The Forbidden Zone

by Whitley Strieber

  "Would you look at that," Bob said, snapping Brian's train of thought. He was peering into the rearview mirror.

  "Oh, beautiful," Brian replied dutifully. A brand new Dodge Viper was closing from behind. It was bright red, being driven by a cross between Nick Nolte and Cary Grant. Beside him sat the goddess Venus. Cars normally bored Brian, but this one was remarkable.

  "Is that a vision or is that a vision," Bob said. He loved fine cars. He had an Austin-Healey he'd been rebuilding for years, but it was nothing like this. Chrysler's new competitor to the Corvette was the hottest car to come out of Detroit in thirty years.

  "How fast are they going?"

  Bob sped up so they wouldn't pass, paced them ahead. "Seventy-one. Nope, now they're slowing down. They've noticed the livery."

  As the Viper dropped back, Bob slowed even more. Soon they were alongside. The car was all mean angles and seductive curves. To him its engine sounded like fabulous sex.

  He peered down into the leather interior, looking directly at the perfect lap of the woman. "Oh, man, short-shorts." As he watched, the girl turned her young face and smiled at him. Then she made motions. She wanted him to roll down his window. He complied. She yelled, but he couldn't hear her over the throbbing engine.

  "Say again," he shouted down at her.

  "... setups..." was all he got. But it was enough. He knew what they wanted.

  Brian looked over at him. He'd heard, too. "You gonna tell her?" If Bob found out the location of the radar units ahead on the highway and told the Viper, he and Brian were going to get a chance to see what it could do.

  "What the hell, let's find out." He went to the radio. Dispatch gave him the location of the next radar trap, a single unit at the one-six-zero mile marker.

  They were still running parallel to the Viper. "They're at the one six zero!"

  The driver saluted. He had thirty-one miles of clear road. "This is gonna be fun," Bob said.

  "Is it legal?"

  Bob laughed. "Course not." At that instant he noticed the driver's arms. They were jointless like snakes, and long, monstrously so, curving around the cockpit, looping down into the foot well. And the hands—long, muscular fingers that ended in black claws. "Goddamn! Can you see the guy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Look at his arms!"

  Brian strained, but he couldn't see that far into the vehicle. Bob swung the Blazer toward the center of the lane but the Viper accelerated. As it did he caught a last glimpse of the girl. Now the pretty face seemed entirely changed. It was nothing but cheap plastic, something you buy in a dime store. It was cheap, painted plastic, and behind the dark eyes there were things glittering and rushing, as if the mask concealed a seething mass of bugs.

  "Oh, fuck, Brian, look at that!"

  Even though it had started at nearly seventy miles an hour the Viper was pulling swiftly away.

  "It's a beautiful thing to see, Bob."

  Bob hardly heard the words. His blood was rushing in his temples, his heart was rattling in his chest. That man had the arms of a—a—he didn't know what. And the girl—he'd wanted her, tasted her in his mind.

  His stomach heaved; he only had seconds before it went on him. Swerving across the lanes, he caused a Lexus jammed with elderly ladies in designer hair to bleat its angry horn.

  "Jesus Christ, Bob!"

  He couldn't talk, all he could do was pull onto the shoulder. With little more than a glance back at the onrushing traffic, he stumbled out of the vehicle. Before he could get off the highway, his stomach turned inside out. A second later a UPS thirty-six-wheeler came blasting past, its airhorns blaring. Bob grabbed the door of the Blazer, choking as he swayed in the rig's slipstream.

  Then he was out of control again, his whole insides seeming to twist against themselves, as if a fist was opening and closing in his guts.

  Brian piled out and then he was holding him, lifting him from his helpless crouch. "What's the problem, buddy?"

  Bob peered down the road. The Viper was half a mile away and going like the wind. "Did you see?"

  "What?"

  "They were—" But what could he say? He couldn't tell anybody what he'd seen, not even Brian. If one word of it got back to the Department, he'd be put on psychiatric report. He steadied himself against the hood of the truck. He was a state police officer in uniform, he could not reveal weakness like this in view of the public. People would assume he'd been drinking.

  Another car passed, its horn blaring. He hopped back into the cab. "Too much cheap breakfast," he said as Brian joined him on the other side.

  "You have eggs sunny side up?"

  "Always. Good for the heart."

  "Maybe it was salmonella You can get that from soft-cooked eggs nowadays."

  Off in the distance Bob could just make out the Viper, a dot on the horizon. Then it was gone. He had recovered himself enough to want to find out what the hell was going on in that car. He picked up the mike, thumbed it live. "This is unit two-two-eight on a detail passing marker one niner zero. We just had a red Dodge Viper through here at about warp speed. He's moving north, and moving is the word."

  There was a click, some static. "We hear you and we appreciate," came an unfamiliar voice. The way troopers were shifted around these days, Bob wasn't surprised that he didn't know the voice from the radar car.

  "You shouldn't rat on the guy." Brian remained completely unaware of what Bob had seen.

  "Come off it. He's doin' a buck fifty at least. That qualifies as abusing the privilege."

  Brian laughed. "You guys are all the same. Traitors to the core."

  As he drove, Bob's stomach slowly settled. He began to think about maybe a cup of tea to complete the process.

  "You sure you're OK, buddy?" Brian asked.

  "You ever do lucy?"

  "A couple of times. I saw Puff the Magic Dragon in a phone booth, as I recall."

  "Ever flash back?"

  "Nope."

  "Well, I think maybe I just did. In that Viper—hell, I thought I saw—" He managed to chuckle a little. "The damn chicken!"

  "What chicken?"

  "The one that laid the egg that made me sick!" They both laughed. "Lookin' for a Dunkin' Donuts," Bob added.

  "I don't believe it, you just don't quit."

  "A cruller and a cup of tea'd set me up just right."

  In Vietnam he'd dropped acid until it was coming out of his pores. He'd had to, he had a death job as commanding officer of a Long Range Infiltration and Intelligence unit. He'd take his squad of specially trained men deep into the jungle for patrols lasting a week, two weeks, three. Charlie hid rice in holes, but he and his men had no holes. Charlie had underground field hospitals, like the kind of place where poor Loi had worked. They even had field kitchens down there. Bob had stayed alive by eating water rats and sucking pond scum.

  The funny thing was, acid had never tripped him out back then. His stress level had been so great that it had worked as a kind of tranquilizer. It made colors prettier, it smoothed over the cellulite on the thighs of Saigon whores. When the sun hit his face when he was on acid, he felt the subtle and deeply comforting presence of some greater force, some deity.

  Maybe it was Brian's mere presence that had set off the flashback. His best friend getting a VC wife—could you beat that? She'd worked in the Chu Chi tunnels. After his stint in intelligence, he'd spent four months tunnel-busting, which meant blowing them closed and then pumping them full of napalm. To drown out the horrible sounds from below, they'd screamed their throats raw.

  At first he'd thought he would hate Loi, then that he would be unable to face her.

  Part of him was still at war, would always be at war. But then the two couples would sit down to a bridge game, and his heart would touch deep feelings of respect and friendship for Loi. Because it had given him these feelings, the war had come to seem in a curious way blessed.

  He searched the horizon for the familiar Dunkin' Donuts sign. Tea and a cruller were his original comf
ort foods.

  There was nothing at the next exit, meaning that he had to put down another eleven miles before relief.

  They drove those miles without saying so much as a word. Brian never pushed anyone to talk, it wasn't his style, hadn't been since Mary died. Before that, he'd jabber physics until your ears dropped off. The friendship had sort of knocked along in those days. Brian had gone through the war on a student deferment, and Bob really resented that. Then he'd resented all the fancy professors hanging out at Kelly Farm, and been rankled along with the rest of Oscola by the way Brian let those fine Kelly orchards go.

  But he'd come back to them, hadn't he, in the end?

  The minutes crept past. Would the radar unit stop the Viper? Sure they would, even if they didn't get it on the gun. Just to remind the guy that this wasn't the friggin' Sahara around here.

  Finally the exit showed up, and it had everything—a Roy Rogers, a McDonald's and a local place called the Franklin Inn and— praise the Lord—a Dunkin' Donuts. Bob went for tea with milk and two crullers, what the hell, he'd work it off later. Brian got the coffee with milk that he always drank.

  Just past mile marker one-six-zero they spotted the radar unit. "Nicely hidden," Brian commented. "Cunning bastards."

  Bob slowed down. "The better to get your ass with, civilian scum."

  "That's how you guys feel, I know it."

  The crullers were hitting Bob's stomach like a load of bowling balls. Maybe this was a combo flashback and stomach flu situation. Be just his luck.

  Twenty yards down from the radar unit, Bob pulled over. They got out and walked up to the car. "You get that Viper?" Bob asked.

  The station man looked up at him. "Never came through."

  "Never came through at all?"

  "Nah. Musta taken the Corey Lake exit."

  Bob concealed the rush of emotion that this caused. He'd wanted to hear that the people in the car were wearing masks or something. That would put the whole thing to bed. But now he was just going to have to suffer.

  They drove on. From time to time he glanced over at Brian, then stuck his nose down into his tea. No way could he afford to go crazy, he had kids at home.

  He was glad when they reached Towayda and he could get his mind off LSD and weirdness, even if it was only to think about whether or not a horrible crime had been done here.

  They drove down Towayda's main street. "Quiet this morning," Brian commented.

  "Damn quiet." There wasn't even a car in front of the grocery store. "There isn't a soul."

  "Well, you're a cop. What gives?"

  "Fishing? Hunting? A mass migration to Atlantic City? I have no idea"

  They passed through the town and headed toward the frowning Mount Jumper ridges. Bob had never much liked Mount Jumper itself, it was too rough and raw. People fell off, got themselves busted all to hell. The name had been conferred when an entire tribe of Algonquin Indians had thrown themselves to their deaths rather than accept captivity.

  As the Blazer moved along, the ridges were arrayed north to south like a wall. The somber green of the pine forest opened every few miles to a rock face.

  As they reached the summit of the Jumpers the views appearing below could not have been prettier: green fields, long stretches of forest, undulating hills. But just beside the road there was a brutal cliff. Dangling from it like a pretty spider was a girl in bright red shorts. For a long moment they both gazed at this apparition. She was hanging in her climbing gear eating a sandwich.

  Brian noticed that Bob had gotten dead quiet. As they ascended into the Jumpers, the road narrowed and became pitted with potholes. Finally the pavement gave out and Bob stopped briefly to shift the truck into four-wheel drive.

  The road was now just a track enclosed by dark pines. And up ahead, through those pines, they could see the winking red of light bars.

  Seven

  I.

  Bob hit his own light bar and accelerated. Three minutes later they pulled into the tiny parking area near the Traps. Two trooper cars were standing parked with their doors still open. Beside them was an ambulance marked TOWAYDA RESCUE. But for the clicking of light bars, the silence was total.

  They went off along the path to the Traps, moving as quickly as they could on the steep path. Around them the woods lived according to their own slow meaning. They were dark, black and silent. A man who grew up with the woods might enjoy what they could give him, but sentiment was for city people.

  The path wound down, deeper and deeper into a rocky, forest-choked crevasse. It was in this sort of place that the desperate Algonquins had hidden, and eventually met their deaths.

  The thick trees gave way to huge rocks jutting up on either side of the path, giving the sense that they had entered some vast, half-finished temple. But it wasn't beautiful: the sharp, jutting edges, the hard angles, the gray stone, made it a cruel place.

  Then the crevasse widened, and suddenly what had been simply big became awesome. Enormous boulders, like prehistoric monoliths, stood every thirty or forty feet. And it became clear why the place was called the Traps: it was possible to get lost in the labyrinth, maybe for a long time... and if you wandered off a bluff, then it would be forever.

  They moved carefully among the columns of stone. Only dim light penetrated, and the odor of mildew was strong. There was also another odor and Bob knew instantly what it was: human blood, lots of it. He had smelled it in Vietnam. He smelled it at the sites of bad accidents.

  "Hello," Bob called. Now that they were among the stones, it was impossible to tell which way to go. The ground was softened by a layer of decaying pine bristles which muffled sounds and sprang back into footprints, meaning that any path would disappear in minutes.

  A trooper burst around one of the huge stones. There was blood on his hands, his shirt was sticking to his body, his face running with sweat. "We got her half out," he gasped. Brian and Bob traded looks. The fact that somebody had been found here meant, also, that somebody had been in the mound.

  Deeper and deeper, they followed the trooper in among the columns of stone. Now the silence was absolute. Not even wind penetrated this place.

  Then they saw her. Brian made a low, trembly noise. Bob simply sucked in breath.

  Brian had never seen anybody so wounded. She was covered from head to torso with bruises, cuts and scrapes. She looked worse than the raw, dripping ninety percenters on the burn ward. She was still half-buried in the earth.

  "What happened to her arms?" Bob asked. They were dark blue and narrow, the skin tight. They looked rubbery and jointless, as if the bones had turned to pulp. He was reminded of the arms of the man in the Viper.

  But no, that was impossible, he told himself. What he'd observed in the Viper was a flashback, pure and simple.

  Then he saw her eyes. His hand came up to his chin, he sucked breath. But he did not cry out, he fought it back just in time.

  Those eyes were vividly aware, darting from face to face. The irises were invisible, the pupils huge and black. The whites were ash gray. Her eyes almost didn't look like... eyes. Not normal eyes.

  "Can you hear me?" Bob asked.

  "She won't respond," one of the troopers said.

  "What's wrong with her?" Brian wanted to cradle her, to somehow make it better.

  "It's some kind of compression injury," one of the rescue squad men replied. "We need to know more."

  Her lips moved and she made a small internal racket. Her voice sounded like somebody was burning leaves in her guts. She looked to Brian as if she had to be dead, and yet she was not only alive, she was still conscious.

  Bob, who was now the senior officer present, went down on one knee. "Ma'am?"

  There was a sort of response, a crackle.

  "What happened to you, ma'am?"

  Silence.

  "Ma'am, try to tell me."

  The torso writhed, the face softened, the eyelids flickered, the teeth appeared behind half-parted lips. Her expression was unmistakable. Inexplica
bly and horribly, whatever she was remembering was bringing her great pleasure.

  "We want to help you, ma'am," Bob repeated. "What did this to you?"

  "Purple..."

  "Yes? Purple what?"

  The lips quivered, the eyes rolled. "Ma'am?" There was no further response. "Where was she, in a cave?"

  "She's stuck in the fuckin' dirt like a grub-worm!"

  The eyes were moving again. Now the chief medic tried to get through. "Lady, can you hear me?" The eyes didn't slow down, the voice didn't even crackle. "She's out to lunch," he said. He looked around. "We gotta get her out."

  They withdrew her from the earth with a sighing pop, as if she'd been a giant cork, tightly jammed. A congealing gel of blood coated the hole.

  She began spitting and gyrating when the medics tried to put her on their portable stretcher. It was a hideous thing to see, like watching a corpse move. The skin was so dead, and giving off a rotted meat smell, that Bob found it almost impossible to believe that they were seeing life here. But the damn eyes were still going, moving like crazy, and the spray of her spit was colored rose by blood.

  The medics finally got her onto their stretcher, strapped her down and covered her. They lifted her and moved off, with the troopers giving assist.

  Flushed and sweating, the chief medic hung back. "What do I tell them in ER? How did the injuries to her limbs come about?"

  He was ignored by the flustered young troopers. But he had a job to do, so Bob swung into action. He reached out, grabbed one of them on the shoulder. "Answer the question."

  The kid turned on him, his face gone white with fury. "We don't fucking know! She was screaming like hell and we dug toward the screams. Then we see hair, we get her face free, two hours later we got what you see. Until ten minutes ago, she was totally unconscious. For the first hour, we thought she was in a coma."

  The medic's face tightened. He wanted to help her, too, but he couldn't do his best unless he knew more. "Her legs and arms— it's not a familiar pattern of trauma."

  The trooper glared into his swimming eyes. "She's been in the fucking ground, packed as tight as a goddamn rock! Look, I don't know what the hell this is. You said it yourself—compression injury. Put that down on your damn form!"