Fearful Symmetries (38 page)

Not to worry, Melinda said, kids—little kids—saw all kinds of things adults didn’t.

When he and Melinda had exited the bus, Lynch had been struck by the noise, a cacophony of screams, shouts, cracks, and booms, which none of the other passengers appeared to notice.

It filled the air this bright morning, as he and Melinda stepped out of the MG. Per her instructions, he had driven the car to the far end of the parking lot—empty at this early hour—then up the access road that led the short distance to the bluff that overlooked the large dip in the earth. Lynch parked there; though he observed that a dirt version of the road continued down into and across the snowy expanse.

“Well,” Melinda said, “what do you think?”

Lynch couldn’t remember what the name of the battle was. It was part of the larger struggle between the United States Army and the natives of the northern plains that had flared in the decade following the Civil War. Some thirty or forty cavalry had ridden straight into a significantly larger contingent of Lakota and Cheyenne. The physical engagement between the forces was over in less than an hour, and resulted in the devastation of the Army forces. Its place in the history books had been overshadowed by the events at the Little Big Horn, a short while after. Here, however, in this intermediate existence, the battle had not ended. Lakota warriors, their bodies dyed yellow and red, their feathered headdresses streaming behind them, rode their horses between cavalry officers who struggled to draw a bead on them with their long pistols. A handful of soldiers fired their rifles from behind the barricade they had improvised of their dead horses. A trio of Cheyenne warriors shot the soldiers who were attempting to position a pair of small cannons near the top of the slope opposite. Men shouted commands and obscenities. Clouds of gray smoke floated across the ground, over puddles and pools of blood. Holes burst open in men’s heads, their chests, where bullets struck them. Arms, feet, hung dangling from where they’d been shot. Unhorsed Native warriors swung heavy clubs at the soldiers who swung the butts of their rifles at them. Men screamed in exultation and agony. Rifles snapped. The cannons thudded. In ones, twos, more, men died—then continued the battle, rising unwounded to attack one another anew. Above the scene, the smoke gathered in a great knot whose contours suggested a fist.

The first time Lynch had seen this place, had watched the tourists wandering its grounds, blissfully ignorant of the horror continuously unfolding around them, he had demanded an explanation from Melinda. For once, she had answered him directly. Some events, she had said, were sufficiently traumatic that their participants remained caught in them, long after they occurred. War, violence, tended to produce that result. Did that mean these men were trapped here, like this, forever? he’d asked. Melinda had shrugged. They’d been here this long.

The cannons boomed, dirt geysered, and Lynch understood what Melinda was proposing. Here was an army for them to employ. “Would that work?” he said.

“If we could lure it here, maybe.”

“But,” he gestured at the combatants. “It hasn’t stopped any of them.”

“That’s because they’re caught in this event. Bring someone, or something else into it, and the situation becomes a lot more dangerous.”

“What about all of them?” He nodded to the men.

“I suppose it’ll rip most of them to shreds; though the horses might help. I’m not sure how fast the thing can run.”

“What’ll happen to them?”

“They’ll cease to exist,” Melinda said. Before Lynch could voice the objection forming on his lips, she added, “Which is harsh, yes. But is it any more so than what they’re trapped in, now? Who was it said that hell is repetition? What do you think this is for these guys?”

“And who says you get to make that decision?”

“If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

A half-dozen proposals flitted through his mind, each relying on a crucial detail whose impossibility rendered the rest of the plan useless: he and Melinda revealing themselves to the town’s authorities; those men and women understanding and accepting what actually was happening; detonating the fuel tanks of one of the gas stations in the center of town; procuring an M1A1 Abrams tank. He shook his head. He’d already figured out who was going to be leading the beast here, too.

As he turned out of the parking lot, Lynch said, “I’m pretty sure I know what this creature is.”

“A Tyrannosaurus, right?”

He nodded. “T. Rex.”

“It looked different in the movies. Less of those little feathers. What makes you so sure?”

“Science projects. For school: my kids.”

“Huh,” Melinda said. “Okay.”

Science projects
: the words were keys, unlocking the padlocks on a cache of memory. He had helped all of his children with their annual entries for the school science fair, which he recalled describing (to whom?) as the bane of his existence, elaborate posters and models whose design and construction were inevitably delayed until the night before the event. (One of the girls—Katie?—had been somewhat more responsible, beginning her projects a weekend or two early.) Anthony, in particular, had little interest in science proper. Hadn’t Lynch encouraged him to build a basic pulley, and hadn’t he rejected the idea through his apathy towards it? The topics in which his oldest was interested: The Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, Bigfoot, had skirted the edge of legitimate science, to put it mildly, and while Lynch had built models for him in his basement workshop out of Plaster of Paris, he’d done so with a dull annoyance souring the process.

A patch of ice on the road ahead burned phosphorous-bright with sunlight. Lynch squinted and eased off the gas.

The exception had been Anthony’s third grade project, when he had selected dinosaurs as his topic. Lynch had known his son was interested in the great beasts; the enthusiasm appeared general amongst the boys his age. Certainly, Lynch had purchased enough plastic and rubber replicas of the creatures for Anthony to have a plentiful supply with which to populate the diorama they fashioned on Lynch’s workbench. What he hadn’t counted on was Anthony’s passion for actual dinosaurs, which had resulted in his son attaining what seemed to Lynch an encyclopedic level of knowledge of the vanished animals, from their Latin designations to their habits to the precise eras during which the various species had roamed the planet. A pair of figurines he’d assumed showed the same bipedal carnivore did not: the one with the slightly more-developed forelegs was Allosaurus, who had lived tens of millions of years before the larger-headed Tyrannosaurus Rex. Lynch had held Tyrannosaurus up for inspection as Anthony described its six-foot skull, its long jaw lined with six-inch fangs. Believe it or not, Anthony had said, paleontologists weren’t sure if T. Rex hunted its prey, or if it was a gigantic scavenger, like a vulture or hyena.

The monster whose teeth had bit a man in two was Anthony’s Tyrannosaurus, and from the way it had snapped at the men and women fleeing from it, it had no trouble chasing its meals down. “How is this even possible?” Lynch said.

“You do realize the irony of your question,” Melinda said.

“By that logic, this place should be overrun by thousands more creatures like that one. Not to mention, all the animals that have lived here since then.”

The road veered towards the creek, whose surface consisted of thousands of shards of light. Lynch accelerated through the curve.

“Touché,” Melinda said. “From what I understand, the subjectile consists of layers. It’s like the bottom of the sea: things drift down and settle there and, over time, you wind up with this stratified structure. What belongs to a particular era tends to remain at that approximate level, so to speak. There’s some movement possible between levels if they’re relatively close, but beyond a certain, limited range, you’re pretty much stuck where you are.”

“So eventually we’ll become what? Fossilized ghosts?”

Melinda looked away. “Not exactly. It’s more a case of, we’ll be sealed off within our layer.”

“That doesn’t sound much better.”

“Don’t worry about that. What matters is, this is why you haven’t been chased by hordes of hungry velociraptors, or stalked by a saber-toothed tiger.”

“However,” Lynch said, “I have seen more than I would have liked of a Tyrannosaurus.” The things you’d never think you’d say.

“True,” Melinda said. “There are fissures in the subjectile, cracks that extend deep—very deep, in a couple of cases—into it. They’re dangerous—unstable—but if you could navigate one, you might be able to cross a tremendous part of the structure.”

“That would have to be a pretty significant break, for a dinosaur to come up it.”

“There are a couple that go back a ways, and a new one could have formed. It’s also possible the T. Rex found its way along a series of smaller cracks, like a rat solving a maze.”

“What happens if we don’t stop it?”

“It continues to chow down on the living, gaining strength as it does.”

“But eventually, the Army—the modern Army—will come in and blast it.”

“Eventually,” Melinda said. “In the meantime, people continue to die horribly, deprived of any chance of a continuing existence. Even after the Army shows up, depending on when exactly this is, they may find it harder to deal with the thing than they’d expect. By then, the T. Rex will have ingested a lot of energy from its victims, which will tend to make it more resilient.”

“You make it sound like some kind of vampire.”

“That isn’t too far off.”

“That . . .” In front of him, the road wavered, as if a sheet of water had slid over the windshield. Instinctively, he downshifted, tapping the brake as he did. The engine whined at being forced into lower gear. “A . . .”

As clearly as if he was standing beside them, he saw Anthony and his son, Jordan. They were in a narrow room, its walls peach, its floor carpeted (cream), one end occupied by a small bed whose blue frame was the shape of a sports car—Jordan’s bed—they were in Jordan’s bedroom, in the house Anthony and his wife were renting in that village with the French name (Arles? St. Marie? Lyon?). Anthony was lying on the floor, on his left side, his head supported with his left hand. Jordan was sitting across from him, all of his five-year-old’s attention focused on the assortment of toys spread out between them. Lynch saw rows of plastic cowboys and Indians, all cast in the same bright red and yellow. Opposite the figures, a handful of Matchbox cars and trucks lay overturned. Jordan’s small hands gripped a plastic Tyrannosaur that was almost too big for him. It was painted red, with almost fluorescent purple stripes wrapping its back. Between its shoulders, a rectangular button protruded which, when Jordan pressed it in, opened the toy’s mouth and caused it to emit an electronic roar. Anthony held a Matchbox car between the thumb and index finger of his right hand that he drove in circles over the carpet, making revving-engine and squealing-tire sounds as he did. “I’m gonna get you!” Jordan shouted, shaking his dinosaur.

“No way, man,” Anthony said, grinning. “This is an MG, the fastest car ever made.”

“I have T. Rex!” Jordan said. “Rawr! Rawr!”

“MG’s faster than T. Rex,” Anthony said.

“Oh no he isn’t,” Jordan said.

“Oh yes he is,” Anthony said.

“Well—he’s a vampire!” Jordan shouted.

“A vampire?” Anthony said. “Uh oh . . .”

“LYNCH!” Something slapped his right cheek, hard. “We’re in the middle of the freaking road!”

“What?” He turned, and, for a moment, did not know the woman sitting next to him. Face stinging, he closed his eyes, certain that, when he opened them, he would be someplace else: a hospital bed, most likely, wired to a dozen different devices charting his steady decline, surrounded by his wife and children, their faces forecasting the grief due to arrive. But the sight that greeted him was the same as the one he’d left, the woman he knew was Melinda facing him across the interior of the MG whose engine was rumbling away, while the air outside filled with snow.

The expression on Melinda’s features blended concern with irritation. “Whatever’s happening to you,” she said, “can it wait long enough for you to move us out of the path of any oncoming traffic?”

Already, this existence had settled upon him like a cat that rises from your lap, only to position itself there more comfortably. “It’s—I’m fine,” he said, and put in the clutch.

Here the road ran straight through the plains. Had the remainder of the drive to the town been longer, Lynch supposed Melinda might have spent more of it quizzing him about what had happened. As it was, he answered the single question she put to him by saying he’d just remembered something—a memory he didn’t care to discuss, he added—and that seemed to be enough for her. It was far from sufficient for him, in no small part because it wasn’t true. Enough of his life, his previous life, his living life, remained opaque for him not to be sure, but he didn’t think he’d witnessed the scene of Anthony playing with Jordan. It didn’t have the familiar, the comfortable feel of his actual memories. At the same time, some quality of the exchange he’d observed struck him as authentic. Which meant what, exactly? That his son and grandson were aware of the posthumous drama in which he found himself an actor? Or that Lynch was in some way playing out the situation they were enacting? It could be a coincidence, but if so, it was such a one as to push the idea past the point of breaking.

Ahead, on the right-hand side of the road, sat the single trailer that marked the farthermost limit of the town in this direction. Although the snow had picked up, the great rent in its middle was clearly visible. A ribbon of black smoke wound up from the trailer’s interior to the clouds assembling overhead. Lynch slowed, glancing at Melinda.

“There’s no point,” she said. “We know what we’ll find.”

“All right,” he said, “where to, then?”

“The Highway. Maybe someone will have seen something.”

What Melinda called the Highway ran due north out of town. The name was as much metaphor as description. A path wide enough for a half-dozen people to walk abreast, the Highway rode the contours of the land out to a junction that was lost in the distance. An irregular but unceasing flow of people left the town walking the route, most of them finding their way to it from the rest home on the west side. Their ultimate destinations were unknown to Lynch and, so she claimed, to Melinda. It was the Highway that had brought him to this place that, yes, he had mistaken for Heaven, because where else could the journey he’d taken have led? In the days since, he had avoided the path, half-afraid that, were he to stray too close to it, he would be caught by it and find himself embarked on a fresh odyssey.