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Dreams are doorways Panic could not arouse her She continued to drift deeper under the sandman’s spell even as she heard her heart pound harder and faster She felt her hand loosening its grip on Ji, would keep her awake, but she felt his grip loosening on her hand, and she realized they were succu to the sandman simultaneously
She drifted in darkness
She felt that she was being watched
It was both a reassuring and a frightening feeling
So to happen She sensed it
For a while, however, nothing happened Except darkness
Then she became aware that she had a ht Jim was the one as sent on missions not her
A mission Her mission She would be sent on a mission of her own
It was vitally important Her life depended on hoell she performed
Jim’s life depended on it as well The whole world’s continued existence depended on it
But the darkness remained
She just drifted It felt nice
She slept and slept
At sohtmares went, this one was a lulu, all the stops pulled out, but it was nothing like her recent dreams of the mill and The Enemy It orse than those because it was painted in excruciating detail and because throughout the experience she was in the grip of anguish and terror so intense that nothing in her experience prepared her for it, not even the crash of Flight 246
Lying on a tile floor, under a table On her side Peering out at floor level Directly ahead is a chair, tubular olden french fries and a cheeseburger, the reased lettuce
Then a wo on the floor, head turned toward Holly Looking through the tubular legs of the chair, across the fries and disarranged burger, the lady stares at her, a look of surprise, stares and stares, never blinking, and then Holly sees that the lady’s eye nearest the floor isn’t there anyout Oh, lady Oh, lady, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Holly hears a terrible sound, chuda-chudachuda-chuda-chuda-chuda-chuda, doesn’t recognize it, hears people screa, a lot of people, chuda-chuda-chuda-chuda, still screa, wood breaking, a , chuda-chuda-chuda-chuduchuda-chuda-chuda-chuda
She kno that it’s gunfire, the heavy rhythet out of there So she turns in the opposite direction fro because she doesn’t want to-can’t, just can’t! crawl by the old lady whose eye has been shot out But behind her is a little girl, about eight, lying on the floor in a pink dress with black patent-leather shoes and white socks, a little girl hite-blond hair, a little girl with, a little girl with, a little girl with patent-leather shoes, a little girl with, a little girl with, a little girl hite socks, a little girl with, a little girl ith ith half her face shot of A red s, screaoing to stop, it’s going to go on forever, that terrible sound, chuda-chuda-chuda Then Holly’son her hands and knees, away froirl with half a face
Unavoidably her hands slap-skip-skid-slide through warm french fries, a hot fish sandwich, a puddle ofunder the tables, between the chairs, then she puts her hand down in the icy slush of a spilled Coke, and when she sees the ie paper cup from which the soda has spilled, she knohere she is, she’s in a Dixie Duck Burger Palace, one of her favorite places in the world Nobody’s screa now, maybe they realize that a Dixie Duck is not a place you should screa, and so please-please-please-please over and over again
Holly starts to crawl out from under another table, and she sees aa few feet from her, turned half away from her, and she thinks maybe this is all just a trick, trick-or-treat, a Halloween performance But it isn’t Halloween Yet thecoe pants and a black T-shirt and a beret, like the Green Berets wear, only this one is black, and it must be a costume because he isn’t really a soldier, can’t be a soldier with that big sloppy belly overhanging his pants, and he hasn’t shaved insoldier stuff This girl is kneeling on the floor in front of hiers orks at Dixie Duck, the pretty one with the red hair, she winked at Holly when she took her order, now she’s kneeling in front of the guy in the soldier costu, except what she’s saying is please please-please-please The guy is shouting at her about the CIA and mind control and secret spy networks operated out of the Dixie Duck storeroo and he looks at the red-haired girl awhile, just looks down at her, and then he says look-at-me, and she says please-please-don’t, and he says look-at-ain, so she raises her head and looks at hiirl is so scared, she is just so scared, and she says no-please-I-don’t-know-anything-about-this, and he says like-shit-you-don’t, and he lowers the big gun, he puts the big gun right there in her face, just od-oh-od, and he says you’re-one-of the-rat-people, and Holly is sure the guy will now throw the gun aside and laugh, and everyone playing dead people will get up and laugh, too, and the er will come out and take bows for the Halloween perforuy pulls the trigger, chuda-chudachuda-chuda-chuda, and the red-haired girl dissolves Holly eels around and heads back the way she caet away from him before he sees her, because he’s crazy, that’s what he is, he’s a crazyh the sah before, past the little girl in the pink dress and right through the girl’s blood, praying the crazy away from him
CHUDA-CHUDA-CHUDA-CHUDA-CHUDACHUDA! But hethe other direction, because no bullets are sht across a deadsirens now, sirens wailing outside, the cops’ll get this crazy overturned, and it sounds so close, she looks back, she sees hi tables out of his way, kicking aside chairs, he sees her She clambers over another dead woman and then she’s in a corner, on top of a dead man who’s slumped in the corner, she’s in the lap of the dead et out of there because the crazy The crazyman looks so scary, so bad and scary, that she can’t watch hiun in her face the way the red-haired girl saw it, so she turns her head away, turns her face to the dead man She woke from the drea, not even with an unvoiced cry caught in her throat, but gagging She was curled into a tight ball, hugging herself, dry-heaving, choking not on anything she had eaten but on sheer throat-clogging repulsion
Ji on his side His knees were drawn up slightly in a modified fetal position He was still sound asleep
When she could get her breath, she sat up She was notShe was convinced she could hear her bones clattering against one another
She was glad that she had not eaten anything after the doughnuts last evening They had passed through her sto else, she’d be wearing it now
She hunched forward and put her face in her hands She sat like that until the rattling quieted to a shudder and the shudder faded to spas
When she raised her face froht at the narros of the high roolow rather than a sunny-blue glare, but daylight nonetheless
Seeing it, she realized that she had not been convinced she would ever see daylight again
She looked at her atch 6:10 Dawn o She could have been asleep only two to two and a half hours