Sleepwalk (40 page)

Her training in karate and judo—the training that had allowed her to overpower Randy Sparks so easily that day in the lunchroom—came to the fore, and she quickly stepped aside, ready to twist the man’s arm around behind him. But even as she made her move, he anticipated it, countering it with an instantaneous shift of his own that put him behind her. As his right arm snaked around her neck, choking off her scream so quickly it was no more than a tiny yelp, Judith understood with terrible clarity that his own first move had been nothing more than a feint, a trap she had instantly fallen into.

“Not a word,” he said, his voice quiet but hard as steel. “If you try to scream, I’ll kill you right here, right now.” As if to prove his point his arm tightened around her neck while the fingers of his left hand found a nerve and applied just enough pressure to send a blinding pain screaming through her body. Her lungs automatically contracted as she tried to scream again, then she began choking as her windpipe closed tight.

The man holding her nodded to his companion, a sandy-haired man with cold blue eyes, who immediately went into the kitchen. Judith could hear the sound of the telephone being put gently back onto its hook.

“I’m going to let you breathe now,” the black-haired man said in a tone so casually conversational that it sent chills through Judith’s body. “But if you try to scream, or speak, or do anything else I don’t tell you to do, it will be the last thing you do.”

As he stopped speaking his right arm relaxed enough so that she could suck air into her aching lungs. A part of her mind focused on the fact that before allowing her to breathe he hadn’t bothered to wait for any sign that she’d even heard his instructions, let alone agreed to them. That added to the terror that now threatened to overwhelm her, for she was certain he would do exactly as he had said, and didn’t really care whether she agreed to his conditions or not.

The sandy-haired man was back in the living room now, and he casually lifted his jacket so she could see the gun in his hand. She hadn’t the slightest idea what kind of gun it was, but it was small and compact, with a snub nose that made it look mean and ugly.

“It’s a thirty-eight,” Sandy-hair told her, his lips curling slightly. “And this,” he went on, pulling a metal tube from a pocket of the jacket, “is a silencer. Actually, it doesn’t really do the aim of this thing much good, and if you were to get away from us, I’d probably miss you from anything beyond ten or fifteen yards. But at close range, like if it’s jammed into your back, aim doesn’t count for much, does it?” He smiled coldly, and neither he nor Black-hair even seemed to notice the phone when it rang.

“What the neighbors are going to see,” Sandy-hair continued, “if they’re looking at all, is us helping you out to the car. You’re not feeling so good, see? So that way, if I have to shoot you, you’ll just look like you’re feeling even worse.”

“Wh-Why?” Judith managed to ask. Her throat hurt where Black-hair had crushed her larynx, and the word was no more than a croak.

Sandy-hair shrugged. “A man wants to talk to you,” he said. “He sent us to pick you up.”

“I’ll need your car keys,” Black-hair said, his voice still carrying that eerily conversational quality that made his request sound so ominous.

“M-My purse,” Judith managed, nodding toward a small table next to the sofa.

Black-hair moved to the table, picked up Judith’s purse, then groped in it until his hands closed on her keys. Then he handed her the purse and opened the front door. “If you’ll just take my arm,” he said.

Numbly, Judith slipped her hand through his arm, and he led her outside onto the porch. Sandy-hair pulled the door closed, almost shutting out the sound of the still-ringing telephone, then fell in beside her, gripping her other arm and letting her feel the pressure of the pistol against her rib cage. Sitting outside, behind her own car, was the blue Chevy she’d seen the day before.

Black-hair opened the passenger door for her, and as she climbed into the front seat, Sandy-hair slid behind the wheel. “My friend here still has his gun,” Black-hair told her. “He’ll be driving with one hand, and he’ll be holding the gun with the other. If you make any attempt to get out of the car, or scream, or do anything else except sit there quietly, he’ll kill you.”

A moment later, after Sandy-hair had disappeared around the corner, Black-hair ambled up the driveway, got into Judith’s car, backed into the street, and shifted the transmission into Drive.

Across the street and two houses up, a woman stood watering her front lawn. As he passed her, Black-hair smiled and waved.

The woman seemed puzzled, but then she grinned uncertainly and returned his wave before going back to her watering.

*  *  *

Peter Langston stared at the receiver in his hand and rattled the button on the phone. “Judith?” he said. He held the button down a moment, then quickly redialed the number. He let the phone ring fifteen times, then finally hung up. “Something’s happened up there,” he told Tom Patchell, who was looking at him, his head cocked worriedly to one side. “Someone came to the door, and then they hung up her phone.”

Patchell’s eyes narrowed. “Better call the police up there.” But his words were unnecessary, for Peter was already dialing again. A few minutes later he began talking urgently to the Borrego police department.

“I’m telling you, something’s gone wrong!” He repeated what had happened, then spoke again. “I don’t know the address. She’s living at her boyfriend’s house.” He searched his memory, but couldn’t remember the name of Judith’s new boyfriend. Possibly she had never told him the name. Then he had an idea. “Look, the guy’s in the hospital. He had a stroke.” A moment later he slammed the receiver down. “I’m driving up there,” he told Patchell. “They knew who the guy was, but they said he’s some kind of kook. I don’t think they’re even going to check his place out.”

“You want me to go with you?” Patchell asked, but Peter shook his head.

“Stay here and see what else you can find out about those damned machines. Like maybe a way to disable them.”

Patchell looked at Peter, his eyes bleak. “I’ve already been thinking about that,” he said. “I’m not sure there
is
a way to disable them, short of destroying them.
And the only way I can think of to do that is to set them off.”

Peter Langston’s eyes turned to flint. “There has to be a way,” he said. “If there isn’t …”

But he left the sentence unfinished, unwilling to accept that for all the teenagers of Borrego, there might already be no means of escape from the bombs that had been planted inside their heads.

By the end of his shift Jed Arnold didn’t have to pretend to move like a somnambulist. As he climbed the long circular staircase that led up to the top of the dam, his whole body felt numb. He’d spent the afternoon in the main shaft, shoveling debris into the conveyor belt, and his arms felt as if he could barely lift them. He took the stairs one by one, moving his legs stolidly, willing them to carry his weight upward. At last he reached the surface and emerged, blinking into the bright afternoon sunlight. He paused, sucking fresh air into his lungs, hacking and coughing in an attempt to dislodge the dust and grime of the power shaft from his throat. A moment later, realizing he was in full view of the operator’s shack at the end of the dam, he let his head hang once more and started along the dam, as though unconscious of his surroundings.

“Arnold!” Otto Kruger’s voice barked as he passed the open door to the control room.

He stopped, and slowly raised his head, keeping his expression carefully impassive. Kruger was holding a brown manila envelope out to him.

“Take this down to the communications center on your way home. Give it to the first person you see.”

It wasn’t a request; it was an order. From the way Kruger had spoken, it was clear to Jed that he anticipated no argument, no questions.

He expected that Jed would silently comply with his command.

Wordlessly, Jed held out his hand and took the thin package, then proceeded on his way to the truck, being careful not even to so much as look at the envelope.

Ignoring the rest of the crew, who had gathered around the bed of Carlos Alvarez’s old pickup to enjoy an after-work beer, he climbed up into the cab of the truck, started the engine, and pulled out onto the road along the canyon’s edge. Only when certain he was no longer within view of anyone at the dam did he pick up the envelope and look for any markings that might identify what was inside. There was nothing on it. No name, no address, not even a logo for either Borrego Oil or UniChem. It was simply a plain brown envelope.

Jed dropped the envelope on the seat beside him, then sped up, enjoying the wind in his face as it blew through the open window. He slowed the truck only when he came to the part of the road that switchbacked down the shoulder of the mesa, then sped up again as he started back up into the canyon itself.

Four hundred yards into the canyon, in the shelter of a thick stand of cottonwoods, he pulled the truck to a stop. He got out and stripped off his shirt, then splashed water from the stream over his face and torso. Finally he went back to the truck, pulled a ragged towel out from behind the passenger seat and wiped himself dry, removing the worst of the sweat and grime from his aching body. Only when he’d put his sticky work shirt back on did he finally pick up the brown envelope again, this time testing the flap to see if it was sealed.

To his surprise, it wasn’t.

And yet, he reflected, why should it be? It was obvious they were certain he would simply do as he was told, and show no curiosity at all about what might be in the envelope.

Well, they were wrong.

Quickly he opened the envelope and slid the single sheet of paper out far enough so he could see what it was.

It was a list of the men he’d been working with all day, the men who had disappeared in groups of four at various times through the morning and afternoon, sent down to the hospital to receive their “flu” shots.

Beside each name there was a five-digit number.

Except for the list of names and numbers, the envelope was empty. Jed stared at the sheet for a few seconds, then rummaged in the glove compartment of the truck until he found a stub of a pencil and a crumpled paper bag.

He copied the names and their corresponding numbers, then shoved the bag and pencil back where he’d found them. He slid the sheet back into its envelope and carefully flattened the metal fastener.

Ten minutes later he pulled up in front of the communications center and climbed out of the truck.

He hesitated.

He wanted to see more of the building than simply whatever lay just inside the door. As he looked at the cars in the parking lot, an idea came to him. He hurried from car to car, until he found what he was looking for. Lying on the dashboard of a blue Buick was an envelope, addressed to someone named Stan Utley. He checked the other cars, but they were all locked, and he
found nothing useful. He would have to gamble on the Utley envelope.

Making his face expressionless once more, he walked through the gate and into the building itself.

A girl he didn’t recognize looked up at him. “Give me the envelope,” she said, exactly as if she were talking to a robot rather than a human being.

Jed shook his head. “They said to give it to Utley,” he said. “Stan Utley.”

The girl stared at him for a moment, then nodded her head. “In the back,” she said. “Go through the door into the transmitter room. He’s in there.”

Jed stifled a sigh of relief as he followed the girl’s instructions. He stepped through the door, and almost immediately the temperature dropped as he came into the cavern that formed the back chamber of the building.

It looked to Jed like a control room. There seemed to be computer monitors everywhere, and at several of the monitors, blank-eyed, expressionless people sat tapping data into keyboards.

Jed stopped, his head down but his eyes darting everywhere, taking in everything he could. On a desk a few feet from him, propped up by one of the monitors, was a list of names and numbers. On the screen of the monitor, more numbers were flashing.

Suddenly a man in a technician’s coat appeared in front of Jed. “I’m Stan Utley,” he said. Nothing more.

Jed handed him the envelope.

“That’s all,” Utley said. “You can go home now.”

Silently Jed turned and started out of the room, but as he reached the door, he heard Utley’s voice speaking to someone else. “Get these entered, and have them matched to the Parameter B frequencies.”

As he left the communications center a few seconds later and started driving back down the canyon, Jed was certain he’d found the source of what was being done to the people of Borrego.

The communications center wasn’t broadcasting to other UniChem offices at all.

It was broadcasting to the town.

Peter Langston hurried up the walk in front of the nondescript cinder-block house and rapped sharply on the door. Darkness had already fallen, the first stars beginning to glimmer in the sky, and Peter shivered, though he wasn’t sure if it was the chill of the evening that had brought on the sudden tremor. He was about to knock again when the door opened and a teenage boy, dark-complected, with fine planes in his face and startlingly blue eyes, looked out at him. Despite his dusky complexion, the boy’s face looked pale and seemed almost expressionless, and as Peter remembered Judith’s description of her “affected” students, he felt a pang of apprehension. But if this was Jed Arnold, he couldn’t possibly be feeling the effects of a shot he hadn’t had.

“Jed?” he asked. “Jed Arnold?” A hint of a frown creased the boy’s brow and he nodded warily. “I’m Peter Langston, Judith Sheffield’s—”

Jed’s face came to life, and he quickly pulled Langston into the house, closing the door behind him.
“Where’s Jude?” he demanded. “Isn’t she with you? She wasn’t here when I got home and—” His words faded away as he saw the look on Langston’s face. “Oh, Jesus,” he breathed. “Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it?”

Peter nodded. “I think she’s been kidnapped. I know it sounds crazy, but—”