The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (60 page)

What they had just accomplished had been a victory. It was an operation that needed the precision of a stopwatch combined with the timing, logistics, and power of a full-scale invasion. And everything lad worked beyond their wildest, most sanguine dreams. For inside he moving van, neatly piled in heavy motionless lumps, was two million dollars in gold bullion.

The tall man with the thin face and the steady, intelligent eyes looked like a college professor. His name was Farwell and he had a doctorate in chemistry and physics. His specialty was noxious gasses. He turned toward the others and held up his thumb in a gesture of victory.

“Clockwork, gentlemen,” he said with a thin smile. His eyes moved slowly left and right, staring into the faces of the other three.

Next to him was Erbe, almost as tall as Farwell, with thin sloping shoulders, a pale nondescript face—perhaps a little younger-looking than his years. He was the expert in mechanical engineering. He could make anything, fix anything, manipulate anything. With probing eyes and surgeon’s fingers, he would gently caress a maze of sears, cogs, wheels, cylinders and coax them into a hum.

Alongside him was Brooks. Broad and stocky, partially bald, with an infectious grin and a Texas accent, he knew more about ballistics than almost anyone alive. Someone had said that his brains were made out of gunpowder, because in the area of firearms and other weaponry he was a dedicated genius.

And to his right was DeCruz—small, mercurial, handsome—a shock of unruly black hair hanging over deep-set, probing dark eyes. DeCruz was the expert in demolition. He was a master at destruction. He could improvise anything and blow up everything.

Two hours earlier these four men, in an incredible blending of talent, timing, and technique, had executed a heist unlike anything ever performed in the annals of crime. DeCruz had planted the five one-pound blocks of TNT that had blown up the tracks and sent the train to its destruction. Erbe had almost single-handedly put the two vehicles together from the parts of a dozen others—with parentage untraceable. Brooks had developed the grenades. And Farwell had come up with the sleeping gas. And in precisely thirteen minutes every occupant of the train had been asleep—the two engineers forever. Then the four men had moved quickly and quietly into one of the cars to remove the rotary-locked pouches carrying the bullion. Again DeCruz had utilized his talents to blow the locks apart, and the bullion had been transferred to the van.

It was part of their natures that none of them was concerned with the two dead engineers or the twenty-odd badly wounded human beings they’d left behind. Expediency was the one gospel that they all recognized and paid homage to.

It was DeCruz who hopped over the tailgate and started to push the treasure toward the rear of the van.

“Apples in the barrel,” Erbe said, and he grinned as he started to carry one of the bars of bullion toward the cave.

Brooks took another bar of bullion and let his fingers run over it. “So far,” he said, “but we ain’t spent nothin’ yet.”

DeCruz paused and nodded thoughtfully. “Brooks is right. Two million dollars’ worth of gold, but I’m still wearing dungarees and I got a dollar and twenty cents in my pocket.”

Farwell chuckled and winked at them. “That’s
this
year, Señor DeCruz. Today this...” He pointed to the tailgate and then nodded toward the cave opening. “But tomorrow! Tomorrow, gentlemen, like Croesus! Midas! Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan all rolled into one.” He patted the gold piling up on the tailgate. “Perfection, gentlemen. That’s how you performed. With perfection.”

Brooks laughed. “Man, did you see that train engineer when he hit those brakes! Looked like he thought the world was comin’ to an end.”

“Why not!” DeCruz said, his voice shrill, his eyes flashing. He pointed to himself proudly. “When I blow up tracks, I blowup tracks!”

Brooks stared at him. There was a rooted dislike, an undisguised contempt in his look. “Find a foundry for me, DeCruz—I’ll cast a medal for you.”

DeCruz’s black eyes returned the dislike. “What’s
your
trouble, Brooks? That wasn’t any easy thing tying up those tracks like that. You coulda done better, huh?”

Farwell, the catalyst, looked from one to the other. He motioned DeCruz back into the van. “May we get to business now?” he said. “We’re on schedule and I’d like to keep it that way.”

They continued to move the gold off the van and into the cave. It was torturously hot and the ten-inch cubes were deadweight in their arms as they slowly emptied the van.

“Man!” said Brooks as he moved into the cave with the last of the bars. He put it on top of the pile next to the deep pit that had been dug days before. “You’re a heavy little bastard. Anymore at home like you?”

Erbe came up beside him. “Yeh, one million nine hundred and eighty thousand bucks’ worth...just like him.” He turned to Farwell. “It worked just like you said it would—car full of gold, train derailed, sleeping gas puts everybody out...” He looked down at the gas mask hanging from his belt. “...except us,” he said pointedly.

Farwell nodded. “Except us, Mr. Erbe. It was not our time to sleep. It was our time to enrich ourselves.” He looked briefly at his watch.  “All right, gentlemen, the gold is in the cave. Next on the agenda—we destroy the van and Mr. Erbe wraps up the car with cosmoline.”

He walked across the cave to the far end. There were four glass-covered boxes, the size of coffins, lined up evenly. Farwell touched the glass top of one of them and nodded his head approvingly.

“And now,” he said in a whisper, “the
pièce de rèsistance
—the real culmination—the ultimate ingenuity.”

The three men stood behind him in the shadows.

“It’s one thing,” Farwell’s quiet voice continued, “to stop a train on its way from Los Angeles to Fort Knox and steal its cargo. It’s quite another thing to remain free to spend it.”

DeCruz squatted down in the dirt. “When?” he asked. “
When
do we spend it?”

“Don’t you know, Señor DeCruz?” Farwell’s voice was faintly disapproving. “I would have thought that this aspect of the plan would be particularly clear in your mind.”

DeCruz rose and walked over to the glass boxes. He stared at them with obvious trepidation. “Rip Van Winkles,” he said, “that’s what we are...”He turned toward the others. “We’re four RipVanWinkles. I’m not sure—”

Farwell interrupted him. “What aren’t you sure of, Mr. DeCruz?”

“Getting put to sleep,
Mr
. Farwell. Just lying down in these glass coffins and getting put to sleep. I like to know what I’m doing.”

Farwell smiled at him. “You know what you’re doing. I’ve explained it very precisely to you.” He turned, taking the other men into his conversation. “All four of us will be placed in a state of suspended animation. A protracted...rest, Mr. DeCruz. And when we wake up,” he pointed toward the pit and the gold stacked alongside, “that’s when we take our gold and enjoy it.”

DeCruz turned from the glass box and faced him. “I say everybody should get their cut now and take his own chances!”

Brooks took out a large switchblade that gleamed in the dim light. “That’s what
you
say, DeCruz.” His voice was quiet. “But that ain’t what we agreed on. What we agreed on was that we’d stash the gold here and then do what Farwell tells us to do. And so far he ain’t been wrong. Not about anything. The train, the gold, the gas—everything. Just like he said. And all we had to do was walk over a lot of horizontal people and transfer a fortune like it was cotton candy.”

“Amen to that,” Erbe said.

“Amen to that, sure,” DeCruz said excitedly, “but how about
this!
” He swiped at one of the boxes with the back of his hand. “None of you mind being helpless and closed up in these?”

Brooks went very slowly over to DeCruz, the knife still held in his hand. “No, Mr. DeCruz,” he said softly, “none of us mind.”

The two men faced each other, and in this moment of challenge it was DeCruz who wavered and turned away. He continued to stare at the semi-opaque glass of the box, and he took a deep breath. “How long, Farwell?” he asked in a different voice. “When we each push the button inside and the gas comes out, and this...this suspended animation thing takes over. How long?”

“How long?” Farwell answered him softly. “I don’t know exactly. I can only surmise. I would say that we would all wake up within an hour of each other—no more.” He looked again down the long row of caskets. “I would say approximately one hundred years from today’s date.” He looked around the circle of faces. “One hundred years, gentlemen, and we shall walk the earth again.” He turned and went over to the pit, then looked at the gold bullion. “As rich men, however,” he continued, “as extremely rich men.”

DeCruz’s lips trembled. “One hundred years.” He shut his eyes. “Just like Rip Van Winkle.”

It took them the rest of the day to pile the gold into the hole and cover it with earth. The moving van was blown up with the last remaining block of TNT. The sedan was pulled into the cave, covered with cosmoline and then with a large tarpaulin. And then Farwell closed the giant steel door covering the opening, its outside a twin to the rock walls on either side.

The four men stood in the shadowy light of the lanterns set around the cave and their eyes were drawn to the four glass boxes that waited for them with quiet invitation. On a signal from Farwell each man climbed into his box, closed the lid, and locked it from inside.

“All right, gentlemen,” Farwell said over the intercom system linking the four boxes. “First of all, I want to know if you can hear me. Knock once on the side as I call your name.” There was a pause. “DeCruz?”

DeCruz moved a shaking hand and knocked on the side of the glass.

“Erbe?”

There was a muffled sound from Erbe’s coffin.

“Brooks?”

Brooks, grinning, tapped his fingers on the glass and tossed a salute.

The lantern light flickered weakly and the room was filled with an orange dusk in the last few moments before the darkness.

Farwell’s voice was cool, deliberate. “Now I’m going to give you, in sequence, precisely what will happen,” he said, his voice hollow in the silence. “First, you’re to check the air locks located on your right. Do you see them there?”

Each man looked up to a spot just above his eyes.

“All right,” Farwell’s voice continued. “The red arrow should be pointed toward ‘closed and locked.’ Now you each count to ten very slowly. When you come to the end of the count, reach up with your left hand to the shelf just above your head. There’s a small green button there. Do you all find it?”

There were movements within the other three coffins.

“You’re to press this button. When that’s done, you’ll hear a light hissing sound. That will be the gas being measured into the enclosures. Take three shallow breaths, then a long, deep one. After a moment you’ll begin to experience a heavy, drowsy feeling. Don’t fight this. Just continue to breathe regularly and try to remain as still as possible. A good idea would be to count backwards from twenty. This will occupy your mind and keep you from any excess movement. By the time you reach eight or seven you should lose consciousness.”

There was another silence.

“All right,” Farwell’s voice continued. “Check your air locks first, gentlemen.”

The other three men followed his directions, and then three sets of eyes turned in their confinement to look across the cave toward the first coffin.

“Now begin to count,” Farwell’s voice said, “and on ten, release the gas.”

The lips of the four men moved as the quiet countdown took place—then, very slowly into each glass enclosure came a white stream of milky gas until the bodies inside were no longer visible.

“Good night, gentlemen.” Farwell’s voice was heavy and indistinct. “Pleasant dreams and a good sleep. I’ll see you...in the next century.” His voice became weaker. “In the next century, gentlemen.”

There was no more movement and no more sound. The lamps around the cave flickered out and there was nothing but darkness.

Inside the glass caskets the four men breathed deeply and regularly, unconscious of the quiet or the darkness, oblivious now to the time passing outside the cave ninety miles from a wrecked train in the Mojave desert.

Time passed. The wrecked skeleton of the moving van turned brown with rust, and then disintegrated into little pieces of metal that mixed with the sand and was eaten by it. Winds blew; the sun crossed the sky day after day.

And time continued to pass, until there came a moment when a small lever inside the first glass box went “click” and the top started to open.

Farwell opened his eyes. For a moment he looked puzzled; gradually awareness flooded into his face. His body seemed heavy and sluggish and it was a while before he could move. Then very slowly he sat up and reached for a flashlight beside him. He had built this with a set of batteries of his own design, set in a welded case made of steel and magnesium. When he pushed the switch a beam of light shone up toward the ceiling of the cave. There was movement down the line as two other caskets opened and Brooks and DeCruz could be seen sitting up inside their caskets. The last box in line remained closed.

DeCruz climbed out of the box, his legs stiff and unfamiliar. There was a tremor in his voice. “It didn’t work” He felt at his face, then moved his hand up and down his body. “We don’t have any beards,” he said. “Our nails haven’t even grown.” He stared accusingly at Farwell. “Hey! Mastermind with the big brain and all the answers—
why didn’t it work
?”

“It must have worked,” Farwell said. “It was foolproof. All the body functions stopped—there wouldn’t be any growth of beard or nails or anything else. I tell you, it worked. It
had
to work”

DeCruz moved across the dim cave and felt around the wall. He found a giant lever half surrounded by rocks. There was a clank of rusting chains, and after a moment the steel partition moved on its tracks. It let in blinding daylight that made the three men shut their eyes. It was several moments before they could become accustomed to the light. Then DeCruz walked out to the broad ledge and stared out over the horizon.