Dreamcatcher

Still no answers, and to these questions he can supply none of his own. He’s only glad he has a place where he can still be himself, and dismayed at how easily the rest of
his life has been hijacked. He wishes again, with complete and bitter sincerity, that he had
shot McCarthy.
8
A huge explosion ripped through the day, and although the source had to be miles

away, it was still strong enough to send snow sliding off the trees. The figure on the snowmobile didn’t even look around. It was the ship. The soldiers had blown it up. The
byrum were gone.
A few minutes later, the collapsed lean-to hove into view on his right. Lying in front
of it in the snow, one boot still caught beneath the tin roof, was Pete. He looked dead but
wasn’t. Playing dead wasn’t an option, not in this game; he could hear Pete thinking. And

as he pulled up on the snowmobile and shifted into neutral, Pete raised his head and bared
his remaining teeth in a humorless grin. The left arm of his parka was blackened and melted. There seemed to be only one working finger remaining on his right hand. All of
his visible skin was stippled with the byrus.
“You’re not Jonesy,” Pete said. “What have you done with Jonesy?”
“Get on, Pete,” Mr Gray said.

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.” Pete raised his right hand-the swooning
fingers, the red-gold clumps of byrus-and used it to wipe his forehead. “The fuck out of
here. Get on your pony and ride.”
Mr Gray lowered the head that had once belonged to Jonesy (Jonesy watching it all
from the window of his bolt-hole in the abandoned Tracker Brothers depot, unable to help
or to change anything) and stared at Pete. Pete began to scream as the byrus growing all

over his body tightened, the roots of the stuff digging into his muscles and nerves. The boot can lit under the collapsed tin roof jerked free and Pete, still screaming, pulled himself up into a fetal position. Fresh blood burst from his mouth and nose. When he screamed again, two more teeth popped out of his mouth.
“Get on, Pete.”
Weeping, holding his savaged right hand to his chest, Pete tried to get to his feet. The

first effort was a failure; he sprawled in the snow again. Mr Gray made no comment, simply sat astride the idling Arctic Cat and watched.
Jonesy felt Pete’s pain and despair and wretched fear. The fear was by far the worst,
and he decided to take a risk.
Pete.
Only a whisper, but Pete heard. He looked up, his face haggard and speckled with

fungus-what Mr Gray called byrus. When Pete licked his lips, Jonesy saw it was growing on his tongue, too. Outer-space thrush. Once Pete Moore had wanted to be an astronaut.
Once he had stood up to some bigger boys on behalf of someone who was smaller and weaker. He deserved better than this.
No bounce, no play.
Pete almost smiled. It was both beautiful and heartbreaking. This time he made it to
his feet and plodded slowly toward the snowmobile.

In the deserted office to which he had been exiled, Jonesy saw the doorknob be in to
twist back and forth.
What does that mean?
Mr Gray asked.
What is no bounce, no play?
What are you doing in there? Come back to the hospital and watch TV with me, why don’t
you? How did you get in there to begin with?
It was Jonesy’s turn not to answer, and he did so with great pleasure.
I’ll get in
, Mr Gray said.
When I’m ready, I’ll come in. You may think you can lock

the door against me, but you’re wrong.
Jonesy kept silent-there was no need to provoke the creature currently in charge of his body-but he didn’t think he
was
wrong. On the other hand, he didn’t dare leave; he would be swallowed up if he tried. He was just a kernel in a cloud, a bit of undigested food in an alien gut. Best to keep a low profile.
9
Pete got on behind Mr Gray and put his arms around Jonesy’s waist. Ten minutes

later they motored past the over-turned Scout, and Jonesy understood what had made Pete
and Henry so late back from the store. It was a wonder either of them had lived through it.
He would have liked a longer look, but Mr Gray didn’t slow, just went on with the Cat’s
skis bouncing up and down, riding the crown of the road between the two snow-filled ruts.
Three miles or so beyond the Scout, they topped a rise and Jonesy saw a brilliant hall

of yellow-white light hanging less than a foot above the road, waiting for them. It looked
as hot as the flame of a welder’s torch, but obviously wasn’t; the snow just inches below it
hadn’t melted. It was almost certainly one of the lights he and Beaver had seen playing in
the clouds, above the fleeing animals coming out of The Gulch.
That’s right
, Mr Gray said.
What your people call a flashlight. This is one of the last.
Perhaps the very last.

Jonesy said nothing, only stared out the window of his office cell. He could feel Pete’s arms around his waist, holding on mostly by instinct now, the way a nearly beaten
fighter clinches with his opponent to keep from hitting the canvas. The head lying against
his back was as heavy as a stone. Pete was a culture-medium for the byrus now, and the
byrus liked him fine; the world was cold and Pete was warm. Mr Gray apparently wanted
him for something-what, Jonesy had no idea.

The flashlight led them another half a mile or so up the road, then veered into the woods. It slipped in between two big pines and then waited for them, spinning just above
the snow. Jonesy heard Mr Gray instruct Pete to hold on as tight as he could.
The Arctic Cat bounced and growled its way up a slight incline, its skis digging into

the snow, then splashing it aside. Once they were actually under the forest canopy there was less of it, in some places none at all. In those spots the snowmobile’s tread clattered
angrily on the frozen ground, which was mostly rock beneath a thin cover of soil and fallen needles. They were headed north now.
Ten minutes later they bounced hard over a jut of granite and Pete went tumbling off

the back with a low cry. Mr Gray let go of the snowmobile’s throttle. The flashlight also
stopped, spinning above the snow. Jonesy thought it looked dimmer now.
“Get up,” Mr Gray said. He was turned around on the saddle, looking back at Pete.
“I can’t,” Pete said. “I’m done, fella. I-”
Then Pete began to howl and thrash on the ground again, feet kicking, his hands-one
burned, the other mangled-jerking.
Stop it!
Jonesy yelled.
You’re killing him!

Mr Gray paid him no attention whatever, just remained as he was, swung around at
the waist and watching Pete with deadly, emotionless patience as the byrus tightened and
pulled at Pete’s flesh. At last Jonesy felt Mr Gray let up. Pete got groggily to his feet.
There was a fresh cut on one cheek, and already it was swarming with byrus. His eyes were dazed and exhausted and swimming with tears. He got back on the snowmobile and

his hands crept around Jonesy’s waist once more.
Hold onto my coat
, Jonesy whispered, and as Mr Gray turned forward and clapped the snowmobile back into gear, he felt Pete take hold.
No bounce, no play, right?
No play
, Pete agreed, but faintly.
Mr Gray paid no attention this time. The flashlight, less bright but still speedy, started

north again… or at least in a direction Jonesy assumed was north. As the snowmobile wove its way around trees, thick clumps of bushes, and knobs of rock, his sense of direction pretty much gave up. From behind them came a steady crackle of gunfire. It sounded as though someone was having a turkey-shoot.
10
About an hour later, Jonesy finally discovered why Mr Gray had bothered with Pete.

That was when the flashlight, which had dimmed to an anemic shadow of its original self,
finally went out. It disappeared with a soft plosive sound-as if someone had popped a
paper sack. Some leftover bit of detritus fell to the ground.
They were on a tree-lined ridge spang in the middle of the God-only-knows. Ahead
of them was a snowy, forested valley; on its far side were eroded hills and brush-tangled

brakes where not a single light shone. And to finish things off, the day was fading toward
dusk.
Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into
, Jonesy thought, but he sensed no dismay on
Mr Gray’s part. Mr Gray stopped the snowmobile by releasing the throttle, and then simply sat there.
North

, Mr Gray said. Not to Jonesy. Pete answered out loud, his voice weary and slow. “How am I supposed to know? I can’t even see where the sun’s going down, for Christ’s sake. One of my eyes is all fucked up, too.”
Mr Gray turned Jonesy’s head and Jonesy saw that Pete’s left eye was gone. The lid

had been shoved up high, giving him a half-assed look of surprise. Growing out of the socket was a small jungle of byrus. The longest strands hung down, tickling against Pete’s
stubbly cheek. More strands twined through his thinning hair in lush red-gold streaks.
You know.
“Maybe I do,” Pete said. “And maybe I don’t want to point you there.”
Why not?
“Because I doubt if what you want is healthy for the rest of us, fuckface,” Pete said,
and Jonesy felt an absurd sense of pride.

Jonesy saw the growth in Pete’s eyesocket twitch. Pete screamed and clutched at his
face. For a moment-brief but far too long-Jonesy fully imagined the reddish-gold tendrils
reaching from that defunct eye into Pete’s brain, where they spread like strong fingers clutching a gray sponge.
Go on, Pete, tell him!
Jonesy cried.
For Christ’s sake, tell him!
The byrus grew still again. Pete’s hand dropped from his face, which was now

deathly pale where it wasn’t reddish-gold. “Where are you, Jonesy?” he asked. “Is there room for two?”
The short answer, of course, was no. Jonesy didn’t understand what had happened to
him, but knew that his continued survival that last kernel of autonomy-somehow depended
on his staying right where he was. If he so much as opened the door, he would be gone for
good.
Pete nodded. “Didn’t think so,” he said, and then spoke to the other. “Just don’t hurt
me anymore, fella.”

Mr Gray only sat, looking at Pete with Jonesy’s eyes and making no promises.
Pete sighed, then raised his scorched left hand and extended one finger. He closed his
eyes and began to tick his finger back and forth, back and forth. And as he did it, Jonesy
came close to understanding everything. What had that little girl’s name been?

Rinkenhauer, wasn’t it? Yes. He couldn’t remember the first name, but a clumsy handle like Rinkenhauer was hard to forget. She had also gone to Mary M. Snowe, aka The Retard Academy, although by then Duddits had gone on to Vocational. And Pete? Pete had
always had a funny trick of remembering things, but after Duddits-
The words came back to Jonesy as he crouched in his dirty little cell, looking out at

the world which had been stolen from him… only they weren’t really words at all, only
those open vowel sounds, so strangely beautiful:
Ooo eee a yine, Ete? Do you see the line, Pete?
Pete, his face full of dreamy, surprised wonder, had said yes, he saw it. And he had
been doing the thing with his finger then, that tick-tock thin, just as he was now.
The finger stopped, the tip still trembling minutely, like a dowsing rod at the edge of

an aquifer. Then Pete pointed at the ridge on a line slightly to starboard of the snowmobile’s current heading,
“There,” he said, and dropped his hand. “Due north. Sight on that rock-face. The one
with the pine growing out of the middle. Do you see it?”
Yes, I see it
. Mr Gray turned forward and put the snowmobile back into gear, Jonesy wondered fleetingly how much
gas was left in the tank. “Can I get off now?” Meaning, of course, could he die now.

No.
And they were off again, with Pete clinging weakly to Jonesy’s coat.
They skirted the rock-face, climbed to the top of the highest hill beyond it, and here
Mr Gray paused again so his substitute flashlight could rehead them. Pete did so and they

continued on, now moving on a path that was a little bit west of true north. Daylight continued to fade. Once they heard helicopters-at least two, maybe as many as four-coming toward them. Mr Gray hulled the snowmobile into a thick stand of underbrush, heedless of the branches that slapped at Jonesy’s face, drawing blood from his cheeks and
brow. Pete tumbled off the back again. Mr Gray killed the Cat’s engine, then dragged Pete,

who was moaning and semi-conscious, under the thickest growth of bushes. There they waited until the helicopters passed over. Jonesy felt Mr Gray reach up to one of the crew
and quickly scan him, perhaps cross-checking what the man knew with what Pete had
been telling him. When the choppers had passed off to the southeast, apparently heading
back to their base, Mr Gray re-started the snowmobile and they went on. It had begun to
snow again.

An hour later they stopped on another rise and Pete fell off the Cat again, this time
tumbling to the side. He raised his face, but most of his face was gone, buried under a beard of vegetation. He tried to speak aloud and couldn’t; his mouth was stuffed, his tongue buried under a lush mat of byrus.
I can’t, man. I can’t, no more, please, let me be.
“Yes,” Mr Gray said. “I think you’ve served your purpose.”
Pete!
Jonesy cried. Then, to Mr Gray:
No, no, don’t!

Mr Gray paid no attention, of course. For a moment Jonesy saw silent understanding
in Pete’s remaining eye. And relief For that moment he was still able to touch Pete’s mind-
his boyhood friend, the one who always stood outside the gate at DJHS, one hand cupped
over his mouth, hiding a cigarette that wasn’t really there, the one who was going to be an
astronaut and see the world entire from earth orbit, one of the four who had helped save Duddits from the big boys.

For one moment. Then he felt something leap from Mr Gray’s mind and the stuff
growing on Pete did not just twitch but
clenched
. There was a tenebrous creaking sound as Pete’s skull cracked in a dozen places. His face-what remained of it-pulled inward in a kind of yank, making him old at a stroke. Then he fell forward and snow began to fleck
the back of his parka.
You bastard.

Mr Gray, indifferent to Jonesy’s curse and Jonesy’s anger, made no reply. He faced forward again. The building wind dropped momentarily when he did, and a hole opened in
the curtain of snow. About five miles northwest of their current position, Jonesy saw moving lights-not flashlights but headlights. Lots of them. Trucks moving in convoy along
the turnpike. Trucks and nothing else, he supposed. This part of Maine belonged to the military now.

And they’re all looking for you, asshole
, he spat as the snowmobile began to roll again. The snow closed back around them, cutting off their momentary view of the trucks,
but Jonesy knew that Mr Gray would have no trouble finding the turnpike. Pete had gotten
him this far, to a part of the quarantine zone where Jonesy supposed little trouble was expected. He was counting on Jonesy to take him the rest of the way, because Jonesy was

different. For one thing, he was clear of the byrus. The byrus didn’t like him for some reason.
You’ll never get out of here
, Jonesy said.
I will
, Mr Gray said.
We always die and we always live. We always lose and we
always win, Like it or not, Jonesy, we’re the future.
If that’s true, it’s the best reason I ever heard for living in the past

, Jonesy replied, but from Mr Gray there was no answer, Mr Gray as an entity, a consciousness, was gone, merged back into the cloud. There was only enough of him left to run Jonesy’s motor skills and keep the snowmobile pointed toward the turnpike. And Jonesy, carried
helplessly forward on whatever mission this thing had, took slender comfort from two things. One was that Mr Gray didn’t know how to get at the last piece of him, the tiny part

that existed in his memory of the Tracker Brothers office. The other was that Mr Gray didn’t know about Duddits-about no bounce, no play.
Jonesy intended to make sure Mr Gray didn’t find out.
At least not yet.
Chapter Thirteen
AT GOSSELIN’S
1
To Archie Perlmutter, high-school valedictorian (speech topic: “The Joys and the
Responsibilities of Democracy”), onetime Eagle Scout, faithful Presbyterian, and West

Point grad, Gosselin’s Country Market no longer looked real. Now spotlighted by enough
candlepower to illuminate a small city, it looked like a set in a movie. Not just any movie,
either, but the sort of James Cameron extravaganza where the catering costs alone would
amount to enough to feed the people of Haiti for two years. Even the steadily increasing

snow did not cut into the glare of the lights very much, or change the illusion that the whole works, from the crappy siding to the pair of tin woodstove stacks sticking acrooked
out of the roof to the single rusty gas-pump out front, was simply set-dressing.
This would be Act One
, Pearly thought as he strode briskly along with his clipboard
tucked under his arm (Archie Perlmutter had always felt he was a man of considerable artistic nature… commercial, too).

We fade in on an isolated country store. The oldtimers
are sitting around the woodstove-not the little one in Gosselin’s office but the big one in
the store itself-while the snow pelts down outside. They’re talking about lights in the sky…
missing hunters… sightings of little gray men skulking around in the woods. The store
owner-call him Old Man Rossiter-scoffs. “Oh gosh fishes, you’re all a buncha old

wimmin!” he says, and just then the whole place is bathed in these brilliant lights (think
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
) as a UFO settles down to the ground! Bloodthirsty
aliens come piling out, firing their deathrays! It’s like Independence Day, only, here’s the
hook, in the woods!
Beside him, Melrose, the cook’s third (which was about as close as anyone got to an
official rating on this little adventure), struggled to keep up. He was wearing sneakers on

his feet instead of shoes or boots-Perlmutter had dragged him out of Spago’s, which was
what the men called the cook-tent-and he kept slipping. Men (and a few women) passed
everywhere around them, mostly at the double. Many were talking into lavalier mikes or
walkie-talkies. The sense that this was a movie-set instead of a real place was enhanced by
the trailers, the semis, the idling helicopters (the worsening weather had brought them all

back in), and the endless conflicting roar of motors and generators.
“Why does he want to see me?” Melrose asked again. Out of breath and whinier than
ever. They were passing the paddock and corral to one side of Gosselin’s barn, now. The
old and dilapidated fence (it had been ten years or more since there’d been an actual horse

in the corral or exercised in the paddock) had been reinforced by alternating strands of barbwire and smoothwire. There was an electrical charge running through the smoothwire,
probably not lethal but high enough to lay you out on the ground, convulsing… and the charge could be jacked up to lethal levels if the natives became restless. Behind this wire,
watching them, were twenty or thirty men, Old Man Gosselin among them (in the James

Cameron version, Gosselin would be played by some craggy oldtimer like Bruce Dern).
Earlier, the men behind the wire would have called out, issuing threats and angry
demands, but since they’d seen what happened to that banker from Massachusetts who
tried to run, their peckers had wilted considerably, poor fellows. Seeing someone shot in
the head took a lot of the fuck-you out of a man. And then there was the fact that all the

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