"Bachelorette Number Three, if you were an animal, what land of animal would you be?"
Best of all, the shot cut him loose from the dreams. Almost from the moment that the thing had started, sleep had quite literally become a nightmare.
"I think I'd be a white fuzzy rabbit so you just couldn't resist picking me up and cuddling me."
It had started that first night on Greene Street with the dream that all but totaled his mind…
Chapter Three
HE WAS IN a tunnel made from hard, bright, reflective material, and he was terrified. A dazzling white light was all but blinding him. He didn't have a clue where he was except for an uncertain feeling that the way out was somewhere up ahead. The most important thing was that he had to keep going. This he knew for sure. Keeping going was of a life-preserving importance. There was something behind him, something coming after him down the tunnel, and if it caught him he was dead meat.
The diameter of the tunnel was getting smaller. He was having to walk in a semicrouch with his knees bent and his head hunched into his shoulders like an ape. If the tunnel got any narrower, he'd be forced to crawl. He heard noises behind him but he didn't look back. He couidn't look back. All he could do was to keep hurrying on, doubled over in the knuckle-trailing, simian shamble. It wouldn't do any good to look back. The pursuit sounded as if it was gaining on him, and the bright tunnel continued to shrink. As well as shrinking, it was taking on a definite downward incline. He was running back down the slippery slope of evolution. It was like that chart on the wall in schooclass="underline" the Ascent of Man. Except he was going in the opposite direction. Any moment, he'd be developing a tail. The sounds behind him were even louder-coarse laughter and the crash of heavy boots. He couldn't take any more. Despite his fear, he turned and looked for the first time.
Rats.
Not real rats scuttling on all fours but anthropomorphic rats the size of five-year-old children. Maybe twenty of them. Rats in engineer boots. Rats in sunglasses. Rats in Nazi helmets. Rats wearing bandoliers and carrying tommy guns. Rats that walked on two legs with oversize heads and humanoid bodies. Rats that flashed disgusting yellow rat teeth as they laughed and called out to him in B-movie Mexican-bandito accents,
"Hey, gringo, we gonna get you. We don't need no stinking badges."
Their leader wore a black patch over his left eye. He was the one setting the pace, making sure that his men took their time, stringing it out, relishing this game of rat and mouse. "Hey, Gibson, we gonna get you."
They weren't cartoon rats. He hadn't washed up on the dark side of some surreal Looney Tune. They weren't even Roger Rabbit technology. These bastards were for real, far too real. Filthy fur formed into greasy spikes; the cuts and sores on their bodies were gross and suppurating. They smelled bad. They stank of sewers and foulness. A detached part of Gibson's mind marveled at this. Joe Gibson had very little sense of smell, having progressively destroyed it during the years when cocaine had been the public display of having too much money. It hardly ever played a part in his dreams.
Dreams! It was a dream. He was dreaming, damn it. All he had to do was wake up. Wake up!
He couldn't wake up. No matter how he tried, he couldn't wake up. Stop this dream! Let me out of here!
He turned and fled. The tunnel was even narrower and it sloped more steeply. He slipped. His feet went out from under him and he fell heavily on his ass. There were shouts of laughter from the rats. They enjoyed a good pratfall. The tunnel was now so steep that he started to slide. He couldn't stop himself. He was picking up speed. The tunnel had become a spiral. Round and round he went, down and down he went. He curled himself into a fetal ball. What was this? The DNA helix? True devolution?
He shot out of the chute. For a moment he was in midair, weightless. Then he hit the water and went under. It was foul and stank worse than the rats. His feet found bottom and he struggled to stand. Snaky things slithered around his ankles, but he didn't even want to think of them.
"Wake up!" A voice rolled across the foul water, but he couldn't wake up. With most nightmares, once the realization came that he was was only dreaming, it was always possible to make the effort and come out of it. This one, however, had him locked in. It wouldn't let go. Any minute, he'd be running into Freddy Krueger.
He was standing up to his waist in black, filthy water in what had to be the heart of all the sewers of the world. A huge man-made cavern with walls of slimy stone, a dank and dripping cathedral with cascades and waterfalls where pipes and conduits spilled their contents into the central confluence.
And there was something wading toward him. It wasn't Freddy. In fact, there were nine of them. More Nazi helmets, except that these were on the heads of real live Nazis. Almost-live Nazis. Corpse-white, hollow-skull faces and ragged, filthy uniforms, pushing through the water with weary, dead-eyed determination, holding their rifles above the water, survivors of Stalingrad on the long, long retreat through hell.
"Ve haf come for you, Gibson, you piece of scheiss."
This time it was B-movie German. "We have ways of making you talk." He had to get out of this dream.
"Wake up!" The disembodied voice spoke again.
"Wake up!"
"Come on, Joe, wake up. It's just a dream."
Now there were two voices, Gibson didn't understand. The voices were urgent, concerned. For a moment, faces looked down, shouting and shaking. Then the faces blurred and, instead, a skeletal hand with an SS ring on its third ringer was reaching into his face.
"Quick, give him the shot, he's slipping back."
A needle was going into his arm.
Gibson started to struggle. "What?"
"Psych attack."
He was struggling out of the dream. "What?"
"They tried to get you on the dream level."
Gibson was shaking his head. He was stretched out on the bed in the guest room. A woman, either the receptionist or her double, was bending over him. A second Nordic blond, enough like the receptionist to be her sister, had just pulled the needle of a disposable syringe out of his arm and was wiping the skin with a swab. He felt the quick chill of surgical spirit. Casillas was standing in the background looking concerned.
The receptionist or her double put an arm under his shoulders. "Can you sit up?"
Gibson eased into a sitting position with her half-lifting him. She was exceedingly strong. Gibson sighed. He'd always had a thing about girls who could beat him at arm wrestling. He shook his head, trying to clear the craziness. '"What was that all about?"
This time Casillas answered. "You have been under what we call psych attack. While you were sleeping, the enemy attempted to infiltrate your dreams."
"Infiltrate my dreams?"
"It's a very basic technique. Fortunately we were able to wake you in time."
"And what would have happened if you hadn't?" Casillas stepped forward so Gibson could see him better. "I imagine there was something in the dream that was trying to get you, to do you harm?"
Gibson nodded, "Rats and Nazis. What would have happened if they'd got me?"
"You would have retreated into catatonia." Gibson took a deep breath. "Thanks for the early call." The last thing that he remembered was being taken to a small functional guest room, little more than a cell, and stretching out on the narrow single bed to think about the day's revelations. He must have fallen asleep almost immediately, and that was strange in itself.
He looked at the receptionist's sister, who was disposing of the syringe. "What did you shoot me up with?"
"A combination of tranquilizer and Methedrine."
Gibson half smiled, "No shit."