Rift (23 page)

“That's the only time you tried?”

“Tom went to qualifying school four times, and four times he tanked. He was thinking about trying out for the U.S. Open before this all happened, but I haven't bothered.”

“Why?”

“Because golf is not just striking the ball well; it's striking the ball well when people are watching and big money is on the line. Apparently my nerves aren't that strong.”

“That's all golf is about? Playing well when big money is on the line? Don't you make pretty good money yourself?”

“Maybe, but I'm not happy doing it. I could walk away from accounting today without a second thought. But golf, it pisses me off that I can't compete with the best. No matter how good you are, there is always someone better.”

“But how many people can really be the best, Cameron?”

“I don't know,” I admit. “There are a lot of things to be the best at.”

“But what you really want is to be the best golfer, right?”

“Of course.”

“And who is the best golfer?”

“Tiger Woods.”

“See what I mean?” Lee says from the backseat, apparently not asleep after all. “The gods you worship? Celebrities, all of them. Created and used by the media to lead you around like a donkey.”

“That's bullshit,” I growl. “You can't arbitrarily make someone the best at something.”

“But you can turn anyone into a celebrity,” Lee counters. “Look at Anna Kournikova. A decent tennis player, someone who shouldn't get all that much press, except that some sports management company got the idea to turn her into a sex symbol, and now that part of her image is much more important than what got her noticed in the first place—a pretty good backhand.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I'm sitting here fighting for my goddamn life, wondering if the lingering effects of my transmission are going to permanently damage my body somehow, and you're back there trying to convince me that
celebrities
are what's wrong with our country? Why the hell are we even talking about this at all? I just want to get to Dallas and do whatever it is we need to do to make Batista or whoever the hell runs NeuroStor fucking
fix
me so I don't lose my goddamned
mind,
so I can have my fucking
life
back and play fucking
golf
again without having to chase the ball all over the goddamned
course,
so I can make someone pay for killing my best
friend,
and you're sitting back there with a bug up your ass trying to piss me off because I like to watch golf on television, because I think Tiger Woods has built a game everyone should aspire to? Who the hell do you think—”

But the rest doesn't come out because suddenly I'm ill. In my head, up there where the works are usually rock-solid, I notice a change, a loosening in my sense of balance and orientation. The car begins to spin slowly around me. Nausea stirs my stomach, and the car seems fifteen degrees warmer than it did a moment ago.

“Cameron,” Crystal asks. “Are you all right?”

I sit up straight and swallow a few times. Wipe my forehead, bring back a slick of sweat. Someone has pumped poison gas into my stomach, and now it's spreading upwards, into my throat. I need to burp. Release this awful poison.

“Cameron?”

I don't want to open my mouth to answer. Lee sits behind me in silence. My stomach is rolling now. Hot down there. My heart beats double-time as I struggle against the urge to throw up. When you get sick in a car full of people, everything and everyone is forced to stop just for you. This has only happened to me once, when I was eighteen and drank way too much beer at an Astros game. It was miserable. Imagine sitting in the backseat of a '78 Nova between two drunk buddies who keep punching each other every time they see a Volkswagen Beetle. No air-conditioning. Dry, musty seats. Sitting there, still as a mouse, hoping the nausea will go away. But of course it didn't. I waited so long that when I finally opened my mouth to yell “Pull over!” vomit sprayed all over the front seat. What a fucking riot everyone thought it was. Everyone except the guy who owned the car, who brought us to a screeching halt in the freeway breakdown lane.

I'm about to ask Crystal to make an emergency stop when a short burp bleeds off my belly like a pressure valve. My heart slows down. I can breathe again.

“Cameron?” Crystal asks me again. “What's wrong?”

“I think I'm okay. I think it's going to pass.”

But what I'm more afraid of is that it's only going to get worse. This is the second time I've experienced nausea since the transmission, the last time being in front of Lee's house where I threw up blood. And usually I'm the kind of guy who loves roller coasters, any ride that rotates, anything that is supposed to make the stomach turn somersaults.

“You think
what's
going to pass?”

Now here comes the nausea again, clawing its way into my throat much more quickly than before. This is what I hate the worst, this expansion, this feeling of fullness, as if someone in my stomach is pushing a Ping-Pong ball up my throat. My heart races again, sweat rolls into my eyes, and if we don't stop soon, if I don't get out right now—

“Pull over, Crystal,” I say. “Stop the car.”

The pause before her foot hits the brake sucks away precious seconds. “What's the matter, Cameron?”

“Just pull . . . og . . . I'm gonna be siii—”

I lean into the floorboard. My stomach clenches like a giant fist. A glut of brown liquid urps out of my mouth. Crystal has already jerked the car into the breakdown lane. I'm thrown forward as the car slows down, and I vomit again.

“Okay, honey, we're stopped now. Do you need me to—”

Grope for the door handle. Into the cool night air. Much better. I heave again, dry this time, then stumble around as my head spins wildly. The car idles beside me, puffing exhaust in quick bursts. Interstate traffic hums in the distance. I move toward the car and reach for its solidity. Everything spinning. Turn sideways and rest my cheek on the cool steel. A door opens. Hands upon me.

Crystal.

“It's okay, Cameron. It's okay. Do you feel better now?”

“My stomach feels better. But my head, the spinning, oh God . . .”

“Do you think you can ride in the car?”

“Not right now. I'll throw up again if I do. I can't even stand without leaning against the car.”

“So you're dizzy? Disoriented?”

“I can barely stand here and talk to you. Nothing is still.”

“You've got some kind of inner-ear problem. Are you prone to motion sickness?”

Fear tightens my scrotum, rushes up my spine like ice. “No. I've never been motion sick. Not once.”

“If we give you a few minutes, do you think you could ride then?”

“I don't know. I'll have to wait and see.”

“Okay. Just stand there and relax. Let your balance come back.”

Her hands leave me, and I turn my head to cool the other cheek. She leans into the car and says something to Lee. I hear him curse something back. A tractor-trailer roars by on the interstate and shakes the car.

Thank God they need me. If I wasn't their precious smoking gun, Lee would probably be willing to leave me right here on the highway. I better hope they don't have second thoughts.

Crystal is still leaning into the car. Arguing, from the sound. I see her narrow waist and curvy hips, her beautiful bottom, and I'm almost too sick to care. Almost.

She walks around to the back of the car and then reappears on the shoulder with me. “I'm not sure what to do, Cameron. We can't just sit here on the side of the road. You might be sick all night.”

“I don't want to hold anyone back, but I may throw up again if I get back in that car.”

“I found a couple of plastic bags in the trunk. You could use those if you're willing to go.”

“Okay.”

It's hard to pry my face from the car, the only solid entity in my swirling existence. Crystal pulls out the soiled floor mat and tosses it into the weeds beside the road.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“I guess.”

I slide back into the seat, immediately aware of the car's new fragrance: Bile of Cameron. I'm sure they're both happy about that.

“Feeling better?” Lee asks me.

“No.”

“Do you think you'll throw up again?”

“Probably be dry heaves if I do. I'm surprised there's anything left in my stomach considering I threw up a couple of hours ago.”

“Any blood this time?” Crystal asks.

“None that I noticed, thank God.”

“We'll stop and buy you some Dramamine in Albuquerque,” she says. “But that's over an hour from now.”

“I don't know if Dramamine will solve this particular problem.”

“Then maybe you should try to get some sleep.”

And so we're going again. Once Crystal reaches cruising speed, I close my eyes, but immediately sense myself going into an uncontrollable spin. My stomach grumbles. I open my eyes. They seem to be looking in all directions at once, even when I hold them steady.

Though our headlights only push the darkness back a short way, I find it comforting to stare straight ahead, as if watching the horizon. My fingers find the two closest air vents, and I point the gusts of cold air directly into my face.

Fifteen minutes later, though, I'm sweating like a football player in summer practice. The poison is back in my stomach. I grab a plastic sack and spill more bile into it.

“I'm sorry, Cameron,” Crystal says. “I know you're suffering. I didn't expect this.”

I close off the sack and relax against the seat. An hour or so to Albuquerque, and then another ten to Dallas?

Jesus, I'm never going to make it. Right now it feels like my stomach is trying to cannibalize itself. And when we get there, what then? Sure, maybe I'm proof that will help Crystal expose NeuroStor's sadistic volunteer program, that will provide the catalyst she needs to wreak havoc on the titans of industry she thinks rule the world. But what about me? Where do I stand? With my seizures and my uncontrollable nausea and my eighteen hours of sleep, what sort of future can I possibly hope . . . what can I . . .

         

Something is different. Something about the car. I've been asleep. I know this because my mouth tastes like shit and the skin on my face is smeared with oil. Because dried tears have formed a crust in the corners of my eyes. I can't open them to see—I'm so incredibly tired, but . . .

The road is smoother. That's the difference.

I bet we're in Texas. As a citizen here, you don't realize it until you leave, but our roads are among the best in the nation. I read somewhere that Lyndon Johnson had something to do with it.

Home.

Where my wife lives. Where that man—that other me—is sitting with her, or perhaps cuddling with her, smelling her chestnut hair.

At the very least, however bad I feel and whatever terrible things may happen later, at least Misty believes I'm okay. At least she feels comfortable and safe. For now.

But could that change? If we attempt some kind of hidden camera campaign against NeuroStor and don't accomplish what we want, is it possible that Batista would retaliate somehow? Would he go after Misty, use her as leverage against me or even kill her in anger?

Is that something I really want to do? Take the chance of hurting Misty to further my own agenda? It's easy to be angry, to go after NeuroStor to get my life back, but should I do so if it means placing my wife in danger?

Just thinking about this is making me sleepy again. My eyes flutter, almost opening, but I give up.

I mean, shit. Why bother?

eight

D
istantly, I hear music. Rock music. Can't recognize the group, but the sound of guitars is familiar. Beneath the tires I can tell the road has turned rough again, only this time because of spaced, uniform bumps beneath the tires. My eyelids struggle open, and I see amber light. Streetlights.

Are we there?

Trees off the road, then a hotel, then a wide ravine under a bridge. We might be passing over a river, and now I see a waterfall of some kind. But I'm confused, because it seems out of place, as if it's not part of this river at all.

The music ends. A disc jockey prattles about a weekend showdown between Rider and Old High. Those names sound familiar but I can't place them. Sleep seems to fade in and out. Someone on the radio exclaims: “Olney, Windthorst, Wichita Falls! . . . ninety-two-point-nine . . . KNIN.”

Now the connections are made. The artificial waterfall, the local high schools. This is where I grew up, where Misty took me to be buried in the recurring nightmare that precluded my trip to Arizona.

I'm falling again, away from the Wichita Falls radio station and into an orbit of sleep, but before I go, something occurs to me, something I had forgotten but that must be related to the memory of the recurring dream. It's Misty's proposal that my soul could be lost during the transmission. I dismissed her, of course—I no more believe in God than I do the Force—but for some reason now I feel like entertaining the idea. Could that be why there was no eulogy in my funeral dream? Because the body being buried was nothing more than an empty shell? A shell that is beginning to show cracks, buckling under the increasing pressure of an inaccurate transmission?

         

The car is much brighter. I've woken up again. We're crossing another bridge of some kind.

“That was a long nap,” Crystal says.

“Where are we?”

“Between Dallas and Fort Worth. Look over there.”

I look out the window and see, of all things, Texas Stadium. Which means we're in Irving, only a few miles from Plano now.

“How do you feel?” she asks me.

“Not too well. My head is still spinning. My stomach feels terrible.”

“Can you make it another thirty minutes?”

“I think so.”

But I don't. We're going over an elevated freeway interchange when the nausea comes again. I throw up into the same bag as last time. Brown spittle. Nothing more. By now the muscles in my stomach are beginning to cramp, and my throat is raw.

Fear still rumbles within me like a constant, nearly inaudible bass line, but now another track is being laid into the mix—anger. Because I shouldn't be here, sweating, shuddering, throwing up in this car. Certainly I agreed to transmit—I accepted the risk—but I did so with incomplete information. I'm here because I was lied to. By that brash, young little fuck whose ideas, whose profits were more important than the lives of my wife and myself. Batista. Motherfucking Batista.

Neither Crystal nor Lee say anything to comfort me. I just sit there and broil in my own contaminated juices as we drive into Plano on U.S. 75, a freeway nothing less than ten lanes wide. Our set of northbound lanes, which head away from downtown Dallas, moves quickly, but the southbound side crawls at a snail's pace. Newly built restaurants and car dealerships border the road. Fast-food signs tower above us—McDonald's, Burger King, Denny's—and normally I would be salivating at the thought of scrambled eggs, sausage, and hash browns. Not today. The way I feel right now, maybe never again.

We exit the freeway and turn onto a surface street. The Hampton Inn appears after only a minute or two, and Crystal jumps out as soon as we reach the carport, leaving Lee and me behind. We wait for her in silence.

Crystal returns to the car a few moments later and guides us to a parking spot. Into the room we go, where the air is crisp and cool, where two beds stand sterile and flat.

“We've rented the two adjacent rooms as well,” Crystal says. “Others will join us soon, and this is where we'll stay tonight.”

“Who are these other people? What are they going to do, exactly?”

“I don't suppose you're hungry,” she says. “But would you like something to drink? A soda to soothe your stomach, maybe?”

“What kind of answer is that?”

Crystal takes me by the arm and leads me toward the door.

“A Coke would do wonders for your nausea,” she says. The morning air is warm and muggy. The door slams shut behind us.

“Would you please—”

A cramp of pain interrupts me, a hot flare in my stomach, and I double over. When Crystal puts her arm on my back, I shrink away.

“Cameron.”

I don't want her to touch me. Not this way. Not with pity.

“Cam—”

“Leave me alone,” I say and stand up straight again. “I'm okay.”

“You're not well.”

“But there's nothing you can do about that, is there?”

Crystal offers no consolation, for which I am supremely grateful. The last thing I want right now is for her to lie to me.

“I guess I'll take that Coke now,” I tell her.

We get into the car, and Crystal drives us away from the motel. Several fast-food restaurants stand within sight, in the direction of the freeway, but she heads in the other direction.

“These ‘other people,' ” she says, “are acquaintances who are going to help us get into the NeuroStor complex in Plano.”

“When?”

She makes a right turn and now we're on a narrower street. We've driven by no less than a dozen places that serve soft drinks. Where exactly are we going instead?

“The day after tomorrow,” Crystal says.

“What? How?”

“We'll try to sneak inside, but at some point, force will be necessary. We have guns and explosives. We have a mobile satellite uplink facility, which we'll use to interrupt network television if Lee can hack into one of their satellites. He's been trying NBC for a while, but I don't know if it's going to work.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You have all this set up?”

“Cameron, we've been ready for a long time. When you came along, we just mobilized what had been acquired and planned well before.”

“You're telling me Lee can hijack a network television satellite and interrupt programming?”

“I told you I'm not sure it will work.”

“But if it does, what about afterwards? You'll be hauled into jail for unlawful entry, airtime theft, firearms violations, and who knows what else. And Batista will just claim his admissions were made under duress. Your crimes will be only a public relations hassle to him.”

“Not if we broadcast with definitive proof,” she says with a devious smile.

We round one more corner and end up on a street populated by medium-size warehouses of the corrugated steel variety. Rick's Home Security Specialists, B. Tate Heating & Air, AAA Body Shop. We turn into one labeled D&D Mechanical. The main warehouse is painted a boring tan color, and a smaller, brick office stands before it. A red Dodge truck is parked in the parking lot out front.

“By proof, you mean me. Or should I say ‘us'?”

“Imagine it, Cameron. The two of you on national television confronting the people who created this abomination. How could they explain it?”

“But why risk so much? When we break into their building, they'll try to kill us. Isn't it more practical to tell our story on
20/20
or
Dateline
?”

“First of all,
you're
not going in. That would be ridiculous, because you're right, some of us are likely to get hurt or even killed. Second, we can't do it the way you mentioned—go on the news by ourselves—because an interview like that would do little to damage their credibility. I don't think we can really get people's attention until we get NeuroStor on camera. Don't you want them to answer for what they've done to you?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then this is it. Let's go inside. I want you to meet someone.”

She pulls a magnetic key card from her purse and uses it to unlock the door. We walk into a typical blue-collar office. Cheap desk, cheap telephone, cheap coffeemaker standing on a cheap table. Open doors stand on the right and left sides of this room, and another one on the back wall leads to the warehouse.

Footsteps creak across the floor in one of the adjoining rooms. A figure steps around the corner and looks at us.

I've never seen this man before. He's shorter than me, sports a receding crop of dark hair, and looks as if he could bench-press five hundred pounds. The sleeves of his black polo shirt are stretched tight around arms that might have been chiseled from pure granite. He walks toward us with no expression at all.

“Crystal,” the man says. His Texas accent is heavier and slower than my own.

“Hi, Clay.”

“You brought the copy. Good work.”

She smiles.

Now Clay looks at me, surveying my body as if it was a particularly choice cut of meat. I don't know what to think or say, so I just stand there.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Fine. How do
you
feel?”

“Any symptoms of transmission sickness?”

“Still a little nauseated.”

“Dizzy?”

“Not too much.”

“Disoriented?”

“I was earlier, but right now—”

“It'll come back,” he says. “Even stronger. We've got a doctor who can take a look at you later today, but I'm afraid there's little to be done. He's got painkillers if you need them.”

I'm about to ask him what he knows about transmission sickness—that's a term I haven't heard before, not even from Crystal—when movement on the left catches my eye. Another figure walks out of the side office.

My God.

This is someone I
have
seen before. About a million times. And always in the mirror.