Dreamcatcher

It’s the goddam telepathy, he thought. His instincts, always superb, told him this was serious trouble, that he was watching an operation go tits-up on a truly grand scale, but he was smiling in spite of that. Got to be the goddam telepathy. They smelled out what was coming…and someone decided to do something about it.

As he watched, a motley mob of men, most in parkas and orange hats, came moiling through the sagging, shattered barn doors. One fell on a splintered board and was impaled like a vampire. Some stumbled in the snow and were trampled under. AR the lights were on now. Kurtz felt like a man with a ringside seat at a prizefight. He could see everything.

Wings of escapees, fifty or sixty in each complement, peeled off as neatly as squads in a drill-team and charged at the fence on either side of the ratty little store. Either they didn’t know there was a lethal dose of electricity coursing through the smoothwire or they didn’t care. The rest of them, the main body, charged directly at the back of the store. That was the weakest point in the perimeter, but it didn’t matter. Kurtz thought it was all going to go.

Never in any of his contingency plans had he so much as considered this scenario: two or three hundred overweight November warriors mounting a no-guts-no-glory banzai charge. He had never expected them to do anything but stay put, clamoring for due process right up to the point where they were barbecued.

“Not bad, boys,” Kurtz said. He smelled something else starting to burn-probably his goddam career-but the end had been coming anyway, and he’d picked one hell of an operation to go out on, hadn’t he? As far as Kurtz was concerned, the little gray men from space were strictly secondary. If he ran the news, the headline above the fold would read: SURPRISE! NEW-AGE AMERICANS SHOW SOME BACKBONE! Outstanding. It was almost a shame to cut them down.

The General Quarters siren rose and fell in the snowy night. The first wave of men hit the back of the store. Kurtz could almost see the whole place shudder.

“That goddam telepathy,” Kurtz said, gri

Some were firing, but not enough-nowhere near enough. Kurtz thought he smelled panic. His men weren’t shooting because they had gone chickenshit. Or because they knew they were next.

“The goddam telepathy,” he said again, and suddenly automatic rifle fire began inside the store. The windows of the office where he and Owen Underhill had had their original conference lit up in brilliant stutterflashes of light. Two of them blew out. A man attempted to exit the second of these, and Kurtz had time to recognize George Udall before George was seized by the legs and jerked back inside.

The guys in the office were fighting, at least, but of course they would; in there they were fighting for their lives. The laddie-bucks who had come ru

Underhill, that was why not. Owen Underhill had played a part in this snafu. Kurtz knew that as well as he knew his own name. This stank of line-crossing, and crossing the line was an Owen Underhill specialty.

More shooting fi7om Gosselin’s office screams of pain… then triumphant howls. The computer-savvy, Evian-drinking, salad-eating Goths had taken their objective. Kurtz slammed the Wi

Cambry was on his knees behind Old Man Gosselin’s desk when the first wave of prisoners smashed its way in. He was opening drawers, looking frantically for a gun. The fact that he didn’t find one very likely saved his life.

“NOW! NOW! NOW!” the oncoming prisoners screamed.

There was a monstrous thud against the back of the store, as if a truck had driven into it. From outside, Cambry could hear a juicy crackling sound as the first detainees hit the fence. The lights in the office began to flicker.

“Stand together, men!” Da

The rear door came off its hinges with so much force that it actually skittered backward across the room, shielding the first of the screaming men who clogged the doorway. Cambry ducked, hands laced over the back of his head, as the door fell on the desk at an angle with him beneath it, in the kneehole.

The sound of rifles on full auto was deafening in the tiny room, drowning out even the screams of the wounded, but Cambry understood that not all of them were firing. Trezewski, Udall, and O'Brian were, but Coleman, Everett, and Ray Parsons were only standing there with their weapons held to their chests and dazed expressions on their faces.

From his accidental shelter, Gene Cambry saw the prisoners charge across the room, saw the first of them caught by the bullets and thrown like scarecrows; saw their blood splash across the walls and the bean-supper posters and the OSHA notices. He saw George Udall throw his gun at two beefy young men in orange, then whirl and lunge at one of the windows. George got halfway out and was then yanked back; a man with Ripley growing on his cheek like a birthmark sank his teeth into George’s calf as if it were a turkey drumstick while another man silenced the screaming head at the other end of George’s body by jerking it briskly to the left. The room was blue with powdersmoke, but he saw Al Coleman throw his gun down and pick up the chant-“Now! Now! Now!” And he saw Ray Parsons, normally the most pacific of men, turn his rifle on Da

Now the matter was simple. Now it was just the infected versus the immune.

The desk was hit and slammed against the wall. The door fell on top of Cambry, and before he could get up, people were ru

He stood ignored in the confusion. There was no need for the escaping internees to use the door between the office and the store; the entire wall-no more than a flimsy partition, really

–had been smashed flat. Pieces of this stuff were also catching fire from the overturned stove.

“Now,” Gene Cambry muttered. “Now.” He saw Ray Parsons ru

A scrawny old party in a tassled cap and an overcoat was pushed forward onto the overturned stove, then stomped flat. Cambry heard his high-pitched, squealing screams as his face bonded to the metal and then began to boil.