The Dream Widow (24 page)

“It is from my mother,” said the boy. “Best cloth of Monpa.”

“Thank you, but I don’t want to take your special things.”

“Not taking,” said the boy. “You are coming back.”

Reed struggled out of the black tent with a worn cane. Wilson and the boy helped him to walk through the cold afternoon sun to the pass.

They stopped before the hatcheted vee in the mountains and Reed handed Wilson a small bundle wrapped in crimson felt.

“Do not open this yet. Wait until it is night.”

Wilson turned the heavy, strangely shaped bundle in his hands. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Reed squashed a tiny scorpion with his cane. “There is a part of me that knows your face, but it is like a dream in the morning. I know your face but then I blink and it’s forgotten. This thing I give you is from before the blink.”

Wilson nodded. He clapped his hands together and bowed to each in the traditional farewell. The ugly dog barked, but not as furiously.

He climbed the slippery gray scree toward the distant dash-dot-dot of the caverns. The boy had said the dream tiger lived in the tunnels.

The dizzying sickness tried to stop him, to stab his legs with needles and pull his bones to the earth, but Wilson fought back with the calming trick. He constantly muttered the four lines and imagined his body surrounded by the freezing ice of a winter lake.

He slowly climbed the spill of broken rock and finally made it to the slice of cavern. Wilson lay on the flat concrete ledge and rested while holding the small cloth bag above his head. If he started to fall asleep the bag would fall on his face.

Once he’d recovered, Wilson explored the tunnels. Apart from the red-and-white wrapper he’d seen before, all the rooms were empty.

Over the valley the scattered clouds turned pink and the sun disappeared in the west. He ate two of the chili cakes and drank from the water skin. A tan lizard no longer than his finger hunted for insects along the rocks of the slope. A hawk drifted on the air currents over the valley and screamed a sound like a young boy’s whistle.

As dusk approached the air cooled and his breath steamed white.

What would happen if his days looped forever? Would they finally try something in the real world to save him? His body couldn’t survive indefinitely, even with intravenous fluids and life support. He wondered what options he’d have if he were outside and someone else had become trapped.

The desert slowly came alive. Lightning bugs floated along the valley floor, tiny pinpoints of blinking light. Small rodents began the night’s forage and foxes crept from rocky, underground dens.  The high-pitched bark reminded Wilson of the foxes around Station.

He pulled the crimson-wrapped bundle from the bag and unwrapped it carefully.

“What in the three cats––?”

A revolver gleamed silver in the moonlight. Apart from the silver finish it looked identical to his revolver back in the real world, the one he’d found in the old tunnels. “SMITH&WESSON” was engraved on one side of the barrel.

Wilson popped the cylinder––empty apart from one round. He dropped it onto his palm, where it lay heavy and gold in the moonlight.

“This will have to be enough, one way or another.”

He worked the action easily and shoved the round back into the cylinder.

A crash exploded from the tunnel behind Wilson, like a steel door thrown from the top of a building.

He could run. He could even let his body tumble down the side of the mountain. He’d probably just wake up again, no matter what Reed and the boy had said.

Wilson stood from the ledge and cocked the hammer of the revolver. He whispered the poem of the sight-trick and walked slowly into the gray tunnel.

Claws scraped on concrete. Wilson wiped sweat from his eyes and kept going.

A ragged female voice hissed at him.

“Zi tshai du lo?”

Wilson looked to his left and stared at a pair of shining circles.

The cat was huge, blindingly white, and covered with black spots. A mesh of circles marked the fur over one eye. Long fangs curved from the upper jaw.

“What I want is to escape,” said Wilson. “Something has gone wrong with the system or my interface.”

“There is nothing wrong with the syssstem,” hissed the dream tiger. “You are the thing that is wrong.” Her shoulders rolled as she paced in the small room, watching him. “You are the thing that is different from the othersss.”

“The others that are dead or dying? What’s the point of protecting them now? I didn’t come here to spend my life in a security loop. I came here to help Reed!”

“Lies! I’ve seen into your mind. You destroy everything you touch!”

The tiger leaped at Wilson and smashed him against the tunnel wall with her massive paws. The revolver fell out of his hand and clattered onto the floor.

Her breath smelled of rotten meat. “Die, you disgusting virussss ...”

Wilson yelled and rammed the hunting blade into the tiger’s neck. She leapt away with a roar and shook her massive head from side to side. The knife flew from her neck in a burst of blue sparkles.

Wilson crawled to the silver revolver. He turned on his back and aimed between his knees as the dream tiger leaped through the air.

The tunnel exploded with a deafening boom. The golden bullet speared the tiger like a ribbon of lightning and she vanished in a snap of blinding light.

Wilson sighed and lay back on the cold concrete. He closed his eyes and waited.

Nothing happened.

“Super.”

His shoulder and ribs were numb on his left side. Wilson got to his feet and left the cave. By the light of a crescent moon he made the exhausting climb down to the pass.

The ugly dog barked at him as usual, prodding Reed and the young boy to rush from the tent.

The boy hugged him around the waist. “Did you defeat the tiger?”

Wilson held up the revolver. “Thanks to this. But it doesn’t matter because I’m still here.”

Reed shrugged. “This is the way of things.”

After a meal of spiced lamb, Wilson lay on the same bedroll as always. He closed his eyes and fell asleep, expecting to wake in the same ditch.

He woke in the dark, confused and disoriented. He saw the glowing embers in the center of the tent and let out a whoop that woke Reed and the boy and caused the ugly dog to bark for a full minute.

TWELVE

R
obb would have screamed if he had the energy. He blacked out instead.

“That’s too deep,” said the Consul. “My mistake.”

She pulled the hair-thin needle from the boy’s left side and slapped him in the face. Robb opened his eyes and watched the Consul flip through the pages of the yellow volume again, like a mother nose-deep in the family cookbook.

This looks like Hausen’s quarters, he thought groggily, except for the changed furniture and the ceiling-to-floor post in the middle of the room. The one he hung from, his arms tied above his head. He wished he were a trussed deer hanging from a tree. At least then it would be over.

The Consul slid a finger down his ribcage and stabbed the needle between a different set of ribs.

“Hope this works,” she said. “Try not to pass out.”

Robb grunted as intense pain shot through his chest and rotated between hot and cold. Sweat dripped from his nose and onto the concrete floor.

“Perfect. Now I’m going to ask the same question as before. It’s about the place you call ‘the Tombs.’ Do you know the entrance code?”

Robb twitched his head from side to side.

“Do you know who does?”

Robb bobbed his head up and down.

“Finally, some progress. Tell me one name and I’ll pull out the needle.”

“Wilson,” said Robb hoarsely.

“And?”

“Badger.”

The searing pain went away as the needle left his body. “Continue,” she said.

“Mary and Father Reed.”

“Continue.”

Robb shook his head and drops of sweat curved to the floor.   

“You can’t be serious. Only four people out of all these hundreds know the secret?”

Robb nodded.

“Not good enough, dear boy. Dear, dear boy.”

The Consul flipped through the pages of the yellow book. “Here’s a good one.”

She looked through the dozens of needles on a nearby table, selected three of varying lengths and sizes, and walked behind Robb.

“I’ll never tire of saying this,” she whispered in his ear. “But I told you so.”

Robb found the energy to scream this time.

BADGER WAITED IN A DARK TUNNEL half-blocked with piles of broken rock. Ancient, balled-up husks of spiders littered the floor along with the bones of an extremely dead rat.

The screams from Robb made the wait harder, made Badger remember what Darius had done to her. Made her think this woman was taking her time, just like Darius.

The soldiers called her “Consul Nahid” to her face and worse behind her back. If there weren’t at least two guards following her everywhere, Badger would have already given her a few undignified stab wounds and a slit throat.

She had to be patient.

The concrete wall sucked the heat from her body and Badger shivered. Mast shifted his feet as he crouched next to her. She elbowed the big lout before he tried to say something.

A paste of charcoal and machine grease blackened their faces and hands, and soot dulled the blades of their hunting knives.

Eventually the screams stopped.

Badger heard a door open and peered around a dark corner. Fifteen meters away, a square opening shone with light. The Consul and her two guards passed by.

Badger touched Mast’s shoulder and crawled around the corner, careful not to disturb any of the broken concrete or loose stone.

Both stopped at the opening, where the abandoned corridor met the lighted hallway of Station. After a long wait Badger heard a rustle of cloth.

She held her braids and tilted her head out near the floor.

Fifteen meters away a Circle soldier sat on a chair near one of the doors. He had leaned back, two legs of his chair off the ground, and stared with drooping eyes at the opposite wall of the corridor.

Badger pulled a short knife from her belt. She slowly stood up, took a deep breath, and flicked it through the air.

The soldier looked to his right as it flew past his face and bounced noisily down the corridor. He stared at the knife on the concrete, then heard a patter of feet from behind. Only meters away, two black-faced demons were sprinting toward him. He grabbed the carbine resting on his lap.

Badger tackled the soldier as he tried to stand up, and the carbine fell on the corridor floor with a clatter. She pulled her knife from his gurgling neck and stabbed again.

As Mast grabbed the carbine and searched the pockets of the still-twitching body, Badger slid open the door with one hand. She ground her teeth and looked away from the sight in the center of the room.

A wooden post ran from ceiling to floor, measured exactly and hammered sideways into the space by the looks of it. Two horizontal beams had been nailed to the back of the post. Robb’s arms and legs were spread in an ‘X’ and tied to the ends of the beams. Hundreds of superficial cuts and pinpoints of dried blood covered his body. Long needles as thin as a cat’s whisker stuck from his chest and bobbed up and down as he breathed. Matted red hair and sweat covered Robb’s drained, emotionless face.

Badger stepped into the room. She began to cut the ropes with her hunting knife and his eyes opened wide.

“Kira?”

She covered his mouth with one hand and shook her head.

Mast came into the room and stuffed everything that looked useful into a bag: blankets, clothes, a leather roll and a yellow book lying on the table.

Badger sawed through the last rope and caught Robb before he collapsed to the filth-covered floor.

“The needles,” he whispered.

She pulled hair-thin rods from his ribs, chest, and back of his legs. Robb moved his arms freely but couldn’t stand without Badger’s help.

“I’ll take him,” said Mast.

He handed the carbine and the bag full of scavenged items to Badger and carried Robb back to the abandoned tunnel. Back in the darkness, Badger kept a hand on the wall to guide herself.

After sprinting for a few minutes through the maze of tunnels they stopped to rest. Mast lowered Robb to the cracked floor.

“I can walk now. You don’t have to carry me.”

“Good to hear.”

He watched the red-haired teenager gulp down a flask of water, and helped him wear a ragged shirt and trousers.

Badger took a metal tube from her pocket. She sprinkled half the contents in the tunnel behind them and the air filled with a sharp, pungent odor. As they continued walking, Badger continued to drip the rest of the liquid along the path. She was careful not to let it touch her clothing or hands, and dropped the empty vial into a pocket.