Elizabeth Hand - 12 Monkeys

Cole let his breath out in a long, low whistle. Kathryn slowed the car to a crawl and looked at him, eyebrows raised. He shrugged sheepishly.

“I thought it was about us.” He began gathering the oddments of paper that made up his clues. “I thought maybe they’d found us and arrested me or something.” Kathryn just stared at him, until Cole finally looked pointedly back out at the narrow road ahead of them.

“Just a joke,” he mumbled.

“So far rescue crews, including Navy sonar specialists, have been unable to determine the location of the boy in the one-hundred-fifty-foot shaft. But a TV sound man who lowered an ultrasensitive microphone into the narrow tubes claims he heard breathing sounds coming from approximately seventy feet down.”

With a disgusted look, Cole punched a button, scanning until he found more music. Kathryn watched him guardedly. The Cherokee bounced down a rutted roadway, past brown, rock-strewn fields where cows grazed lazily on the frost-nipped grass.

“Does that disturb you, James?” she asked at last. “Thinking about that little boy in the well?”

Cole shook his head. He stared out at the cows, his expression unreadable. “When I was a kid, I identified with that kid, down there alone in that pipe. A hundred feet down, doesn’t know if they’re going to save him…”

Kathryn fought the urge to snap at him. “What do you mean, ‘when you were a kid’?”

Cole sighed. “Never mind. It’s not real. It’s a hoax. A prank. He’s hiding in a barn— Hey! ”

He yelled so loudly that Kathryn sent the car careering too far to the right, nearly putting them in a ditch.

“Turn left here! Left! ”

Gritting her teeth, Kathryn eased the car back onto the road, then turned left. In a few minutes they were on a major road once more. An hour later, she eased the Cherokee off the interstate and into Philadelphia’s outer limits. In the distance the city’s spires shimmered in the clear light of a snowless winter morning. Despite the cold, Cole sat beside the open window with the ferocious look of a Rottweiler straining to be loose.

“Okay,” Cole said edgily. He shuffled quickly through pages until he found a small rental car agency map of the city. He puzzled over it, barking directions at Kathryn and pointing down first one industrial alley, then another, until they were cruising through a desolate part of town. A weary line of derelicts sat leaning against a long stone building, empty bottles rolling at their feet. Paper bags and Styrofoam cups rose up desultorily in the chill wind. Kathryn wrinkled her nose; Cole’s open window let in the musty tang of urine, the nasty chemical smell of burning plywood. Ripped posters flapped against abandoned storefronts and rusted street signs. On a corner, a wild-eyed man in the frayed remnants of a terry cloth robe stood waving a paperback Bible.

“IN A SEASON OF GREAT PESTILENCE AND TECHNOLOGICAL HORRORS, OH YES, OH YES! THERE ARE OMENS AND DIVINATIONS!”

The Cherokee slowed nearly to a halt as Kathryn stared out Cole’s window, riveted by the gaunt figure. With his ravaged face and tangled hair and feral eyes, hew as a dead ringer for the man in the engraving that graced the cover of her book. Behind him an emaciated woman squatted on the sidewalk and urinated.

“‘AND ONE OF THE FOUR BEASTS GAVE UNTO THE SEVEN ANGELS SEVEN GOLDEN VIALS FULL OF THE WRATH OF GOD, WHO LIVETH FOR EVER AND EVER!’ REVELATIONS!” Swaying back and forth the man shouted the last word triumphantly, arms raised to the distant blue sky.

“Around here somewhere,” Cole murmured, bringing Kathryn back to earth. “I think if we just—”

Screeeech!

She slammed the brakes, her heart pounding. In front of the car an old man stood with his hands drawn before his face, as though to defend himself from a blow. At his feet a half-empty trash bag billowed, spilling forth its load of empty bottles and cans.

“Christ, I almost nailed him,” Kathryn gasped. “Poor guy.”

She drew a few long even breaths, trying to calm herself as the scavenger gathered his recyclables and dragged the bag to safety.

“Poor!” Cole exclaimed bitterly. “He’s got the sun; he’s got air to breathe. He could get a whole lot poorer.”

Behind them a horn blared. Kathryn looked into the rearview mirror and saw a black BMW zipping around the Cherokee. Almost immediately the BMW braked, its enraged driver leaning out the window and shouting.

“Out of the street, asshole!”

The old man stooped, his face all misery as he picked up a last bottle and the BMW roared past. Cole’s bitterness turned to anger.

“All of you!” he railed, slapping his torn map against the dashboard. “You live in Eden, and you don’t even notice it. You don’t even see the sky. You don’t…”

His voice broke as he let his hand dangle out the window. “You don’t feel sunshine . You don’t taste the fresh water or smell the air.” As the Cherokee inched forward again, his voice became reverent. “You have real sun-grown food . It’s all gonna be gone and — WAIT! STOP! HERE — RIGHT HERE! ”

The Cherokee veered up onto the curb. It crunched to a halt and Cole leapt from the front seat, heading for a graffiti-covered wall. “Come on! ” he yelled without looking back. Kathryn didn’t move, except to reach over and pull Cole’s door shut. Her hand fingered the gear shift, the gas pedal thrummed beneath her foot, but still she remained there, eyes staring straight ahead.

In thirty seconds I can be gone , she thought. In five seconds. There’s got to be a police station around here somewhere, or a pay phone. All I have to do is dial 911 and it’ll all be over …

She turned and watched him, told herself it was so she’d be able to give a good final description to the police. White Caucasian male, late thirties, dressed in stained prison drab that only accentuated his muscular frame, the determined set of his mouth and that pair of haunted eyes …

He stood before the wall of a crumbling building, heedless of the garbage heaped up around his ankles. Hands splayed, he ran his fingers over the filthy moldering bricks, peeling at ragged bits of older posters and peering beneath them with ludicrous concentration. He looked like nothing so much as some dogged archaeologist at the base of a ruined temple, searching for the lost hieroglyph that would prove all his mad theories to be true. Kathryn’s foot tapped the accelerator. The engine growled impatiently, but still she couldn’t leave.

Cole’s frantic searching slowed. His hands moved more carefully, teasing first one poster from the bricks, then another. Kathryn had a glimpse of red graffiti, not even the work of a graffiti artist but a spray-painted stencil, the paint flecked with dirt and bits of paper. Automatically, as though she were sleepwalking, she turned the ignition key to Off, slipped from the car, and walked silently to stand beside him.

“I was right.” His voice shook with emotion. He did not turn to look at her. “ I was right! They’re here! ”

Kathryn stared, first at the wall, then at Cole. Her heart flooded with pity.

Jesus Christ, he’s just completely insane . She stretched a hand to touch him gently on the shoulder, but before she could, he turned.

“See!” he cried ecstatically. His finger stabbed at the filthy brick. “The Twelve Monkeys!”

Kathryn took a breath. “I see some red paint, James. Some marks.”

“Marks? Marks? His voice grew shrill. He ripped down more posters, tossing them aside and looking more frantically beneath. “You think they’re just marks? ”