The Web

"What do you think it was, originally?" said Robin. "An escape route for the Japanese?"

"Or some kind of supply cha

We reached the second light and were nearly out of its glow when we saw something against the wall.

Cardboard boxes. Scores of them, piled neatly in columns. Just like the case files in the storeroom.

Confidential files? Was this what Moreland wanted me to see?

I pulled down a box. The flaps were folded closed but unsealed.

Inside, zip-locked plastic bags.

Dried fruit and vegetables.

I tried another carton. More food.

A third contained pharmaceutical samples and bottles of pills- antibiotics, antifungals, vitamins, minerals, dietary supplements. Then bottles of something clear- tonic water. The antimalarial properties of quinine.

Another carton. More dried fruit. Gatorade.

"Dr. Bill's secret stash," I said. "He grows stuff in his garden, preserves it, and brings it down here. Maybe we're dealing with a survivalist. The question is, what's his Armageddon?"

Robin shook her head and fished out ca

"So much for vegetarianism," I said.

She looked sad. "Maybe Armageddon's the destruction of the island. Could be he's pla

"Under the forest," I said. "Protected by those mines, real or phony. It's pretty nuts, but there are bunkers full of folks just like that all over the States. The problem is, they also tend toward hair-trigger paranoia. A lust for the big battle."

"That doesn't seem like Bill."

"Why? Because he says he despises weapons? Everything the man's said or done is suspect- including his altruism. Aruk imports food at two, three times the usual cost. Bill helps out with occasional handouts but stockpiles all this stuff for himself. If he's been pla

She took something else out of the box. A foil packet with a white label.

" 'Freeze-Dried Combat Meal,' " she read aloud. " 'Segment B: reconstituted carrots, beets, peas, lima and string beans, soya protein'… then a whole bunch of vitamins… United States Navy issue… oh, boy."

"What?"

"The date."

Tiny numbers at the bottom of the label. February 1963.

"Sixty-three was his last year in the Navy," I said. "He bought the estate that year- he's been doing this for thirty years!"

"Poor man," she said.

"He's obviously quite content. Damned proud of what he's accomplished."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because now he wants to show it off."

Six more ceiling lights, two more large caches of food and medicine.

We kept walking, automatically, like soldiers, drained of further conjecture, track and ties slipping past hypnotically.

My watch said we'd been underground nearly half an hour, but it felt both longer and briefer.

Time's deceit.

Another caged bulb.

Then a patch of green just beyond.

Another AstroTurf strip.

Another flight of stairs, fifty yards ahead.

Thirteen steps up to a metal door.

No handles or locks. I pushed, expecting ponderous weight, another tricky leverage system. It opened so easily I had to stop myself from falling forward.

On the other side was an upsloping concrete ramp lit by a weak bulb.

We climbed till we came to yet another door.

Metal grillwork- radiating circles of iron crisscrossed by spokes. Beyond it total darkness.

I knocked and pushed but this one didn't give. Then my brain put the grill design in context.

A web- what had Moreland called webs-a beautiful deceit.

Enough.

I turned to head back down the ramp.

Saw the first door closing behind us, rushed to catch it and failed.

It slammed shut, refused to yield.

Trapped in the ramp.

Ensnared.

Moreland's thin face appeared in my head. Long, loose limbs, fleshy snout, pouchy eyes, loping walk- arachnid walk.

Not a camel or a flamingo.

Predators…

Robin put her hand to her mouth. I stopped breathing; panic became a tight necktie.

Then light appeared behind the web, letting in a draft of very cool air.

The same chill I'd felt coming over the walls from the banyan forest.

The webbed door swung open. I saw walls of hewn stone, then blackness.

A cave.

The choice was to stay there and risk another entrapment or step through and take our chances with whatever was on the other end.

I stepped through.

A hand settled lightly on my shoulder.

I spun around. "Damn you, Bill!"

But the eyes that stared back weren't Moreland's.

Dark slits- at least, the left one was. Its mate was a wide-open, milky-white crescent, drooping heavily, tugging at a ragged lid.

No iris. The white was shot through with capillaries.

The face around the orb was white, too.

The eyes lower than mine, set into an elliptical, neckless head that rested on meager, sloping shoulders.

Misshapen and hairless except for three patches of colorless down.

Ridges of skin in place of ears.

A mouth opened. Less than a dozen teeth, some of them no more than yellow buds. Framing them was a pouchlike, puckered aperture: no lower lip, the upper one thick, cracked, liverish- a smile? Why wasn't I screaming?

I smiled back. The hand so light on my shoulder… an inch of downy skin separated the mouth from a nose that was two black holes under a nub of pink-white flesh, twisted like a pig's tail.

Wens and scabs, keloid tracks, and crater scars danced across the face, a moonscape in closeup. A sharp smell fumed from the skin. Familiar smell… hospital corridors- antibiotic ointment.

The hand on my shoulder sat so delicately, I barely felt it.

I looked at it.

Four stumpy, broad-tipped fingers, the thumb clubbish and spatulate, no nail on the index finger. More of that soft, downy hair. Dimpled knuckles.

The wrist thin and frail, laced with baby-blue veins and scabbed heavily, disappearing into the cuff of a white shirt.

Clean, white oxford button-down.

Khaki trousers cinched tight around a thin waist, the cuffs rolled thick.

A man, I supposed… protruding from under the cuffs, brown loafers that looked new.

A boy-sized man- five feet tall if that, maybe eighty pounds.

"Hhh," he said. "Hhhii."

Whispery rasp. I'd heard voices like that before: burn victims, the larynx and vocal cords seared, learning to talk from the gut.

The pouch-mouth stayed open, as if struggling for speech. More medicinal smell- mouthwash. The single eye watched my face. The pouch twisted upward in what might have been a smile.

"Hi," I said.

The eye studied me some more. Blinked- winked? No eyebrows, but the skin above the sockets creased into deep dual crescents that simulated brows.