this, you don’t really need anything else.”
Hatch supposed that he should be grateful he was living in an age when
the government promised to protect and defend its citizens from threats
even so small as radon in the cellar and the ultimate environmental
consequences of the extinction of the one-eyed, blue-tailed gnat. In a
less civilized era-say the turn of the century-he no doubt would have
required an armory containing hundreds of weapons, a ton of explosives,
and a chain-mail vest to wear when answering the door.
He decided irony was a bitter form of humor and not to his taste. At
least not in his current mood.
He filled out the requisite federal and state forms, paid with a credit
card, and left with the Mossberg, a cleaning kit, and boxes of
ammunition for the Brownings as well as the shotgun. BehInd him, the
hop door fell shut with a heavy thud, as if he were exiting a vault.
After putting his purchases in the trunk of the Mitsubishi, he got
behind the wheel, started the engine-and froze with his hand on the
gearshift.
Beyond the windshield, the small parking lot had vanished. The gun shop
was no longer there.
As if a mighty sorcerer had cast an evil spell, the sunny day had
disappeared. Hatch was in a long, eerily lighted tunnel. He glanced
out the side windows, turned to check the back, but the illusion or
hallucination whatever the hell it might be-enwrapped him, as realistic
in its detail as the parking lot had been.
When he faced forward, he was confronted by a long slope in the center
of which was a narrow-gauge railroad track. Suddenly the car began to
move as if it were a train pulling up that hill.
Hatch jammed his foot down on the brake pedal. No effect He closed his
eyes, counted to ten, listening to his heart pound harder by the second
and unsuccessfully willing himself to relax. When he opened his eyes,
the tunnel was still there.
He switched the car engine off. He heard it die. The car continued to
move.
The silence that followed the cessation of the engine noise was brief.
A new sound arose: clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack.
An inhuman shriek erupted to the left, and from the corner of his eye,
Hatch detected threatening movement. He snapped his head toward it.
To his astonishment he saw an utterly alien figure, a pale white slug as
big as a man. It reared up and shrieked at him through a round mouth
full of teeth that whirled like the sharp blades in a garbage disposal.
An identical I beast shrieked from a niche in the tunnel wall to his
right, and more of them ahead, and beyond them other monsters of other
forms, gibbering, hooting, snarling, squealing as he passed them.
In spite of his disorientation and terror, he realized that the
grotesque figures along the tunnel walls were mechanical beasts, not
real. And as that understanding sank in, he finally recognized the
familiar sound. Clackety clack, clacketyk. He was on an indoor roller
coaster, yet in his car, moving with decreasing speed toward the high
point, with a precipitous fall ahead.
He did not argue with himself that this couldn’t be happening, did not
try to shake himself awake or back to his . He was past denial. He
understood that he did not have to believe in this experience to insure
its continuation; it would progress whether he believed in it or not, so
he might as well grit his teeth and get through it.
Being past denial didn’t mean, however, that he was past fear. He was
scared shitless.
Briefly he considered opening the car door and getting out. Maybe that
would break the spell. But he didn’t try it because he was afraid that
when he stepped out he would not be in the parking lot in front of the
gun shop but in the tunnel, and that the car would continue uphill
without him.
Losing contact with his little red Mitsubishi might be like slamming a
door on reality, consigning himself forever to the vision, with no way
out, no The car” the last mechanical monster. It reached the crest of