Zig Zag (45 page)

Milan.
This is because of what we saw in Milan.

He
wondered why he wasn't worse himself and finally deduced that it was
because he couldn't possibly
get
any
worse.

"There
are some things that no one should see ... ever," Harrison said,
recovering, rolling up the screen again and placing it back into his
overcoat.

You're
telling me.
Carter
didn't reply. He just kept looking out the window. No spectator
(though there were none) could ever tell that he was affected by what
he'd seen.

But
he was. Paul Carter was afraid.

"WAIT!
I
think I get it!"

"No,
there's no way you get it yet."

"Yes,
I do ... Wait a minute. Sergio Marini's death ... The news on TV
today, I was the one who called to tell you..." Victor opened
his mouth and almost jumped out of his seat. "Elisa, you put two
and two together, right? Now I see. You had a truly horrible
experience, I know ... Three of your colleagues died because another
one went insane... But that was ten years ago!"

She
listened carefully. And now it all made sense to him: Elisa needed
his words and his comfort more than she needed him to drive her down
dark, winding lanes at night. Her memories were the only thing
actually after her. She was absolutely terrified of a bunch of things
that were dead and gone. There was a name for that, right?
Post-traumatic stress disorder. Marini's murder was just a terrible
coincidence, and it had sparked the whole thing off. What should he
do? The thing that would help her the most would be to make her see
that.

"Think
it through," he said calmly. "Ric Valente already had
plenty of reasons to be unstable, and I can assure you that I'm not
surprised to hear that the Impact, or whatever it was, brought his
worst instincts to the surface. But he's dead, Elisa. You can't..."
Suddenly, another idea flashed through his mind. "Wait a minute
... We're on our way to meet the others, aren't we?" Her silence
confirmed he was right. He decided to venture on. "The rest of
the Zig Zag team. Of course ... You're meeting tonight. Marini's
death made you all think that... that another one of you had lost
your minds, the way Ric did ... But if that were true, shouldn't you
be trying to get help?"

"Who's
going to help us, Victor?" she asked, in the saddest, bleakest
voice he'd ever heard. "No one."

"The
government... the authorities ... Eagle Group."

"They're
the ones after us. Don't you see? That's who we're running from."

"But
why?"

"Because
they're trying to help us." With each sentence, Elisa seemed to
be making less sense, getting more scrambled, mired deeper in
turmoil. "When we get to the meeting, it'll all make sense.
We're almost there. The exit is just after this stretch..."

He
was distracted for a moment by two curves in the road. The names of
the towns they passed all blurred in his mind: Cerceda, Manzanares el
Real, Soto del Real... Faint lights were dotted throughout the black
fields, sometimes clustered in what must have been little villages.
The scenery would have been beautiful in the daylight (Victor had
traveled through here before), but at night it was like meandering
through the ruins of a huge, haunted cathedral. It's frightening how
insignificant the distance separating man from terror really is,
Victor realized. Three hours ago, he'd been watering his aeroponic
plants, in his comfortable apartment in Ciudad de los Periodistas,
and look at him now. Driving along a dark road with a woman who might
be deranged.

"Why
are you armed?" He tried to think fast. "Is Eagle Group our
enemy?"

"No,
our enemy is much worse ... unfathomably worse."

He
took another curve, the headlights casting their beams on the trees.

"What
do you mean by that? Wasn't Ric the one who—"

"That
was
bullshit.
They
lied."

"But
then—"

"Victor,"
she said harshly, staring at him, "for the past ten years,
someone has been murdering
everyone
who
was on that fucking island..."

He
was about to reply, but as he turned into another bend in the road,
his headlights shone on a car blocking their way.

21

HIS
right
foot took over entirely.

His
mind didn't go blank. He had time to ask himself a few questions, to
register Elisa's scream, invoke both God and his parents, and have a
terrible realization: we're going to die.

The
mass of metal blocking the highway raced toward the windshield as if
it
were
moving, rather than his car. Victor put all his weight behind his
right foot as it plunged into the pedal beneath him. In his ears,
Elisa's cries and the sound of tires screeching blended into one
incredibly sharp, piercing note, like a chorus of terrified lunatics.
There were two strokes of luck: the curve was not a tight one, and
the car was a short distance away. Still, despite his sharp turn to
the left, the right side of the car smashed into the driver's door of
the other vehicle. For a fraction of a second, he was elated.
Whoever
that asshole is, I showed him.
Then
they reached the shoulder and he had a realization: beyond them were
a few trees and then a steep slope.
Yes,
Victor, you're on a mountain. A steep slope. Practically a cliff.
But
the world came to a halt at the safety barricade. It wasn't really a
crash. The air bags didn't even deign to inflate. Newtonian inertia
slightly jiggled their bodies, and then all was calm.

"God!"
Victor shouted, as if "God" were an insult to make truckers
blush. He turned to Elisa. "You OK?"

"I
think so..."

His
legs were trembling (after having done its duty, his right foot had
turned to Jell-O), but his hands were in control. He unfastened his
seat belt, muttering, "Jerk... I'm going to report that idiot...
He'll be sorry..." He was about to open the door when something
stopped him.

For
a second, he thought that the light shining through his window and
blinding him was coming from the other car, but it was floating in
the air and had no motor attached to it.

"It's
them," Elisa murmured.

"Them?"

"The
people following us."

A
black leather fist banged on the window.

"Out!"
the fist shouted.

"Hey,
wait a minute!...

Anger
was a common response for Victor, but he was anything but angry. At
that precise moment, he was terrified. He didn't want to leave the
car's protective interior, but he was scared to disobey Black Fist.
His fear was schizophrenic, simultaneously hissing, "Don't do
it," and yet also whispering, "Do as you are told."

Dark
suits with jacket tails fluttering in the wind filed past his high
beams.

"Don't
get out," Elisa said. "I'll talk to them."

She
rolled her window down manually. An unknown face appeared, in a
sliver of light. Elisa and the face spoke in English.

"Professor
Lopera has nothing to do with this ... Let him go..."

"He
has to come too, now."

"I'm
telling you..."

"Don't
make this any more difficult than it already is, please."

While
he witnessed that rather formal discussion, night suddenly entered
his side of the car. They had somehow managed to open his door,
though he didn't recall having unlocked it. Nothing separated him
from Black Fist now.

"Get
out, Professor."

A
hand clamped onto his arm. The words stuck in his throat. No one had
ever touched him like that before. His relationships were based on
courtesy and a polite personal distance. The hand yanked, dragging
him out. Now, mixed in with the fear assailing him, he also felt the
outrage of an upstanding citizen unfairly hassled by the authorities.

"Hey!
Just a minute! What right do you have—Let's go."

There
were two men, one bald and the other blond. Baldy was doing all the
talking. Victor was pretty sure Blondie couldn't even speak Spanish.

Of
course, he didn't need to.

Blondie
had a gun.

THE
house,
situated a few miles from Soto del Real, was just as she remembered
it. The only changes she noticed were that the inside seemed slightly
run-down now, and there was more construction in the area than there
had been. But it still had the peaked roof, white walls, porch, and
old swimming pool. It was nighttime, but it had been dark the first
time, too.

Everything
was the same, but it was all different, too, because the first time
she'd felt hopeful, and now she had no hope, had resigned herself
entirely.

The
room they locked her in was a small bedroom that looked like it
hadn't been used in years. There was no decor whatsoever, just a
sheetless bed, a nightstand, a lamp with a naked bulb providing the
only light, and an old wooden chest of drawers, warped with age. Oh,
and a man built like a brick house, arms folded across his chest,
wearing a dark suit and an earpiece while he blocked the door. Elisa
had tried speaking to him, but it was like talking to a wall.

As
she paced the desolate room, watched by her keeper, her thoughts were
all focused on one thing, the most important of the many that should
be concerning her: Victor.
I'm
so sorry. So, so sorry.

She
had no idea where they'd taken him. She guessed he was somewhere in
the house, too, but the men who had ambushed them split them up,
forcing Victor into another car. She was driven in Victor's car,
after they'd confiscated that stupid knife, of course (what had she
been thinking, grabbing that thing?). Nevertheless, she felt
convinced they'd been brought to the same place, and that Victor had
arrived first. They were probably interrogating him at that very
moment.
Poor
Victor.

She
promised herself that she'd get him out of there if it was the last
thing she did. Getting her friend tangled up in this had been a
tragic mistake on her part, a failing. She swore that she'd pay any
price, including her life, to free him. But first she'd have to find
the answers to a few questions. For example, why had she gotten
the
call
if
the meeting place was not secure? And how had they even found out
about the meeting? Had the whole thing been a trap from the start?