Dreamcatcher

known about our pals from the void since the late nineteen-forties. We also know that Russian fighters destroyed a grayboy ship over Siberia in 1974… although to this day the
Russkies don’t know we know. That one was probably a drone, a test-shot. There have been a lot of those. The grays have handled their early contacts with a care which strongly
suggests that we scare them quite a lot.”

Owen listened with a sick fascination he hoped didn’t show on his face or at the top
level of his thoughts, where Kurtz might still have access.
From his inner pocket, Kurtz now brought out a dented box of Marlboro cigarettes.
He offered the pack to Owen, who first shook his head, then took one of the remaining four fags. Kurtz took another, then lit them up.
“I’m getting the truth and the spin mixed in together,” Kurtz said after he’d taken a

deep drag and exhaled. “That may not be the most profitable way to get on. Let’s stick to
the spin, shall we?‘Owen said nothing. He smoked rarely these days and the first drag made him feel light-headed, but the taste was wonderful.
“The President will say that the United States government quarantined the crash site

and the area around it for three reasons. The first was purely logistical: because of the Jefferson Tract’s remote location and low population, we
could
quarantine it. If the
grayboys had come down in Brooklyn, or even on Long Island, that would not have been the case. The second reason is that we are not clear on the aliens” intentions. The third reason, and ultimately the most persuasive, is that the aliens carry with them an infectious

substance which the on-scene personnel calls “Ripley fungus”. While the alien visitors have assured us passionately that they are not infectious, they have brought a
highly
infectious substance with them. The President will also tell a horrified world that the
fungus
may in fact be the controlling intelligence, the grayboys just a growth medium. He will show videotape of a grayboy literally exploding
into

the Ripley fungus. The footage has been slightly doctored to improve visibility, but is basically true.”
You’re lying,
Owen thought.
The footage is entirely fake from be inning to end, as
fake as that
Alien Autopsy
shit. And why are you lying? Because you can. It’s as simple as
that, isn’t it? Because to you, a lie comes more naturally than the truth.
“Okay, I’m lying,” Kurtz said, never missing a beat. He gave Owen a quick gleaming

look before dropping his gaze to his cigarette again. “But the facts are true and verifiable.
Some of them
do
explode and turn into red dandelion fluff. The fluff is Ripley. You inhale enough of it and in a period of time we can’t yet predict-it could be an hour or two days-your lungs and brain are Ripley salad. You look like a walking patch of poison sumac.
And then you die.
“There will be no mention of our little venture earlier today. According to the

President’s version, the ship, which had apparently been badly damaged in the crash, was
either blown up by its crew or blew up on its own. All the grayboys were killed. The Ripley, after some initial spread, is also dying, apparently because it does very poorly in
the cold. The Russians corroborate that, by the way. There has been a fairly large kill-off
of animals, which also carry the infection.”
“And the human population of Jefferson Tract?”

“POTUS is going to say that about three hundred people-seventy or so locals and
about two hundred and thirty hunters are currently being monitored for the Ripley fungus.
He will say that while some appear to have been infected, they also appear to be beating
the infection with the help of such standard antibiotics as Ceftin and Augmentin.”
“And now this word from our sponsor,” Owen said. Kurtz laughed, delighted.

“At a later time, it’s going to be announced that the Ripley seems a little more antibiotic-resistant than was first believed, and that a number of patients have died. The names we give out will be those of people who have in fact
already
died, either as a result of the Ripley or those gruesome fucking implants, Do you know what the men are calling
the implants?”
“Yeah, shit-weasels. Will the President mention them?”

“No way. The guys in charge believe the shit-weasels are just a little too upsetting for
John Q. Public. As would be, of course, the facts concerning our solution to the problem
here at Gosselin’s Store, that rustic beauty-spot.”
“The
final
solution, you could call it,” Owen said. He had smoked his cigarette all the way down to the filter, and now crushed it out on the rim of his empty coffee cup.
Kurtz’s eyes rose to Owen’s and met them unflinchingly. “Yes, you could call it that.

We’re going to wipe out approximately three hundred and fifty people-mostly men, there’s
that, but I can’t say the cleansing won’t include at least a few women and children. The
upside, of course, is that we will be insuring the human race against a pandemic and, very
possibly, subjugation. Not an inconsiderable upside.”
Owen’s thought-
I’m sure Hitler would like the spin-
was unstoppable, but he covered

it as well as he could and got no sense that Kurtz had heard it or sensed it. Impossible to
tell for sure, of course; Kurtz was sly.
“How many are we holding now?” Kurtz as ed. “About seventy. And twice that
number on the way from Kineo; they’ll be here around nine, if the weather doesn’t get any
worse.” It was supposed to, but not until after midnight.
Kurtz was nodding. “Uh-huh. Plus I’m going to say fifty more from up north, seventy

or so from St Cap’s and those little places down south… and our guys. Don’t forget them.
The masks seem to work, but we’ve already picked up four cases of Ripley in the medical
debriefings. The men, of course, don’t know.”
“Don’t they?”
“Let me rephrase that,” Kurtz said. “Based on their behavior, I have no
reason
to believe the men know. All right?”
Owen shrugged.
“
The story,”

Kurtz resumed, “will be that the detainees are being flown to a top-secret medical installation, a kind of Area 51, where they will undergo further
examination, and, if necessary, long-term treatment. There will never be another official statement concerning them-not if all goes according to plan-but there will be time-release

leaks over the next two years: encroaching infection despite best medical efforts to stop it… madness… grotesque physical changes better left undescribed… and finally, death
comes as a mercy. Far from being outraged, the public will be relieved.”
“While in reality…?”
He wanted to hear Kurtz say it, but he should have known better. There were no bugs
here (except, maybe, for the ones hiding between Kurtz’s ears), but the boss’s caution was

ingrained. He raised one hand, made a gun of his thumb and forefinger, and dropped his
thumb three times. His eyes never left Owen’s as he did this.
Crocodile’s eyes,
Owen thought.
“All of them?” Owen asked. “The ones who aren’t showing Ripley-Positive as well
as those who are? And where does that leave us? The soldiers who also show Negative?”
“The laddies who are okay now are going to stay okay,” Kurtz said. “Those showing

Ripley were all careless. One of them… well, there’s a little girl out there, about four years
old, cute as the devil. You almost expect her to start tap-dancing across the barn floor and
singing “On the Good Ship
Lollipop.””
Kurtz obviously thought he was being witty, and Owen supposed that in a way he
was, but Owen himself was overcome by a wave of intense horror.
There’s a four-year-old
out there,
he thought.
Just four years old, how about that.

“She’s cute, and she’s hot,” Kurtz was saying. “Visible Ripley on the inside of one wrist, growing at her hairline, growing in the corner of one eye. Classic spots. Anyway, this soldier gave her a candybar, just like she was some starving Kosovar rug-muncher, and she gave him a kiss. Sweet as pie, a real Kodak moment, only now he’s got a lipstick

print that ain’t lipstick growing on his cheek.” Kurtz grimaced. “He had himself a little tiny shaving cut, barely visible, but there goes your ballgame. Similar stuff with the others.
The rules don’t change, Owen; carelessness gets you killed. You may go along lucky for
awhile, but in the end it never fails. Carelessness gets you killed. Most of our guys, I’m
delighted to say, will walk away from this. We’re going to face scheduled medical exams

for the rest of our lives, not to mention the occasional surprise exam, but look at the upside-they’re gonna catch your ass-cancer
wicked
early.”
“The civilians who appear clean? What about them?”
Kurtz leaned forward, now at his most charming, his most persuasively sane. You
were supposed to be flattered by this, to feel yourself one of the fortunate few to see Kurtz
with his mask (“two parts Patton, one part Rasputin, add water, stir and serve”) laid aside.

It had worked on Owen before, but not now. Rasputin wasn’t the mask;
this
was the mask.
Yet even now-here was the hell of it-he wasn’t completely sure.
“Owen, Owen, Owen! Use your brain-that good brain God gave you! We can monitor
our own without raising suspicions or opening the door to a worldwide panic-and there’s

going to be enough panic anyway, after our narrowly elected President slays the phooka horse. We couldn’t do that with three hundred civilians. And if we really flew them out to
New Mexico, put them up in some model village for fifty or seventy years at the
taxpayers” expense? What if one or more of them escaped? Or what if-and I think this is

what the smart boys are really afraid of-given time, the Ripley mutates? That instead of dying off, it turns into something a lot more infectious and a lot less vulnerable to the environmental factors that are killing it here in Maine? If the Ripley’s intelligent, it’s dangerous. Even if it isn’t, what if it serves the grayboys as a kind of beacon, an interstellar road-flare marking our world out-yum-yum, come and get it, these guys are tasty… and there’s plenty of them?”

“You’re saying better safe than sorry.”
Kurtz leaned back in his chair and beamed. “That’s it. That’s it in a nutshell.”
Well,
Owen thought,
it might be the nut, but the shell is something we’re not talking
about. We watch out for our own. We’re merciless if we have to be, but even Kurtz watches
out for his laddie-bucks. Civilians, on the other hand, are just civilians. If you need to
burn em, they go up pretty easy.

“If you doubt there’s a God and that He spends at least some of His time looking out
for good old
Homo sap,
you might look at the way we re coming out of this,” Kurtz said.
“The flashlights arrived early and were reported-one of the reports came from the store owner, Reginald Gosselin, himself Then the grayboys arrive at the only time of year when
there are actually
people
in these godforsaken Woods, and two of them saw the ship go down.”
“That
was
lucky.”

“God’s grace is what it was. Their ship crashes, their presence is known, the cold kills both them and the galactic dandruff they brought along.” He ticked the points off rapidly on his long fingers, his white eyelashes blinking. “But that’s not all. They do some
implants and the goddam things don’t work-far from establishing a harmonious
relationship with their hosts, they turn cannibal and kill them.

“The animal kill-off went well-we’ve censused something like a hundred thousand
critters, and there’s already one hell of a barbecue going on over by the Castle County line. In the spring or summer we would’ve needed to worry about bugs carrying the Ripley out of the zone, but not now. Not in November.”
“Some animals must have gotten through.”
“Animals and people both, likely. But the Ripley spreads slowly. We’re going to be

all right on this because we netted the vast majority of infected hosts, because the ship has
been destroyed, and because what they brought us smolders rather than blazes. We’ve sent
them a simple message: come in peace or come with your rayguns blazing, but don’t try it
this way again, because it doesn’t work. We don’t think they will come again, or at least
not for awhile. They played fiddly-fuck for half a century before getting this far. Our only

regret is that we didn’t secure the ship for the science-boffins but it might’ve been too Ripley-infected, anyway. Do you know what our great fear has been? That either the grayboys or the Ripley would find a Typhoid Mary, someone who could carry it and
spread it without catching it him-or herself”.”
“Are you sure there isn’t such a person?”
“Almost sure. If there is… well, that’s what the cordon’s for.” Kurtz smiled. “We

lucked out, soldier. The odds are against a Typhoid Mary, the grayboys are dead, and all
the Ripley is confined to the Jefferson Tract. Luck or God. Take your choice.”
Kurtz lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose high up, like a man
suffering a sinus infection. When he looked up again, his eyes were swimming.
Crocodile
tears,
Owen thought, but in truth he wasn’t sure. And he had no access to Kurtz’s mind.

Either the telepathic wave had receded too far for that, or Kurtz had found a way to slam
the door. Yet when Kurtz spoke again, Owen was almost positive he was hearing the real
Kurtz, a human being and not Tick-Tock the Croc.
“This is it for me, Owen. Once this job is finished, I’m going to punch my time.
There’ll be work here for another four days, I’d guess-maybe a week, if this storm’s as bad

as they say-and it’ll be nasty, but the real nightmare’s tomorrow morning. I can hold up my end, I guess, but after that… well, I’m eligible for full retirement, and I’m going to give them their choice: pay me or kill me. I think they’ll pay, because I know where too

many of the bodies are buried-that’s a lesson I learned from J. Edgar Hoover-but I’ve almost reached the point of not caring. This won’t be the worst one I’ve ever been involved in, in Haiti we did eight hundred in a single hour-1989, that was, and I still dream
about it-but this is worse. By far. Because those poor schmucks out there in the barn and
the paddock and the corral… they’re
Americans.

Folks who drive Chevvies, shop at Kmart, and never miss ER. The thought of shooting Americans,
massacring
Americans…
that turns my stomach. I’ll do it only because it needs to be done in order to bring closure
to this business, and because most of them would die anyway, and much more horribly.
Capish?”
Owen Underhill said nothing. He thought he was keeping his face properly

expressionless, but anything he said would likely give away his sinking horror. He had
known
this was cormng, but to actually
hear it…
In his mind’s eye he saw the soldiers drifting toward the fence through the snow, heard the loudspeakers summoning the detainees in the barn. He had never been part of an
operation like this, he’d missed Haiti, but he knew how it was supposed to go. How it
would go.
Kurtz was watching him closely.

“I won’t say all is forgiven for that foolish stunt you pulled this afternoon, that water’s under the bridge, but you owe me one, buck. I don’t need ESP to know how you
feel about what I’m telling you, and I’m not going to waste my breath telling you to grow
up and face reality. All I can tell you is that I need you. You have to help me this one time.”
The swimming eyes. The infirm twitch, barely perceptible, at the corner of his mouth.

It was easy to forget that Kurtz had blown a man’s foot off not ten minutes ago.
Owen thought:
If I help him do this, it doesn’t matter if I actually pull a trigger or
not, I’m as damned as the men who herded the Jews into the showers at Bergen-Belsen.
“If we start at eleven, we can be done at eleven-thirty,” Kurtz said. “Noon at the very
worst. Then it’s behind us.”
“Except for the dreams.”
“Yes. Except for them. Will you help me, Owen?”

Owen nodded. He had come this far, and wouldn’t let go of the rope now, damned or
not. At the very least he could help make it merciful… as merciful as any mass murder could be. Later he would be struck by the lethal absurdity of this idea, but when you were
with Kurtz, up close and with his eyes holding yours, perspective was a joke. His madness
was probably much more infectious than the Ripley, in the end.

“Good.” Kurtz slumped back in his rocker, looking relieved and drained. He took out
his cigarettes again, peered in, then held the pack out. “Two left. Join me?”
Owen shook his head. “Not this time, boss.”
“Then get on out of here. If necessary, shag ass over to the infirmary and get some
Sonata.”
“I don’t think I’ll need that,” Owen said. He would, of course he needed it already-
but he wouldn’t take it. Better to be awake. “All right, then. Off you go.” Kurtz let him get

as far as the door. “And Owen?”
Owen turned back, zipping his parka. He could hear the wind out there now.
Building, starting to blow seriously, as it had not during the relatively harmless Alberta Clipper that had come through that morning.
“Thanks,” Kurtz said. One large and absurd tear overspilled his left eye and ran down

his cheek. Kurtz seemed unaware. In that moment Owen loved and pitied him. In spite of everything, which included knowing better. “Thank you, buck.”
7
Henry stood in the thickening snow, turned away from the worst of the wind and
looking over his left shoulder at the Winnebago, waiting for Underhill to come back out.
He was alone now-the storm had driven the rest of them back into the barn, where there

was a heater. Rumors would already be growing tall in the warmth, Henry supposed.
Better the rumors than the truth that was right in front of them.
He scratched at his leg, realized what he was doing, and looked around, turning in a
complete circle. No prisoners; no guards. Even in the thickening snow the compound was
almost as bright as noonday, and he could see well in every direction. For the time being,
at least, he was alone.

Henry bent and untied the shirt knotted around the place where the turnsignal stalk had cut his skin. He then spread the slit in his bluejeans. The men who had taken him into
custody had made this same examination in the back of the truck where they had already
stored five other refugees (on the way back to Gosselin’s they had picked up three more).
At that point he had been clean.
He wasn’t clean now. A delicate thread of red lace grew down the scabbed center of

the wound. If he hadn’t known what he was looking for, he might have mistaken it for a
fresh seep of blood.
Byrus,
he thought.
Ah, fuck. Goodnight, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are.
A flash of light winked at the top of his vision. Henry straightened and saw Underhill
just pulling the door of the Winnebago shut. Quickly, Henry retied the shirt around the hole in his jeans and then approached the fence. A voice in his head asked what he’d do if

he called to Underhill and the man just kept on going. That voice also wanted to know if
Henry really intended to give Jonesy up.
He watched Underhill trudge toward him in the glare of the security lights, his head
bent against the snow and the intensifying wind.
8
The door closed. Kurtz sat looking at it, smoking and slowly rocking. How much of
his pitch had Owen bought? Owen was bright, Owen was a survivor, Owen was not

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