Nightmare Country (23 page)

“And you saw all that in the seconds before the cave-in and while frantically trying to dig Winn out of a jam?”

Saul slammed his glass down with a splash of amber. “Shit, Burnham, I'm not trying to make this up to—”

“Okay, okay. I just have to get it all straight, sort out the truth from the excitement. Nobody's calling anybody a liar. We'll let things settle good, and you and me'll go in in the morning and scout before letting the men work the tunnels.”

Tamara didn't keep her promise to prepare a nutritious meal that evening, but went to bed on canned soup, crackers, and an awful pudding mixture Adrian had concocted in sugar-starved desperation. Too exhausted to care and certainly to dream, she gave herself up to Miriam Kopecky's expensive mattress before she'd completed grading papers and filling out the preliminary questionnaire of the National Education Council on Learning Disabilities and Modular Systems Planning. Sleep came quickly and deep, and if there were dreams in the first part of the night, they spun into view and around and back into her memory bank without a lasting impression.

But later, every time Bennie Hope would sniff, Tamara brought a ruler down on his head until it became almost rhythmical—sniff-slap, sniff-slap—and Larry Johnson laughed and cheered her on, and Vinnie cried. And Tamara felt the cruelty in what she was doing but couldn't stop. And even worse was the sensation of glee in finally repaying the child for hours of nerve-rasping sniffles. Her guilt over this last was so heavy she found herself reeling under its weight as she followed Backra down the sand street. He glided like Adrian had on the mountain. He wore only pajama pants.

A series of ugly scabs still marred one shoulder, but when he stopped and turned to stare at something she couldn't see, she noticed the swelling on the bridge of his nose had receded and his profile was once more clean and smooth in the moonlight.

They passed darkened houses, a side street, a cat on a board fence that arched and spit and ran away, a shuttered storefront with cases of empty Coke bottles stacked waist-high along one wall. Backra turned at the next corner and again at the next, so he was going back the way he'd come. He stepped into a doorless, roofless structure made of concrete. By the arches on the window holes Tamara guessed it to be a church under construction, but there was no building mess or scaffolding about.

A scurrying, a succession of ruffs and growls and then yips and barks. She turned to see what looked like a miniature dinosaur with shortened legs, perhaps the ugliest creature she'd ever seen. Shivers tingled over her skin as the creature, who did not look built for such speed, ran-slithered across the floor. He was green, over three feet long, and with a ridge of spines along his back. He had wartlike bumps all over his face and inch-long toenails that clicked on the concrete. His tail and hindquarters swiveled from side to side as he ran. And close behind him, in a scramble of feet and fur, came a pack of canines, perhaps four or five, who skidded to a wide-eyed and squealing halt at the sight of Tamara. They turned and left the green creature to make good his escape out the opposite door hole, across the beach, and over the edge of a dike or breakwater of some sort.

The commotion made Backra stop and turn. He looked past her, again at something she couldn't see. And a dark mass she'd taken for a shadow became instead a kneeling woman with a black shawl draped over her head. She stared openmouthed at Tamara as she rose to her feet and crossed herself. Tamara was surprised that someone other than a dog or Backra could see her. There seemed to be a progression in her dreams. At first she wasn't visible to anyone, but recently more and more of the dream island's occupants could see her. Were dreams really meaningful, as some people claimed? Were these dreams trying to tell her something by way of this progression?

The woman backed carefully toward the door hole that led to the beach. “Thaddeus, come with me. You must wake and get away from this place. An evil one is here.” Her whisper trembled, and her eyes never left Tamara. “Thaddeus, please, this is Rafaela. We must …” The woman in black was out the door and gone.

Backra had taken no notice of her, and now wandered back toward the hole he'd entered by and out into the sand street once more. Tamara followed. In this place of green monsters, he alone seemed safe and familiar. She kept close behind him now, fearing that strange creatures lurked in every shadow, beneath every house. Her dream senses sharpened, making her aware of the background throbbing she always heard here but rarely listened to, and the constant sounds of the sea.

They came to a tall chain-link fence. The throbbing sound came from a lighted building behind it. Backra seemed confused by the fence. As if he could feel it but not see it. A gate stood open not ten feet to his right, but he moved to his left instead, feeling along the fence as he went. When he came to the corner, he started off into the jungle.

“Don't go in there barefoot! Dammit, Tamara, this is just a dream.” But she hurried in after him, worried about what could happen to a sleepwalker here. That woman with the pop eyes had spoken of sinkholes.

He floated through shadows and out into moonlight again, unaware of the plant life clawing at his pajama pants, the debris fallen from the tangle of palms and low trees that might harbor poisonous insects. The air here was filled less with the brine smell of the sea and heavier with the odors of blossom, fruit, vegetable rot, and damp. It smelled as she imagined a snake would, and she wouldn't have been surprised to see all sorts of green demons with spines along their backs

White splotches at intervals in and out of shadows, and a long vine that connected ground to tree, tree to palm, branch to branch. It twisted back on itself and then continued. Tamara knew what it was even before she stepped closer to look. Thick waxy leaves, elongated. Here, bristlelike hairs on the end of each, instead of the brown ends like those in Jerusha Fistler's apartment. Huge white blossoms gave off a sickly scent like that of rotting pineapples and lemons and a hint of gardenia. They reminded her of pictures of exotic orchids. But she knew this to be the night-blooming cereus.

Backra had been stopped by a wall of vines and other vegetation. He stood motionless, staring at it. A vine above his head moved, lowered part of itself as if to get a better look at the sleeping man. As it did so, it unwrapped for at least the five feet Tamara could see. It had an eye that shone back at the moon and a forked tongue that swept the air before it. The snake lowered onto Backra's naked shoulders, and Tamara lunged forward to pull him away, but she struck something hard. Her feet slid out from under her, and she fell backward, to sprawl on something icy. Her breath was knocked from her lungs, and her senses spun.

The sudden cold scared her, and her breath returned with a gasp. Places hurt around her body. Bright lights swirled in front of her eyes. She wondered if the snake would get her before she froze to death. The cold air was crisp and dry, the smells now were of earth, metal, and frost. The colored lights swirled away, the white ones fell thick and wet on her skin and soaked into her nightgown.

Through the snowflakes, Tamara could just make out the huge doors to Iron Mountain's six-hundred-foot portal looming above her in the darkness. She lay spread-eagled across the tracks in front of them.

Interim

Time and Again

Ralph Weicherding was a reporter for a UPI bureau based in Guatemala City but responsible for all of Central America and most of the Caribbean. He heard the news from a contact while on a stopover in Belmopan, the capital of Belize, and was on the next flight to the coast, certain that the contact must have been mistaken. No one could keep a lid on that kind of story for hours, let alone days. But if there was such a story, Ralph was determined to get to it before his counterpart from Reuters. The lack of real news in this region was enough to make a grown reporter cry.

He arrived in Belize City only to find all planes at Mayan Airlines either conscripted as search planes or mysteriously grounded. No flights to the cays allowed. Delayed but undaunted, Ralph Weicherding took passage on the daily supply boat to Mayan Cay. The engines ground ominously and the crew had to shout to be heard over them. Coral heads broke the water in places. Stretches of coral banks that extended close to the surface darkened huge patches of sea. Then they'd enter an area that was clear and deep. They were about an hour out of San Tomas when the supply boat jerked and nosed into a wave no one had apparently expected. Ralph had been dozing, and was awakened by the captain's shouts, followed by a cold drenching as water cascaded over the deck.

“Aye, what's your name again?” The captain was from the U.S. and sounded like a New York City taxi driver.

“Weicherding, Ralph.” He picked himself up out of a puddle.

“Come over here and see this, Weicherdink.” The captain yanked Ralph around the wheelhouse, where his crew lined the rail. About two hundred feet away was a gleaming white ship.

Even the gun turrets were white. And the towers topped with complicated radar devices. And a helicopter on her rear deck that several sailors seemed to be working on or preparing for flight. The only colors were the black letters on her side—D06—and the flags she flew. The top one was the red-and-white crisscross on blue of the Union Jack.

“Bit much for these waters, isn't she?” Ralph asked.

“Get Belize City,” the captain ordered through the wheelhouse window. “Only one destroyer that size ever been around here. That's the
Gloucestershire.”

“I heard she was lost.”

“Don't look lost now. In a clear channel. Ought to make it in with no trouble. Where in hell's she been?” He waved back at a seaman on the destroyer's deck. “And how'd she get right here so quick?”

Heavy static from the wheelhouse and a “whumping” sound that flashed across the water and hit them with the impact of a shock wave. Ralph felt sharp pains in his ears and a momentary pressure against his chest that stopped his breath.

HMS
Gloucestershire
was gone, more as if she'd never been than as if she'd vanished. No disappearing in the gradual sense. The destroyer just wasn't. The men on the supply boat stood silent, staring at empty water, holding on as the boat pitched. The static from the wheelhouse silenced too, and then:

“Belize City, here,” a very English voice. “We read you,
Bella Donna
. Over.”

“Tell 'em never mind,” the captain yelled, and slid his back down the exterior wall of the wheelhouse until he hunkered, lips puckered, eyes darting with the rapidity of the thoughts in his head.

Ralph knew how he felt. Whatever was happening here, it was too unbelievable to make news. If the bureau chief decided to send it out at all, some of the newspapers might use it—put it on their back pages maybe. He doubted any of the TV networks would touch it. Only the kooks would pick up on it.

Too much hard stuff like terrorism, revolution, hostage-taking, impending war, energy crisis. That's where the stories were. With all the American tourists that came to the Caribbean, he thought just one good hostage story wouldn't be asking too much. But this …

Ralph Weicherding sighed and sat next to where the captain of the
Bella Donna
hunkered. “I had a dream once,” Ralph said, “where the Reverend Jim Jones rose from the dead and started a whole new suicide colony right here in Belize. Down between Placentia Point and Monkey River Town. My territory.”

“Talked to a ‘Naivee' over a beer and darts couple o' weeks ago in Mingo's Bar,” the captain answered. “Said the British put something as big as the
Gloucestershire
down here to show Cuba their support for the U.S. in the Caribbean. Kind of a deal with Washington. Don't know if he knew what he was talking about. She ain't been here hardly a month.”

“Why'd you radio Belize City and not just hail the
Gloucestershire?”

“Hell, I wouldn't know what to say to something that big … and clean. One good whiff of this garbage scow and she'd probably blow us out of the water. Keep the world clean for Englishmen or something. You say you're a reporter?”

“Yeah. But this is one story I don't know how I'm going to file.”

“See those tanks over there?” The captain gestured toward a row of crates containing scuba tanks. “Them's for the Mayapan Hotel. Classiest place in San Tomas. Lost most of its rental gear in an accident out here somewheres. Same day as that destroyer turned up missing. One of the guides and a bunch of divers didn't come back.”

“I was on my way to Mayan Cay to interview some of the survivors.”

“Most of 'em have been sent back to the States and some of 'em to hospitals. Now, the stories they had to tell before they left, about how this accident happened, are something else. Something you ain't going to believe, and neither am I. We'd even be embarrassed to repeat 'em. Now, you heard any news reports about them stories?”

“Lid's been put on the whole thing.”

“Nothing to keep those divers from talking when they get home. And most of 'em are home.”

“They can talk all they want to, but if nobody listens, they—”

“Exactly.” The captain of the
Bella Donna
began to whistle significantly. He walked past the excited crewmen, who were still discussing the freakish phenomenon, and nonchalantly peed over the side into the clear blue waters of the Caribbean Sea.

Ralph headed up the beach for the Mayapan, his clothes stiff and scratchy from his salt-water bath on the
Bella Donna
.

A tall bronzed man in swim trunks crept among toppled headstones and tumbled concrete coffins. Three other men stood poised on the far side of the cemetery, spread out at even distances as if to catch whatever the first man flushed.

“I say, you don't plan to cut her up again, do you?” said the man with a British accent and a dead pipe.