Nightmares and Dreamscapes Page 6

  I didn't know if he could smell me, but I could smell him.

  *

  Knowing he was on the way made it easier to pick up my aching legs and run.

  I got back to the big DETOUR sign and shoved it facedown into the ditch. I shook a sand-colored piece of canvas over it, then pawed loose sand over its support posts. The overall effect wasn't as good as the fake strip of road, but I thought it would serve.

  Now I ran up the second rise to where I had left the van, which was just another part of the picture now--a vehicle temporarily abandoned by the owner, who had gone off somewhere to either get a new tire or have an old one fixed.

  I got into the cab and stretched out across the seat, my heart thumping.

  Again, time seemed to stretch out. I lay there listening for the engine and the sound didn't come and didn't come and didn't come.

  They turned off. He caught wind of you at the last moment anyway. . . or something looked hinky, either to him or to one of his men . . . and they turned off.

  I lay on the seat, my back throbbing in long, slow waves, my eyes squinched tightly shut as if that would somehow help me hear better.

  Was that an engine?

  No--just the wind, now blowing hard enough to drive an occasional sheet of sand against the side of the van.

  Not coming. Turned off or turned back.

  Just the wind.

  Turned off or turned b--

  No, it was not just the wind. It was a motor, the sound of it was swelling, and a few seconds later a vehicle--one single vehicle--rushed past me.

  I sat up and grabbed the wheel--I had to grab something--and stared out through the windshield, my eyes bulging, my tongue caught between my teeth.

  The gray Cadillac floated down the hill toward the flat stretch, doing fifty or maybe a little more. The brake lights never went on. Not even at the end. They never saw it; never had so much as the slightest idea.

  What happened was this: all at once the Cadillac seemed to be driving through the road instead of on it. This illusion was so persuasive that I felt a moment of confused vertigo even though I had created the illusion myself. Dolan's Cadillac was hubcap-deep in Route 71, and then it was up to the door-panels. A bizarre thought occurred to me: if the GM company made luxury submarines, this is what they would look like going down.

  I could hear thin snapping sounds as the struts supporting the canvas broke under the car. I could hear the sound of canvas rippling and ripping.

  All of it happened in only three seconds, but they are three seconds I will remember my whole life.

  I had an impression of the Cadillac now running with only its roof and the top two or three inches of the polarized windows visible, and then there was a big toneless thud and the sound of breaking glass and crimping metal. A large puff of dust rose in the air and the wind pulled it apart.

  I wanted to go down there--wanted to go down right away--but first I had to put the detour to rights. I didn't want us to be interrupted.

  I got out of the van, went around to the back, and pulled the tire back out. I put it on the wheel and tightened the six lug-nuts as fast as I could, using only my fingers. I could do a more thorough job later; in the meantime I only needed to back the van down to the place where the detour diverged from Highway 71.

  I jacked the bumper down and hurried back to the cab of the van at a limping run. I paused there for a moment, listening, head cocked.

  I could hear the wind.

  And from the long, rectangular hole in the road, the sound of someone shouting . . . or maybe screaming.

  Grinning, I got back in the van.

  *

  I backed rapidly down the road, the van swinging drunkenly back and forth. I got out, opened the back doors, and put out the traffic cones again. I kept my ear cocked for approaching traffic, but the wind had gotten too strong to make that very worthwhile. By the time I heard an approaching vehicle, it would be practically on top of me.

  I started down into the ditch, tripped, landed on my prat, and slid to the bottom. I pushed away the sand-colored piece of canvas and dragged the big detour sign up to the top. I set it up again, then went back to the van and slammed the rear doors closed. I had no intention of trying to set the arrow sign up again.

  I drove back over the next rise, stopped in my old place just out of sight of the detour, got out, and tightened the lug-nuts on the van's back wheel, using the tire-iron this time. The shouting had stopped, but there was no longer any question about the screaming; it was much louder.

  I took my time tightening the nuts. I wasn't worried that they were going to get out and either attack me or run away into the desert, because they couldn't get out. The trap had worked perfectly. The Cadillac was now sitting squarely on its wheels at the far end of the excavation, with less than four inches of clearance on either side. The three men inside couldn't open their doors wide enough to do more than stick out a foot, if that. They couldn't open their windows because they were power-drive and the battery would be so much squashed plastic and metal and acid somewhere in the wreck of the engine.

  The driver and the man in the shotgun seat might also be squashed in the wreckage, but this did not concern me; I knew that someone was still alive in there, just as I knew that Dolan always rode in back and wore his seatbelt as good citizens are supposed to do.

  The lug-nuts tightened to my satisfaction, I drove the van down to the wide, shallow end of the trap and got out.

  Most of the struts were completely gone, but I could see the splintered butt ends of a few, still sticking out of the tar. The canvas "road" lay at the bottom of the cut, crumpled and ripped and twisted. It looked like a shed snakeskin.

  I walked up to the deep end and here was Dolan's Cadillac.

  The front end was utterly trashed. The hood had accordioned upward in a jagged fan shape. The engine compartment was a jumble of metal and rubber and hoses, all of it covered with sand and dirt that had avalanched down in the wake of the impact. There was a hissing sound and I could hear fluids running and dripping down there someplace. The chilly alcohol aroma of antifreeze was pungent in the air.

  I had been worried about the windshield. There was always a chance that it could have broken inward, allowing Dolan space enough to wriggle up and out. But I hadn't been too worried; I told you that Dolan's cars were built to the sorts of specifications required by tinpot dictators and despotic military leaders. The glass was not supposed to break, and it had not.

  The Caddy's rear window was even tougher because its area was smaller. Dolan couldn't break it--not in the time I was going to give him, certainly--and he would not dare try to shoot it out. Shooting at bullet-proof glass from close up is another form of Russian Roulette. The slug would leave only a small white fleck on the glass and then ricochet back into the car.

  I'm sure he could have found an out, given world enough and time, but I was here now, and I would give him neither.

  I kicked a shower of dirt across the Cadillac's roof.

  The response was immediate.

  "We need some help, please.

  We're stuck in here."

  Dolan's voice. He sounded unhurt and eerily calm. But I sensed the fear underneath, held rigidly in check, and I came as close to feeling sorry for him right then as it was possible for me to come. I could imagine him sitting in the back seat of his telescoped Cadillac, one of his men injured and moaning, probably pinned by the engine block, the other either dead or unconscious.

  I imagined it and felt a jittery moment of what I can only term sympathetic claustrophobia. Push the window-buttons--nothing. Try the doors, even though you can see they're going to clunk to a full stop long before you could squeeze through.

  Then I stopped trying to imagine, because he was the one who had bought this, wasn't he? Yes. He had bought his own ticket and paid a full fare.

  "Who's there?"

  "Me," I said, "but I'm not the help you're looking for, Dolan."

  I kicked another fan of g
rit and pebbles across the gray Cadillac's roof. The screamer started doing his thing again as the second bunch of pebbles rattled across the roof.

  "My legs! Jim, my legs!"

  Dolan's voice was suddenly wary. The man outside, the man on top, knew his name. Which meant this was an extremely dangerous situation.

  "Jimmy, I can see the bones in my legs!"

  "Shut up," Dolan said coldly. It was eerie to hear their voices drifting up like that. I suppose I could have climbed down onto the Cadillac's back deck and looked in the rear window, but I would not have seen much, even with my face pressed right against it. The glass was polarized, as I may already have told you.

  I didn't want to see him, anyway. I knew what he looked like. What would I want to see him for? To find out if he was wearing his Rolex and his designer jeans?

  "Who are you, buddy?" he asked.

  "I'm nobody," I said. "Just a nobody who had a good reason to put you where you are right now."

  And with an eerie, frightening suddenness, Dolan said: "Is your name Robinson?"

  I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. He had made the connection that fast, winnowing through all the half-remembered names and faces and coming up with exactly the right one. Had I thought him an animal, with the instincts of an animal? I hadn't known the half of it, and it was really just as well I had not, or I never would have had the guts to do what I had done.

  I said, "My name doesn't matter. But you know what happens now, don't you?"

  The screamer began again--great bubbling, liquid bellows.

  "Get me outta here, Jimmy! Get me outta here! For the luvva Jaysus! My legs're broke!"

  "Shut up," Dolan said. And then, to me: "I can't hear you, man, the way he's screaming."

  I got down on my hands and knees and leaned over. "I said you know what h--"

  I suddenly had an image of the wolf dressed up as Gramma telling Red Riding Hood, All the better to hear you with, my dear. . . come a little closer. I recoiled, and just in time. The revolver went off four times. The shots were loud where I was; they must have been deafening in the car. Four black eyes opened in the roof of Dolan's Cadillac, and I felt something split the air an inch from my forehead.

  "Did I get you, cocksucker?" Dolan asked.

  "No," I said.

  The screamer had become the weeper. He was in the front seat. I saw his hands, as pale as the hands of a drowned man, slapping weakly at the windshield, and the slumped body next to him. Jimmy had to get him out, he was bleeding, the pain was bad, the pain was turrible, the pain was more than he could take, for the luvva Jaysus he was sorry, heartily sorry for his sins, but this was more than--

  There was another pair of loud reports. The man in the front seat stopped screaming. The hands dropped away from the windshield.

  "There," Dolan said in a voice that was almost reflective. "He ain't hurting anymore and we can hear what we say to each other."

  I said nothing. I felt suddenly dazed and unreal. He had killed a man just now. Killed him. The feeling that I had underestimated him in spite of all my precautions and was lucky to be alive recurred.

  "I want to make you a proposal," Dolan said.

  I continued to hold my peace--

  "My friend?"

  --and to hold it some more.

  "Hey! You!" His voice trembled minutely. "If you're still up there, talk to me! What can that hurt?"

  "I'm here," I said. "I was just thinking you fired six times. I was thinking you may wish you'd saved one for yourself before long. But maybe there's eight in the clip, or you have reloads."

  Now it was his turn to fall silent. Then:

  "What are you planning?"

  "I think you've already guessed," I said. "I have spent the last thirty-six hours digging the world's longest grave, and now I'm going to bury you in your fucking Cadillac."

  The fear in his voice was still reined in. I wanted that rein to snap.

  "You want to hear my proposition first?"

  "I'll listen. In a few seconds. First I have to get something."

  I walked back to the van and got my shovel.

  *

  When I got back he was saying "Robinson? Robinson? Robinson?" like a man speaking into a dead phone.

  "I'm here," I said. "You talk. I'll listen. And when you're finished I may make a counter-proposal."

  When he spoke, he sounded more cheerful. If I was talking counter-proposals, I was talking deal. And if I was talking deal, he was already halfway to being out.

  "I'm offering you a million dollars to let me out of here. But, just as important--"

  I tossed a shovelful of gritty till down on the rear deck of the Cadillac. Pebbles bounced and rattled off the small rear window. Dirt sifted into the line of the trunk-lid.

  "What are you doing?" His voice was sharp with alarm.

  "Idle hands do the devil's work," I said. "I thought I'd keep mine busy while I listened."

  I dug into the dirt again and threw in another shovelful.

  Now Dolan spoke faster, his voice more urgent.

  "A million dollars and my personal guarantee that no one will ever touch you . . . not me, not my men, not anyone else's men."

  My hands didn't hurt anymore. It was amazing. I shoveled steadily, and in no more than five minutes, the Cadillac's rear deck was drifted deep in dirt. Putting it in, even by hand, was certainly easier than taking it out.

  I paused, leaning on the shovel for a moment.

  "Keep talking."

  "Look, this is crazy," he said, and now I could hear bright splinters of panic in his voice. "I mean it's just crazy."

  "You got that right," I said, and shoveled in more dirt.

  *

  He held on longer than I thought any man could, talking, reasoning, cajoling--yet becoming more and more disjointed as the sand and dirt piled up over the rear window, repeating himself, backtracking, beginning to stutter. At one point the passenger door opened as far as it could and banged into the sidewall of the excavation. I saw a hand with black hair on the knuckles and a big ruby ring on the second finger. I sent down a quick four shovelfuls of loose earth into the opening. He screamed curses and yanked the door shut again.

  He broke not long after. It was the sound of the dirt coming down that finally got to him, I think. Sure it was. The sound would have been very loud inside the Cadillac. The dirt and stones rattling onto the roof and falling past the window. He must have finally realized he was sitting in an upholstered eight-cylinder fuel-injected coffin.

  "Get me out!" he shrieked. "Please! I can't stand it! Get me out!"

  "You ready for that counter-proposal?" I asked.

  "Yes! Yes! Christ! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

  "Scream. That's the counter-proposal. That's what I want. Scream for me. If you scream loud enough, I'll let you out."

  He screamed piercingly.

  "That was good!" I said, and I meant it. "But it was nowhere near good enough."

  I began to dig again, throwing fan after fan of dirt over the roof of the Cadillac. Disintegrating clods ran down the windshield and filled the windshield-wiper slot.

  He screamed again, even louder, and I wondered if it was possible for a man to scream loud enough to rupture his own larynx.

  "Not bad!" I said, redoubling my efforts. I was smiling in spite of my throbbing back. "You might get there, Dolan--you really might."

  "Five million." It was the last coherent thing he said.

  "I think not," I replied, leaning on the shovel and wiping sweat off my forehead with the heel of one grimy hand. The dirt covered the roof of the car almost from side to side now. It looked like a starburst . . . or a large brown hand clasping Dolan's Cadillac. "But if you can make a sound come out of your mouth which is as loud, let us say, as eight sticks of dynamite taped to the ignition switch of a 1968 Chevrolet, then I will get you out, and you may count on it."

  So he screamed, and I shoveled dirt down on the Cadillac. For some time he did indeed scream very lo
udly, although I judged he never screamed louder than two sticks of dynamite taped to the ignition switch of a 1968 Chevrolet. Three, at most. And by the time the last of the Cadillac's brightwork was covered and I rested to look down at the dirt-shrouded hump in the hole, he was producing no more than a series of hoarse and broken grunts.

  I looked at my watch. It was just past one o'clock. My hands were bleeding again, and the handle of the shovel was slippery. A sheaf of gritty sand flew into my face and I recoiled from it. A high wind in the desert makes a peculiarly unpleasant sound--a long, steady drone that simply goes on and on. It is like the voice of an idiot ghost.

  I leaned over the hole. "Dolan?"

  No answer.

  "Scream, Dolan."

  No answer at first--then a series of harsh barks.

  Satisfactory!

  *

  I went back to the van, started it up, and drove the mile and a half back down to the road construction. On the way I tuned to WKXR, Las Vegas, the only station the van's radio would pull in. Barry Manilow told me he wrote the songs that make the whole world sing, a statement I greeted with some skepticism, and then the weather report came on. High winds were forecast; a travellers' advisory had been posted on the main roads between Vegas and the California line. There were apt to be visibility problems because of sheeting sand, the disc jockey said, but the thing to really watch out for was wind-shear. I knew what he was talking about, because I could feel it whipsawing the van.

  Here was my Case-Jordan bucket-loader; already I thought of it as mine. I got in, humming the Barry Manilow tune, and touched the blue and yellow wires together again. The loader started up smoothly. This time I'd remembered to take it out of gear. Not bad, white boy, I could hear Tink saying in my head. You learnin.

  Yes I was. Learning all the time.

  I sat for a minute, watching membranes of sand skirl across the desert, listening to the bucket-loader's engine rumble and wondering what Dolan was up to. This was, after all, his Big Chance. Try to break the rear window, or crawl over into the front seat and try to break the windshield. I had put a couple of feet of sand and dirt over each, but it was still possible. It depended on how crazy he was by now, and that wasn't a thing I could know, so it really didn't bear thinking about. Other things did.

  I geared the bucket-loader and drove back up the highway to the trench. When I got there I trotted anxiously over and looked down, half-expecting to see a man-sized gopher hole at the front or rear of the Cadillac-mound where Dolan had broken some glass and crawled out.