Strangers (90 page)

Talia had a ten-year-old Cadillac, a big boat of a car, with winter-tread tires and snow chains. She claimed it would take her anywhere she wanted to go, regardless of the weather, and she called it “Old Paint.” Parker sat up front with her, and Father Wycazik sat in back.

They had gone less than a mile when they heard the emergency radio bulletin about the purported toxic spill and the closure of I-80 west of Elko. “Those muddle-headed, nimble-fingered damn goofballs!” Talia said, turning the volume louder but raising her voice to talk over it. “Dangerous stuff like that, you’d think they’d treat it like a load of babies in glass cradles, but this here’s twice in two years.”

Neither Parker nor Father Wycazik was capable of commenting. They both knew that their worst fears for their friends were now coming true.

Talia Ervy said, “Well, gentlemen, what do we do now?”

Parker said, “Is there anyplace that rents cars? Four-wheel-drive is what we’ll need. A Jeep, something like that.”

“There’s a Jeep dealer,” Talia said.

“Can you take us there?” Parker asked.

“Me and Old Paint can take you anywheres, even if it starts putting down snowflakes big as dogs.”

The salesman at the Jeep dealership, Felix Schellenhof, was far less colorful than Talia Ervy. Schellenhof wore a gray suit, gray tie, and pale-gray shirt, and spoke in a gray voice. No, he told Parker, they didn’t rent vehicles by the day. Yes, they had many for sale. No, they couldn’t complete a deal in just twenty minutes. The salesman said if Parker intended to finance, that would take until tomorrow. Even a check would not clinch the deal quickly because Parker was from out of state. “No checks,” Parker said. Schellenhof raised gray eyebrows at the prospect of cash. Parker said, “I’ll put it on my American Express Gold Card,” and Schellenhof looked grayly amused. They took American Express, he said, but in payment for accessories, repairs; no one had ever bought an entire
vehicle
with plastic. Parker said, “There’s no purchase limit on the card. Listen, I was in Paris, saw a gorgeous Dali oil in a gallery,
thirty thousand bucks,
and they took my American Express!” With deliberate, plodding diplomacy, Schellenhof began to turn them away.

“For the love of God, man,
move
your tired butt!” Father Wycazik roared, slamming one fist into the top of Schellenhof’s desk. He was flushed from his hairline to his backward collar. “This is a matter of life or death for us. Call American Express.” He raised his hand high, and the salesman’s shocked gray eyes followed its swift upward arc. “Find out if they’ll authorize the purchase. For the love of God, hurry!” the priest shouted, slamming his fist down again.

The sight of such fury in a clergyman put some speed into the salesman at last. He took Parker’s card and nearly sprinted out of his small office, across the showroom to the manager’s glass-walled domain.

“Good grief, Father,” Parker said, “if you were a Protestant, you’d be a famous fire-and-brimstone evangelist by now.”

“Oh, Catholic or not, I’ve made a few sinners quake in my time.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Parker assured him.

American Express approved the purchase. With hasty repentance, Schellenhof produced a sheaf of forms and showed Parker where to sign. “Quite a week!” the salesman said, though he was still drab and gray in spite of his new enthusiasm. “Late Monday a fella walks in, buys a new Cherokee with cash—bundles of twenty-dollar bills. Must’ve hit it big in a casino. Now this. And the week’s hardly started. Something, eh?”

“Fascinating,” Parker said.

Using the telephone on Schellenhof’s desk, Father Wycazik placed a collect call to Michael Gerrano in Chicago and told him about Parker and about the closing of I-80. Then, when Schellenhof popped out of the room again, Wycazik said something that startled Parker: “Michael,
maybe something’ll happen to us, so you call Simon Zoderman at the
Tribune
the minute I hang up. Tell him everything. Blow it wide open. Tell Simon how Brendan ties in with Winton Tolk, the Halbourg girl, Calvin Sharkle, all of it. Tell him what happened out here in Nevada two summers ago,
what they saw.
If he finds it hard to believe, you tell him I believe it. He knows what a hard-headed customer I am.”

When Father Wycazik hung up, Parker said, “Did I understand you right? My God, you know what happened to them on that July night?”

“I’m almost certain I do, yes,” Father Wycazik said.

Before the priest could say more, Schellenhof returned in a gray blur of polyester. Now that his commission seemed real to him, he was obviously determined not to exceed Parker’s time limit.

“You’ve got to tell me,” Parker said to the priest.

“As soon as we’re on our way,” Father Wycazik promised.

•

Ned drove Jack’s Cherokee eastward across the snowswept slopes, moving at a crawl. Sandy and Faye rode up front with him, leaning forward, peering anxiously through the windshield, helping Ned spot the obstacles in the chaotic whiteness ahead of them.

Riding in back—crowded in with Brendan and Jorja, with Marcie on her mother’s lap—Ernie tried to convince himself that he would not succumb to panic when the last light of the storm-dimmed dusk gave way to darkness. Last night, when he’d snuggled under the covers in bed, staring at the shadows beyond the reach of the lamp’s glow, his anxiety had been only a fraction of what he’d come to expect. He was improving.

Ernie also took hope from Dom’s resurrected memory of jets buzzing the diner. If Dom could remember, so could Ernie. And when the memory block crumbled away, when at last he recalled what he’d seen that July night, he would stop being afraid of darkness.

“County road,” Faye said as the Jeep came to a stop.

They had indeed reached the first county road, the same one that ran past the Tranquility and under I-80. The motel lay about two miles south, and Thunder Hill lay eight miles north along that ribbon of blacktop. It had been plowed already, and recently, because the federal government paid the county to keep the approach to the Depository open at all times.

“Quickly,” Sandy urged Ned.

Ernie knew what she was thinking: Someone going from or to Thunder Hill might appear and accidentally discover them.

Gunning the engine, Ned drove hurriedly across the empty road, into the foothills on the other side, traversing a series of ruts with such haste
that Brendan and Jorja were thrown repeatedly against Ernie, who sat between them. Once more, they took cover in the snow which fell like a storm of ashes from a coldly burning sky. Another north-south county artery—Vista Valley Road—lay six miles east, and that was where they were headed. Once there, they would turn south and go to a third county road that paralleled I-80 and that would carry them into Elko.

Ernie suddenly realized twilight was falling to the shadow armies of the night. Darkness had nearly stolen up on them. It was standing just a little way off, not in distance but in time, only a few minutes away, but he could see it watching them from billions of peepholes between billions of whirling snowflakes, creeping closer each time he blinked, soon to leap through the curtains of snow and seize him….

No. There were too many other things worth fearing to waste energy on a nonsensical phobia. Even with a compass, they could get lost at night in this shrieking maelstrom. With visibility reduced to a few yards, they might drive off the edge of a ridge crest or into a rocky chasm, unaware of the hole until it swallowed them. Driving blindly to their own destruction was such a real threat that Ned could make no speed but could only nurse the Cherokee forward at a cautious crawl.

I fear what’s worth fearing, Ernie told himself adamantly. I don’t fear you, Darkness.

Faye looked over her shoulder from the front seat. He smiled and made an OK sign—only slightly shaky—with thumb and forefinger.

Faye started to give him an OK sign of her own, and that was when little Marcie screamed.

•

In his office along the wall of The Hub, deep inside Thunder Hill, Dr. Miles Bennell sat in darkness, thinking, worrying. The only light was the wan glow at two windows that faced into the central cavern of the Depository’s second level, illumination insufficient to reveal any details of the room.

On the desk in front of him lay six sheets of paper. He’d read them twenty or thirty times during the past fifteen months; he did not need to read them again tonight to recall, word for word, what was typed on them. It was an illegally obtained printout of Leland Falkirk’s psychological profile, stolen from the computer-stored personnel records of the elite Domestic Emergency Response Organization.

Miles Bennell—Ph.D. in biology and chemistry, dabbler in physics and anthropology, musician proficient on the guitar and piano, author of books as diverse as a text on neurohistology and a scholarly study of the works of John D. MacDonald, connoisseur of fine wine, aficionado
of Clint Eastwood movies, the nearest thing to a late-twentieth-century Renaissance man—was among other things a computer hacker of formidable skill. He had begun adventuring through the complex worldwide network of electronic information systems when he had been a college student. Eighteen months ago, when his work on the Thunder Hill project threw him into frequent contact with Leland Falkirk, Miles Bennell had decided that the colonel was a psychologically disturbed individual who would have been declared unfit for military service even as a private—but for one thing: He was apparently one of those rare paranoids who had learned how to
use
his special brand of insanity to mold himself into a smoothly functioning machine-man who looked and acted normal enough. Miles had wanted to know more. What made Falkirk tick? What stimulus might make him explode unexpectedly? The answers were to be found only at DERO headquarters. So sixteen months ago, Miles began using his personal terminal and modem to seek a route into DERO files in Washington.

The first time he’d read the profile, Miles had been frightened, though he had developed a thousand rationalizations for staying on the job even if it meant working with a dangerous and violent man like the colonel. There was less chance of trouble if Miles treated Falkirk with the coolness and grudging respect that a controlled paranoid would understand. You dared not be buddy-buddy with such a man—or flatter him—for he would assume you were hiding something. Polite disdain was the best attitude.

But now Miles was totally in Falkirk’s power, sealed beneath the earth, to be judged and sentenced according to the colonel’s warped view of guilt and innocence. He was scared sick.

The Army psychologist who’d written the profile was neither very well educated as psychologists went nor too perceptive. Nevertheless, though he had proclaimed the colonel more than fit enough for the elite DERO companies, he had noted peculiarities of the man’s personality that made his report disturbing reading for Miles, who could read not only what was on the paper but what lay hidden between the lines.

First: Leland Falkirk feared and despised all religion. Because love of God and country were prized in career military men, Falkirk tried to conceal his antireligious sentiments. Evidently, these attitudes sprang from a difficult childhood in a family of fanatics.

Miles Bennell decided that this fault in Falkirk was especially troublesome because the current undertaking, in which he and the colonel were involved, had a multiplicity of mystical connotations. Aspects of it had undeniable religious overtones and associations that were certain to trigger intense negative reactions in the colonel.

Second: Leland Falkirk was obsessed with control. He
needed
to dominate every aspect of his environment and everyone he encountered. This urgent need to control the external world was a reflection of his constant internal struggle to control his own rages and paranoid fears.

Miles Bennell shuddered when he thought of the terrible strain this current assignment had put on the colonel, for the thing being hidden here in Thunder Hill could not be controlled forever. Which was a realization that might lead Falkirk to a harmless breakdown—or to an explosion of psychotic anger.

Third: Leland Falkirk suffered a mild but persistent claustrophobia that was strongest in subterranean places. This fear might have arisen in his childhood as a result of his parents’ unrelenting assertion that he would one day wind up in Hell.

Falkirk, uncomfortable when underground, would be automatically suspicious of everyone in a place like Thunder Hill. In retrospect, it was frighteningly obvious that the colonel’s growing paranoid suspicion of everyone on the project had been inevitable from the first day.

Fourth and worst: Leland Falkirk was a controlled masochist. He subjected himself to tests of physical stamina and resistance to pain, pretending these ordeals were necessary to maintain the high level of fitness and superb reflexes required of a DERO officer. His dirty little secret, hidden even from himself, was that he enjoyed the suffering.

Miles Bennell was more disturbed by that aspect of Falkirk’s character than by anything else in the profile. Because the colonel liked pain, he would not mind suffering along with everyone in Thunder Hill if he decided their suffering was necessary to cleanse the world. He might actually
enjoy
the prospect of death.

Miles Bennell sat in darkness, troubled and bleak.

But it was not even his death or the deaths of his colleagues that most frightened him. What made his gut clench was the fear that, while destroying everyone on the project, Falkirk would also destroy the project itself. If he did, he would be denying mankind the greatest news in history. And he’d also be denying the species its best—perhaps only—chance for peace, immortality, endless plenty, and transcendence.

•

Leland Falkirk stood in the Blocks’ kitchen, looking down at the album that lay on the table. When he opened it, he saw photographs and drawings of the moon, all colored red.

Outside, searching the property end to end, a dozen DERO troops shouted to one another, voices garbled and muffled by the raging wind.