to stay awake. Damn it, she shouldn’t need sleep this badly yet, no
matter how much stress she had been under lately. She struggled to keep
up her end of the conversation with Jim, even though at times she
realized that she was not sure what they were talking about and did not
fully understand the words that came out of her own mouth. Dreams are
doorways. It was almost as if she had been drugged, or as if The
Friend, after warning them against sleep, was secretly exerting pressure
on a narcoleptic button in her brain. Dreams are doorways. She fought
against the descending oblivion, but she found that she did not possess
the strength or will to sit up. . . or to open her eyes.
Her eyes were closed. She had not realized that her eyes were closed.
Dreams are doorways. Panic could not arouse her. She continued to
drift deeper under the sandman’s spell even as she heard her heart pound
harder and faster. She felt her hand loosening its grip on Jim’s hand,
and she knew he would respond to that warning, would keep her awake, but
she felt his grip loosening on her hand, and she realized they were
succumbing to the sandman simultaneously.
She drifted in darkness.
She felt that she was being watched.
It was both a reassuring and a frightening feeling.
Something was going to happen. She sensed it.
For a while, however, nothing happened. Except darkness.
Then she became aware that she had a mission to perform.
But that couldn’t be right. Jim was the one who was sent on missions
not her.
A mission. Her mission. She would be sent on a mission of her own.
It was vitally important. Her life depended on how well she performed.
Jim’s life depended on it as well. The whole world’s continued
existence depended on it.
But the darkness remained.
She just drifted. It felt nice.
She slept and slept.
At some point during the night, she dreamed. As nightmares went, this
one was a lulu, all the stops pulled out, but it was nothing like her
recent dreams of the mill and The Enemy. It was worse than those
because it was painted in excruciating detail and because throughout the
experience she was in the grip of anguish and terror so intense that
nothing in her experience prepared her for it, not even the crash of
Flight 246.
Lying on a tile floor, under a table. On her side. Peering out at
floor level. Directly ahead is a chair, tubular metal and orange
plastic, under the chair a scattering of golden french fries and a
cheeseburger, the meat having slid halfway out of the bun on a skid of
ketchup-greased lettuce.
Then a woman, an old lady, also lying on the floor, head turned toward
Holly. Looking through the tubular legs of the chair, across the fries
and disarranged burger, the lady stares at her, a look of surprise,
stares and stares, never blinking, and then Holly sees that the lady’s
eye nearest the floor isn’t there any more, an empty hole, blood leaking
out. Oh, lady. Oh, lady, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Holly hears a
terrible sound, chuda-chudachuda-chuda-chuda-chuda-chuda, doesn’t
recognize it, hears people screaming, a lot of people,
chuda-chuda-chuda-chuda, still screaming but not as much as before,
glass shattering, wood breaking, a man shouting like a bear, roaring,
very angry and roaring, chuda-chuda-chuda-chuduchuda-chuda-chuda-chuda.
She knows now that it’s gunfire, the heavy rhythmic pounding of an
automatic weapon, and she wants to get out of there. So she turns in
the opposite direction from which she’s been facing because she doesn’t
want to-can’t, just can’t! crawl by the old lady whose eye has been
shot out. But behind her is a little girl, about eight, lying on the
floor in a pink dress with black patent-leather shoes and white socks, a
little girl with white-blond hair, a little girl with, a little girl
with, a little girl with patent-leather shoes, a little girl with, a
little girl with, a little girl with white socks, a little girl with, a
little girl with with with with with half her face shot of. A red