The Sleepwalkers Part 21

"Of course they will. Once people really understand what's going on over there, the government will send more aid and medicine, and more international workers will come to educate the population about safe s.e.x."

"Then you'll make a difference," she says. It's a tone that, to Caleb, seems patronizing.

"People will take action," he says, miffed. "What's going on is horrifying."

"People like to be horrified," Christine says, as the wipers screech across the windshield.

Caleb opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it and decides not to push the subject anymore.

"Caleb, STOP!"

He had been looking at her, and when he looks ahead again, he sees flashing red and blue lights up ahead. Two cop cars are parked lengthwise across the road, a roadblock. He slams on the brakes.

They both brace themselves against the doors, and Christine grabs the front of Caleb's T-shirt into a ball with her fist.

First they fishtail left, then right, then they overcorrect and begin spinning out of control. The flashing lights get closer and closer, racing past like a strobe on each rotation.

Now: the impact, a terrible sound of ripping metal.

Caleb grits his teeth.

And they stop. They've knocked the two squad cars onto the shoulder like bowling pins. The sheriff 's car comes sliding in behind and skids to a halt just a few feet short of their b.u.mper.

Caleb sits, stunned, staring at the rain in the headlights of one of the wrecked squad cars, but Christine is working, frantically turning the k.n.o.bs of the radio.

"What do we do, Anna? What do we do?"

Static fills the car, and Anna's little voice comes through, wavering.

"Play dead!" whispers Christine, and Caleb nods.

Through the dazzle of headlights, he sees the silhouette of a cop approaching Christine's window.

The cop knocks on the window with the barrel of his drawn gun.

He leans down and stares at Christine for a second (she sits completely still), then he straightens up and turns back to somebody and says: "Hey, Merv. I think this one's cooked."

Caleb barely hears: "What's the other one look like?"

He takes that as his cue. He stares at the dashboard, staying very still, fighting not to blink even as the Maglite's blaze burns into his retinas. Finally, the light turns away, and he hears the cop call: "Yep, we got a coupla fried eggs. Too bad," he laughs.

Caleb hears the other voice: "Check the sheriff 's car, make sure he's alright."

Caleb hears screaming. It's a woman.

Careful to move only his eyes, he looks in his side mirror and sees Margie fighting with the sheriff, then gesturing to the approaching cop.

He can barely make out the words: "Tried to kill her . . . just a girl . . . " over the sound of the rain.

Caleb hears the sound of footsteps on the pavement and looks forward. He sees the other cop approaching Christine's window and plays dead again. This time the flashlight scalds his eyes for so long, he's sure he'll blink. He has to blink, but the instant before he does blink the flashlight turns mercifully away. The new cop at the window calls: "Hey, did you even check the pulse of these perps?"

But just then more screams pierce the rain, and in the side mirror Caleb sees Margie. She's running away up the center of the road. The sheriff and the first cop are chasing after her-and having some trouble on the slick pavement.

"Jesus Kee-rist," says the cop at the window, and he sticks his flashlight in his belt and jogs up the road after his comrades.

Maybe twenty seconds pa.s.s, and all is still-so still, in fact, that Caleb's afraid Christine might have gotten hurt after all and pa.s.sed out. Paralyzing ice seeps into his heart at the thought that she might actually be dead.

But just then she jerks to life. She shoves her door open, hisses, "Come on!" and sprints toward the shoulder of the road.

Caleb lettered in track three years in a row, and it's all he can do to keep up.

She's not as weak as she looks, he thinks, and the thought gives him comfort-because although he still doesn't know what they're up against exactly, he knows they'll need a lot more strength than he has on his own.

He watches her break into the woods ahead of him like a tailback through a defensive line. She doesn't slow as the branches gouge her skin and break against her rush. She doesn't slow as her bare feet pound over slick, sharp rocks and roots. And to Caleb's great alarm, she doesn't slow as she reaches the steep, almost sheer slope leading thirty feet down to the river below. Instead, she jumps, lands, slides, then jumps again and again until a final landing-ploosh-puts her knee-deep in a racing stream.

Caleb almost loses it twice trying to follow her. Once he slips and descends on his a.s.s for a few feet, then he almost twists his ankle when a rock rolls out from under him.

One more jump and he lands next to Christine, grimacing at the sickly feeling as his running shoes fill with water, their soles oozing slowly into the mud of the riverbed.

"Come on!" Christine whispers.

She grabs Caleb's wrist and leads him under the bridge, into the deep shadows. Fifty feet away the shadow of the bridge ends and the river runs away in the blue of the moonlight, but here he can see nothing. There could be an army of sleepwalkers right next to him and he'd never know until it was too late.

But again, Christine does not slow. She pulls Caleb behind her at a relentless pace, weaving around what he can only guess must be rocks with perfect grace and precision. How can she see so well? Are her eyes that adjusted to the dark? Did they deprive her of light in that place, that asylum?

She leads on. They're only a few feet from the end of the dark, from the place where they'll step into the moonlight and out from under the bridge, when a flashlight beam slices down from above, cutting through the gloom just a few feet ahead of them. They both pull up short.

Two voices drift down from above.

" . . . see anything?"

"I can see enough to know they didn't jump down into that gully.

Prob'ly they took to the woods."

"We could get the dogs."

"I don't know. Sheriff said the girl was from the Dream Center.

That means no shoes, unless she got some someplace, and no shoes means no woods."

"She still coulda gone in the woods without shoes."

"Yeah, and she'd a poked her foot on a stick or gotten a sand burr and we'da heard her boo-hooin' by now."

Under the bridge, Christine frowns and wrinkles her nose at this a.s.sessment of her character.

Caleb smiles at her.

"Where'd they go then?" the voices continue. "Maybe they took off down the street?"

A new voice enters the conversation now, this one deeper. Caleb thinks this is the sheriff, but he can't be sure: "They're under this here bridge."

It's a statement of dead certainty. Caleb's heart sinks.

"I dunno . . . "

"That's right, ya don't," says the sheriff, "but I do."

"Maybe we should call and ask him."

The voices are silent for a minute. Caleb and Christine look at each other. Even though the night is warm, she's shivering. Caleb puts his arms around her and pulls her to him. She keeps shivering, however, as the voices resume.

"He doesn't much like to be disturbed."

"He won't like that we lost them either."

"Yer right there."

"Shut up now and let me think," the deep voice says.

A moment pa.s.ses, then one of the other voices says: "Look at those rocks down there. No way they'd have jumped. That's a sure way to bust an ankle."

"Shut up," the deep voice repeats. The other two comply.

Caleb is getting antsy. Panic grips him. If they don't get out soon, they might not get out at all. The certainty of that thought almost knocks the wind out of him. He looks at Christine. She nods. She knows it too.

From above, there are voices too quiet to be heard, then: "Shine your light on that side. You shine yours under there. They come out either side, you shoot. Got it?"

Grumbles of reply, and a ray of light reappears just in front of Caleb and Christine along with a twin at the far end of the bridge's shadow.

They look at each other, and Christine's eyes say: This isn't good. What do we do?

There's a scrambling sound at the far side of the bridge, and suddenly it's too late to make a plan, too late to escape.

First one sleepwalker leaps down to the riverbed from above, landing as gracefully as a puma. Another follows, then another. They walk abreast, slowly. Because there's no hurry. If Caleb and Christine step out from under the bridge, they'll be shot. If not, the sleepwalkers will have them.

"Caleb . . . " whispers Christine.

"I'm thinking."

What do we do . . . ? Maybe the cops aren't great shots, he thinks.

Maybe we make a break for it.

The deep voice from above comes booming: "I'm three-time national shooting champion with the .38 revolver, kids, just in case yer wondering."

As if Caleb had spoken aloud.

The sleepwalkers come.

Caleb yanks Christine to him by the arm, so hard she nearly falls over, cups his hand to her ear, and whispers. "What I'm about to say, we have to do now. No arguments, no second thoughts. You run past the sleepers to the right. I'll hold them back for as long as I can.

There's only one cop on that side of the bridge, I'm pretty sure the sheriff and the other one are over here. Come out from under the bridge like you're one of them, slowly. When you've gone like fifteen steps, sprint down the riverbed, and I'll have your back. Go!"

He gives her a little push.

"But," she says, her eyes pleading.

"GO!" he says, and she does.

It's a play right out of backyard football, and not a very inventive one either. Christine streaks to the river's edge, where dry sand pokes up in enough places to allow real running, and she takes off toward the far side of the bridge. Caleb runs along next to her as her blocker.

Though their eyes are closed, the sleepers turn toward them like plants to sunlight, all three at once. The nearest one springs at them, but is caught up in the deeper water and slows just enough to allow them past. The second one finds footing on a dry rock and makes a much more effective lunge. Just as it leaps, Caleb sees a piece of driftwood protruding from the water so close it's almost in his hand. He s.n.a.t.c.hes it up and swings it all in one motion. If the stick were stuck in the mud, things might have worked out quite differently, but as it happens, Caleb pulls it free at just in time and catches the creature (this one a handsome boy of about seventeen) just under the left side of his jaw. The stick snaps, but the force knocks the sleepwalker off balance and back into the water. Caleb looks up and sees Christine. She's made it almost to the far side of the bridge.

A voice from above: "What's going on down there?"

Someone answers, but Caleb can't tell who.

The final sleepwalker has made it onto a sandbar and is racing across it, straight for Christine. Caleb feels sick to his stomach suddenly. She's not going to make it. Caleb's bogged down in water, and as hard as he pushes his legs, his speed is no match for the preternatural thing now that it's running on dry land.

And then he sees it. Maybe his eyes finally adjust to the dark or maybe it's something else, but he finally sees the path and he goes. He springs ahead on a series of dry rocks, and then he's on a sandbar of his own. It intersects with the sandbar on which the sleepwalker runs, fast approaching Christine.

If he can just make it . . .

His legs pump ferociously, but he knows he can't possibly get there in time; the thing is still too fast.

But somehow, he finds a burst of speed, and just as Christine reaches the line where the river runs into the moonlight, Caleb tackles the sleepwalker from behind with all his force. He clearly hears the crunch as one of the thing's bones breaks, and they both tumble into the water.

In the next instant, Caleb is on his feet, desperate to rejoin the world from the half death of submersion. For a terrifying instant, he can't hear, he can't see. And then he can, and he smiles at the sight: Christine is walking out the other side of the bridge slowly, like a sleepwalker, like one of them.

"What's happening on your side?" a voice comes from the far side of the bridge, and from the near side, the one Christine is walking out from, he hears: "Nothing, all I can see is one of ours."

Caleb smiles. It's working.

His smile abruptly fades, however, because the other two sleepers are coming for him, and they look p.i.s.sed.

He widens his stance. They may take him, but they won't catch her. He'll make sure of that; or die trying.

Both sleepwalkers are on the sandbar now, walking, creeping, slowly. One is the handsome one. The other is shorter. Something about him looks familiar, but under the dark of the bridge . . .

Suddenly, he glances over, afraid that the third one might be pursuing Christine. Instead, he sees it floating in the water in a halo of blood. Head must've struck a rock on the way down. Caleb bites his lip. That one was a girl.

Now, the others are on him. The closer of the two lunges and grabs his injured arm. Suddenly Caleb's whole body feels hot as his fractured wrist is wrenched in the tight grip. He punches the thing with all his might with the other hand, and manages to open a gash on its face. But the blows don't slow it at all. If the demon even registers pain, it's going to take a lot more than that to phase it. And speaking of pain-now it twists his arm even harder. Tears come to Caleb's eyes despite his effort to squelch them, and he's forced to his knees.

The other one brushes past Caleb to pursue Christine, but he manages to free himself just enough to kick its legs out from under it. The boy/monster turns back to him, silhouetted against the moonlit creek, and grabs him by the neck with a grip of steel. The other one grabs both his arms and pulls them behind him so hard he knows for sure that his shoulder tendons are ripping. He fights his best, but they slowly drag him into deeper water. He knows this is the end, but his only thoughts are of Christine.

A loud splashing then the sound of swift footfalls means she's making her break. G.o.d, help her.