Dreamcatcher

look like some kind of elderly white rapper. Maybe there was nothing under there but skin,
but it was warm in here for a cap, wasn’t it? Especially a knitted one.
“Kick a buck,” Howie Everett said.
“Call,” said Danny O’Brian.
Parsons Called; so did Udall. Cambry barely heard. In his mind there rose an image
of a woman with a child cradled in her arms. As she struggled across the drifted-in paddock, a soldier turned her into a napalm road-flare. Cambry winced, horrified, thinking

this image had been served up by his own guilty conscience.
“Gene?” Al Coleman asked. “Are you going to call, or-”
“What’s that?” Howie asked, frowning.
“What’s what?” Ted Trezewski said.
“If you listen, you’ll hear it,” Howie replied.
Dumb Polack:
Cambry heard this unspoken corollary in his head, but paid it no mind. Once it had been called to their attention, the chant was clear enough, rising above the wind, quickly taking on strength and urgency.
“

Now! Now! Now! Now! NOW!”
It was coming from the barn, directly behind them.
“What in the blue
hell?”
Udall asked in a musing voice, blinking over the folding table with its scatter of cards, ashtrays, chips, and money. Gene Cambry suddenly
understood that there was nothing under the stupid woolen cap but skin, after all. Udall was nominally in charge of this little group, but he didn’t have a clue. He couldn’t see the

pumping fists, couldn’t hear the strong thought-voice that was leading the chant.
Cambry saw alarm on Parsons’s face, on Everett’s, on Coleman’s. They were seeing
it, too. Understanding leaped among them while the uninfected ones only looked puzzled.
“Fuckers’re gonna break out,” Cambry said.
“Don’t be stupid, Gene,” George Udall said. “They don’t know what’s coming down.
Besides, they’re
civilians.
They’re just letting off a little st-”
Cambry lost the rest as a single word-
NOW
-

ripped through his brain like a buzzsaw.
Ray Parsons and Al Coleman winced. Howie Everett cried out in pain, his hands going to
his temples, his knees connecting with the underside of the table and sending chips and cards everywhere. A dollar bin landed atop the hot stove and began to bum.
“Aw, fuck a duck, look what you d-” Ted began.
“They’re coming,” Cambry said. “They’re coming at
us.”
Parsons, Everett, and Coleman lunged for the M-4 carbines leaning beside Old Man

Gosselin’s coatrack. The others looked at them, surprised, still three steps behind… and then there was a vast thud as sixty or more of the internees struck the barn doors. Those
doors had been locked from the outside-big steel locks, Army issue. They held, but the old
wood gave with a splintering crack.
The prisoners charged through the gap, yelling
“Now! Now!”
into the snowy mouth
of the wind and trampling several of their number underfoot.Cambry also lunged, got one

of the compact assault rifles, then had it snatched out of his hands. “That’s mine, muhfuh,”
Ted Trezewski snarled.There was less than twenty yards between the shattered barn doors
and the back of the store. The mob swept across the gap, shouting
NOW! NOW! NOW!
The poker-table went over with a crash, spilling crap everywhere. The perimeter
alarm went off as the first internees struck the double-strung fence and were either fried or

hooked like fish on the oversized bundles of barbs. Moments later the alarm’s honking, pulsing bray was joined by a whooping siren, the General Quarters alert which was
sometimes referred to as Situation Triple Six, the end of the world. In the plastic Porta-Potty sentry huts, surprised and frightened faces peered out dazedly.
“The barn!” someone shouted. “Collapse in on the barn! It’s an escape!”

The sentries trotted out into the snow, many of them bootless, moving along the
outside of the fence, unaware that it had been shorted out by the weight of more than eighty kamikaze deer-hunters, all screaming
NOW
at the top of their lungs, even as they jittered and fried and died.
No one noticed the single man-tall, skinny, wearing a pair of old-fashioned horn-rim
specs-who left from the back of the barn and set out diagonally across the drifts filling the

paddock. Although Henry could neither see nor sense anyone paying attention to him, he
began to run. He felt horribly exposed under the brilliant lights, and the cacophony of the
siren and the perimeter alarm made him feel panicky and half-crazy… made him feel the
way Duddits’s crying had, that day behind Tracker Brothers.
He hoped to God Underhill was waiting for him. He couldn’t tell, the snow was too

thick to see the far end of the paddock, but he would be there soon enough and then he would know.
9
Kurtz had everything on but one boot when the alarm went off and the emergency
lights went on, flooding this godforsaken piece of ground with even more glare. He felt no

surprise, no dismay, only a mixture of relief and chagrin. Relief that whatever had been chewing on his nerve-endings was now out in the open. Chagrin that this fucking mess hadn’t held off for another two hours. Another two hours and he could have balanced the
books on the whole deal.
He jerked open the door of the Winnebago with his right hand, still holding his other
boot in his left. A savage roaring came from the barn, the sort of warrior’s cry to which his

heart responded in spite of everything. The gale-force wind thinned it a little, but not much; they were all in it together, it seemed. From somewhere in their well-fed, timorous,
it-can’t-happen-here ranks, a Spartacus had arisen-who would have thunk it?
It’s the goddam telepathy,
he thought. His instincts, always superb, told him this was serious trouble, that he was watching an operation go tits-up on a truly grand scale, but he
was smiling in spite of that.

Got to be the goddam telepathy. They smelled out what was
coming…and someone decided to do something about it.
As he watched, a motley mob of men, most in parkas and orange hats, came moiling
through the sagging, shattered barn doors. One fell on a splintered board and was impaled
like a vampire. Some stumbled in the snow and were trampled under. AR the lights were
on now. Kurtz felt like a man with a ringside seat at a prizefight. He could see everything.

Wings of escapees, fifty or sixty in each complement, peeled off as neatly as squads
in a drill-team and charged at the fence on either side of the ratty little store. Either they
didn’t know there was a lethal dose of electricity coursing through the smoothwire or they
didn’t care. The rest of them, the main body, charged directly at the back of the store. That
was the weakest point in the perimeter, but it didn’t matter. Kurtz thought it was all going
to go.

Never in any of his contingency plans had he so much as considered this scenario: two or three hundred overweight November warriors mounting a no-guts-no-glory banzai
charge. He had never expected them to do anything but stay put, clamoring for due process right up to the point where they were barbecued.
“Not bad, boys,” Kurtz said. He smelled something else starting to burn-probably his

goddam career-but the end had been coming anyway, and he’d picked one hell of an
operation to go out on, hadn’t he? As far as Kurtz was concerned, the little gray men from
space were strictly secondary. If he ran the news, the headline above the fold would read:
SURPRISE! NEW-AGE AMERICANS SHOW SOME BACKBONE! Outstanding. It was
almost a shame to cut them down.
The General Quarters siren rose and fell in the snowy night. The first wave of men hit

the back of the store. Kurtz could almost see the whole place shudder.
“That goddam telepathy,” Kurtz said, grinning. He could see his guys responding, the
first wave from the sentry huts, more coming from the motor-pool, the commissary, and the semi trailer-boxes that were serving as makeshift barracks. Then the smile on Kurtz’s
face began to fade, replaced by an expression of puzzlement. “Shoot them,” he said. “Why
don’t you shoot them?”
Some
were

firing, but not enough-nowhere near enough. Kurtz thought he smelled panic. His men weren’t shooting because they had gone chickenshit. Or because they
knew they were next.
“The goddam telepathy,” he said again, and suddenly automatic rifle fire began inside
the store. The windows of the office where he and Owen Underhill had had their original

conference lit up in brilliant stutterflashes of light. Two of them blew out. A man attempted to exit the second of these, and Kurtz had time to recognize George Udall before George was seized by the legs and jerked back inside.
The guys in the office were fighting, at least, but of course they would; in there they
were fighting for their lives. The laddie-bucks who had come running were, for the most

part, still running. Kurtz thought about dropping his boot and grabbing his nine-millimeter.
Shooting a few skedaddlers. Bagging his limit, in fact. It was falling down all around him,
why not?
Underhill, that was why not. Owen Underhill had played a part in this snafu. Kurtz
knew that as well as he knew his own name. This stank of line-crossing, and crossing the
line was an Owen Underhill specialty.
More shooting fi7om Gosselin’s office screams of pain… then triumphant howls. The

computer-savvy, Evian-drinking, salad-eating Goths had taken their objective. Kurtz
slammed the Winnebago’s door on the scene and hurried back to the bedroom to call Freddy Johnson. He was still carrying his boot.
10
Cambry was on his knees behind Old Man Gosselin’s desk when the first wave of
prisoners smashed its way in. He was opening drawers, looking frantically for a gun. The
fact that he didn’t find one very likely saved his life.
“
NOW! NOW! NOW!”

the oncoming prisoners screamed.
There was a monstrous thud against the back of the store, as if a truck had driven into
it. From outside, Cambry could hear a juicy crackling sound as the first detainees hit the
fence. The lights in the office began to flicker.
“Stand together, men!” Danny O’Brian cried. “For the love of Christ, stand toge-”
The rear door came off its hinges with so much force that it actually skittered

backward across the room, shielding the first of the screaming men who clogged the doorway. Cambry ducked, hands laced over the back of his head, as the door fell on the
desk at an angle with him beneath it, in the kneehole.
The sound of rifles on full auto was deafening in the tiny room, drowning out even
the screams of the wounded, but Cambry understood that not all of them were firing.

Trezewski, Udall, and O’Brian were, but Coleman, Everett, and Ray Parsons were only standing there with their weapons held to their chests and dazed expressions on their faces.
From his accidental shelter, Gene Cambry saw the prisoners charge across the room,
saw the first of them caught by the bullets and thrown like scarecrows; saw their blood splash across the walls and the bean-supper posters and the OSHA notices. He saw George

Udall throw his gun at two beefy young men in orange, then whirl and lunge at one of the
windows. George got halfway out and was then yanked back; a man with Ripley growing
on his cheek like a birthmark sank his teeth into George’s calf as if it were a turkey drumstick while another man silenced the screaming head at the other end of George’s body by jerking it briskly to the left. The room was blue with powdersmoke, but he saw Al

Coleman throw his gun down and pick up the chant-
“Now! Now! Now!”
And he saw Ray
Parsons, normally the most pacific of men, turn his rifle on Danny O’Brian and blow his
brains out.
Now the matter was simple. Now it was just the infected versus the immune.
The desk was hit and slammed against the wall. The door fell on top of Cambry, and
before he could get up, people were running over the door, squashing him. He felt like a
cowboy who has fallen off his horse during a stampede.

I’m going to die under here,
he thought, and then for a moment the murderous pressure was gone. He lunged to his knees,
driving with adrenaline-loaded muscles, and the door slid off him to the left, saying goodbye with a vicious dig of the doorknob into his hip. Someone dealt him a passing kick
in the ribcage, another boot scraped by his right ear, and then he was up. The room was
thick with smoke, crazy with shouts and screams. Four or five bulky hunters were

propelled into the woodstove, which tore free of its pipe and went crashing over on its side, spilling flaming chunks of maple onto the floor. Money and playing cards caught fire. There was the rancid smell of melting plastic poker chips.
Those were Ray’s,
Cambry thought incoherently.
He had them in the Gu!f. Bosnia, too.
He stood ignored in the confusion. There was no need for the escaping internees to

use the door between the office and the store; the entire wall-no more than a flimsy partition, really
–had been smashed flat. Pieces of this stuff were also catching fire from the
overturned stove.
“Now,” Gene Cambry muttered. “Now.” He saw Ray Parsons running with the others
toward the front of the store, Howie Everett at his heels. Howie snatched a loaf of bread as
he ran down the center aisle.

A scrawny old party in a tassled cap and an overcoat was pushed forward onto the overturned stove, then stomped flat. Cambry heard his high-pitched, squealing screams as
his face bonded to the metal and then began to boil.
Heard it and
felt it.
“Now!”
Cambry shouted, giving in and joining the others. “
Now!”
He broad-jumped the growing flames from the stove and ran, losing his little mind in
the big one.
For all practical purposes, Operation Blue Boy was over.
11

Three quarters of the way across the paddock, Henry paused, gasping for breath and
clutching at his hammering chest. Behind him was the pocket armageddon he had
unleashed; ahead of him he could see nothing but darkness. Fucking Underhill had run out
on him, had-
Easy, beautiful-easy.
Lights flashed out twice. Henry had been looking in the wrong place, that was all; Owen was parked a little to the left of the paddock’s southwest comer. Now Henry could

see the Sno-Cat’s boxy outline clearly. From behind him came screams, shouts, orders, shooting. Not as much shooting as he would have expected, but this was no time to wonder why.
Hurry up!
Owen cried.
We have to get out of here!
I’m coming as fast as I can-hold on.
Henry got moving again. Whatever had been in Owen’s kickstart pills was already
wearing off, and his feet felt heavy. His thigh itched maddeningly, and so did his mouth.

He could feel the stuff creeping over his tongue. It was like a soft-drink fizz that wouldn’t
go away.
Owen had cut the fence-both the barbed wire and the smooth. Now he stood in front
of the Sno-Cat (it was white to match the snow, and it was really no wonder Henry hadn’t
seen it) with an automatic rifle propped against his hip, attempting to look everywhere at
once. The multiple lights gave him half a dozen shadows; they radiated out from his boots
like crazy clock-hands.

Owen grabbed Henry around the shoulders.
You okay?
Henry nodded. As Owen began to pull him toward the Sno-Cat, there was a loud,
high-pitched explosion, as if someone had just fired the world’s largest carbine. Henry ducked, stumbled over his own feet, and would have fallen if Owen hadn’t held him up.
What-?
LP gas. Gasoline, too, maybe. Look.
Owen took him by the shoulders and turned him around. Henry saw a vast pillar of

fire in the snowy Might. Bits of the store-boards, shingles, flaming boxes of Cheerios, burning rolls of toilet paper-rose into the sky. Some of the soldiers were watching this, mesmerized. Others were running for the woods. In pursuit of the prisoners, Henry
assumed, although he was hearing their panic in his head-
Run! Run! Now! Now!-

and simply could not credit it. Later, when he had time to think, he would understand that many of the soldiers were also fleeing. Now he understood nothing. Things were
happening too fast.
Owen turned him around again and boosted him into the Sno-Cat’s passenger seat,
pushing him past a hanging canvas flap that smelled strongly of motor oil. It was blessedly
warm in the “Cat’s cab. A radio bolted to the rudimentary dashboard chattered and

squawked. The only thing Henry could make out clearly was the panic in the voices. It made him savagely happy-happier than he’d been since the afternoon the four of them had
put the fear of God into Richie Grenadeau and his bullyrag buddies. And that’s who was
running this operation, as far as Henry could see: a bunch of grownup Richie Grenadeaus,
armed with guns instead of dried-up pieces of dogshit.

There was something between the seats, a box with two blinking amber lights. As
Henry bent over it, curious, Owen Underhill snatched back the tarp hanging beside the
driver’s seat and flung himself into the “Cat. He was breathing hard and smiling as he looked at the burning store.
“Be careful of that, brother,” he said. “Mind the buttons.” Henry lifted the box, which

was about the size of Duddits’s beloved Scooby-Doo lunchbox. The buttons of which
Owen had spoken were under the blinking lights. “What are they?”
Owen turned the ignition key and the Sno-Cat’s hot engine rumbled into immediate
life. The transmission ran off a high stick, which Owen jammed into gear. Owen was still
smiling. In the bright light falling through the Sno-Cat’s windshield, Henry could now see

a reddish-orange thread of byrus growing beneath each of the man’s eyes, like mascara.
There was more in his brows.
“Too much light in this place,” he said. “We’re gonna dial em down a little.” He turned the “Cat in a surprisingly smooth circle; it was like being on a motorboat. Henry collapsed back against the seat, holding the box with the blinking lights on his lap. He felt
that if he didn’t walk again for five years, that would be about right.

Owen glanced at him as he drove the Sno-Cat on a diagonal toward the snowbank-
enclosed ditch that was the Swanny Pond Road. “You did it,” he said. “I doubted that you
could, I freely admit it, but you pulled the fucker off.”
“I told you-I’m a motivational master.”
Besides,
he sent,
most of them really are
going to die anyway.
Doesn’t matter. You gave them a chance. And now
-
There was more shooting, but it wasn’t until a bullet whined off the metal just above

their heads that Henry realized it was aimed at them. There was a brisk clank as another
slug ricocheted off one of the Sno-Cat’s treads and Henry ducked… as if
that
would do any good.
Still smiling, Owen pointed a gloved hand off to his right. Henry peered in that
direction as two more slugs ricocheted off the “Cat’s squat pillbox body. Henry cringed both times; Owen seemed not even to notice.

Henry saw a cluster of trailer-boxes, some with brand names like Sysco and Scott
Paper on them. In front of the trailers was a colony of motor homes, and in front of the biggest, a Winnebago that looked to Henry like a mansion on wheels, were six or seven
men, all firing at the Sno-Cat. Although the range was long, the wind high, and the snow

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