Grand Junction

by Maurice G. Dantec

  He says: “You will do exactly what we tell you to do. You will do everything we tell you to do. And you will do it without ever raising the slightest objection.”

  And he says: “I think they’re trying to trap us. But their trap is going to close on them.”

  Then he adds, in conclusion: “You will act exactly as you planned with Pluto, exactly as you just told me. You will keep quiet about the fact that the Convoy is back; if he questions you on the subject, be evasive. Say it’s somewhere in the Notre Dame Mountains. I’m not even going to tell you what we’re doing. You will be as surprised as the others. And don’t take that as a punishment—it’s for your protection, just in case.”

  Link de Nova stares at his feet, his face scarlet with embarrassment and shame. Campbell will never forgive him for this mistake, obviously, but even though he knew he was breaking an ironclad rule set down by the man from Aircrash Circle, he had sincerely believed that by helping Pluto’s “clients” in their absence he was only continuing the mission. The war against the Thing.

  “That’s the kind of feeling that a man like Pluto knows how to play on,” says Campbell. “He’s almost four times your age, and he’s from Junkville. You’re like a minnow and he, with his inoffensive front, is the crocodile. What I’d really like to know, actually, is who he’s working for. Has he told you about other possible clients besides the two young people from New Arizona and the guy from tonight?”

  “He told me there was a request, yes. That we would do another operation the day after tomorrow.”

  The iciness in Campbell’s eyes is approaching absolute zero. “He probably didn’t think we’d get back so fast.”

  He turns to Yuri. “Let’s go back to Aircrash Circle. We have to get ready for tonight.”

  Yuri can read the message in his gaze perfectly: Let’s get some rest, because tonight we might have to kill some more men.

  They are back in the Territory, but, even more, the Territory is back in them.

  “I can’t believe Link could do something so stupid,” remarks Yuri.

  The night is clear. Out the Airbus windows of Chrysler’s cabin, he watches the furtive flight of a group of predatory birds searching for their nocturnal victims. They seem like extensions of the night itself, and of the terrible light it carries within it. Nature, even denatured, remains like the hidden model of the Territory. We are the night birds of Grand Junction. We see by starlight, and we kill in the darkness as if it were broad daylight.

  Chrysler is carefully cleaning their guns; he kept silent all during the voyage home. His eyes are still cold, as if nothing can melt the ice in them. Nothing. Except the deaths of a few men, maybe, guilty if possible.

  “Link’s twelve years old,” he replies. “He’s a smart boy, but he isn’t immune to simple trickery. It’s that fucking Pluto Saint-Clair who’s going to have a very bad time of it, believe me.”

  “And his client?”

  “His client? I’ll fuck him up more than you can possibly imagine.”

  “But what are you going to do?” asks Yuri, slightly anxiously.

  Campbell’s smile is the very smile of the Territory.

  “That will depend on him. You know that as well as I do.”

  Better to let the glacial silence of the Territory night back up this statement. There is nothing more to say, any more than there would be to a group of birds of prey.

  “How does the sheriff know about it?”

  “One of his deputies, Erwin Slovak, followed Link de Nova one night. He left HMV County and went to one of our usual meeting points, near Lake Champlain, where Pluto was waiting for him. That’s the night he healed the two boys from New Arizona. Langlois wanted to wait for our return to tell us, and do whatever is necessary about it. He did well to wait; we’ll deal with this business.”

  “And what do we do about the two teenagers?”

  “I’ll see tomorrow. According to his description I’d say they’re nomads, and if that’s the case they’ve already left the Territory. That would be lucky. Lucky for them, I mean.”

  Yes, thinks Yuri, watching the smile—neither good nor evil—that crosses Chrysler’s face. Their only chance is to have left the Territory, or to do it fast, before Campbell can find them.

  Their only chance is to put as much distance as possible between them and us.

  We are the Camp Doctors.

  If we can’t induce amnesia, we might very well move on to euthanasia.

  Back to the ultraviolet sky and the artificial night of the binoculars; back to the hypernight of invisible rays. Campbell has perfectly established the strategy they will follow—one truly fit for nocturnal birds of prey, ending with them melting into the darkness below.

  Whether the prey is mobile or stationary, they must contain it. Whether it is a dangerous carnivore or an inoffensive and fragile creature, they must dominate it with a single blow.

  Whether it is running somewhere on a vast prairie, through the sands of a desert, or up the side of a mountain, the Territory will be laid bare—because from the sky, no place can be seen in any way other than as a flat surface for the hunter to examine.

  The hunter begins in the prey’s territory. The hunter begins by making it his own. The hunter remains invisible because he has become the prey’s territory.

  Okay, let’s go, ultraviolet sky, black night, starfire. Back to the artificial day, the dark noon of killers.

  “Concentric circles. Starting at two opposite points. We’ll hide the car a kilometer to the west, far away from the main access road they will arrive by. I’ll bring the camouflage tarp. Then, on foot toward our departure zone. We’ll begin in the surrounding areas; two hundred, two hundred and fifty meters. You to the south, me to the north. We’ll go inward, in opposing directions, so that we’ll pass each other regularly, and so we can make sure nobody’s hiding anywhere. We’ll go over the whole area with a fine-toothed comb. Then we take our positions and we wait.”

  The night will be black, very black. Ultrablack. It will be their night. The Camp Doctors are back. It will be a surgical operation. One worthy of the Territory.

  It is often in the most dangerous situations that harmless details hit you in the face, more forcefully than an antipersonnel mine.

  For the first time since their return to the Territory, Yuri notices the mingled presence of sand and snow in indistinct masses, scattered everywhere. He remembers seeing the same thing in the areas around Heavy Metal Valley and Aircrash Circle, but at the time he paid no attention to it. He also remembers that during their departure for the Gaspé he had noticed the simultaneous arrival of an Arctic blizzard and a sandstorm coming from the Midwest. The two opposing air masses can’t have collided directly above the Territory, or there would be more obvious damage. That must have happened farther east, toward New Hampshire. The storm they had encountered in the Estrie was probably born of the head-on smash between the two antinomic “supercells.”

  But traces are visible just the same, including in the thick woods in this part of Champlain Banks, which means that the phenomenon happened again. Which means that it will happen again—and this time the Territory won’t be spared.

  There is nothing out here. Forest. Brush. Rampant weeds and wild grasses, thistles, nettles, Canadian goldenrod, buckthorn, euphorbia, wild mustard, Cornus canadensis, poison sumac, and the spiny offshoots of chaparral. The mirrorlike surface of Lake Champlain a hundred meters away. Mounds of mixed snow and sand. The varied trees of the Territory: pines, lodgepoles, beeches, acacias, cedars, maples, and palms. He fights his way through the vegetal curtain using his long Gurkha knife as a machete. He sees Campbell twenty meters away and gives him the thumbs-up; then he continues along his own path, his own circle.

  He can see the slender shape of a Nordic python curled around the thick bough of a maple tree; its concentric central rings, swollen by the digestion in progress of some woodland mammal, are the only mobile part of it. Its red and yellow colors are unmistakable. Far
ther away, in the top branches of a red pine, he can see the virginal white of two albino macaws; the eyes of a Strix Americanis gleam through the foliage like two topaz disks. When he rounds an old beech tree, partially rotted where it stands, the trunk scored by ringworm and various amanitas, his movement provokes the sudden flight of a group of wood bats, who flee, shrieking with one voice, into the tops of the trees. He sees Campbell gesturing to him urgently, indicating that he should keep silent.

  He is armed with his Sig Sauer and the Beretta assault rifle left to him by the soldier-monk. Campbell has opted for his U.S. Army pistol and his Winchester semiautomatic.

  They circle their target, slowly, calmly, scrutinizing each square meter of terrain, searching for any suspicious trace or, more simply, for other men.

  Neither Yuri nor Chrysler finds anything suspect, or any other men.

  They quickly take up their posts to wait for the people they came for.

  The night is blacker than ever. A perfect night for birds of prey.

  Then everything is so simple, so quick, so clean.

  As binary as an electric switch. On/off.

  Before/after.

  Certainty/doubt.

  Trust/fear.

  Life/death.

  Standing. On your knees.

  Talking, full of life, because hope is finally within your grasp. Obligated to shut up, the barrel of a gun pressed against your temple, knowing that all hope has just been destroyed.

  On/off. Digital. Like the black night and the ultraviolet sky.

  “You, Pluto,” says Yuri. “I advise you to stay very calm, place your hands on your head, and get down on your knees like your friend just did. You, Link, stay seated on the hood of your quad; please don’t move. You are not part of this situation.”

  And Campbell adds to the man who raises his hands slowly to the back of his neck: “You will be the first one.”

  Campbell knows the entire language of fear. The man instinctively bows his head, squares his shoulders, clenches his fingers until the knuckles turn white.

  Chrysler allows a few seconds for the nail to be hammered into the coffin, then says:

  “You will be the first one to answer some questions.”

  He places the barrel of his Winchester lightly on the back of the man’s neck.

  “My patience tends to run out pretty fast. When I’ve asked a question for the second time, that’s generally the limit. And when my patience has reached its limit, my finger presses on the first metal object within its reach. So I’m going to ask you some questions, and you would do well to answer them the first time, because if you don’t I guarantee that one of my twelve cartridges will prevent you from being buried with your head, which will have disappeared like a watermelon in a wood chipper. Do you understand me, hombre?”

  The man turns toward Campbell slightly, just enough to say, nodding his head, “Yes, I understand.”

  And Yuri feels his heart lurch violently as he recognizes the man.

  Campbell begins the interrogation, but Yuri is no longer listening; he can’t hear anymore; he has shifted to another channel of reality. The channel of consequences and causes. The channel of potential catastrophes.

  Until now, the situation was serious. It has now become a true disaster.

  Yuri stares into Pluto’s eyes and sees fear in them. He answers with an expression of pure disdain. Then he coldly informs Chrysler that the situation is much worse than they imagined.

  Chrysler glances at him frostily. “By ‘situation,’ I assume you mean this man.”

  Yuri takes a deep breath. It is up to him, now, to announce the imminent arrival of the cataclysm.

  “Yes. It’s him. The man in the Buick.”

  Now the ultraviolet night has fallen on everything, isolating this small piece of the Territory from the rest of humanity.

  The fire of the stars shines for each of them, and for each it has reserved its own particular combustion.

  “Bravo, Pluto. You really know how to behave. This is the man with the red Buick, a piece of shit from Little Congo, the guy who’s been following us for weeks. Thanks to you and your delusions of personal grandeur, he has found us. You’re nothing but a worthless bastard; you let yourself be manipulated like a little girl. But I’ll deal with you later.”

  The language of fear. That language that writes itself in the body. Yuri reads the alphabet in Pluto’s face, and in his smallest movements—reflexes, expressions. Down to the pallid color of his face, shiny with cold sweat.

  Campbell turns back to the man at whom his weapon is pointing.

  “You must see, Mr. Vegas Orlando, that now we’re going to have to resume our little interview from a slightly different angle.”

  And he strikes the man a violent blow to the side of the head with the butt of his gun. Yuri can see the blood trickling in fine bluish lines through his binoculars.

  The night is very, very black. The night is interrogatory black. It is a dungeon of a night. An ultrablack night.

  A lake, underbrush, a dusty road, the sky and the stars. Four men, one boy. Two men armed; two men on their knees. The boy is just an observer of the whole thing.

  The night is interrogatory black, Gestapo black, NKVD black, CIA black. It is the pirated recording, the clandestine listening station, the secret file. It is Chrysler Campbell and James Vegas Orlando. And Madam Winchester SX3, who has just placed a cold kiss on the neck of the man on his knees.

  It is the night that speaks:

  “Very well; we’ll start over from the beginning. Start with your first contact with Pluto Saint-Clair—and don’t try to feed me any bullshit about meeting in Vortex Townships. I’ve filled whole cemeteries with jokers like you.”

  The silence of the night, a few instants too long.

  “I would prefer not to have to ask you again. I think you’ve understood me.”

  “I’ve been using him as a spy.”

  “Yes, like you spied on all of us in Carbon City. Why Pluto?”

  “You—we couldn’t pin you down, and we wanted to move faster. One night, I was able to follow Pluto here and I saw the trade they were running—the boy on the quad bike and the two teenagers from New Arizona. I saw guitars.”

  Campbell looks at Link de Nova, sitting on his Suzuki in front of two long black-and-tawny electric guitars lying side by side on the still rain-wet earth, like offerings.

  “I understand. So you followed Pluto and you saw the trade. But your words have given you away; you said ‘we.’ You’ve said it more than once, so it isn’t just a slip of the tongue. Who is ‘we’?”

  A few seconds of silence, but this time the man starts speaking again just before Campbell can remind him—with the butt of his gun—of the rules of the game.

  “I hired some guys to flesh out the investigation, but they didn’t turn up anything on you, so we concentrated our research on Pluto Saint-Clair.”

  Yuri and Campbell exchange a glance full of the Territory’s secrets. The men on Row 299. Vegas Orlando’s little soldiers. He doesn’t seem to know that they’re dead, that Yuri wiped them out.

  In fact, he doesn’t seem to know a lot of things. But there is at least one thing he does know.

  The most important thing.

  “Okay. Very interesting. You’re rising in our estimation, Mr. Orlando. Now I’m going to ask you a crucial question, and it will not tolerate the slightest bending of the rules I’ve laid out for you. Understood?”

  “Understood perfectly.”

  “Excellent. Who are you working for?”

  The seconds are stars whose fire shines in the night.

  This time, the standard delay is exceeded by a great deal.

  “I’m going to be nice and ask the question a second time without killing you first. Now, who are you working for?”

  “I … I don’t know what you’re talking about; I swear.”

  “Too bad.”

  The ultraviolet night has fallen on this part of the Territory, an
d the ultra-black night is Campbell’s friend. It is very simple, very fast, very clean.

  The butt of the gun hits the man’s other cheek, hard. He gives a groan of pain and falls heavily on his side, then gets shakily back up on his knees, prodded by the pressure of the Winchester’s barrel. Again, thin geysers of bluish blood spurt in Yuri’s binoculars.

  “Don’t mistake me for a fool, Mr. Orlando. I know you by name; I know you wouldn’t have the means to conduct a wide-scale search in the Territory, or even in Junkville. Someone has to be helping you. And I want to know the name of your … associate.”

  A moment of silence, shot through with vibrations that could contain an eternity.

  “I … if … if I tell you, will you let me live?”

  The man gasps like an animal being tracked by a nocturnal predator. He’s right, thinks Yuri; it would be better if he knew how to run very fast, with Campbell at his heels.

  The night is ultrablack. The time to make a deal with death has come. The moment of truth—the moment of betrayal.

  “How can I know you’re telling the truth, for starters?”

  “I … I’ll give you all the details … listen, I’ll tell you everything, and I’ll get out of the Territory within forty-eight hours. Anyway, my life won’t be worth a drop of gasoline once I tell you his name.”

  “Your life is already pretty far down on the list. You’d better decide.”

  And Campbell gently presses the barrel of his gun into the man’s neck. It is as if he has heaved a sigh of impatience mingled with resignation. Yes, the night is surely interrogatory black.

  “They say the exception proves the rule. For the third and very last time, who are you working for? You have three seconds before I pulverize your head. One … two …”

  “I … I work for a man from Little Congo.”

  “Good; you know how to count to three. Who is this man? Another pimp? What is his name?”

  “He isn’t a pimp. He’s a surgeon, an autotransformist, a refugee from Neon Park.”