Sandy, the only one of them to be affected only positively by their
mysterious ordeal, was so sweet-tempered, so delighted with the recent
changes in herself, that she was especially good company. Together, she
and Ginger prepared the dinner salad and vegetables, and as they worked,
an almost sisterly affection developed between them.
Faye Block made the dessert, a refrigerator pie with a chocolate crust
and banana-cream filling. Ginger liked Faye, who reminded her of Rita
Hannaby. That cultured society woman was different from Faye in many
ways, but in fundamental respects they were alike: efficient,
take-charge types, tough of mind, tender of spirit.
Ernie Block and Dom Corvaisis put the extra leaf in the table and
arranged six place settings. Ernie had seemed gruff and intimidating at
first, but now she saw he was a sweetheart. He inspired much affection
because of his fear of darkness, which made him seem boyish in spite of
his size and age.
Of the five people among whom Ginger found herself, only Dominick
Corvaisis stirred emotions that she could not understand. For him, she
felt the same friendship that she felt for the others, and she was aware
of a special bond between them related to an unremembered experience
just the two of them had shared. But she was also sexually attracted to
him. That surprised her because she never felt desire for a man until
she knew him for several weeks, at least, and knew him well. Wary of
her romantic yearnings, Ginger kept a tight rein on her emotions, and
she tried hard to convince herself that Dom did not feel a similar
attraction for her, which he so patently did.
Through dinner, the six of them continued to discuss their strange
predicament and search for clues that might have been overlooked.
Like Dom, Ginger had no recollection of the toxic spill two years ago,
though the Blocks and Servers recalled it clearly.
I-80 had really been closed, and an environmental emergency had been
declared; there was no doubt about that much. Last night, however, Dom
convinced the Blocks that their memories of evacuating to Elroy and
Nancy Jamison's mountain ranch were phony and that both they and the
Jamisons had almost surely been kept at the motel. (According to Faye
and Ernie, the Jamisons had not mentioned having any nightmares or odd
problems lately, so their brainwashing must have been effective, though
it would be necessary to talk to them soon.) Likewise, Ned and Sandy
had reluctantly concluded that their own recollections of sitting out
the crisis at their trailer were too shallow to be real and that they
had been strapped into motel beds, drugged, and brainwashed like
everyone else in those Polaroids.
"But," Faye wondered, "why wouldn't they give us all approximately the
same false memories?"
Ginger said, "Maybe all you locals have had the toxic spill and the
highway closure woven into your false memories. That'd be necessary
because, later, people would be asking you where you went during the
emergency, and you'd have to know what they were talking about. But Dom
and I are from distant places, unlikely ever to return, unlikely to run
into anyone who would know that we'd been within the quarantine zone, so
they didn't bother including that bit of reality in the set of fake
memories they gave us."
Sandy paused with a morsel of chicken on her fork. "But wouldn't it be
safer and easier to make your memories fit the toxic spill, too?"
"Ever since Pablo Jackson helped me discover that my mind had been
tampered with," Ginger said, "I've been reading about brainwashing, and
I think maybe it's a lot less difficult to implant recollections that
are entirely false than it is to weave in threads of reality such as the
environmental emergency and the road closure. It probably takes a lot
longer to construct fake memories that have some reality to them, and
maybe they simply didn't have time to do that with all of us. So they
gave the super-deluxe brainwashing job only to you locals."
"That feels like the truth," Ernie said, and everyone agreed.
Faye said, "But did the toxic spill really happen, or was it just a
cover story that gave them an excuse to close I-80 and bottle us up, a
way of preventing us from talking about what we'd seen Friday night?"
"I suspect there was contamination of some sort," Ginger said. "In
Dom's nightmare, which we know is really more memory than dream, those
men were wearing decontamination suits. Now, when they came into the
quarantine zone, maybe they'd wear costumes like that for the benefit of
newsmen or other onlookers. But once here, where only we could see
them, they wouldn't keep the suits on unless they absolutely had to."
Glancing uneasily at the blind-covered window nearest the table, as if
he thought he had seen a trickle of darkness dribbling in from the night
beyond, Ernie cleared his throat and said, "Yeah, uh . . . well,
which was it, do you think? You're the doctor. Does it sound like
chemical or biological contamination? The story they gave the media was
that it involved chemicals being delivered to Shenkfield's testing
facilities."
Ginger had been thinking about this question for some time, long before
Ernie asked it. Chemical or biological contamination? She had arrived
at an answer that deeply disturbed her. "Generally speaking, the suits
required for a chemical spill don't have to be air-tight. They just
have to cover the worker from head to toe in order to prevent any
caustic or toxic substance from coming into contact with his skin, and
they have to include a respirator, rather like a scuba diver's tank and
mask, so he won't breathe deadly fumes. They're usually made of
lightweight nonporous cloth, and the headgear consists of a simple cloth
hood with a plastic visor. But Dom described heavy-looking suits with an
outer level of thick vinyl, with gloves that were of one piece with the
sleeves, and a hard helmet that locked into an airtight seal at the
collar. That is unquestionably gear that's been designed to prevent
exposure to a dangerous biological agent, microbes."
For a while no one said a word, pondering this disquieting news.
Then Ned took a long swallow of his Heineken for fortification and said,
"So we must've been infected with something."
Faye said, "Some virus they developed for biological warfare."
"If it was headed for Shenkfield, that's the only kind of bug it
could've been," Ernie said. "Something mean."
"Yet we lived," Sandy said.
"Because they were immediately able to quarantine us and treat us,"
Ginger said. "Surely they wouldn't be intending to test a genetically
engineered virus, some new and deadly organism that could be used as a
weapon, unless they had simultaneously developed an effective cure for
it. So they had a supply of a new antibiotic OT serum to guard against
just such an accident. If they contaminated us, they also cured US."
Ernie said, "It sounds right, doesn't it? Maybe it's all starting to
fall together, piece by piece."
Dom disagreed. "It still doesn't explain what happened on that Friday
night, what we saw that they didn't want us to see. It doesn't explain
what made the whole damned diner shake or what blew out the
windows-either on that first night or again last night."
"And it doesn't explain the other weird stuff," Faye said. "Like all
those paper moons whirling around Dom in Lomack's house. Or Father
Wycazik's claim that this young priest's been performing miracle cures."
They looked at one another, waiting in silence for someone to put forth
an explanation that would tie biological contam ination with those
paranormal events, but no one had an answer.
Less than three hundred miles west of the Tranquility Motel, in another
motel in Reno, Brendan Cronin had gone to bed and turned out the lights.
Although it was only a few minutes after nine o'clock, he was still
functioning on Chicago time, so for him it was after eleven.
However, sleep eluded him. After checking into the motel and having
dinner at a nearby Bob's Big Boy, he had telephoned St. Bette's rectory
and had spoken with Father Wycazik, who had told him of the call from
Dominick Corvaisis. Brendan was electrified by the news that he was not
the only one caught up in this mystery. He considered calling the
Tranquility, but they already knew he was on his way, and whatever they
could say on the phone could be said better in person, tomorrow.
Thoughts of tomorrow and speculations about what might happen were what
kept sleep at bay.
He had lain awake less than an hour and his thoughts had drifted to the
eerie luminescence that had filled his rectory bedroom two nights ago,
when suddenly that phenomenon appeared once more. This time, there was
no visible source of light, not even one so unlikely as the frost-moon
upon the window from which the uncanny radiance had sprung last Friday
night. Now, the glow appeared above him and on all sides, as if the
very molecules of the air had acquired the ability to produce light. It
was a lunar-pale, milky shimmer at first, growing brighter by the
second, until it seemed as if he must be lying in an open field, under
the looming countenance of a full moon.
This was different from the peaceful golden light that was featured in
his recurring dream, and as it had done two nights ago, it filled him
with conflicting emotions-horror and rapture, fear and wild excitement.
As in his rectory bedroom, the lactescent light changed color, darkening
to scarlet. He seemed suspended in a radiant bubble of blood.
It's inside me, he thought, wondering what that meant. Inside me. The
thought reverberated in his mind. Suddenly he was cold with fear.
His thundering heart seemed about to explode. He lay rigid. In his
hands, the rings appeared. Throbbing.
2.
Monday, January 13
When they gathered in Ernie and Faye's kitchen for breakfast the next
morning, Dom was excited to learn that the previous night had been an
ordeal for most of them. "It's unraveling the way I hoped it might," he
said. "By gathering together here, by re-creating the group that was
gathered here that night, and by working together to get at the truth,
we're putting constant pressure on the memory blocks that've been
implanted in us. And now, that barrier is crumbling a bit faster."
Last night, Dom, Ginger, Ernie, and Ned experienced exceptionally vivid
nightmares of such similarity that they were surely fragments of
forbidden memories. In every case they had involved being strapped to
motel beds and tended by men in decontamination suits. Sandy had a
pleasant dream, although it lacked the clarity and detail of the others'
nightmares. Faye was the only one who did not dream at all.
Ned had been so disturbed by his nightmare that on Monday morning, when
he and Sandy arrived from Beowawe for breakfast, he announced they were
moving into a room at the motel for the duration. "During the night,
after the dream woke me, I couldn't get back to sleep. And while I was
laying there, I got to thinking how lonely it is at our trailer, empty
plains all around. . . . Maybe this Colonel Falkirk will decide to
kill us like he wanted to do in the first place. And if he comes for
us, I don't want me and Sandy to be alone out there at the trailer."
Dom sympathized with Ned because these dark and vivid dreams were new to
the cook. Over recent weeks, Dom, Ginger, and Ernie had learned a
little about coping with the frighteningly powerful nightmares, but Ned
had developed no armor, so he was badly shaken.
And, of course, Ned was well advised to fear Falkirk. The closer they
came to exposing the conspiracy and learning the truth, the more likely
they were to become targets of a preemptive strike. Dom did not think
Falkirk would make a move until Brendan Cronin, Jorja Monatella, and
perhaps other victims had gathered at the Tranquility. But once they
were in one place, they would need to be prepared for trouble.
Now, in the Blocks' kitchen, Ned Sarver picked at his breakfast without
appetite as he spoke of the images that had disturbed his sleep. At
first he had dreamed of being held prisoner by men in decontamination
suits, but later they had worn either lab coats or military uniforms, an
indication that the biological danger had passed. One of the uniformed
men had been Colonel Falkirk, and Ned described that officer in detail:
about fifty years old, black hair graying at the temples, gray eyes like
circles of polished steel, a beakish nose, thin lips.
Ernie was able to confirm the word-portrait that Ned painted, for
Falkirk had also been in his nightmare. The amazing coincidence of the
same man appearing in both Ned's and Ernie's dreams made it clear that
his face was not merely a figment of imagination but a memory of a real
face that both Ernie and Ned had seen two summers ago.
"And in my nightmare," Ernie said, "another Army officer referred to
Falkirk by his first name. Leland. Colonel Leland Falkirk."
"He's probably stationed at Shenkfield," Ginger said.
"We'll try to find out later," Dom said.
The barriers to memory were definitely crumbling. That prospect boosted
Dom's spirits higher than they had been in months.
In Ginger's nightmare, which she recounted for them, she had not been
the only person being brainwashed in Room 5, the room she had occupied
that summer and which she now occupied again. "There was a rollaway bed
in one corner, and the redhead in it was someone I'd never seen before.
She was about forty years old. They had her connected to her own IV
drip and EKG machine. She had that ... vacant stare."
Just as Ernie and Ned had shared a new developmentthe appearance of
Colonel Falkirk-in their nightmares, Dom and Ginger had shared this
other discovery. In Dom's dream, there had been a rollaway bed, flanked
by an IV stand and an EKG monitor, and in the bed had been a young man
in his twenties with a pale face, bushy mustache, and zombie eyes.
"What does it mean?" Faye Block asked. "Did they have so many subjects
for brainwashing that they more than filled all twenty rooms?"
"But," Sandy said, "the registry showed only eleven rooms rented."
Ginger said, "There must've been people on the interstate, in transit,
who saw what we saw. The Army managed to stop them and bring them here.
None of their names would appear on the registry."
"How many?" Faye wondered.
"We'll probably never know for sure," Dom said. "We never actually met
them; we only shared rooms with them while we were drugged. We might
eventually remember the faces of those we saw, but we can't possibly
remember names and addresses we never knew in the first place."
But at least those reprogrammed memories, those tissues of lies, were
dissolving, allowing the truth to show through. Dom was grateful for
that much. In time, they would uncover the entire story-if Colonel
Falkirk did not first come after them with heavy artillery.
Monday morning, while the group at the Tranquility ate breakfast, Jack
Twist was being escorted to a safe-deposit box in a vault of a Fifth
Avenue branch of Citibank, in New York. The attending bank employee, an
attractive young woman, kept calling him "Mr. Farnham," for that was
the false identity under which he had acquired the box.
After they used their separate keys to remove the box from the wall of
the vault, when he was alone with it in a cubicle, he opened the lid and
stared in shock at the contents. The rectangular metal container held
something that he had not put there, which was an impossibility since
only he knew about the box and possessed the only master key.
It should have contained five white envelopes, each filled with five
Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers Page 57
