Babylon Terminal Page 5

  In that moment, I’d have given anything to remember what it was like to be a child, still new to this world and all the things it had in store for me. But the memories remained elusive, as they always had, slinking away like so much smoke from my cigarettes, twisting and turning into the night without explanation or mercy. The past, much like the future, was not my own, never had been. All I had was the present.

  The here. The now.

  Gideon came to me, but I banished the visions of her from my mind. She couldn’t help me now, and it was unfair of me to ask.

  Surrounded by empty fields and increasingly untamed country, I sped up, rocketing along the highway and into the darkness before me. I watched for occasional landmarks that might let me know when I’d gone farther than I ever had before, and soon found myself in wholly unfamiliar terrain. I suppose it was a testament to how good I was at my job. No one I’d been assigned to had ever gotten beyond this point. Still, I had no idea what to expect. These were outlands, dead zones of open road and dangerous country with small pockets of residents nestled into dark little hamlets. Few ventured into these parts and even fewer ever returned from them. I thought of Matt the Cat and Frisco Sean. They’d taken off along this same highway not so long ago, so sure they’d reach the Promised Land, the ocean on the other side of the dead zone most believed existed. They’d beaten their Dreamcatcher, but that didn’t mean they’d made it, or that there was anywhere to make it to. Couldn’t help but wonder where they were at that very moment, though, and if they’d made it. Whatever the hell that meant.

  Soon my thoughts shifted back to Julia. She was out here too. Maybe they’d all made it. Or maybe none of them had. Odds were, sooner than later, someone else would be barreling down this lonely highway looking for me.

  There wasn’t anyone looking yet, but once they got the idea I might be running, they’d come after me with whatever they had. Dreamcatchers rarely ran. It happened, but I’d never given any indication I’d do such a thing. Then again, it was Julia I was after this time, so all bets were off. Surely I wasn’t the only one who knew that.

  Night, and the highway, kept coming.

  I had no way of knowing how long I’d been driving. The crystal on my wristwatch was shattered and the clock had died long ago. Strange, but I couldn’t remember a time when it had worked. Maybe it never had. Maybe it had always been broken.

  Like me, I thought. Like all of us.

  The rhythm of the road had nearly lulled me to sleep when I saw a strange red light in the distance. At first I thought it was something in the sky, so I took my foot off the gas until the car slowed a bit. As I cruised closer, I realized I was looking at a neon sign installed atop a squat, one-story wooden building in the middle of a dirt lot.

  The lighted sign read Lumières Rouges. Though run-down, the small bar was open, as scattered about the otherwise empty lot were a few cars in even worse shape than mine. Weary from the road, I pulled in and parked close to the entrance.

  I got out of the car, went around and popped the trunk. Inside, my 12-gauge pump shotgun with a pistol grip was waiting for me in its leg holster. I strapped it to my thigh, pulled my trench coat in tight around me to mask it, then slammed closed the trunk and strode for the door to the bar.

  When I glanced back over my shoulder, I saw a vision of Julia sitting in the passenger seat. I knew it wasn’t real—whatever the fuck that was—but I watched her a while anyway. Unmoving and pale, her eyes stared straight ahead through the windshield at me, as if hypnotized. I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets. My left brushed the revolver, my right the shotgun.

  Without looking to see if the mirage was still there, I turned and went inside.

  The buzz of voices ceased the moment I stepped through the door. The handful of others in the bar remained motionless, as if some invisible switch had been thrown that left them frozen in place. I stayed where I was, just inside the entrance, and scanned the barroom. Six people total, five men. Four at the bar and one tending bar. The lone woman sat by herself at a table along the back wall, sipping a drink. Only the bartender looked me directly in the eye. A short but powerfully built older man with no neck, thick forearms and a broad chest; he ran a hand over his shaved head, wiped away the perspiration there, then cocked his head to the side like he was straining to hear something in the distance. After a beat, he offered a slow, subtle nod. I returned it and moved over to the bar. I remained standing as he wiped the counter with a dirty rag. “Evening,” I said.

  The bartender offered a crooked grin.

  While this was the farthest I’d ever ventured beyond the city, maybe I hadn’t gone quite as far as I’d originally thought. “What is this place?” I asked.

  “A bar,” he answered in a gruff voice. “What the hell does it look like?”

  I stared at him until he understood I was neither intimidated by him nor interested in his wiseass cracks. “Beer,” I told him.

  He reacted like I’d spoken Swahili. Finally, he reached behind him to a small refrigerator beneath a wall of bottles, plucked a beer free and slapped it on the counter between us. “Only kind we got.”

  “That’ll do fine.” I scooped it up, then reached into my coat pocket and flashed my creds, flopping open the small leather case to reveal my badge.

  “On the house,” he said with a special hatred reserved for my kind.

  I returned the badge to my pocket, making sure my coat opened far enough for him to glimpse the firepower I was packing, and then I gave him a look at a photograph of Julia. “Ever seen her before?”

  “Nope,” he said without looking at it.

  “Try again.”

  “We get a lot of people in here, chief.”

  “No you don’t. Look at it again.”

  With an exaggerated sigh he begrudgingly glanced at the photo—a wallet-sized headshot I’d carried on me for long as I could remember—creased and worn but clearly showing the person I was looking for. “She doesn’t look familiar.”

  “She hasn’t been here?”

  “Never said that,” he said through a smirk.

  I grabbed a peanut from a nearby bowl and popped it in my mouth. “We can get along or I can make you sorry you ever met me, up to you.”

  “I’m already sorry I met you.”

  “You think I’m playing with you?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Has she been here or not?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” he said, fidgeting about as he wiped the counter again.

  “Tell you what. You give it some thought. Anything comes to mind before I leave—and I bet it will—you let me know. How’s that sound, good?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

  “Then maybe I won’t have to take your fucking eyes out of your head, huh?”

  As most of the blood drained from the bartender’s face, I moved away, unsure if anyone else had seen me flash the badge or photo, so I kept my eyes open as I waded through the tables toward the back of the bar. Taking up position at the table next to the lone woman in the place, I purposely waited for her to look away before I stole a glance.

  Pale and powdered, with dark eyes, bright red lipstick and matching fingernails, she wore a tailored dress, light blue with black piping. Knee-length, it buttoned up the front and was offset by a thick black belt secured snugly around her tiny waist, which only further accentuated her hourglass figure. She wore black stockings and a pair of black-and-white spectator pumps. Her jet-black hair was styled in a victory roll and cascaded down to the bottom of her neck.

  She shouldn’t have been in a place like this—much less sitting alone—but there she was, the Black Dahlia before she went to pieces, a special order 1940s pinup girl doing her best to sip a fruity drink, bat her false eyelashes and pretend she hadn’t noticed me or anyone else within a ten-mile radius.

  But like me, this one rarely missed a trick. I saw it in her, and even with a cursory look, she’d seen it in me.

  As the ot
hers resumed whatever conversations they’d been having when I arrived, and a buzz returned to the bar, I caught her stealing another peek. Before she could look away, I asked, “You in here a lot?”

  She smiled, subtly, and broke eye contact, gazing out at the bar like there was something else of interest she wanted to see. “Is that a low-rent version of come here often?” she asked in a husky voice that didn’t fit her.

  I stared at her even though she was no longer looking at me. I knew she could feel my eyes on her—although not in the way she was accustomed to—and I knew it was as uncomfortable for her as it was intriguing, which was exactly what I was going for. “Not exactly,” I told her. “I need information.”

  She sipped her drink. “What kind of information?”

  “I’m looking for someone, a woman.”

  “Most men are.”

  “Not like that.”

  “Not like what?” She gave me a quick but playful sideways glance.

  I got up, took a chair at her table and sat back down, careful to keep my seat faced in the direction of the bar. “I have a professional interest,” I told her, sliding the photo across the table to her.

  When she finally got around to looking at it, she did so more vigilantly than I’d expected. “Are you a Dreamcatcher?” she asked in a far less jovial tone.

  “Have you seen her?”

  She pushed the photograph back across the table to me. “Maybe…”

  “Maybe doesn’t work,” I said, returning the photo to my pocket. “Is it yes, or no?”

  “It’s still maybe.” She played with the little paper umbrella floating in her drink. “Maybe,” she said quietly, “as in, maybe we could go somewhere and talk.”

  The bartender was having what appeared to be a rather intimate chat with two of the men at the bar. Huddled together, they thought they were being clever. Those types always did, and they were always mistaken. I felt the blood coursing through my temples and could already see theirs spilling.

  I am the wolf.

  “I’ve got a room around back,” she told me. “Follow the path down to the tracks and you’ll see the building on the other side. Second floor, first door on the right. Meet me there when…if…you can.”

  I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no. I had no way of knowing why she wanted to help me—or even if she really did—but we both knew what was coming, and soon, and she had no intention of sticking around for it. Couldn’t blame her, there were times I wished I could just walk too. But things had been set in motion the moment I came through the door, and like always, nothing could stop it. Those things the lost planned in the shadows, in their own little twisted corners of darkness and fear, were irreversible. They, like all of us, were soldiers of providence, marching mindlessly into battles someone or something, somewhere along the line, had convinced us were worth fighting. Ironically enough, it was all as inescapable as the night and the damning daylight that was sure to follow.

  The Dahlia pulled the last of her drink through her pretty little straw, then put the glass aside, threw me a wink and, paper umbrella in hand, slinked her way across the bar and out the door.

  And then there were five.

  I took a nice long swig of beer. It felt good on my throat and stopped my shakes.

  The bartender and his two buddies had finished their powwow and were doing their best to pretend they weren’t coming for me. The other two were farther down the bar and hadn’t participated. They’d either leave or stay within the next minute or so, depending upon how bright they were.

  As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods…

  By the time I’d finished half my beer, they’d taken up position over by the front door without ever looking my way. I could tell they really didn’t want any part of this. They knew what I was, and they had no reason to get involved and even less reason to get hurt. But the others had convinced them. Neither looked that bright, just a couple of rummies on break from the dreams of a drunken sailor slumped in an alley somewhere.

  They kill us for sport…

  One of the men still at the bar, a scruffy-looking road dog in leathers sporting a salt-and-pepper ponytail and a swagger far beyond his abilities, slid down off his stool and sauntered across the bar to a silent jukebox in the far corner.

  Why did they always think things like that would save them?

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “Afraid someone might hear the screams?”

  Somewhere in the distance, as if in answer, I heard the sound of thunder. My own personal choir of damned angels singing to me in the night, serenading my dreams…dreams of dark addictions, the dead and dying…the running…the hopeless…

  The bartender smiled but there was no humor in it. The third man, a skinny black guy with a huge Afro, was dressed in a camouflage jacket and fringed suede boots. He spun on his stool and glared at me in an effort to appear intimidating.

  After starting the juke, Road Dog slid a huge hunting knife from his belt and ambled toward me with the same slow, overconfident gait he’d shown off before. As the bartender reached beneath the counter, Afro headed for me as well, hands held at his sides but clenched into fists. The two rummies blocked the front door.

  I don’t know what the hell was coming out of that jukebox, but it was loud, abrasive, violent and evil.

  Closing my eyes, I reached down to the shotgun strapped to my leg, but thought about holding Julia in my arms instead—the weight of her there, so small but strong, so soft but firm—and the way she’d look into my eyes when I was inside her, like she could see something in that moment she’d never seen before. Something deep inside me, another wound she’d only just then discovered. And all the while, I wanted nothing more than to tell her she was everything I wanted, everything I needed, and everything I ever wanted to be.

  She slipped away, spiraling down into the dark where she belonged.

  Then I opened my eyes and killed everybody in the room.

  7

  Julia wears slips even after they’re no longer fashionable. And it works. On her, it works. They are elegant and sexy and real. Often, she wears a slip and nothing else, her skin glistening with a thin film of perspiration, her hair slightly mussed, a drink in her hand and an alluring smile on her face. Sometimes she wears one as we lie in bed together for hours, listening to the night die. She tells me outrageous stories she later whispers in my ear are all lies, and we laugh and make love and fall asleep just before the night burns to day. When darkness returns, so do we, stumbling about our indifferent nighttime world, vagabonds from the Land of Nod.

  Though she is gone, her sadness and sedition remain, and I see her watching from the shadows in the tattered remnants of my mind. “If we knew the sun, do you think we’d miss it?” she asks. Before I can answer she tells me about a place where birds sing in flight, gentle winds blow and the air is fresh and clean. You can feel the sun as it warms you, and no one is afraid. At least not all the time.

  “Fairy tales,” I tell her. “Bedtime stories for the feebleminded.”

  “No,” she insists. “It’s true. They stole it from us. And we let them.”

  “I don’t regret this life I’ve chosen.”

  Julia backs further into shadow. “You chose nothing.”

  I follow her to darkness, to nightmares, to the terror and screams, and the blood that baptizes us both.

  * * *

  A light rain had started to fall. I staggered out the back door of the bar and leaned back beneath an overhang of roof and against the wall to catch my breath a moment. Just like Dahlia had said, a dirt path about thirty yards in the distance led to a set of ancient railroad tracks, and a small building sitting just beyond them. An old adobe structure, it was an unimaginative little two-story box with a flat roof. The walls were cracked and chipped, and though a few were intact, most of the windows were blown out. The front entrance had been reduced to a gaping hole; a doorway with splintered remnants of what had once been a heavy wooden door han
ging from rusted hinges. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve figured the place was abandoned.

  I made my way along the dirt path, crossed the tracks and into the shelter of the building. The foyer was dark and smelled musty. So much dirt and debris had blown in it was hard to tell if I was standing on a dirt floor or one simply covered in it. A basic staircase stood to my left; three closed and battered doors to my right. Second floor, she’d said, first door on the right. Or was it the left? As I climbed the stairs I realized I still had the shotgun in my hand. I pushed back my coat and slid the weapon into its holster, just as I found myself at the top of the stairs and at the head of a long hallway. Doors on either side, all closed. It was filthy up here too, and smelled just as bad.

  An overhead light blinked and buzzed, the bulb encased in a cage-like iron fixture. There was something at the far end of the hallway huddled on the floor, but in the limited and intermittent light, I couldn’t make out what the hell it was. Could’ve been a body, but it didn’t look like a person. I thought for a moment I’d heard it breathing, but maybe it was just the rain. I watched it a while. It never moved, so I settled on the first door on the right and rapped it lightly with my knuckles.

  The door opened almost too quickly, slightly at first, then all the way. And there she was. All pale flesh, red lipstick and hair black as coal, a white rose clipped above her right ear. She bit her lip as if she wasn’t sure what to do next. “Jeepers,” she finally managed. “You’re covered in blood.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  The dress and pumps were gone, replaced with bare feet and a knee-length silk robe adorned with red dragons. Her dark eyes dropped the length of me, then slowly crawled back up. “I don’t want any trouble,” she said softly.

  “Little late for that, doll.”

  “May as well come in then,” she said, stepping back and away from the door.

  Inside was basically what I’d expected, a meager room with a rickety iron bed that looked like something out of an institution, a small bureau and a rolltop desk. A tiny closet with no door took up a portion of one wall and housed the dress she’d been wearing prior, alongside two others, all three draped across wire hangers. The lone window was closed, the pane so filthy it barely qualified as transparent, and the entire cramped space reeked of cigarettes, booze, perfume and pussy. Sparse light emanated from a candle burning on the bureau, leaving behind plenty of shadow.