But the more these images filled his mind, the more his head began to spin, and his stomach to churn. Perhaps it was because of the other thoughts still with him. Memories of the feelings he used to have. All those secret, unrealized desires he had shared with no one. They were dead now, but their memories remained—and he now found them so repulsive, that he wanted to reach in through his eyes, and pull his brain out so he couldn’t think of them anymore.
But this is a good thing, thought Drew.A great thing. Michael has done for me what no one else could do. He monkeyed around in my head, and when he left, he left me straight. Drew clung on to that thought, as he heaved into the toilet again.
15. Doctor Doom And Nurse Hatchet
Shiprock was the key.
Two weeks into the siege of San Simeon, Dillon zeroed in on the tragic news reports, and they became the key to deciphering the pattern of destruction. Since he had arrived, he had scoured the media and Internet, but until now his searches had yielded nothing but white noise. And then came the Shiprock Massacre, pulling his attention, narrowing his focus. It was a primer that helped him decode everything else. From that moment on, things began to fall into place, like a puzzle constructing itself. In almost everything he saw and read, the pattern of destruction had finally begun to emerge.
“What pattern?” Winston asked when Dillon tried to tell the others. “I don’t see any pattern.”
Dillon had called the others to his suite the moment he was certain he could now read the language of the unraveling. So certain was he that he was blindsided by Winston’s skepticism.
“If there were anything to see,” challenged Winston, “then I would see it, too.” Winston stood there, his arms crossed. Michael, Tory, and Lourdes were there as well, and none of them was jumping to Dillon’s aid.
“You won’t see it,” Dillon told them. “Only I can see—you just have to trust me . . .”
Silence from the others—but more than mere silence. It was . . . a lack of connection. Not only with him, but with each other. The angle of their stances—the distance they stood from one another—it all spoke of isolation. Disunity. For the life of him, Dillon couldn’t understand why.
Dillon dragged his fingers through his hair in frustration, and for a moment he felt his hair stand at wild angles like a mad scientist, but a single shake of his head brought it back into place. “It’s not like I’m guessing about these patterns—I don’t guess!”
Still nothing. Winston stood with folded arms, Michael’s shifting slouch radiated indifference, and Lourdes seemed more interested in the ceiling architecture than in Dillon’s warning, as if this meeting were an unwanted obligation.
Tory seemed to be the only one who was even slightly with him on this. “Maybe if you explain it to us . . . "
Dillon took a deep breath to balance his thoughts. “Explain it . . .” He looked around the clutter of his suite, searching for clues that could translate to their understanding—but how could he verbalize a cognitive sense that they didn’t possess? He began by handing Tory an article—a small one about a candidate in an upcoming election.
“What is it?” asked Lourdes.
Tory skimmed it, and wrinkled her brow. “Some old fart is running for Congress.”
Winston glanced at it over her shoulder. “So?”
“That old fart,” Dillon explained, “just happens to be the president of the Flat Earth Society. Two weeks ago, he didn’t have a chance. Now, all of a sudden it seems like half of Nebraska is voting for him.”
“Have you ever been to Nebraska?” said Winston. “Pretty easy to think the world is flat if Nebraska’s all you see of it.”
Seeing he was getting nowhere, Dillon switched gears, moving to the computer in the corner. He clicked a button, and brief messages scrolled up the screen.
“I downloaded these this morning from an on-line chat room.”
He let them scan the notes for a few moments, then asked. “Do you see?”
“See what?” asked Lourdes.
“The notes! These people aren’t talking to each other, they’re talking at each other.
Michael laughed. “That’s nothing new!”
Dillon tried one more time. He flipped open a magazine, and presented it to the others. “Nielsen ratings,” he told them. They all took in the lists of shows and numbers, but it might as well have been written in Arabic for all it mattered.
“See, look,” Dillon said, pointing it out as best he could. “Ratings on the most popular shows have dropped off—and the shows no one ever watches are beginning to get followers.”
They kept looking at the ratings, then back to Dillon as if there should be more.
“And that’s the end of the world?” Tory asked dubiously.
“No, but this is.” And Dillon presented them with a picture from the morning sports pages. Crowds at a Nascar race. “This says it all. I mean, look at them. Look at the way this woman is slouching—look at the angle those people are standing—and the directions they’re all looking. It’s as if they’re not there to watch the race—they’re just passing time. It’s like they’re waiting for something else—something bigger—but they don’t even know it yet.”
“I’m sorry, you lost me,” said Tory.
“Okay,” said Dillon, pacing across the rug, and flexing his fingers to keep from pulling his hair out. “It’s like a tidal wave. You know—just before there’s a tidal wave, all the water pulls away from the beach, and it gets quiet—as if the shore is waiting for the wave to hit: Well, that’s what’s happening now.”
He picked up the article about the flat-world politician. “People everywhere are slowly losing their sense of reason.” Then he went to the computer screen. “People are forgetting how to communicate.” Then he held up the magazine of Nielsen ratings—“Everyone’s changing their alliances at an abnormal rate”—and finally the picture. “And everyone’s waiting for something to happen.” He took a moment, realizing he had hyperventilated and was feeling faint, then continued, trying to lock on their eyes one at a time.
“These things that would mean nothing to you, mean everything to me. They show me the pattern that no one else can see.” He took a deep breath, and spoke slowly. “Within one month,” he said, “some crucial event is going to occur—something that no one can explain. That event is going to get stuck in people’s minds, and when they can’t reason it away, miscommunication will start to spread. Half-truths, and flat-out lies will spread around the world until no one knows what truth is anymore . . .
. . . and alliances will shift.”
He turned and grabbed a globe off of Hearst’s private desk. “After that, there’s going to be a great gathering. I’ve been studying changes in airline schedules and travel statistics—they all point to it.” He showed them the globe. He had already penned in a thousand flight patterns, leaving nothing but blue pen covering most of the world, darkest over Europe and the Mediterranean.
“It’ll be somewhere on the other side of the world,” he told them. “Millions will go there . . . and die. But it won’t stop there. Death will spread out from that spot, until there’s nothing left. Human, animal, or vegetable. Unless we can change the pattern.”
“Is it nuclear?” asked Tory.
Dillon shook his head. “No, that’s not part of the pattern. It’s something else. Something worse. And so far, all the good we’ve done hasn’t changed a thing!”