The Sleepwalkers Part 12

The floor is gritty and smooth.

Water is warm as blood now.

Gropes and gropes and finds the slippery shaft of the flashlight a few feet away. He pulls himself up, taking a big, shuddering breath.

Suddenly, he's so dizzy he isn't sure he's on earth anymore, isn't sure he's right-side up, isn't sure he's himself.

In a moment, reality comes back. He steps over to the left, finds the wall with a tentative hand, steadies himself.

Clicks the flashlight switch. It doesn't work.

Clicks the flashlight switch. It doesn't work.

Feels himself crying. It hurts his face, bad.

Shakes the light, clicks it on, it doesn't work.

Shakes it hard, clicks it on. It works.

And in the light, he sees- Them.

Maybe twenty pale faces. White gowns.

Eyes closed.

Facing him.

Very still.

The flashlight paints them white against the wet, black cement.

Don't wake them up, he thinks.

Dreaming eyes snap back and forth beneath their lids.

Suddenly twenty faces contort into rage.

Bean hears his own scream, and it echoes and echoes and echoes, and all those hands grab him, and he fights and fails, and he doesn't know what's the water and what's his blood, and he wonders-if there is a G.o.d, does he know about this?

And all those hands tear him, deep.

The corridor is long, but the water's getting shallower. Caleb's legs burn, feels like his blood's battery acid, but he chugs on. Gotta put enough distance behind him. This is almost enough. He glances back. No sleepwalking faces. Good. Maybe he lost them in those turns. Maybe they gave up.

Maybe Bean's already made it to the door, or even back to the car, and the sleepwalkers have given up. Everything will be okay. It always is. It has to be.

Something ahead. A moon. A crescent moon, in the heart of the blackness. Closer; it's light! And the water is getting shallower, and- it's the door.

Caleb clatters up the lopsided steps, throws his weight on the door, and it grinds open. He smells the air.

The morning after a nightmare.

His cheeks tense up to cry.

But . . .

He pulls himself off the door, tears his eyes from the light.

Suddenly his stomach winds into a knot.

The way he sent Bean was supposed to lead to the exit, not this way. That means Bean is still in there, alone.

He listens. No splas.h.i.+ng.

"Bean?"

No one behind him . . .

"Bean!"

. . . means the sleepwalkers didn't follow him.

He half falls down the steps, sloshes forward.

"Beeean!"

. . . Means they might have followed Bean instead.

A scream.

Echoing, it seems to amplify, wave upon wave, a tooth-gritting, blistering, piercing sound. The sound of an animal dying.

"Beeeean!"

The sound of a dying man.

Caleb battles through the water, blind with fury and tears. The echo dies away and his ears are starving for something more, for the slightest sound, and for a half an instant he thinks he hears a whimper, faint as the sound of a flower opening, then nothing. Nothing. His own flailing. His own howl of blind rage.

He finally reaches the crossing of the corridors, the place where he left his friend.

Blood in the water.

The tunnel ahead is empty. The tunnel to the left is bare. The tunnel to the right is vacant. Not even a ripple there.

"I'M HERE!" screams Caleb, veins beating, voice grating.

"I'M HERE!"

His voice echoes back to him, mocking.

He growls through his tears and punches the wall of the tunnel with all his force.

He hears a snap and doesn't care.

He cries harder.

"I'm right here!"

But there's no one to hear him call. Bean is gone.

Chapter Eight.

THE SUN s.h.i.+NES, BUT THE LIGHT FEELS HOLLOW.

Bob Dylan's on the radio, singing the story of the "Hurricane," and even though it should be as familiar as the voice of an old friend, the campfires and late-night talks and crisp, hungover mornings and late-night lovemaking sessions that Bob's tunes usually evoke in Ron Bent's memory are somehow missing. All he sees is a pine-hemmed stretch of two-lane highway and the whistle of the wind through the broken rearview mirror.

Ron feels like an eggsh.e.l.l today. Helpless, useless, fragile, empty. In another time, he'd be in jail right now. He'd have grabbed that d.a.m.ned smug pig's neck in the crook of his arm, grabbed his face with his hand, his good hand, and jerked his head to the side. Snapped his smug pig neck. He was a thick fella, it might have taken a couple of tries, but he'd have done it. Even to think of it gives him a shot of adrenaline, makes him smile around his cigarette. Then he'd have pulled the dead cop's gun, turned it on the woman, which probably would have made her wetter than a Seattle winter. Yeah, she'd have liked that. And he'd have made her spill her guts. He'd have made her get him into the police database, show him all the files, call in the families of the other missing kids, the lonely, the bereaved, and they could figure it out together, ride out like a posse from one of those Old West movies they always played on Sunday afternoons-and, of course, he'd be the leader, like a real-life John Wayne. The Duke. And they'd find Keisha. Get revenge with smoke and lead, as it should be. And he'd take her home, his Keisha, and they'd make macaroni and cheese with hot dogs and she'd sit on his lap and put her arms around his neck and say, "Thank you, Daddy, I knew you'd never give up."

Except he did give up. Well, not exactly-but he sure hadn't snapped the cop's neck, that's for sure. He'd asked some questions, pressed them as much as he could, tried to make them at least understand. But in the end, he'd left as empty-handed as ever. Except with the knowledge of what she had said, what Deputy Janet had let slip, what he couldn't make her repeat or even acknowledge in front of the sheriff: hundreds are missing. Ron s.h.i.+vered.

Pine trees whooshed past and white clouds with bottoms of heavy gray hung motionless in the blue sky. Maybe it was for the best, the way he had shut up and walked away. It was easy to be rash when he was young and full of whiskey. Easy to be stupid and heroic. His heroism had earned him breakfast in jail on more than one occasion. Maybe it was a good thing to walk away sometimes, "know when to fold 'em," as Kenny Rogers once said. Or h.e.l.l, maybe he was just getting old, getting soft, getting tired.

Now he drives that old stretch of road all over again, seeking what he looked for more and more nowadays. Not vengeance, but communion, with Keisha or with G.o.d. He doesn't really know which. It's hard to know the difference between the two sometimes. Times like these, he always goes to the spot of beach where he lost her, and that's where he's going now. Times like these, he sits on a driftwood log (his knees won't tolerate sitting Indian-style anymore) and he looks into the wind, into the sunset, and finds the will to search on.

As he drives, he prays: Hey there, Lord.

Here we are again.

How many times have we talked On this same stretch of highway?

On the way to the same empty beach?

I don't even know what to say anymore.

It's all been said.

Only thing new is a number, and it can't be real.

Hundreds, she said.

Hundreds of folks just went away.

Did you have the Rapture and forget to invite me?

I pray that's true because that means you took her, You took my Keisha.

And if it's true and she's up in your kingdom, Then praise you, Lord, thank you, Lord.

Take her and leave me behind, An old man like me has seen too much anyway.

I wouldn't make much of an angel.

Think my wings might be dirty brown, Not white like they ought to be.

But, Lord, if you would take any pity on me at all, Just bless me with the truth, Bless me with- The engine stutters, then stutters again. Ron curses under his breath, knowing what's coming. This is really a stroke of c.r.a.p luck. He leans forward and taps the fuel gauge. It says half-empty. If he were an optimist, it might say half-full. But Ron Bent isn't much of an optimist. He flicks the clear plastic of the fuel gauge and the needle falls down to empty. d.a.m.ned, blessed, stinkin', car. He knew he should have had that gauge fixed. The car is s.h.i.+mmying now, s.h.i.+vering like a dog shaking off water. All Ron can do is ease it over to the side of the road and sit there, head pressed back against the headrest, eyes closed in frustration. It's gonna be a long walk to get a gas can.

He gets out of the car, wanders into the empty road.

For a minute, he's so p.i.s.sed off he thinks of walking away from the car, just leaving it here-even though this hunk of c.r.a.p is just about the only thing he has left-and pus.h.i.+ng forth on foot. Maybe that's how it should be. He can spend the rest of his years wandering the earth, like Christ, a pauper and a pilgrim. Except he'd get pretty d.a.m.ned wet in those Florida rainstorms. Christ didn't live in a semitropical climate.

He looks up the road; as far as he can see, nothing but yellow lines and pavement and pine trees in sand. He sighs, looks down at his feet. Time to start walking.

Suddenly a sound: the snap of a twig. He turns his head and squints (his old eyes don't work like they did-seen too much, they have). Someone is there, in the woods, moving between trees. Ron watches. He sees a pink s.h.i.+rt, blue jeans. Whoever it is doesn't seem to see him. Ron stands still and watches the figure move in slow, limping steps, parallel to the roadway at first, then toward it, and finally breaking into the clear perhaps forty yards up ahead. Several times, Ron almost calls a greeting to the stranger, but something strangles his voice in his throat. Finally he speaks.

"Hey."

The figure, a young man, looks back at him, or maybe past him, then continues up the road in the opposite direction, unfazed. Ron almost turns and walks away, but he doesn't.

"Hey," he calls again, and when the teenager seems to pick up his limping pace, Ron jogs after him. Even with the pain in his knees sparking red like firecrackers at every step, he catches up to the kid in no time. When he does, he draws up short.

The kid's jeans are dripping wet and smeared with mud. His s.h.i.+rt, which had appeared a pinkish red from a distance, now appears to be a white T-s.h.i.+rt, soaking wet and stained with blood or something like it. He grips a flashlight in each hand so tight that his arms are shaking with tension.

"Hey," Ron says, touching the kid on the shoulder.

The boy, probably no older than eighteen, wheels around, raising both flashlight-wielding fists defensively.

"Who are you?" the kid says, his voice a rasping whisper.

"Name's Ron. Ron Bent," he says, trying to smile. "You okay? What are those flashlights for?"

Ron sees now that the kid is shaking. His face is covered with grime, except for two paths trailing down from his eyes, where tears must have washed it away. Four b.l.o.o.d.y scratch marks streak one cheek. Must have been a fight, and someone clawed his face. As Ron studies him, the kid's eyes begin welling up again, though he tries his best to sniff it away.

"My friend lost his light," he says, looking hard at one of the flashlights in his hand.

The kid tries to pull away, and Ron detains him as gently as possible. "Wait a minute, wait," he says. "You don't look so good. What happened to your arm?"

The kid looks at his arm, uncomprehendingly.

His left wrist has swollen to almost the size of his fist, and it's blotched and streaked an angry, bruised shade of purple.

"Oh s.h.i.+t," the kid says.