Dreamcatcher

A third shot, then silence.

“Boss?” Freddy murmured. “Some kind of building up ahead.” “Can you see anyone?”

Freddy shook his head.

Kurtz joined him, amused even at this point at the slight jump Freddy gave when Kurtz put his hand on Freddy’s shoulder. And he was right to jump. If Abe Kurtz survived the next fifteen or twenty minutes, he intended to go forward alone into whatever brave new world there might be. No one to slow him down; no witnesses to this final guerrilla action. And while he might suspect, Freddy couldn’t know for sure. Too bad the telepathy was gone. Too bad for Freddy.

“Sounds like Owen found someone else to kill.” Kurtz spoke low into Freddy’s ear, which still sported a few curls of the Ripley, now white and dead.

“Do we go get him?”

“Goodness, no,” Kurtz replied. “Perish the thought. I believe the time has come-regrettably, it comes in almost every life-when we must step off the path, buck. Mingle with the trees. See who stays and who comes back. If anyone does. We’ll give it ten minutes, shall we? I think ten minutes should be more than enough.”

29

The words which filled Owen Underhill’s mind were nonsensical but unmistakable: Scooby! Scooby-Doo! Got some work to do now!

The carbine came up. He wasn’t the one who did it, but when the force lifting the rifle left him, Owen was able to take over smoothly. He flicked the auto’s selector-switch to single-shot fire, sighted, and squeezed the trigger twice. The first round missed, hitting the concrete in front of the weasel and ricocheting. Chips of concrete flew. The thing pulled back, turned, saw him, and bared its mouthful of needle teeth.

“That’s right, beautiful,” Owen said. “Smile for the camera.”

His second shot went right through the weasel’s humorless grin. It tumbled backward, struck the wall of the shaft house, then fell to the concrete. Yet even with its rudiment of a head blown off, its instincts remained. It began to crawl slowly forward again. Owen aimed, and as he centered the sight, he thought of the Rapeloews, Dick and Irene. Nice people. Good neighbors. If you needed a cup of sugar or a pint of milk (or a shoulder to cry on, for that matter), you could always go next door and get fixed up. 7hey said it was a stroke! Mr Rapeloew had called, only Owen had thought he was saying stork. Kids got everything wrong.

So this was for the Rapeloews. And for the kid who had kept getting it wrong. Owen fired a third time. This slug caught the byrum amidships and tore it in two. The ragged pieces twitched… twitched… lay still.With that done, Owen swung his carbine in a short arc. This time he settled the sight on the middle of Gary Jones’s forehead. Jonesy looked unblinkingly back at him. Owen was tired almost to death, that was what it felt like-but this guy looked far past even that point. Jonesy raised his empty hands. “You have no reason to believe this,” he said, “but Mr Gray is dead. I cut his throat while Henry held a pillow over his face-it was right out of The Godfather.” “really,” Owen said. There was no inflection in his voice whatsoever. “And where, exactly, did you perform this execution?”

“In a Massachusetts General Hospital of the mind,” Jonesy said. He then uttered the most joyless laugh Owen had ever heard in his life. “One where deer roam the halls and the only TV program is an old movie called Sympathy for the Devil.”

Owen jerked a little at that.

“Shoot me if you have to, soldier. I saved the world-with a little ninth-inning relief help from you, I freely admit. You might as well pay me for the service in the traditional manner. Also, the bastard broke my hip again. A little going-away present from the little man who wasn’t there. The pain is… “Jonesy bared his teeth. “It’s very large.”

Owen held the gun where it was a moment longer, then lowered it. “You can live with it,” he said.

Jonesy fell backward on the points of his elbows, groaned, turned his weight as well as he could on to his unhurt side. “Duddits is dead. He was worth both of us put together-more-and he’s dead.” He covered his eyes for a moment, then dropped his arm. “Man, what a fuckarow this is. That’s what Beaver would have called it, a total fuckarow. That is opposed to a fuckaree, you understand, which in Beaver-ese means a particularly fine time, possibly but not necessarily of a sexual nature.”

Owen had no idea what the man was talking about; likely he was delirious. “Duddits may be dead, but Henry’s not. There are some people after us, Jonesy. Bad people. Do you hear them? Know where they are?”

Lying on the cold, leaf-littered floor, Jonesy shook his head. “I’m back to the standard five senses, I’m afraid. ESP’s all gone. The Greeks may come bearing gifts, but they’re Indian givers.” He laughed.” Jesus, I could lose my job for a crack like that. Sure you don’t want to just shoot me?”

Owen paid no more attention to this than he had to the semantical differences between fuckarow and fuckaree. Kurtz was coming, that was the problem he had to deal with now. He hadn’t heard him arrive, but he might not have done. The snow was falling heavily enough to damp all but loud sounds. Gunshots, for instance.

“I have to go back to the road,” he said. “You hang in there.” “What choice?” Jonesy asked, and closed his eyes. “Man, I wish I could go back to my nice warm office. I never thought I’d say that, but there it is.”

Owen turned and went back down the steps, slipping and sliding but managing to keep his feet. He scanned the woods to either side of the path, but not closely. If Kurtz and Freddy were laid up, waiting someplace between here and the Hummer, he doubted be would see them in time to do anything. He might see tracks, but by then he’d be so close to them they’d likely be the last things he saw. He had to hope he was still ahead, that was all. Had to trust to plain old baldass luck, and why not? He’d been in plenty of tight places, and baldass luck had always pulled him through. Maybe it would do so ag-

The first bullet took him in the belly, knocking him backward and blowing the back of his coat out in a bee-shape. He pumped his feet, trying to stay upright, also trying to hang onto the MP5. There was no pain, just a feeling of having been sucker-punched by a large boxing glove on the fist of a mean opponent. The second round shaved the side of his head, producing a bum-and-sting like rubbing alcohol poured into an open wound. The third shot hit him high up on the right side of the chest and that was Katie bar the door; he lost both his feet and the carbine.

What had Jonesy said? Something about having saved the world and getting paid off in the traditional manner. And this wasn’t so bad, really; it had taken Jesus six hours, they’d put a joke sign over His head, and come cocktail hour they’d given Him a stiff vinegar-and-water.

He lay half on and half off the snow-covered path, vaguely aware that something was screaming and it wasn’t him. It sounded like an enormous pissed-off blue jay.

That’s an eagle, Owen thought.

He managed to get a breath, and although the exhale was more blood than air, he was able to get up on his elbows. He saw two figures emerge from the tangle of birches and pines, bent low, very much in combat-advance mode. One was squat and broad-shouldered, the other slim and gray-haired and positively perky. Johnson and Kurtz. The bulldog and the greyhound. His luck had run out after all. In the end, luck always did.

Kurtz knelt beside him, eyes sparkling. In one hand he held a triangle of newspaper. It was battered and slightly curved from its long trip in Kurtz’s rear pocket, but still recognizable. It was a cocked hat. A fool’s hat. “Tough luck, buck,” Kurtz said.

Owen nodded. It was. Very tough luck. “I see you found time to make me a little something. “'I did. Did you achieve your prime objective, at least?” Kurtz lifted his chin in the direction of the shaft house. “Got him,” Owen managed, His mouth was full of blood. He spat it out, tried to pull in another breath, and heard the good part of it wheeze out of some new hole instead.

“Well, then,” Kurtz said benevolently, “all’s well that ends well, wouldn’t you say?” He put the newspaper hat tenderly on Owen’s head. Blood soaked it immediately, spreading upward, turning the UFO story red.

There was another scream from somewhere out over the Reservoir, perhaps from one of the islands that were actually hills poking up from a purposely drowned landscape. “That’s an eagle,” Kurtz said, and patted Owen’s shoulder. “Count yourself lucky, laddie. God sent you a warbird to sing you to-'Kurtz’s head exploded in a spray of blood and brains and bone.

Owen saw one final expression in the man’s blue, white-lashed eyes: amazed disbelief. For a moment Kurtz remained on his knees, then toppled forward on what remained of his face. Behind him, Freddy Johnson stood with his carbine still raised and smoke drifting from the muzzle.

Freddy, Owen tried to say. No sound came out, but Freddy must have read his lips. He nodded. “didn’t want to, but the bastard was going to do it to me. Didn’t have to read his mind to know that. Not after all these years.” Finish it, Owen tried to say. Freddy nodded again. Perhaps there was a vestige of that goddam telepathy left inside Freddy, after all.

Owen was fading. Tired and fading. Goodnight, sweet ladies, goodnight, David, goodnight, Chet. Goodnight, sweet prince. He lay back on the snow and it was like falling back into a bed stuffed with the softest down. From somewhere, faint and far, he heard the eagle scream again. They had invaded its territory, disturbed its snowy autumn peace, but soon they would be gone. The eagle would have the reservoir to itself again.

We were heroes, Owen thought. Damned if we weren’t. Fuck your hat, Kurtz, we were h-

He never heard the final shot.

30

There had been more firing; now there was silence. Henry sat in the back seat of the Humvee beside his dead friend, trying to decide what to do next. The chances that they had all killed each other seemed slim. The chances that the good guys-correction, the good guy had taken out the bad ones seemed slimmer still.

His first impulse following this conclusion was to vacate the Hummer posthaste and hide in the woods. Then he looked at the snow (If I ever see snow again, he thought, it’ll be too soon) and rejected the idea. If Kurtz or whoever was with him came back in the next half hour, Henry’s tracks would still be there. They would follow his trail, and at the end of it they’d shoot him like a rabid dog. Or a weasel.

Get a gun, then. Shoot them before they can shoot you.

A better idea. He was no Wyatt Earp, but he could shoot straight. Shooting men was a lot different from shooting deer, you didn’t have to be a headshrinker to know that, but he believed, given a clear line of fire, he could shoot these guys with very little hesitation.

He was reaching for the doorhandle when he heard a surprised curse, a thump, yet another gunshot. This one was very close. Henry thought someone had lost his footing and gone down in the snow, discharging his weapon when he landed on his ass. Perhaps the son of a bitch had just shot himself? Was that too much to hope for? Wouldn’t that just-

But no. No joy. Henry heard a low grunt as the person who’d fallen got up and came on again. There was only one option, and Henry took it. He lay back down on the seat, put Duddits’s arms around him again (as best he could), and played dead. He didn’t think there was much chance this hugger-mugger would work, The bad guys had passed by on their way in-obviously, as he was still alive-but on their way in they must have been in a pants-ripping hurry. Now they would be a lot less likely to be fooled by a few bullet holes, some broken glass, and the blood of poor old Duddits’s final hemorrhages.