The Forbidden Zone

by Whitley Strieber

  Her whole body flopped and writhed, she twisted around, her jaws snapped, her bulging eyes gleamed. She began making undulant, humping movements, her skin quivering, her fine, clear voice gone to cracking, whispered barks.

  As if responding to the sounds of the dog's effort, the screaming reached extreme frenzy.

  "It isn't human screaming," the judge said. "It's some damn coon."

  "It's gotta be checked out," Bob responded.

  "You're a damn nut," the judge snapped at Brian. "All this over nothing!"

  Abruptly, Sal collapsed, as if she'd been turned off with a switch. One moment she was in full cry, struggling to get back in her hole, the next she was a heap of floppy brown animal with froth pouring out of her slack mouth.

  "My God," Brian said. He lifted her head, listened at her nose, looked into her eyes. "She's dead."

  When the sound of Sal's digging had stopped, the woman in the mound had begun to sob. "We're coming," Bob shouted.

  Silence.

  "Just hang on, ma'am!" Bob's voice was shaking.

  The response was terrible to hear, as if she had just made a new and hideous discovery, something awful beyond belief.

  "Oh, Christ, get a backhoe, Bobby! Get a damn backhoe!"

  "Don't you dare! You'll tear my property to pieces."

  The screams dropped low, became gurgles, finally stopped.

  "Listen," the judge said. "Nothing. So you don't need a backhoe. Not for a coon that just died."

  As Bob ran down the mound, Brian gathered the dog into his arms.

  "You let her overdo it," the judge said, "you let her run herself to death trying to dig out a coon."

  "Hell, she wasn't trying to dig anything out, Judge. Don't you know a single damn thing about hounds?"

  "Well, I—certainly!"

  "Judge, there's something in there that Sal wanted to kill."

  Both men looked down at the roughly ditched ground. Brian knew his dog. Sal had died of hate.

  Two

  1.

  When the phone rang Ellen Maas was—as usual—alone in the office. It was eight-fifteen on a Saturday night and this week's edition of the Gazette was supposed to be put to bed, but she was working desperately to expand the all-important local gossip column, the one with everybody's name in ALL CAPS. The more people she could fit in, the more papers she would sell.

  She stared at the ringing phone. Surely it wouldn't be a bill collector, not on a Saturday night.

  Between rings, she listened to the moths fluttering against the screens. There was a mutter of thunder, she blew sweat from her top lip.

  "Gazette."

  "This is Harry terBroeck."

  She sat up a little straighter. You wanted the extremely powerful, deeply respected, profoundly unpleasant Judge terBroeck on your side around these parts, you sure did—especially if you were the new owner of a broke newspaper. "Hello, Judge."

  "I have a story. You know the way the paper used to run the local news on the front page? Well, this is that kind of thing. It's not going to be up there with a presidential visit to China, but it's interesting to us yokels."

  The new girl in town had just been criticized. OK. She could handle that. "Great," she enthused, "I'm always looking for a big local story."

  "Well, this is big, I mean, for us yahoos."

  He waited for her protest that they weren't really yahoos, that they were terrific, that she just loved the town, gush, gush. The expected words got stuck in her throat like a backed-up corn fritter.

  He went on. "The state police are out on my mound. You know the place?"

  "Of course. What's the story?"

  "They're tearing it all to hell. Making an awful mess of my private property without so much as a by-your-leave!"

  Ellen tried not to sound impatient. "Right," she said, "shoot."

  "Shoot?"

  "Tell me the rest. Why are they there?"

  "Well, I'd never let 'em do it, and if there's nobody in there I've got a fine cause of action against the state."

  "Nobody in where?"

  "The mound! My mound! They're tearing it apart to find a supposed woman. Been screaming."

  "What woman would that be?"

  "The one that's supposedly trapped in there. Nobody told you anything yet?"

  "Why should they? This is just the newspaper."

  He cleared his throat. For Judge terBroeck the paper was chiefly a forum where he could publish letters about the many liberal plots he detected in the affairs of the community. Evil forces on the town board trying to put in streetlights, hippies from downstate with their communistic recycling schemes, that sort of thing. "A dog—badly handled, poor damn thing—already died trying to reach her."

  "You heard the screaming?"

  "I heard sounds that I personally connect with a raccoon in distress. Brian Kelly said it was human screaming, of course—which he would, given that he's more than a little off balance on that particular subject, poor man. He was out there trespassing with that peculiar new wife of his when they first heard it."

  "The woman in a cave or what?"

  "They haven't found any woman! The story isn't the damn fool alleged woman, it's the invasion and destruction of my property, you stupid creature!"

  She wanted to slam down the phone on him. She swallowed hard, then forced herself to thank the judge with dutiful and agonizing care. She hung up and went to the steel locker to get the ancient Speed Graphic that had been there when she bought the paper. It had been slated for immediate replacement, of course, considering that it was fifty years old, weighed twenty pounds and required old-fashioned glass plates that had to be special-ordered from Kodak.

  "Immediate" had come to mean the end of her current five-year plan—if said plan could be realized somewhere this side of bankruptcy court.

  Lugging the miserable hunk of photographic iron and an old Bloomie's bag full of plates, she went down the angular stairway onto the street. It was dead quiet, of course. Early on she'd discovered that Oscola nightlife ended when the Mills Café closed down at nine. She'd been a night rider in New York, as often as not starting with the theater or a concert and ending when they flushed out the after-hours clubs at dawn.

  A Crown Victoria slid up Main Street, the frail driver sitting stiffly erect. The car moved like a hearse. Why? Small towns tend to be elderly, and old drivers can't see spit after dark. Plus, streetlighting was a liberal plot.

  If she walked out in front of that Crown Vic, there wouldn't even be the flicker of a brake light. Still traveling at a stately fifteen miles an hour, it would roll over her like a bump.

  It being past eight on a Saturday night, Oscola was as dark as a cave, except for dim light coming from the Mills Café and Handy's Tobacco. The Rexall Drugstore was dark, as was Mode O'Day Fashions, which was like an antique clothing store where everything was still new. They had black patent leather belts and slack suits along with boxes of hair ribbons in the glass-topped counter and a rack of $2.98 harlequin reading glasses.

  But Main Street was lined with big old oaks and maples, and down at the end where it became Mound Road there was one streetlight, a wonderful old iron creation meant to resemble a sapling, complete with iron leaves cradling the lamp.

  The smell of pipe tobacco that floated out of Mr. Handy's open door was pleasant, and the faint clink of dishes coming from the Mills communicated the peace of the entirely ordinary.

  Farther off something revved and died, probably some of the town's smattering of teenagers tuning a pickup out at Fisk's Garage. The "blown" pickup was Cuyamora County's ultimate muscle car. There were no Porsche Carerras here, no Acura NSX's. But then again, there were also no orthodontists in mirrored sunglasses to go with them, which was a plus. She'd had her fill of mirrored orthodontists, especially ones named Ira Bergman.

  Still, something appealed about those breezy early-morning runs to East Hampton in Ira's Porsche with the wind in their hair. That was back when the relationship was still in the
battlefield maneuvers stage, before the actual war had started.

  Well, hell, what was love compared to owning a dying newspaper?

  People around here hadn't stopped buying the Gazette because it was bad, but because she'd breezed into town and bought it and she was a city person and a fancy former New York Times reporter into the bargain.

  She pulled her ancient gray Duster out of the parking space in front of ludicrously named Excelsior Tower. It was two stories tail, for God's sake. Then she drove the mile out to the mound, the Speed Graphic on the seat beside her.

  As she turned into the long driveway beside the judge's house her ears drank the newsy snarl of heavy machinery out on the mound. A glance in the direction of the old terBroeck place told her that the judge was at home. She could see him in his kitchen, still on the phone.

  Ahead she observed dancing red light bars, and up on the mound itself the glare of portable floodlights. She opened her door and jumped out, hefting the camera.

  Passing the jumble of cars and trucks at the base of the mound, she noticed Brian Kelly's exotic wife asleep in the cab of their truck. The way the story went, he'd met her while she was waitressing at the Waywonda Inn in Ludlum. Discreetly turning tricks was more like it, Ellen thought. She was one of those desperate, unwanted souls coughed up by Southeast Asia, a Vietnamese all mixed up with French and American blood. As a child, she'd allegedly been used by the Vietcong as a tunnel rat. God only knew how she'd made her way to Oscola, New York. Ellen leaned into the cab. "Mrs. Kelly?"

  Loi's eyes opened, but there was no sense of her being startled awake. Maybe the tunnel rat story was true. She certainly displayed the elaborately careful attitude of a person who's lived with danger.

  "I'm Ellen Maas, Mrs. Kelly, with the Gazette."

  Finally, Loi smiled. "I'm tired," she said apologetically. It wasn't surprising, considering the advanced state of her pregnancy.

  "What do you know about the woman in the mound?"

  "You must ask my husband." She made a movement so sudden that it shocked Ellen. The woman was as swift as a cat, but all she'd done was glance at her watch. Then she came down out of the truck and moved off up the path, her huge belly making her rock from side to side.

  Ellen had the feeling that Loi Kelly was running away from her. So naturally she followed, stopping when Loi did among a group of men standing under the lights. They had a large chart open between them. She stared right back at the trooper eyes that were now regarding her.

  Trooper Numero Uno was here, Lieutenant Robert West. His big, open face broke into a grin. She was not deceived: West was a sweet man, but he was no hick. And he was very careful about the press. She knew why: this particular Medal of Honor winner had gotten his award for doing some very hard things, very hard indeed. Very brave, also, but it was not West's nature to be proud of killing people with his bare hands.

  She'd made the mistake of doing research into his medal. He'd begged her not to print the story. "Tell about my Little League work. Tell about my Great Books stuff. But leave the medal alone." She'd complied: her feature about him had quoted his thoughts about Aeschylus, but not Westmoreland.

  She walked toward him, working on her mask. Don't smile like an idiot, just look very professional. Reticent though he was, the man remained a hero. How do you share a secret heroism?

  Of the men with West, Ellen knew only Brian Kelly, now standing hand in hand with his wife. Her face had gone soft, the almond eyes melted with love, the full, heart-shaped lips revealing what Ellen thought was probably pride.

  He'd lost his daughter and his first wife in a fire, and Ellen had looked that up in the newspaper's morgue, too. The fire had been attributed to a defective propane line under his ancestral home. He'd been burned half to death attempting to save them. He and Mary Kelly had been extremely close. She'd been one of his students, and after she got her doctorate they'd taught as a team.

  The fire had crushed him. He'd walked away from his university job and become a hermit, gone on a two-year bender. Then he'd suddenly met Loi and astonished this half of the state by bringing her into his distinguished old Oscola family.

  Ellen took a deep breath. West, with his obsessive concern for safety, was already asking one of the men to help Loi back down the mound. She'd be next, she knew, if she wasn't careful. "Any luck?" she asked in a voice that came out so husky it could have pulled a dogsled. Too many cigarettes.

  Bob West glanced at her, then hid his face under the shadow of his hat.

  "I'm sorry, but I've got to ask a few questions. Is she in a tomb?"

  "More likely a cave," West responded. "And you'd best wait in your car until we've found the opening."

  She rushed on. "Well, isn't it an old Indian mound? Maybe it's full of tombs."

  "Now, ma'am, we've got a lot of heavy equipment working out here, and—"

  "I'm press, Bob, you know that."

  Instantly the head lowered, again the eyes disappeared. "I just worry that it isn't safe."

  She sighed. "I have to stay. It's my job."

  "You keep near us," Dr. Kelly finally said. "We don't want anybody else falling in holes."

  "Thank you," Ellen responded.

  "We think a sinkhole has opened up," Kelly explained. "Our theory is that she's fallen in and she's wandering in our hypothetical cave."

  Fifty feet away the backhoe growled again. The machine rocked, its operator clamped his cigar in his jaws, a jet of exhaust fumes shot up past the lights. The hoe turned and the debris went pouring down into a pile near the base.

  Ellen cranked up the Graphic and took a picture.

  "Kill the backhoe," a man bawled from the dark summit of the mound. It ground, coughed, rumbled, finally went silent. All that was left was an occasional random crinkle from its hot exhaust manifold.

  Ellen could just barely see the face of the man who had called out. It was visible in the faint green glow of some sort of electronic device. Smelling more story, she started up toward him.

  "Quiet," the man yelled. "Hey, lady, quiet! Don't move, don't even breathe!"

  Little pinging noises started above, continued for a few moments. Then the man stood up, removed his earphones, stepped out of the glow coming from his instrument's screen. He hurried down toward Bob West, who regarded him with eyes so full of pain that Ellen wanted to cuddle the poor man up in her arms.

  "It's solid earth, in my opinion," the man said.

  "You're sure?"

  "There's nothing in there. It's exactly what it looks like, a small glacial tip without geologic significance. Certainly there are no caves."

  "Then what did we hear, Danny?" Brian's voice was much too smooth.

  Danny, who Ellen surmised was a state-owned geologist, rubbed his left hand against the stubble on his cheek. "I just don't know. Maybe it was a trick of the wind."

  The Speed Graphic began to feel awfully heavy.

  "There's somebody in there," Brian Kelly said. His voice had taken on the low, ominous note of a threatened man. "I can't buy your finding."

  "Well, you have to," the geologist replied blithely. "It's reality."

  Kelly tucked his chin into his chest. "She was in a hollow space. We could hear the echoes."

  "Well, it wasn't in this mound! I'm telling you, there's nothing in it. Zero. Zip. Nada".

  "That's bullshit, Danny."

  "Then dig the goddamn thing up yourself, Doctor! You've got a backhoe here, raze the damn thing."

  Bob West spoke. "Let me ask you a question."

  "One I can answer, certainly."

  "Are you willing to say I should abandon this rescue, given that a woman—a human being just like you or me—could be in there dying in agony? You're that certain?"

  "I can only tell you that my instruments do not support the notion that this mound is anything except what it appears, a pile of broken schist and stone."

  "Come on, Danny," Kelly interjected, "you're dealing with a government surplus echo sounder that was desi
gned for work in water. It's next to useless here. Even a dumb old physicist can tell you that. The resistivity of the soil isn't going to allow a meaningful reading."

  "It's been recalibrated," the young man snarled. "Of course."

  In the motionless air, the mutter of thunder became more defined. Off in the west the dark was thick.

  "I've never liked this place much," the backhoe operator said. He'd been standing at the edge of the group. "Back last month the wife and me was up here and the whole thing sort of shook. It spooked us and we took off."

  The geologist wiped his brow. "Admittedly there's evidence of some earth movement. The schist's probably loose. Changing temperature, degree of dampness—a lot of things can cause small-scale earth movement. Even the Towayda fault could be involved."

  "The woman was screaming," Kelly repeated.

  In support of her husband, Loi Kelly became fierce. "I heard her, too, Danny!"

  Ellen made a mental note never to tangle with this woman.

  "You might as well go ahead and move this equipment out," the young geologist said.

  Brian Kelly roared. "No you won't! You sure as hell will not!"

  Bob looked at him. "I can't get a budget for it if the expert says there's nobody in there."

  "What expert? He was a failure when he was at Ludlum, and he's a failure now. That's why he works for the state!"

  "How dare you!"

  "Hey, Brian, come on. He's still my official expert. He's the guy I've gotta rely on."

  Kelly went up to West, face-to-face. "Somebody's dying in there!"

  "Brian, I don't have enough evidence. And what about the judge—he's already been after us to get out of here. I continue this dig without good cause, I've got a lawsuit on my hands."

  "If there turns out to be a story here," Ellen said to West, "could you please give me a call?" She started off down the mound.

  "Take care," Brian Kelly called after her.

  She waved, and was soon negotiating the dark with the dubious old penlight she kept in the bottom of her purse.

  She was past the halfway point when she felt a sort of lurch. A distinct vibration began pulsing up from the ground. It stopped her dead. "Jesus," she heard herself say.