Loose ends

12.

Now then, Isabel thought, turning her attention to Joe Morton, whose dream- replica still lingered motionlessly at the Crashdown's exit. A frozen ribbon of gray smoke hovered about the muzzle of his upraised pistol. Your turn, she silently informed the gunman.

If dreams were indeed the unconscious corridors co

"Run," she ordered Mortons petrified figure, jolting the fleeing gunman and his accomplice out of stasis. Gun in hand, looking back worriedly at the scene behind him, Morton dashed out of the diner and into the street, only a few paces behind the other man. Isabel followed right behind him.

She chased them down the sunlit sidewalk of Roswell's main drag, past the UFO Museum, the Mexican folk art museum, and the rest of the tourist traps that sustained the town's struggling economy. Strolling sightseers, many of them in town for the upcoming UFO Festival, ducked out of the way in alarm as the armed criminals barreled through assorted clusters of pedestrians, pursued, inexplicably, by a tall blond girl in blue jeans. Behind her, back by the Crashdown, brakes squealed and a police siren blared as Sheriff Valenti arrived too late to apprehend the gun-wielding strangers.

Morton and his bearded accomplice got away in real life, Isabel knew. But not this time, she vowed, determined to track Morton all the way back to his own trigger-happy psyche.

Two blocks from the crime scene, Morton and the other man darted into a gloomy- looking side alley which Isabel was almost positive didn't exist in the real town. She hesitated at the entrance of the alley, fearful of the unknown. Shadows, surprisingly dense and impenetrable for such a su

It was like stepping into another world. The sun disappeared as the scene shifted abruptly from day to night. The temperature dropped ten degrees or so, making Isabel shiver despite her blue turtleneck sweater. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she found herself jogging uneasily through a dirty, squalid alley that stretched between the soot-blackened walls of two anonymous concrete buildings. Obscene graffiti defaced the walls further, while the broken pavement was littered with discarded cigarette butts, beer cans, broken glass, and syringes. Greasy puddles, which Isabel took care to step around, reflected the slivers of harsh white light that escaped from broken windows a few stories above her. The alley stank of spoiled garbage, spilled booze, and urine. Rats scurried between dented metal trash cans and Dumpsters, while, all around her, Isabel heard raucous laughter, racing police sirens, and loud honky-tonk music. Somehow I don't think we're in Roswell anymore, she thought nervously, feeling like a modern-day Dorothy who had just landed anywhere but Oz.

She doubted, too, that she was still in Liz's dream, unless Liz Parker, honor student and founder of Roswell High's Future Scientists Club, was leading a double life straight out of a David Lynch movie. Where am I now, Isabel wondered uncomfortably, and do I really want to be here? Experiencing a failure of nerve, she paused and looked back the way she'd come. To her dismay, Roswell's safe, sun-drenched Main Street was nowhere to be seen, replaced by yet more of the grimy, disgusting alley, which now, impossibly, seemed to lead back only to more darkness, decay, and Dumpsters. Overturned trash cans, their rotting contents spilling onto the greasy pavement, served as barricades, blocking her escape route. Enormous rats, the size of porcupines, patrolled the scattered refuse, their black eyes glittering malevolently.

There was nowhere else to go but forward, she realized, after Morton. Straining her ears, she thought she still heard his ponderous footsteps ahead of her, farther down the slummy alley, and started after him again. Guess I have to see this through to the end, she thought less than enthusiastically, gingerly making her way through the garbage, broken glass, and stagnant, shining puddles of grease.

The alley had the kind of warped, irrational geography that only made sense in dreams. It twisted and turned without warning, leading Isabel through a confused, disorienting maze of broken pavement and dingy shadows. After several u

Then, just when she'd pretty much convinced herself that this entire dreamwalk had been a dreadful mistake, she heard Morton snarling up ahead, not very far away. Holding her breath, she tiptoed up to the next curve in the alley and cautiously peeked around the corner. Trying hard not to touch anything, she gazed in alarm at the frightening drama unfolding before her eyes.

Morton had cornered the other man, who was even larger than the beefy gunman, in what appeared to be a dead end. A flickering red neon light, shining over the back entrance of the building to the right, cast a crimson glow over the tense confrontation, which had die biker backed up against a graffiti-covered brick wall, looking scared to death. The red neon made the sweat on his face glisten like blood. "Hold on, Joe!" he pleaded, his Adam's apple bobbing like the dopey ante