Dream Thing

Brotz felt as if he were witnessing a chain reaction on a California expressway, standing there helplessly as one car after another slammed into the growing pile of wreckage. Were the Wahine and the Reliant really gone? Even on the unpredictable Pacific Ocean, catastrophe simply did not strike that fast. Ships took minutes or hours to sink …

He called for a connection to the Navy cruiser.

“Captain, your own Navy people report a major seismological disturbance throughout your vicinity. Two ships might be lost already. Don’t risk the Harding.”

“You Coast Guard boys have sure lost your balls,” replied the captain of the Harding. “Don’t tell me you want to abandon the survivors? Those are your own people in there.”

“Air rescue is on the way.”

“Not fast enough. We’re going in. Besides, this isn’t a merchant ship and it’s not a Coast Guard dinghy. It’s a Navy cruiser. We can handle a little strong water.”

Captain Brotz felt ill, and the command center was eerily silent as he and his crew monitored the Navy radio chatter. Harding reported a strong current.

“Twenty-eight knots!” Brotz said under his breath.

Harding vanished. The icon on the traffic screen simply went away. No more radio communication came in from the ship, and the Navy radio chatter became frantic.

As the two Coast Guard rescue helicopters closed in on the last known location of the Navy cruiser, Navy command radioed Brotz and belligerently demanded surrender of command of the rescue choppers. Brotz declined. “You’re welcome to listen in if you like.”

Somewhere, Navy top brass was sputtering. Brotz didn’t care.

“Sea is empty,” reported the leader of the rescue team aboard the choppers.

“No wreckage? No oil?”

“Nothing. But the water is moving like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like a river down there.”

“Pilot, what’s your status?”

“Unaffected. We’re fine up here, Base,” the pilot reported. “Dropping a tracking buoy. Jesus!”

“What happened?” Brotz demanded.

“The tracking buoy, sir. It hit the water and started moving like a bat from hell. I’m pacing it at an airspeed of sixty-three knots.”

“Coast Guard commander, this is Navy Command at Pearl Harbor. Your pilots are obviously incompetent. I want them under my command right now or it’s your ass.”

Brotz leaned into the monitor and examined the icon for the activated buoy, then he snatched the radio to the Navy. “Check it for yourself, Admiral, it should be on your screen. My pilot pinned it at sixty-three knots and climbing. Since the only bad decisions made here today were made by Navy command, I think I’ll hold on to this one.”

“Commander, there’s a Navy vessel missing—”

“And a Coast Guard vessel and a merchant ship.”

“But the Harding is a Navy ship,” the admiral insisted. “Its priority outweighs a merchant ship or even a Coast Guard cutter.”

Commander Brotz hung up on the admiral of the Navy.

“I’ve spotted the Harding!” radioed the helicopter copilot. “She’s moving like you wouldn’t believe, but she’s afloat.”

“We’re getting interference,” Brotz said. “Is there any visible cause?”

“Nothing, Base. The Harding is being pulled stem first. She’s flopping all over the place. That nut thinks he can get free—he’s rocking his thrust on the props.”

Brotz barely made out the words behind the worsening static. On the monitor, the pair of icons for the helicopters flickered, as if the aircraft were dematerializing. “Pilots, pull out now.”

“Negative, Base. There’s no danger up here. We see something ahead.”

“That’s an order—turn around.”

There was no response from the helicopters, ever, and their traffic blips blinked out.

On the other side of the world, a man was gasping for air.

“Mark, wake up.” The young woman shook him gently. The man’s eyes went wide and he crawled away from her, against the metal bars of the head board.

Sarah Slate never forgot the look. For a moment, Mark Howard didn’t know who she was—or even what she was.

Then he saw her, remembered her and remembered himself. “Oh.”

“What was it?”

He concentrated. “I don’t even know.” He looked at his hands. “I was something else. It was dark. The world was moving me and there was a light. It was going to—consume me.”

“Eat you?”

“There were others, all of us being—channeled into the light. We were food.”

“Food for what?”

The door rattled on its hinges with such noise and racket that Sarah turned, expecting an army to come pouring through it. It was a heavy old hospital door, and it remained closed.

“Open at once!” a voice squeaked from the outside.

Sarah rushed to the door and yanked it open, and was pushed aside by a figure no larger than a child. He was, however, unbelievably, old, Asian and dressed in a brightly colored robe. Close behind him came a slapping of wild wings, and a purple bird as big as an eagle flew into the room.

“Say not the name,” warned the old man, addressing Mark Howard as the bird settled on the blankets.

“What name?” he asked.

“That of the thing of which you dreamed.”

“Were you eavesdropping?” Sarah demanded.