Zig Zag (43 page)

"What's
going on?" Nadja asked, panting. "Who's making that awful
noise?"

Silberg
stopped. Half of his body was motionless, sticking out above the
trapdoor. They could hear the cries clearly now, interspersed with
coughing and panting. Elisa thought it was Mrs. Ross at first, but it
was a man's voice.

Then
Silberg did something that horrified her. He hoisted himself up,
climbed up the same top three steps he'd just climbed down, and
stepped aside, his massive hands gesticulating wildly as he shook his
head.

"No
... no ... no...," he whimpered.

Seeing
that enormous man sob like a schoolboy, his face a ball of wax, was
more upsetting than the screams she was hearing. But what was about
to happen was even worse.

Another
set of gloved hands appeared above the trapdoor. A soldier. Though he
had no helmet and no machine gun, Elisa recognized him right away. It
was Stevenson, one of the younger ones, and he gave the impression
that he was trying to escape. He ran to the corner where Silberg was
and then turned and ran to the opposite side of the room, staggering
like a boxer after the final, decisive blow. Then he fell to his
knees and began to vomit.

The
trapdoor was still open, a serene black hole, almost beckoning,
seeming to call, "Who's next?" A toothless mouth waiting to
be fed.

"Keep
away from there!" Carter roared. He was holding a pistol. "Don't
move! Nobody move!" In his other hand he held a flashlight,
surely of more use than the gun, because after he climbed down the
ladder he was swallowed up by darkness.

Lots
of people crowded into the room now. One of the other soldiers
(York), his boots and pants splattered with mud, tried unsuccessfully
to comfort Stevenson; Blanes and Marini were arguing with Bergetti...
There seemed to be mayhem down below, too. Elisa could hear Colin
Craig's voice perfectly.
On
the wall! Right there! Are you blind? On the wall!

It
dawned on her now, amid the chaos, that it had been Craig's voice all
along.

Elisa
made up her mind hastily. She dodged Nadja and slipped through the
trapdoor. Instinctively, she climbed down the first few rungs of the
ladder.

Her
way down was like reliving everything that had happened the previous
night, step by step, scene by scene. She felt the same horror, heard
mumbled voices, saw the confused shadows, the darkness. But there was
one key difference: this time she couldn't keep going. Not because
there was anything in her way. No. It was the vision before her.

She'd
never forget it. Years would go by and she'd remember that scene as
if for the first time, as if time itself was just a con, a disguise
for the constant, immobile present.

Carter
was in the back, in the cold-storage area; the only light came from
his flashlight. Elisa saw his silhouette in the beam. Everything
else, everything that was not Carter's dark shadow, was a dense,
sticky color that covered the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room
entirely.

Red.

It
was as though a huge monster had swallowed Carter and he was in its
stomach, about to be digested.

She
couldn't go any farther. That vision paralyzed her. She stopped
halfway down, just as Silberg had, and realized that someone was
pulling her arm (a soldier; she saw the gloved hand). She heard a
dizzying Stream of commands shouted in English from below.

"Everyone
keep out! Civilians, out! Get the fucking civilians out!!"

A
set of hands yanked her up by the armpits and toward the light once
more.

In
that very instant, she heard the thunderclap and saw a huge flash of
lightning.

"THAT
was
the moment we all died," Elisa said to Victor, ten years later.

PART
FIVE

The
Meeting

The
future torments us, and the past holds us back.

GUSTAVE
FLAUBERT

20

Madrid
March 11, 2015 11:51 P.M.

"I
lost
consciousness. I remember a nightmare helicopter ride. I'd wake up,
faint again ... They gave me sedatives. During the flight, they
explained that the warehouse by the military compound was used to
store flammable materials, and it had exploded when one of the
helicopters lost control during its landing and crashed into it.
Mendez and Lee, who'd been outside, were killed in the explosion,
along with the crew on board the helicopter. The whole military
compound was destroyed, and the control room was severely damaged.
Both labs were totaled. And as for us ... well, we were 'lucky.'
That's what they told us." She laughed. "We took shelter in
the kitchen; that was what they considered 'lucky' ... Anyway, it
made no difference, really, because by then we were already dead. We
just didn't know it." She paused and then added, "Of
course, they didn't tell us the whole truth."

Victor
saw her raise her left hand and stiffened.

He
watched every move Elisa made, and had been since she'd asked him to
pull off at the rest area and park the car. It wasn't that he didn't
trust her, but the story she'd told him, the dark night, and the
enormous butcher knife she still gripped so tightly didn't exactly
set his mind at ease.

All
Elisa did, though, was consult her computer watch.

"I
lost track of time; it's almost midnight. You probably have a lot of
questions, but you need to decide one thing first... Are you coming
with me to this meeting?"

The
mysterious midnight meeting.
Victor
had forgotten about it, wrapped up as he was in Elisa's incredible
story. He nodded his head.

"Of
course I am, if you..." he began. All of a sudden, their shadows
were cast on the car ceiling by a bright light shining through the
rear window. They heard the crunch of gravel under tires at the same
time.

"Oh
shit, drive!" Elisa shouted. "Come on, let's go!"

For
a second, Victor thought he wasn't going to be able to play the role
of race-car driver, but he managed just fine. He turned the ignition
and gunned the motor at almost the exact same time. The tires gripped
the asphalt and burned rubber with a peal that made him imagine
sparks flying out from behind them. After some skillful maneuvering,
he regained control of the vehicle and they were off.

Once
they were back on the Burgos highway, he had two equally satisfying
realizations. First, that the van, or whatever it was that had pulled
up behind them, wasn't following them (maybe it had just been a
coincidence), and second, that despite the panic making him shudder
like an old windup alarm clock, he was starting to feel like this was
the adventure of a lifetime, and he was living it with Elisa, of all
people.

The
adventure of a lifetime.

That
made him smile, and he decided to drive a little faster (very unlike
him) than the speed limit. He didn't want to break the law, just to
make an exception for one night. He felt like he was taking a woman
who'd just gone into labor to the hospital. For once, he could
condone it.

Elisa,
who'd turned to look behind them, now twisted back around and leaned
back, panting.

"We
lost them. For now. Maybe we could ... Do you have autopilot?"

"Nope.
I don't even have GPS or Galileo. Never wanted them. I do have a
good, old-fashioned street map, though, in the glove compartment.
Jeez, that was something ... I never thought I had it in me to peel
out like that!" He slowed down a little and bit his lip. "Luis
Lopera should have seen me!" He glanced over at her. "My
brother, I mean."

But
Elisa was paying no attention. For a minute, he watched her unfold
the map, searching for something under the yellow map light. Bent
over like that, her jet-black hair fell forward, and he couldn't see
her beautiful face.

"Keep
going until San Agustin de Guadalix and then take the Colmenar exit."

"OK."

"Victor..."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"Don't
say that."

He
felt her fingers stroke his arm and recalled a time when he'd gone on
a winter vacation with his brother's family. Sitting beside the
campfire one night, the flames had given him the same sort of
tingling sensation.

"The
floor is now officially open to questions and requests," she
murmured, folding up the map.

"You
still haven't told me what
really
happened
in the pantry. You said they didn't tell you the truth, but..."

"I
will. But first let me try to clear up any doubts you have about what
happened up until now."

"Clear
up any doubts? Elisa, right now I'm doubting absolutely everything,
beginning with who I even
am.
Where
do I begin? It's all so ... I don't know..."

"So
strange. Right? The strangest thing you've ever heard. And that's why
we have to act strange, stranger than ever. In order to understand
this, Victor, we have to behave like strangers."

He
liked that. Especially the fact that a woman like her— wearing
a low-cut T-shirt, black leather jacket, and jeans— had said
it, butcher knife in hand, as they sped down the highway at 110 miles
an hour.
Strangers.
Yeah. You and I. Strangers in the night.
He
accelerated. Then he realized there would be other people at this
meeting and they wouldn't be alone, and that discouraged him
slightly.

He
decided to start with some preliminaries.

"Do
you have any proof of all this? I mean, do you have a copy of the
dinosaur images, and the woman at least?"

"I
told you, they wouldn't let us take anything. And the guys at Eagle
said everything was destroyed in the explosion. That could just be
another lie, but to be honest, that's the least of my worries."

"Well,
how is it that the scientific community knows nothing about any of
this? If it happened in 2005, that was ten years ago. Things like
that, astounding technological breakthroughs, they don't stay secret
for that long."

Elisa
thought about her answer for a minute.

"People
like us, we
are
the
scientific community, Victor. And back in the forties, a lot of our
colleagues knew it was
possible
to
make bombs using nuclear fission, but they were just as shocked as
the general public when they saw thousands of Japanese blown to
smithereens. It's one thing to believe something is
possible,
and
quite another to
see
it happen."