Dream Thing

“Will you do this, Mr. President?”

“Why should I?”

“To save the world.”

“Bullshit.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You can spare the resources.”

“Are you kidding me, Smith?” the President fumed. “The DOD is stretched thin as a wire. They’re watching conflicts in every country on the earth.”

“About which you can do little. If we assume that the rise in global tensions is linked somehow to the catastrophe in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, then the best and only action you can take is to address that problem. I am asking you to trust that I may know of a way to slow the growth of the phenomenon.”

“You may know of a way? What if you’re wrong?”

“Then it is the same as if you fail to act. If I am right, then we might save ourselves.”

The President glared at the clear blue dawn outside the Oval Office. “Fine. What do you want me to do about it?”

The President took the first call after issuing his orders, and it just happened to be from the Secretary of Defense.

“Mr President, have you gone mad?”

“Not at all.”

“What’s the purpose of all this?”

“I’m not telling.”

“You’ve gone mad!”

“No, I haven’t.”

“What’s this all about, then?”

“None of your business.”

“With all due respect, Mr. President, it’s my business.”

“Not this time.”

The admiral looked stunned when he hung up the phone with Washington and emerged from his office, stopping a moment to gaze out the windows to the view of the vast fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor.

After a moment he shrugged to himself and noticed his staff waiting patiently. They knew something was up.

“Get them ready to sail.” The admiral waved at the window. “All of them.”

The U.S. Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force joined forces in the venture. They moved into the Pacific and deployed in the watch zone, an unaffected buffer area around the no-man’s-land of the vortex. Their ships numbered in the hundreds. The French, Japanese and Russian fleets joined the Americans, more out of curiosity than anything else. The Americans weren’t explaining why it was now so important to keep people away from the vortex.

The orders were simple: keep anybody and everybody from approaching the vortex. With the benefit of U.S. spy satellites watching the perimeter, this was easy enough.

But what became remarkable was the number of ships actually trying to get in. No one had guessed it before. Once it became clear that ships from all over the world were determined to break into the vortex, the urgency of the mission became clear.

In the first twenty-four hours, more than one thousand human beings were dragged kicking and screaming off their suicide ships.

Chapter 36

Henry Lagrasse wasn’t feeling so good this morning.

Waking up with a lunatic is a surefire way to start your day badly. Sandy’s head injury had grown worse in the night, and she was in convulsions by daybreak. Howard went for a walk while she rode them out.

The air felt different this morning. The sky was quiet. Something was wrong. He started on a patrol of the island, looking for the cause of the wrongness, but nothing had changed since the previous evening.

Nothing had changed. It hit him suddenly. There were no new shipwrecks.

How could that be? There were more every day. The shore was a junkyard of wrecks now. There ought to be some sort of watercraft washing up every half hour at least. But none?

Then he found the wreckage of a new ship. It came in the night, and one survivor was screaming for release. “Help me out!” he pleaded. “I have to go in there!” He pointed at the ruins with his one functional arm.

Lagrasse began pulling on the metal panels that had collapsed across the survivor, a man in his fifties with white hair and white stubble on his chin. He was in a priest’s collar and he was babbling about how lucky he was.

“We slipped through. They tried to stop us, but we gunned it when a bigger boat got their attention. They chased us, but then they stopped when we reached the current.”

“Who tried to stop you?” Lagrasse asked.

“Coast Guard. Navy. French and Japanese and even the Australians showed up. They’re trying to keep everybody out of here. We were lucky to get through.”

Lagrasse felt a sudden dread. The people had to get through! They had to get to the island! Otherwise—well, he didn’t know what the consequences would be.

The white-haired priest finally grew impatient with Lagrasse and pushed himself out of the wreckage, tearing himself open on the metal edges. He didn’t care. He staggered off into the city to become breakfast for the thing in the pyramid.

Without people, the thing wouldn’t feed, Lagrasse realized. That was a disaster! It must feed! It must have human beings to sustain and strengthen it!

Why? He didn’t know.

He paced nervously, then it occurred to him that he should go get Sandy and deliver them both to the thing in the pyramid. But that was no good. There was a reason he and Sandy hadn’t wanted to go into the pyramid with all the other island arrivals; they were broken in the head. They didn’t have the sustenance the thing needed.