Strangers

Page 82

“You're right,” he said, startling her by his quick agreement. But what she said made sense, and there was no point wasting time debating it. “Ned, you'll go with Sandy and Brendan to Chicago.”
"I don't mind going to the Depository with you, if that's what you think's best," Ned told him.
“I know,” Jack said. "I did think it was best, but now I don't. Jorja, you and Marcie will go to Boston with Ernie and Faye. Now, if we don't get the hell out of here soon, the whole question of who goes where won't matter anyway, because we'll be back in the hands of the people who had us drugged senseless the summer before last."
Ned pulled the table away from the door. Ernie removed the panel of plywood standing there, and beyond the glass the world was a whirling white wall of wind and snow.
“Terrific,” Jack said. “Good cover.”
As they stepped out into the driving snow, they could see only as far as the place where the greenbrown, government Plymouth had been parked out by the county road. It was gone. That made Jack uneasy. He preferred the watchers out in the openwhere he could also watch them.
The conference call did not progress as Colonel Leland Falkirk had foreseen. He intended to seek agreement that the witnesses at the motel must be rounded up at once and conveyed to the Thunder Hill Depository. He expected that he and General Riddenhour would be able to convince the others that the threat of a spreading infection was both real and acute, and that he should be permitted to destroy everyone in the Tranquility group as well as the entire staff of Thunder Hill the moment he put his hands on proof that those individuals were no longer human, proof he fully expected to obtain. But from the moment he picked up the phone, nothing went his way. The situation deteriorated.
Emil Foxworth, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had news of yet another disastrous development. The team making new memory modifications in the Salcoe family in Monterey, California, had been visited by a persistent intruder. They had thought they'd cornered hima burly, bearded manbut he had made a spectacular escape. The four Salcoes were quickly transferred to a medical van and moved to a safehouse for continuation of memory modifications. A registration check on the bearded intruder's abandoned car identified it as a rental from the local airport agency, and the lessee was not merely a burglar but Parker
Faine, Corvaisis' friend. “Subsequently,” the Director said, "we traced Faine on a flight out of Monterey to San Francisco, but there we've lost him. We have no idea where he's been or what he's been up to since his West Air flight landed at SFX."
Foster Polnichey, in the FBI's Chicago office, was already of the view that maintaining the coverup was impossible, and news of Faine's escape confirmed that opinion. The two political appointeesFoxworth of the FBI, and James Herton, National Security Adviser to the Presidentwere in agreement with him.
Furthermore, with oily skill, Foster Polnichey argued that every developmentthe miraculous cures effected by Cronin and Tolk; the wondrous telekinetic powers of Corvaisis and Emmy Halbourgindicated that the ultimate effects of the events of July 6 were going to be beneficial to mankind, not detrimental. "And we know that Doctor Bennell and most of the people working with him are of the opinion that there is no threat whatsoever and never was. They've been convinced of it for many months now. Their arguments are quite persuasive."
Leland tried to make them see that Bennell and his people might be infected and unreliable. No one inside Thunder Hill could be trusted any more. But he was a military leader, not a debater, and in a contest with Foster Polnichey, Leland knew he sounded like a raving paranoid.
Leland did not even get much support from the one source on which he had counted most: General Maxwell Riddenhour. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was noncommittal at first, listening carefully to every point of view, playing the role of mediator, for his position put him somewhere between a political appointee and a career soldier. But it soon became clear that he agreed more with Polnichey, Foxworth, and Herton than he did with Leland Falkirk.
"I understand your instincts in this situation, Colonel, and I admire them,“ General Riddenhour said. ”But I believe the matter has gone beyond the scope of our authority. It requires the input not just of soldiers but of neuropathologists, biologists, philosophers, and others before precipitous action can be taken. Upon disclosure of any evidence of an imminent threat, I will of course change my mind; I'll favor the roundup of the witnesses at the motel, order the quarantine on Thunder Hill continued indefinitely, and take most of the other strong measures you now favor. But for the moment, in the absence of a grave and obvious threat, I believe we should move a bit more cautiously and leave open the possibility that the coverup will have to be undone."
“With all due respect,” Leland said, barely able to control his fury, "the threat seems both grave and obvious to me. I don't believe there's time for neuropathologists or philosophers. And certainly not for the spineless equivocating of a bunch of gutless politicians."
That honest appraisal brought a stormy reaction from Foxworth and Herton, the mealy spawn of politicians. When they shouted at Leland, he lost his usual reserve and shouted back at them. In an instant the conference call degenerated into a noisy verbal brawl that ended only when Riddenhour exerted control. He forced a quick agreement that no moves would be made against the witnesses or any steps taken to further cement the coverup, while at the same time no steps would be taken to weaken the coverup, either. "I'll seek an emergency meeting with the President the instant I end this call,“ Riddenhour said. ”In twentyfour hours, fortyeight at the latest, we'll try to have a plan that satisfies everyone from the CommanderinChief to Bennell and his boys out there in Thunder Hill."
That, Leland thought sourly, is impossible.
When Leland hung up, the illfated conference call having concluded in unanticipated humiliation, he stood for at least a minute at his desk in the windowless room at Shenkfield, seething with such pure anger that he did not trust himself to summon Lieutenant Horner. He did not want Horner to know that the tide had gone against him, did not want Horner to have any reason to suspect that the operation he was about to launch was in absolute contradiction of General Riddenhour's orders.
His duty was clear. Grim, terriblebut clear.
He would order the closure of I-80 under the pretense of a toxic spill, in order to isolate the Tranquility Motel. He would then take the witnesses into custody and transport them directly to the Thunder Hill Depository. When they were all underground with Dr. Miles Bennell and the other suspect workers staffing the Depository, trapped behind massive blast doors, Leland would take themand himselfout with a pair of the fivemegaton backpack nukes that were stored among the munitions in the subterranean facility. A couple of fivemegatoners would incinerate everyone and everything inside the mountain, reduce them all to ash and bone fragments. That would eliminate the primary source of this hideous contamination, the home nest of the enemy. Of course, other potential sources of contamination would remain: the Tolk family, the Halbourg family, all remaining witnesses whose brainwashing had not developed holes and who had not returned to Nevada, others. . . . But Leland was confident that, once he had taken the courageous action required to eliminate the largest and primary source of contamination, Riddenhour would be shamed by his example of selfsacrifice and would find the backbone to do what was necessary to finish the work and scrub every trace of contagion from the face of the earth.
Leland Falkirk was trembling. Not with fear. It was pride that made him tremble. He was enormously proud to have been chosen to fight and win the greatest battle of all time, thus saving not just one nation but all the world from a menace with no equal in history. He knew he was capable of the sacrifice required. He had no fear. As he wondered what he would feel in the splitsecond it took him to die in a nuclear blast, a thrill coursed through him at the prospect of pitting himself against the most intense pain of which the human mind could conceive. Oh, it would be cruelly intense and yet so short in duration that there was no doubt he'd prove capable of enduring it as stoutheartedly as he had endured all other pain to which he had subjected himself.
He was calm now. Perfectly calm. Serene.
Leland savored the sweet anticipation of the blistering pain to come. That brief atomic agony would be of such exquisite purity that the endurance of it would ensure the reward of heaven, which his Pentecostal parents, seeing the devil in every aspect of him, had always sworn he would not attain.
Stepping out of the Tranquility Grille behind Ginger, Dom Corvaisis looked up into the maelstrom of drivingwhirlingspinning snow, and for an instant he saw and heard and felt what was not there:
Behind him rang out the atonal musical clatter of demolished glass stillfallingfrom the explosion of the windows, and ahead lay the glow of the parkinglot lights and the hot summer darkness beyond, and all around the thunderroar and earthquakeshudder of mysterious source; his heart pounding; his breath like taffy that had stuck in his throat,- and as he ran out of the Grille he looked around and then up....
“What's wrong?” Ginger asked.
Dom realized that he had staggered across the snowy pavement, skidding not on that surface but on the slippery recollection that had escaped his memory block. He looked around at the others, all of whom had come out of the diner. "I saw ... like I was there again ... that July night...... Two nights ago, in the diner, when he'd come close to remembering, he had unconsciously recreated the thunder and shaking of July 6. This time, there was no such manifestation, maybe because the memory was no longer repressed and was breaking through and needed no help. Now, unable to adequately convey the intensity of the memory, he turned away from the others and peered up into the falling snow, andThe roar was so loud that it hurt his ears, and the vibrations so strong that he felt them in his bones and in his teeth the way thunder sometimes reverberated in window glass, and he stumbled out across the macadam, looking up into the night sky andthere!-an aircraft flying only a few hundred feet above the earth, red and white running lightsflashing across darkness, so low that the glow from within the cockpit was visible, a jet judging by the speed with which it rocketed past, a fighter jet judging by the powerful scream of its engines, andthere!another one, sweeping past and wheeling up across the field of stars that filled the clear black sky in a panoramic specklesplash; but the roar and the shaking that had shattered the diner's windows and had set small objects adance on the tables now grew worse instead of better, even though he would have expected it to subside once the jets were past, so he turned, sensing the source behind him' and he cried out in terror when a third jet shot over the Grille at an altitude of no more than forty feet, so low that he could see the markingsserial numbers and an American flagon the bottom of one wing, illuminated by the parkinglot light bouncing up from the macadam; Jesus, it was so low that he fell flat on the ground in panic, certain that the jet was crashing, that debris would be raining over him in a second, perhaps even a shower of burning jet fuel....
“Dom!”
He found himself lying facedown in the snow, clutching the ground in a reenactment of the terror he had felt on the night of July 6, when he'd thought the jet was crashing on top of him.
“Dom, what's wrong?” Sandy Sarver asked. She was kneeling beside him, a hand on his shoulder.
Ginger was kneeling at his other side. “Dom, are you all right?”
With their support, he got up from the snow. "The memory block is going, crumbling." He turned his face up toward the sky again, hoping that the white snowy day would flash away, as before, and be replaced by a dark summer night, hoping that the recollections would continue to pour forth. Nothing. Wind gusted. Snow lashed his face. The others were watching him. He said, "I remembered jets, military fighter craft... two at first, swooping by a couple of hundred feet above..... and then a third one so low that it almost took the roof off the diner."
“Jets!” Marcie said.
Everyone looked at her in surprise, even Dom, for it was the first word- other than “moon”-that she had spoken since dinner the previous night. She was in her mother's arms, bundled against the weather. She had turned her small face to the sky. In response to what Dom had said, she seemed to be searching the stormy heavens for some sign of the longdeparted jets of a summer lost.
“Jets,” Ernie said, looking up as well. "I don't . . . recall.
“Jets! Jets!” Marcie reached up with one hand toward the heavens.
Dom realized that he was doing the same thing, although with both hands, as if he could reach up beyond the blinding snow of timepresent, into the hot clear night of timepast, and pull the memory down into view. But he could not bring it back, no matter how hard he strained.
The others were not able to recall what he described, and in a moment their tremulous expectation turned to frustration again.
Marcie lowered her face. She put a thumb in her mouth and sucked earnestly on it. Her gaze had turned inward again.
“Come on,” Jack said. “We've got to get the hell out of here.”
They hurried toward the motel, to dress and arm themselves for the journeys and battles ahead of them. Reluctantly, with the smell of July heat still in his nose, with the roar of jet engines still echoing in his bones, Dom Corvaisis followed.
Night on Thunder Hill
Courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy lift us above the simple beasts and define humanity.
-THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned; By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned.
-ALEXANDER POPE
Tuesday Night, January 14
1.
Strife
Father Stefan Wycazik flew Delta from Chicago to Salt Lake City, then caught a feeder flight into the Elko County Airport. He landed after snow had begun to fall but before the rapidly dropping visibility and the oncoming false dusk of the storm had curtailed air traffic.
In the small terminal, he went to a public phone, looked up the number of the Tranquility Motel, and dialed it. He got nothing, not even a ring. The line hissed emptily. He tried again with no success.
When he sought help from an operator, she was also unable to ring the number. “I'm sorry, sir, there seems to be trouble with the line.”
Taking that as very bad news, Father Wycazik said, "Trouble? What trouble? What's wrong?"
“Well, sir, I suppose the storm. We're getting really gusty wind.”
But Stefan was not as certain as she was. The storm had hardly begun. He could not believe telephone lines had already succumbed to the first tentative gusts, which he had experienced on his way into the terminal. The isolation of the Tranquility was an ominous development, more likely to be the handiwork of men than of the impending blizzard.