Dreamcatcher

  "What have they got there, buck?" Kurtz asked. At six-foot-six he towered above Underhill, but Underhill probably outweighed him by seventy pounds.

  "Burger King. We drove through. I didn't think the bus would fit, but Yoder said it would, and he was right. Want a Whopper? They're probably a little on the cold side by now, but there must be a microwave in there someplace." Underhill nodded toward the store.

  "I'll pass. Cholesterol's not so good these days."

  "Groin okay?" Six years before, Kurtz had suffered a serious groin-pull while playing racquetball. This had indirectly led to their only disagreement. Not a serious one, Owen Underhill judged, but with Kurtz, it was hard to tell. Behind the man's patented game-face, thoughts came and went at near light-speed, agendas were constantly being rewritten, and emotions were turning on a dime. There were people--quite a few of them, actually--who thought Kurtz was crazy. Owen Underhill didn't know if he was or not, but he knew you wanted to be careful around this one. Very.

  "As the Irish might put it," Kurtz said, "me groin's foine." He reached between his legs, gave his balls a burlesque yank, and favored Owen with that teeth-baring grin.

  "Good."

  "And you? Been okay?"

  "Me groin's foine," Owen said, and Kurtz laughed.

  Now coming up the road, rolling slowly and carefully but having an easier time than the bus, was a brand-new Lincoln Navigator with three orange-clad hunters inside, hefty boys all three, gawking at the helicopters and the double-timing soldiers in their green coveralls. Gawking at the guns, mostly. Vietnam comes to northern Maine, praise God. Soon they would join the others in the Holding Area.

  Half a dozen men approached as the Navigator pulled up behind the bus, with its stickers reading BLUE DEVIL PRIDE and THIS VEHICLE STOPS AT ALL RR CROSSINGS. Three lawyers or bankers with their own cholesterol problems and fat stock portfolios, lawyers or bankers pretending to be good old boys, under the impression (of which they would soon be disabused) that they were still in an America at peace. Soon they would be in the barn (or the corral, if they craved fresh air), where their Visa cards would not be honored. They would be allowed to keep their cell phones. They wouldn't work this far up in the willywags, but hitting REDIAL might keep them amused.

  "You plugged in tight?" Kurtz asked.

  "I think so, yes."

  "Still a quick study?"

  Owen shrugged.

  "How many people in the Blue Zone altogether, Owen?"

  "We estimate eight hundred. No more than a hundred in Zones Prime A and Prime B."

  That was good, assuming no one slipped through. In terms of possible contamination, a few slips wouldn't matter--the news, at least so far, was good on that score. In terms of information management, however, it would not be good at all. It was hard to ride a phooka horse these days. Too many people with videocams. Too many TV station helicopters. Too many watching eyes.

  Kurtz said, "Come inside the store. They're setting me up a 'Bago, but it's not here yet."

  "Un momento," Underhill said, and dashed up the steps of the bus. When he came back down, he had a grease-spotted Burger King sack in his hand and a tape recorder over his shoulder on a strap.

  Kurtz nodded toward the bag. "That stuff'll kill you."

  "We're starring in The War of the Worlds and you're worried about high cholesterol?"

  Behind them, one of the newly arrived mighty hunters was saying he wanted to call his lawyer, which probably meant he was a banker. Kurtz led Underhill into the store. Above them, the flashlights were back, running their glow over the bottoms of the clouds, jumping and dancing like animated characters in a Disney cartoon.

  3

  Old Man Gosselin's office smelled of salami, cigars, beer, Musterole, and sulfur--either farts or boiled eggs, Kurtz reckoned. Maybe both. There was also a smell, faint but discernible, of ethyl alcohol. The smell of them. It was everywhere up here now. Another man might have been tempted to ascribe that smell to a combination of nerves and too much imagination, but Kurtz had never been overburdened with either. In any case, he did not believe the hundred or so square miles of forestland surrounding Gosselin's Country Market had much future as a viable ecosystem. Sometimes you just had to sand a piece of furniture down to the bare wood and start again.

  Kurtz sat behind the desk and opened one of the drawers. A cardboard box with CHEM/U.S./10 UNITS stamped on it lay within. Good for Perlmutter. Kurtz took it out and opened it. Inside were a number of small plastic masks, the transparent sort that fitted over the mouth and nose. He tossed one to Underhill and then put one on himself, quickly adjusting the elastic straps.

  "Are these necessary?" Owen asked.

  "We don't know. And don't feel privileged; in another hour, everyone is going to be wearing them. Except for the John Q's in the Holding Area, that is."

  Underhill donned his mask and adjusted the straps without further comment. Kurtz sat behind the desk with his head leaning back against the latest piece of OSHA paperwork (post it or die) taped to the wall behind him.

  "Do they work?" Underhill's voice was hardly muffled at all. The clear plastic did not fog with his breathing. It seemed to have no pores or filters, but he found he could breathe easily enough.

  "They work on Ebola, they work on anthrax, they work on the new super-cholera. Do they work on Ripley? Probably. If not, we're fucked, soldier. In fact, we may be fucked already. But the clock is running and the game is on. Should I hear the tape you've doubtless got in that thing over your shoulder?"

  "There's no need for you to hear all of it, but you ought to taste, I think."

  Kurtz nodded, made a spinning motion in the air with his forefinger (like an ump signalling a home run, Owen thought), and leaned back further in Gosselin's chair.

  Underhill unslung the tape recorder, set it on the desk facing Kurtz, and pushed PLAY. A toneless robot voice said: "NSA radio intercept. Multiband. 62914A44. This material is classified top secret. Time of intercept 0627, November fourteen, two-zero-zero-one. Intercept recording begins after the tone. If you are not rated Security Clearance One, please press STOP now."

  "Please," Kurtz said, nodding. "Good. That'd stop most unauthorized personnel, don't you think?"

  There was a pause, a two-second beep, then a young woman's voice said: "One. Two. Three. Please don't hurt us. Ne nous blessez pas." A two-second silence, and then a young man's voice said: "Five. Seven. Eleven. We are helpless. Nous sommes sans defense. Please don't hurt us, we are helpless. Ne nous faites--"

  "By God, it's like a Berlitz language lesson from the Great Beyond," Kurtz said.

  "Recognize the voices?" Underhill asked.

  Kurtz shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

  The next voice was Bill Clinton's. "Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen." In Clinton's Arkansas accent, the last one came out Nahnteen. "There is no infection here. Il n'y a pas d'infection ici." Another two-second pause, and then Tom Brokaw spoke from the tape recorder. "Twenty-three. Twenty-nine. We are dying. On se meurt, on creve. We are dying."

  Underhill pushed STOP. "In case you wondered, the first voice is Sarah Jessica Parker, an actress. The second is Brad Pitt."

  "Who's he?"

  "An actor."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Each pause is followed by another voice. All the voices are or would be recognizable to large segments of the people in this area. There's Alfred Hitchcock, Paul Harvey, Garth Brooks, Tim Sample--he's a Maine-style humorist, very popular--and hundreds of others, some of which we haven't identified."

  "Hundreds of others? How long did this intercept last?"

  "Strictly speaking, it's not an intercept at all but a clear-band transmission which we have been jamming since 0800. Which means a bunch of it got out, but we doubt if anyone who picked it up will have understood much of it. And if they do--" Underhill gave a little What can you do shrug. "It's still going on. The voices appear to be real. The few voiceprint comparisons that were run are identical. Whatever else they are, th
ese guys could put Rich Little out of business."

  The whup-whup-whup of the helicopters came clearly through the walls. Kurtz could feel it as well as hear it. Through the boards, through the OSHA poster, and from there into the gray meat that was mostly water, telling him to come on come on come on, hurry up hurry up hurry up. His blood responded to it, but he sat quietly, looking at Owen Underhill. Thinking about Owen Underhill. Make haste slowly; that was a useful saying. Especially when dealing with folks like Owen. How's your groin, indeed.

  You fucked with me once, buck, Kurtz thought. Maybe didn't cross my line, but by God, you scuffed at it, didn't you? Yes, I think so. And I think you'll bear watching.

  "Same four messages over and over," Underhill said, and ticked them off on the fingers of his left hand. "Don't hurt us. We're helpless. There's no infection here. The last one--"

  "No infection," Kurtz mused. "Huh. They've got their nerve, don't they?"

  He had seen pictures of the reddish-gold fuzz growing on all the trees around Blue Boy. And on people. Corpses, mostly, at least so far. The techs had named it Ripley fungus, after the tough broad Sigourney Weaver had played in those space movies. Most of them were too young to remember the other Ripley, who had done the "Believe It or Not" feature in the newspapers. "Believe It or Not" was pretty much gone, now; too freaky for the politically correct twenty-first century. But it fit this situation, Kurtz thought. Oh yes, like a glove. Made old Mr. Ripley's Siamese twins and two-headed cows look positively normal by comparison.

  "The last one is We're dying," Underhill said. "That one's interesting because of the two different French versions accompanying the English. The first is straightforward. The second--on creve--is slangy. We might say 'Our goose is cooked.' " He looked directly at Kurtz, who wished Perlmutter were here to see that yes, it could be done. "Are they cooked? I mean, assuming we don't help them along?"

  "Why French, Owen?"

  Underhill shrugged. "It's still the other language up here."

  "Ah. And the prime numbers? Just to show us we're dealing with intelligent beings? As if any other kind could travel here from another star system, or dimension, or wherever it is they come from?"

  "I guess so. What about the flashlights, boss?"

  "Most are now down in the woods. They disintegrate fairly rapidly, once they run out of juice. The ones we've been able to retrieve look like soup cans with the labels stripped off. Considering their size, they put on a hell of a show, don't they? Scared the living hell out of the locals."

  When the flashlights disintegrated, they left patches of the fungus or ergot or whatever the hell it was behind. The same seemed true of the aliens themselves. The ones that were left were just up there standing around their ship like commuters standing around a broken-down bus, bawling that they weren't infectious, il n'y a pas d'infection ici, praise the Lord and pass the biscuits. And once the stuff was on you, you were most likely--what had Owen said? A cooked goose. They didn't know that for sure, of course, it was early yet, but they had to make the assumption.

  "How many ETs still up there?" Owen asked.

  "Maybe a hundred."

  "How much don't we know? Does anybody have any idea?"

  Kurtz waved this aside. He was not a knower; knowing was someone else's department, and none of those guys had been invited to this particular pre-Thanksgiving party.

  "The survivors," Underhill persisted. "Are they crew?"

  "Don't know, but probably not. Too many for crew; not enough to be colonists; nowhere near enough to be shock-troops."

  "What else is going on up here, boss? Something is."

  "Pretty sure of that, are you?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  Underhill shrugged. "Intuition?"

  "It's not intuition," Kurtz said, almost gently. "It's telepathy."

  "Say what?"

  "Low-grade, but there's really not any question about it. The men sense something, but they haven't put a name on it yet. Give them a few hours and they will. Our gray friends are telepaths, and they seem to spread that just as they spread the fungus."

  "Holy fucking shit," Owen Underhill whispered.

  Kurtz sat calmly, watching him think. He liked watching people think, if they were any good at it, and now there was more: he was hearing Owen think, a faint sound like the ocean in a conch shell.

  "The fungus isn't strong in the environment," Owen said. "Neither are they. What about the ESP?"

  "Too soon to tell. If it lasts, though, and if it gets out of this pine-tree pisspot we're in, everything changes. You know that, don't you?"

  Underhill knew. "I can't believe it," he said.

  "I'm thinking of a car," Kurtz said. "What car am I thinking of?"

  Owen looked at him, apparently trying to decide if Kurtz was serious. He saw that Kurtz was, then shook his head. "How should I . . ." He paused. "Fiat."

  "Ferrari, actually. I'm thinking of an ice cream flavor. Which f--"

  "Pistachio," Owen said.

  "There you go."

  Owen sat another moment, then asked Kurtz--hesitantly--if Kurtz could tell him his brother's name.

  "Kellogg," Kurtz replied. "Jesus, Owen, what kind of name is that for a kid?"

  "My mother's maiden name. Christ. Telepathy."

  "It's going to fuck with the ratings of Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, I can tell you that," Kurtz said, then repeated, "If it gets loose."

  From outside the building there came a gunshot and a scream. "You didn't have to do that!" someone cried in a voice filled with outrage and fear. "You didn't have to do that!"

  They waited, but there was no more.

  "The confirmed grayboy body-count is eighty-one," Kurtz said. "There are probably more. Once they go down, they decompose pretty fast. Nothing left but goo . . . and then the fungus."

  "Throughout the Zone?"

  Kurtz shook his head. "Think of a wedge pointing east. The thick end is Blue Boy. Where we are is about the middle of the wedge. There are a few more illegal immigrants of the gray persuasion wandering around east of here. The flashlights have mostly stayed over the wedge area. ET Highway Patrol."

  "It's all toast, isn't it?" Owen asked. "Not just the grayboys and the ship and the flashlights--the whole fucking geography."

  "I'm not prepared to speak to that just now," Kurtz said.

  No, Owen thought, of course you're not. He wondered immediately if Kurtz could read his thought. There was no way of telling, certainly not from those pale eyes.

  "We are going to take out the rest of the grayboys, I can tell you that much. Your men will crew the gunships and your men only. You are Blue Boy Leader. Got that?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Kurtz did not correct it. In this context, and given Underhill's obvious distaste for the mission, sir was probably good. "I am Blue One."

  Owen nodded.

  Kurtz got up and drew out his pocket-watch. It had gone noon.

  "This is going to get out," Underhill said. "There are a lot of U.S. citizens in the Zone. There's simply no way to keep it quiet. How many have those . . . those implants?"

  Kurtz almost smiled. The weasels, yes. A good many here, a few more over the years. Underhill didn't know, but Kurtz did. Nasty little fellows they were. And one good thing about being the boss: you didn't have to answer questions you didn't want to answer.

  "What happens later is up to the spin doctors," he said. "Our job is to react to what certain people--the voice of one of them is probably on your tape--have determined is a clear and present danger to the people of the United States. Got it, buck?"

  Underhill looked into that pale gaze and at last looked away.

  "One other thing," Kurtz said. "Do you remember the phooka?"

  "The Irish ghost-horse."

  "Close enough. When it comes to nags, that one's mine. Always has been. Some folks in Bosnia saw you riding my phooka. Didn't they?"

  Owen chanced no reply. Kurtz didn't look put out by that, but he lo
oked intent.

  "I want no repeat, Owen. Silence is golden. When we ride the phooka horse, we must be invisible. Do you understand that?"

  "Yes."

  "Perfect understanding?"

  "Yes," Owen said. He wondered again how much of his mind Kurtz could read. Certainly he could read the name currently in the front of Kurtz's mind, and supposed Kurtz wanted him to. Bosanski Novi.

  4

  They were on the verge of going, four gunship crews with Owen Underhill's men from the bus replacing the ANG guys who had brought the CH-47s this far, they were cranking up, filling the air with the thunder of the rotors, and then came Kurtz's order to stand down.

  Owen passed it on, then flicked his chin to the left. He was now on Kurtz's private com channel.

  "Beg pardon, but what the fuck?" Owen asked. If they were going to do this thing, he wanted to do it and get it behind him. It was worse than Bosanski Novi, worse by far. Writing it off by saying the grayboys weren't human beings just did not wash. Not for him, anyway. Beings that could build something like Blue Boy--or fly it, at least--were more than human.

  "It's none of mine, lad," Kurtz said. "The weather boys in Bangor say this shit is moving out fast. It's what they call an Alberta Clipper. Thirty minutes, forty-five, max, and we're on our way. With our nav gear all screwed up, it's better to wait if we can . . . and we can. You'll thank me at the other end."

  Man, I doubt that.

  "Roger, copy." He flicked his head to the right. "Conklin," he said. No rank designations to be used on this mission, especially not on the radio.

  "I'm here, s . . . I'm here."

  "Tell the men we're on hold thirty to forty-five. Say again, thirty to forty-five."

  "Roger that. Thirty to forty-five."

  "Let's have some jukebox rhythm."

  "Okay. Requests?"

  "Go with what you like. Just save the Squad Anthem."

  "Roger, Squad Anthem is racked back." No smile in Conk's voice. There was one man, at least, who liked this as little as Owen did. Of course, Conklin had also been on the Bosanski Novi mission in '95. Pearl Jam started up in Owen's cans. He pulled them off and laid them around his neck like a horse-collar. He didn't care for Pearl Jam, but in this bunch he was a minority.

  Archie Perlmutter and his men ran back and forth like chickens with their heads cut off. Salutes were snapped, then choked off, with many of the saluters sneaking did-he-see-that looks at the small green scout copter in which Kurtz sat with his own cans clamped firmly in place and a copy of the Derry News upraised. Kurtz looked engrossed in the paper, but Owen had an idea that the man marked every half-salute, every soldier who forgot the situation and reverted to old beast habit. Beside Kurtz, in the left seat, was Freddy Johnson. Johnson had been with Kurtz roughly since Noah's ark grounded on Mount Ararat. He had also been at Bosanski, and had undoubtedly given Kurtz a full report when Kurtz himself had been forced to stay behind, unable to climb into the saddle of his beloved phooka horse because of his groin-pull.