"So?"
"Compare the two images."
"Nadja, we don't have time for..."
"Please."
Suddenly Elisa saw it.
"The dinosaurs' legs ... are ... mutilated?"
Nadja's almost-albino head bobbed up and down affirmatively. They stared at each other in the gloomy laboratory.
"There are chunks missing, Elisa. Jacqueline thinks they're wounds caused by predators or disease. But then I thought of another idea. I knew it was absurd, but I decided to check ... You see these cuts, here and here? There are no teeth marks. They're remarkably similar to these here..." She pointed to the Jerusalem Woman's face.
"That's just a coincidence, Nadja. A fluke. One of those images is from AD 33 and the other is a hundred and fifty million years old!"
"I know. I'm just telling you what I see. And what you yourself just saw."
"All I see is a totally ravaged face..."
"And ravaged reptiles..."
"Nadja, it makes no sense to try to establish a relationship there!"
"I know, Elisa."
For a minute they peered into each other's faces. Elisa smiled.
"I think we're starting to lose our minds. I'm glad we're getting out of here."
"Me, too, but don't you think it's a pretty extraordinary coincidence?"
"Well, it is odd..."
"Let me tell you another coincidence." Nadja lowered her voice to a whisper, but her wide-open eyes were the very definition of a scream. "Did you know Rosalyn saw the man, too?"
Elisa didn't need to ask who she was talking about. She listened, shuddering.
"One afternoon a few days ago, I found her alone in her room, so I went in to talk to her. I don't remember how it came up; I think we were commenting on how poorly we'd been sleeping, and I told her about my nightmare ... or what you think was a nightmare. She looked at me and told me that she'd had a very similar... dream. She was petrified. She had a dream about a man with no face whose eyes..."
"Stop it, please."
"What?"
Elisa suddenly burst into nervous laughter.
"I dreamed the same thing last night... My God..." Her laughter cracked like an eggshell and she burst into tears. Nadja gave her a hug.
They both sat there gasping, the outlines of their bodies silhouetted in the computer screen's murky glow. Elisa was terrified. Not the vague fear she'd felt throughout the day, but a concrete fear, a real fear. I dreamed about him, too. What does that mean? She looked around at the shadows that engulfed them.
"Don't worry," Nadja said. "You're probably right, they're just nightmares ... Our fear has rubbed off on each other."
Now they could hear voices in the hallway: Blanes, Marini... The exodus was clearly under way.
Just then, the door connecting the two labs burst open, startling them. Jacqueline Clissot appeared, took a few steps as if to cross the room, and then abruptly stopped. Clissot looked as though she'd dived headfirst into a swimming pool, fully clothed. But it was obvious that the water glistening on her face, plastering her hair to the sides of her head, and sticking her blouse to her breasts and armpits was, in fact, sweat. The paleontologist was sweating like crazy.
"Have you finished, Jacqueline?" Nadja asked, rising. "How did—?"
"Have you seen Carter?" Clissot interrupted her disciple with a stern voice. "I radioed him twice, and he doesn't pick up."
They both shook their heads. Elisa wanted to hear Clissot's verdict on the body, but she didn't have a chance to ask her. The hall door opened, and Mendez spoke to them in his accented English.
"I'm sorry. You must come to the screening room. The helicopters are arriving."
"I want to see Mr. Carter," Clissot said. She opened the trash can and threw her surgeon's mask into it. "It's urgent."
But it was too late. Mendez was gone, and Colin Craig stood in his place.
"Sorry. Any of you seen Mrs. Ross?"
"Try the pantry," Elisa suggested.
"Thank you." Craig offered a polite smile and disappeared.
"I need to see Carter before we go," Clissot insisted to the two women. "If you see him, let him know. I'm going to try to find him at the heliport." Then she followed Craig's footsteps and disappeared down the hall.
"She seems so edgy," Nadja murmured.
"We all are."
"Yeah, but she never was before..."
Elisa knew what she meant. She never was before she examined Rosalyn.
"There you go, getting carried away with your fantasies again," she said. But she wondered what it was that Clissot could have found on Rosalyn's body that was so urgent. "Come on, we should leave everything how it was..."
While she helped Nadja close down the computer and save all the files, she thought about how badly she wanted to get out of there. Suddenly, the island was unbearable, with everyone coming and going, people storming in and out all the time, the soldiers making a racket. She longed for the solitude of her house. Or any house, for that matter.
"I'll be right there," Nadja said. "I still have a few things in my room."
They separated in the hallway, and Elisa headed for the exit. It seemed to have stopped raining, although the sky was still gray. The barracks were oppressive.
She walked past the dining room and was almost to the exit when she heard the screams.
THEY were coming from below her. She could almost feel them vibrate in the soles of her shoes, like the start of an earthquake. For a second, it made no sense. And then it hit her. The pantry. She ran to the dining room and found it empty.
Almost. Silberg had been the first to arrive (or maybe he was already there to begin with) and was headed toward the kitchen at top speed.
Her stomach did flips as she followed the German professor to the storeroom where the trapdoor leading down to the pantry was located. Silberg rushed to it and began to climb down the ladder. A shadow appeared beside Elisa.
"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."
"Still..."
"Oh, Victor..." she sighed, sneaking a glance at him. "You don't believe a word of this, do you?"
"Of course I believe you. The island, the experiments, the images ... It's just... it's too much to take in all in one night."
&nbs
p; "You think I'm hallucinating or something."
"No! That's not true."
"Do you even believe there was a Project Zig Zag?"
The question made him stop and think. Did he? She'd told him everything in plenty of detail, but had he accepted it? Had that constant stream of mind-blowing information cleared his cerebral channels? And the hardest question: had he accepted what it meant if she was actually telling him the truth? The ability to see the past... the sequoia theory ... Time strings opened and viewed, their present images transformed into images from the past. It seemed ... possible ... unlikely ... fantastic ... rational... absurd. If it were true, then the history of humankind had changed forever. But how could he believe it? Up until that moment, what he knew was what the rest of his colleagues knew: that Blanes's theory was mathematically attractive but had an exceedingly slim chance of ever being proven. And as for the rest of it (mysterious shadows, unexplained deaths, white-eyed ghosts), if it were all based on an idea that struck him as crazy, how could he believe it? He decided to be honest.
"OK, I don't believe it all... I mean, it's just too much to handle, the idea that for the past half an hour I've been hearing about the greatest discovery since relativity, right here in my car, on the ride up to Burgos ... I'm sorry, I just can't... I can't take it all in. But by the same token, I can say I believe you. In spite of... the way you're acting, Elisa." He swallowed hard and then confessed all. "I have to be honest with you. A lot of things have been going through my head tonight ... I mean, I still don't even know who we're running from, or why you're carrying a... a small machete around with you ... It's all pretty shocking, and frankly, I have my doubts ... about you, about me. What you're suggesting, the way you're acting, it's just all so mysterious. It's like the hardest cryptogram I've ever tried to crack. But I think I have a solution. And my solution says, I believe you, but right now I don't believe what you believe! Does that make sense?"