Sleepeasy

by Wright, T. M.

  The thing pushed the water ahead of it as it moved, wild eyes intent on its victims, gummy mouth salivating.

  It swamped the little boat and the boat turned over.

  Harry screamed again.

  Sam screamed, though not solely for effect this time.

  That's enough, enough, enough! he thought frantically.

  And found that he was falling through the blue-green and airy ocean.

  He caught sight of Harry, far off, falling too and being pursued by the black, wild-eyed, bulbous thing that he, Sam, had conjured up and now could not control. He could hear Harry screaming. It was continuous, ragged, distant. And very fearful. Sam yelled as he fell, "Forgive me, my friend! I had no idea what the hell I could do!"

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Sydney sat very still in his suite at the Ritz Carlton. The lights were off. The TV was off. The shades were drawn. The rooms were in near darkness.

  Sydney wasn't sleeping, though. Nor was he resting, or taking some "quiet time." Sydney was existing. When he wasn't killing or involved in the acquisition of power and money, he merely sat.

  He had no thoughts per se. The memories of his recent murders swam around in his head like bits of muck in a dirty fishbowl and he enjoyed them.

  But as he sat, he felt a little discomfort too. It wasn't pain exactly. It wasn't a headache, a backache, a toothache. It was pressure, as if something unseen were tugging gently but insistently on him from all sides at once.

  Dammit, Amelia thought, more fucking sunflowers!

  "Look at all the fucking sunflowers!" Morgan said from the backseat.

  "And what I want to know," Jack called—head stuck out the monster Buick's window—"is where do all these sunflowers come from if there's no flicking sun?"

  "Isn't that a good question?" shouted Freely, sitting next to Morgan in the backseat. "And you can bet your ass that our indomitable Captain Amelia doesn't know the answer."

  Amelia had the Buick's accelerator pedal to the floor and the car's big engine was pulling them over the rutted road at close to ninety-five miles an hour. She had seen no other cars, no people, no animals, only the road and the fields and the sun-flowers—which seemed to nod in a friendly way as they passed—so she thought that her speed didn't matter, and she was getting a kick out of it any-way.

  She wasn't getting a kick out of Freely's attitude. The woman was turning into a real bitch. Even if she was… dying, it was no reason to make life unpleasant for everyone around her.

  Amelia chanced a quick glance at her, before returning her gaze to the road. Huh? she thought. She looked once more. "Freely," she said. "Good Lord, you're whole!"

  "My hole?" Freely snapped back. "What is that, some sexual slur?"

  Amelia sighed. "No, no, no. I mean, you're… entire. You're all there."

  "I am?" She looked down at herself. "Jesus, I am! How in the hell did that happen?"

  "My guess," Amelia said, "is that it happened because we got out of Silver Lake." She let off a bit on the accelerator pedal. Suddenly, and inexplicably, excessive speed had lost its appeal.

  "At last," Freely proclaimed, "you're right about something."

  "Bitch," Amelia whispered.

  "Look there!" Jack said. He was leaning out the window, pointing straight ahead. The fields of sunflowers ended not far away and buildings were visible.

  Amelia let off further on the accelerator, so the car was barely crawling.

  "What the fuck's the problem?" Morgan shouted. "And turn down that damned music."

  Amelia turned it off.

  "Hey!" Jack said.

  "Just for a moment," Amelia said, and peered through the windshield. "I don't like the feel of this."

  "The feel of what?" Morgan barked.

  Amelia wasn't sure. The buildings ahead—halfway to the horizon—looked innocent enough. Square, gray, apparently made of cinder block. They were certainly ugly, but there was nothing overtly menacing about them.

  "Step on it!" Morgan ordered. "This car's too damned hot!"

  Why is everyone so testy? Amelia wondered. Was it the heat? The road that cut through the field of sunflowers certainly seemed hotter than it should.

  "Jack, could you roll up your window, please," she said.

  "Roll up the window? Sure. You going to turn on the air-conditioning?" He pressed the button for the power window. Amelia found the electronic hum of the window closing oddly comforting.

  "Yes," she answered, "I'm going to turn on the air-conditioning," and she did. Cold air flowed into the car almost at once.

  "Good fucking idea!" Morgan bellowed. "Jesus, I'm sweating back here!"

  "It's on, it's on," Amelia told him.

  They were very close to the cinder-block buildings now and Amelia could see what had made her instinctively uncomfortable about them. They looked like prisons. Small, barred windows. Sturdy, metal doors.

  She stopped the car a hundred yards away. She could see no people, no sign of habitation.

  "What the hell is this?" Morgan asked.

  "It looks like Attica," Freely said.

  "Or Leavenworth," Jack said.

  "It's someone's twisted fantasy," Amelia told them, and thought that whoever indulged in such fantasies wasn't someone she wanted to meet.

  "Why are we stopped?" Jack asked. "Let's get a move on."

  "She doesn't have any idea where we're going, let alone where we are," Freely said. "I think she's doing the correct thing."

  Amelia glanced at her. "Thanks."

  "Sisters, right?" Freely said, and grinned back.

  Amelia smiled uneasily at her. The whole sisters idea had always seemed a little ... constipating. "Sure," she said. "Sisters."

  "All right, all right," Morgan chimed in, "that's enough of the female-bonding crap. Are we going to move or not? We can't simply stay here."

  "I've got to think," Amelia said.

  "About what?" Morgan asked. "If you don't like this place, then we drive on. We go somewhere you do like. Somewhere all of us like."

  Amelia looked at him. "I don't think that's in the cards."

  "Oh, you don't." He sighed. "Okay, I guess I understand that—"

  "You do?" Jack cut in.

  "Who's that?" Freely said.

  Amelia, who had been looking at Morgan, turned to the road again. A man was standing fifty yards off, in the middle of the road. He wore what looked like a black uniform with yellow insignias on the arms. His stance was very erect and he held what looked like a bazooka.

  "Shit!" Jack whispered.

  "I say we turn around," Morgan offered. "This guy doesn't look friendly."

  "Agreed," Amelia said, and put the car in reverse. Just then the man in the road lifted the bazooka to his shoulder, as if preparing to fire.

  Amelia floored the accelerator.

  Harry's feet felt wet and his head hurt. He reached to touch his head and his fingers hit a wall behind him. "Shit!" he whispered.

  He couldn't see and at first he thought it was because he was blind, which gave him a little rush of panic. Then his eyes adjusted to the light and he realized that he was in a small, dank, windowless room. Light filtered into the room beneath what looked like a door a dozen feet in front of him. He could hear people talking loudly outside. He listened for a moment and, though he couldn't make out any single words, he got the idea that the loud talking was not in anger. He could hear other sounds and he guessed that they were the sounds of machines, and that people were talking loudly to make themselves heard over the machines.

  He reached carefully toward his head again, avoiding the wall. His head felt wet. He tried to peer at his fingers but with no success, and guessed that the wetness on his fingers was blood.

  He pushed himself slowly to his feet—,he ached all over, as if he'd done a full day's worth of heavy labor—and trudged toward the door.

  Where were his shoes? he wondered. His feet were bare and he was walking through slimy puddles. The place stunk too. Urine, beer. And
it was very cold.

  He reached through the darkness, found a doorknob, turned it, pushed. The door wouldn't budge. He pulled on the door. It opened. Bright light flooded over him and he raised his arm to his eyes.

  "Who the hell is that?" he heard.

  "Hey, buddy, what are you doing here?"

  He lowered his arm. A half dozen workmen in hard hats stood close by, staring at him.

  "Where am I?" he said.

  "Where you shouldn't be," one of the workmen answered. "Good God, Mack, this place is going to go down in two hours. What were you doing, sleeping one off in there?"

  "No. I don't know. I don't think so." Harry was very confused. What was this place? How had he gotten here?

  "He's bleeding," one of the workmen said. "You know you're bleeding, Mack?"

  Harry reached, felt his head, looked at his fingers. Blood. He looked into the face of a workman with puffy cheeks and small eyes. "What is this place?"

  "Huh?" the man said.

  "Someone get him out of here," a voice said. Another workman came forward and took Harry by the arm. "C'mon, buddy."

  Harry tried unsuccessfully to shake off the man's grip. "Don't give me no trouble, okay?" the man said.

  "Sorry," Harry said.

  "We gotta take the stairs, okay? It's a long way down. You think you're up to it?"

  The walls of the building were pockmarked with holes. Harry thought he could see the Con Ed building through one of these holes. "This is New York?" he asked, astonished.

  "Yeah." The man chuckled. "Where else would they be knocking a building down for Christmas?" This didn't register with Harry. He nodded vaguely and wondered what the hell he was doing in New York City. The last thing he remembered was watching Barbara take one of her nude swims.

  The man led him to a flight of cement steps. Harry looked down. "How far up are we?"

  "Fifteen stories."

  "And we have to walk? There's no elevator?"

  "That's right."

  "I don't think I'm up to that."

  "You sure as hell are," the man said, and chuckled. "Up to it, I mean." He chuckled again and guided Harry to the top of the stairs. "It's the only way outta here. Just be careful. There's ice."

  Harry took the first step down, then another. "I'm so tired," he said.

  "Yeah, ain't we all!" the man said.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  "He vanished!" Jack whispered. "That guy simply vanished."

  Amelia hit the brake pedal hard and stared through the windshield. "He did, didn't he?" This was crazy. One moment, the guy's pointing what looks like a bazooka at them and then, when she backs away, he's gone, along with his ugly cinder-block buildings. And they—Morgan, Freely, Jack South and she—are awash in nodding sunflowers and blue-green sky again.

  "You know what it reminds me of?" Morgan said from the backseat. "It reminds me of a computer game."

  "Yeah," Freely said. "It does."

  "You're right," Jack said. "You get to a certain place in a computer game, where you're going to get killed or something, and when you go backward, you're all right. Then you go a different way, or you stay where you are, and think about what you oughta do next."

  "Because," Freely explained, "the enemy is out of the frame, off the screen."

  "This is not a computer game," Amelia told them.

  "It's not our computer game anyway!" Morgan said.

  "It's not a computer game at all," Amelia said. "It's . . . What it is . . . is . . ." She cast about for the proper words. Did she even know the proper words? she wondered. "What it is," she finished, "is someone else's reality."

  "Yeah, like I said," Morgan chuckled, "it's someone's computer game."

  Amelia sighed. "Listen, I know what I'm talking about. This is my world after all."

  "Yours?" Morgan objected. "It's ours too. And everyone else's."

  Amelia pursed her lips in annoyance. These people simply didn't understand. Although, on second thought, how could they? They were the recently dead after all. And so they were confused, as she once had been. No one could blame them for not thinking straight. "This is what I'm going to do," she announced.

  "Wait a minute," Morgan cut in. "Who died and made you boss?"

  Amelia glared at him.

  "Yeah," Freely agreed. "Who died and made you boss?"

  "Do you think that's funny?" Amelia asked, astonished.

  "No. Just a damned good question," Morgan answered.

  "A fucking damned good question," Freely chimed in.

  Amelia looked at her. "I thought we were sisters?"

  Freely shrugged.

  She glanced from Morgan to Jack South. "I'm the boss because I've been here longer than any of you and because I know what I'm doing."

  "Hah!" Morgan harrumphed.

  "And because I've got control of the car," Amelia finished, smiling. "And what I've decided we're going to do is confront the enemy." And with that, she put the car in drive and floored the accelerator.

  Within moments, the squat, gray, cinder-block buildings appeared, followed almost instantly by the man with the bazooka. He raised it to his shoulder.

  "Get down!" Amelia barked, and stiff-armed the steering wheel.

  But nobody got down. All eyes were trained on the man with the bazooka.

  Amelia closed her eyes.

  When she opened them, the man was jumping out of the way and the bazooka was flying skyward.

  She hit the brake and the Buick screeched to a halt. Craning her head around, she saw the man at the side of the road. He was sitting up, massaging his knees. He was in his sixties, she guessed, and he looked hurt, angry and confused.

  "I'm sorry," she called. "You looked like you meant business with that . . . weapon of yours."

  He glanced at her, then back at his knees. "Well, I did mean business, until I figured out that you weren't one of mine. They haven't degenerated to the point where they're actually trying to run me over yet."

  Remarkably, she thought she understood what he was talking about.

  She glanced around at the ugly gray buildings: there were seven of them and they were all clustered near the road. Beyond, atop a little rise, she could see a nice, two-story, white colonial house with green shutters and a red slate roof. "What is this place?" she asked.

  The man looked at her a moment, as if trying to decide whether to answer or not. "I call it Bunker Number Four."

  "Oh," she said.

  "See," Morgan called from within the car. "I told you it was a computer game."

  The man in the roadway shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. He was thin and balding, and his eyes were large, gray and rheumy, as if he spent much of his time in darkness, or asleep. "It's not a computer game," he said. "It's more sophisticated than that."

  "Virtual reality then," Jack South called. He was sticking his head out of the passenger window.

  The man shrugged. "Reality, virtual reality—who knows? It works, so it is."

  Shit, Amelia thought. Another philosopher.

  The man started walking toward the car. He limped, which gave her a little pang of guilt. "I didn't mean to scare you. You're the first real flesh-and-blood people I've seen in quite a long time. Years, I think. Actually, it's very good to have real people here, although you must realize that you can't stay for long." It was not a threat, merely a statement of fact, and Amelia understood it only too well.

  "How long?" she asked.

  He was at the rear of the car now. He stopped, put his hand on the fender, as if to steady himself, breathed heavily for a moment and then smiled sheepishly at her. "I don't think I can answer that question," he said. "As I told you, it's been a very long time since I had flesh-and-blood people here. I don't remember how long you're allowed to stay—"

  "Allowed?" Morgan said. He was sticking his head out of the rear passenger window. "Allowed by whom?"

  Again, the man smiled sheepishly. "Whoever is in charge, I guess. God, maybe."

 
; "That's absurd," Morgan said.

  "It's a reflection of his ignorance," Freely said.

  "Don't insult the man," Amelia ordered.

  "She thinks someone died and made her boss," Jack South said.

  Amelia grimaced. "He thinks that's funny."

  "It is funny," the man said, grinning. "It's very funny." He sighed. "If you want to stay, I'm afraid you'll have to leave in a couple of hours. By then you'll start . . . coming apart—"

  "Disintegrating," Freely cut in. She got out of the car and confronted the man with the bazooka. "I know precisely what happens because it happened to me!"

  The man said, "Yes. It happened to me too."

  Freely backed off. "Really?"

  He nodded sullenly. "It was quite an awful experience. Worse than death, and I think we all know how that felt. At least with death we knew, right from the beginning, that there was . . . more—"

  "Wait just a cotton-pickin' minute," Jack South interrupted. "Everyone here has been talking about death and dying and all that stuff ever since I arrived, and I want to know why. It sounds pretty creepy to me."

  All eyes settled pityingly on him.

  The man with the bazooka—which was lying on the road not far off—came over and put his hand comfortingly on Jack South's shoulder. Jack looked suspiciously at the man's hand. "You got somethin' on your mind, I can tell," he said.

  "Well, son," the man said soothingly, "in point of fact, some of us arrive in this place equipped with certain unalterable truths. And some of us don't."

  "I guess I'm one of those that don't," Jack said.

  The man nodded. "That does appear to be the case," he said, and then went on to tell Jack what everyone else already knew about themselves, and about Jack.

  When he was done, Jack shook his head in disbelief and stared leadenly out of the windshield.

  The man with the bazooka, who introduced himself as "Conrad," said, "He'll be all right. They always are. What choice do they have, after all?" Then he invited the rest of the group to his house for lunch.

  Jack South stayed in the car.

  Harry was barefoot and broke, and he had no idea what he was doing in Manhattan. He was wearing a brown trench coat and a threadbare, gray double-breasted suit, which was warm enough, but no shoes, and his feet were growing numb.