utter stillness.

And Ron Bent dies.

Amen.

Chapter Nineteen

C
ALEB IS DRIVING
. Christine watches him. The radio crackles at AM five thirty-five, but for now the dead are silent. “The world is strange,” says Christine.

The rain had started falling gently at first, but it’s picking up fast. Caleb leans forward, squinting out the glass, looking for the driveway that leads to the Dream Center.

“I always thought I’d run away sooner or later. I’d find you, we’d love each other, and everything would be different. We’d have kids and stuff. That’s all I ever wanted. Now it’s like . . . ” she shakes her head.

“They say if you want to make God laugh, make a plan,” says Caleb. He tries to smile, but his stomach is tied up so tight he winces instead. All he can think of is the sight of Margie’s blown-out kneecaps and the way everything would smell if the world actually ended and everything burned.

They both know that no matter how things work out, they’re bound to end up dead. They’re up against an army of fearless demons, a sheriff with a gun, a ruthless madman, and a host of evil spirits. Maybe even the devil himself.

And the word on the street is that Caleb is the one who’s going to make the end of Creation happen. Word on the street is it’s inevitable.

“What are you thinking?” asks Christine.

Caleb sighs.

She puts her hand on his hand on the car’s automatic shifter.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says. “We’re together.”

He looks in her eyes and finds sincerity, even hope. It surprises him.

“I still don’t know if you’re crazy or not,” he admits. “I don’t know if you helped hold my father prisoner. I don’t know anything. I was supposed to be in Africa, writing, making a difference. Going to Stanford, winning the Pulitzer Prize. What happens if it all just disappears?”

She shrugs. “You want to make God laugh, make a plan,” she teases.

They pass the driveway. It looks like a tunnel leading to nothing. Caleb pulls the car over just past it, shutting off the headlights. They both sit in the quiet for a second, listening to the sound of rain on the roof. Behind the trees to their right they can already see the shape of the Dream Center, huge, dark, and imposing.

Christine offers Caleb the gun. He shakes his head.

“You take that,” he says. “I have this.”

He holds up the hatchet.

“We should try not to kill any of the kids if we can help it,” he says. “But if it comes down to it and a few of them have to die to save the world, then I guess . . . ”

She nods. “So what’s the plan?”

Caleb stares at the steering wheel. They took Ron’s car, hoping it’d be less easily recognized. It smells of stale cigarettes. “Yeah,” says Caleb, “the plan . . . I’ve been trying to figure that out. There’s a gas can in the trunk. It’s only about half full, but it’s something. We might be able to burn them out.”

Christine frowns. “Everybody might be trapped in there,” she says. “The spirits won’t let them leave. They’ll all burn.”

“Maybe we can bluff the director with it then,” says Caleb. “We should take it just in case. We’ll try not to use it.”

“I got this from the house,” says Christine, holding up a little radio

Walkman. “I don’t even know if it still works—it was Mom’s. But if the battery’s still good, Anna might be able to communicate with us.

I don’t know why she doesn’t talk to us now when we need her the most.” She glances at the car radio, but only static replies.

“Maybe the others won’t let her,” Caleb says. “Where do you think Margie and Ron would be?”

Christine thinks for a second. “I don’t know. I never saw any prisoners except the other patients, and when we kidnapped people I was always sleeping. I can’t remember what we did with them.”

“We’ll just have to go room by room, stick together, and hope we find them,” Caleb says.

Christine nods. They look at each other for a long time. Caleb sees Christine looking at his lips. He wants to kiss her too—so bad his chest hurts. Then he thinks of Amber and his life, and he’s frozen.

He pulls back.

A hurt look crosses Christine’s face.

“Let’s go, Caleb,” she says. “We can do this.” She musters a smile.

As she opens the door a rush of rain and wind comes in. Caleb grabs her hand, pulls her back.

He opens his mouth to speak, then doesn’t. He squeezes her hand.

They look at each other one more time, each wanting to say something more, but the rain picks up outside, pounding even harder, drumming on the hood of the car and the windshield, and they both know the moment has come.

They step out of the car, into the deluge. The raindrops are so huge and heavy it hurts when they hit their skin. Caleb takes the gas can out of the trunk and they head toward the Dream Center, hand in hand.

The canopy of trees over the long driveway undulates, their branches writhing in the ferocious wind like a million interlaced snakes. The driveway is mostly flooded from all the rain, and they walk ankle-deep in freezing water. The gale at their back pushes them forward, threatening to knock them off their feet with its power.

They can feel it all around them, a thousand unseen hands at work.

“The spirits are all here,” yells Christine through the torrent.

“Trying to stop us?” Caleb yells.

She shakes her head, a strange, terrified look in her eye. “Pushing us on.”

The trees open up in front of them, and through the stinging haze of rain they see the Dream Center, the old, abandoned, forbidden place of their childhood, waiting for them.

“There aren’t any lights on,” Caleb says.

“They’re there,” says Christine. “The director is in his office on the sixth floor. They’re all there. Waiting for us.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“Are they alive? Margie and Ron?”

Christine just shakes her head. She can’t tell.

She hurries forward first, around the big, circular driveway, past the fountain and straight for the nearest window. Caleb follows. They check all the windows on the first floor. They’re all locked, barred, and dark. Caleb keeps glancing at the woods, expecting to see sleepwalkers in the shadows. But all he sees are the shadows themselves, watching him back.

They reach the basement door, the one that Anna disappeared into once upon a time, and the wind picks up a little. Caleb half expects them to find the door unlocked and waiting for them, but when Christine jerks on the handle it won’t budge. By now they’re soaked to the bone. The rain is cold, biting, almost sleet. Lightning fractures the dark above, illuminating what might be faces in the forest, clawing hands in the branches of the trees all around them.

They pass the old pond Caleb remembers from his childhood.

Little Billy, Anna, and Christine used to splash each other there in those cold, clear, spring-fed waters. Now it sits still and black as the eye of a dead fish. Swollen with rainwater, it’s flooded so much that one leg of its surface reaches nearly to the foundation of the Dream Center. He was always a little scared of that swimming hole as a kid.