Elizabeth Hand: 12 Monkeys

In the dream there is thunder, people shouting, the muted hissing of an intercom. High overhead a monitor displays flight times, a picture of smiling children. Twenty yards away a woman kneels on the tiled floor beside a man in a flowered shirt. As the boy watches them, his mother’s hand tightens around his. He can smell his father’s sweat, overpowering his Old Spice aftershave, hear his father’s voice breaking as he yanks him roughly away.

“Come on…”

Then the clatter of running feet, the distant high-pitched beeping of an alarm somewhere in the airport. He stares, refusing to budge, and wrinkles his nose. There is a smell at once oddly familiar yet strange, something he is certain he has never smelled before: salt and scorched metal. For an instant he wonders if it is a dream, has he perhaps forgotten something? But then his father’s voice grows angry, even frightened.

“…come on, this is no place for us.”

As his parents hurry him away, he cranes his head, still transfixed by the kneeling woman. Her spun-candy hair glowing beneath the fluorescent lights, her mouth open as though to receive a kiss, but he thinks no, she is about to scream…

But she doesn’t. Instead her head dips toward the man’s. Even from here he can see tears welling, a small black, streak of mascara. The man sprawled on the floor lifts his hand. He touches her, his fingers leaving small red blooms upon her cheek. Then his hand falls limply across his chest, where more flowers bloom, lush and moist, staining the gaudy Hawaiian shirt red.

“ Flight 784 for San Francisco is now ready for boarding ,” the PA announces. “ Gate number thirty-eight, gate number …”

People are everywhere now. Someone helps the woman to her feet; someone else crouches beside the man on the floor and frantically tears his Hawaiian shirt open. In the distance the boy hears a siren, shouting, the crackle of a security walkie-talkie. His father pulls him roughly around a corner. His mother’s hand nestles in his hair and he can hear her murmuring, more to herself than to him—

“It’s okay, don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay…”

But even then he knew she was lying, that nothing was ever going to be okay again. Even then, he knew he had watched a man die.

He awoke in near-darkness, as he always did. the smells of aftershave and salt faded into a warm stench of unwashed bodies and excrement. Overhead an intercom blared between bursts of static.

“… number 5429, Ishigura. Number 87645, Cole …”

He blinked, confused, running a hand across his face and pushing his lank dark hair from his eyes. “Number 87645…” At the sound of his own number Cole grimaced into full wakefulness, glanced at the bunk cage next to his.

“Hey,” he whispered, “Jose! What’s going on?”

In the other cages people twisted to look at him, their eyes glittering in the dim light. For a moment Jose refused to meet his gaze.

Then, “They said your name, man,” he whispered.

Cole shook his head. “I was asleep,” he said. “I was dreaming.”

“Too bad you woke up.” Jose turned onto his stomach, his elbow grazing the bunk’s metal grille. “They’re lookin’ for volunteers.”

A chill snaked across Cole’s neck. “Volunteers,” he repeated numbly. From the darkened corridor voices echoed, the clatter of boots on broken concrete. Jose bared his teeth in a grin.

“Hey, maybe they’ll give you a pardon, man.”

“Sure,” said Cole. His whole body was cold now, sweat breaking out beneath the thin rough fabric of his uniform. “That’s why ‘volunteers’ never come back; they all get pardoned.”

The voices grew closer. From the metal bunks came the scrape of skin against steel as people twisted and groped for a better vantage point. “Some guys come back,” Jose said hopefully. “That’s what I heard.”

“You mean up on seven?” Cole bared his teeth and thrust a thumb at the low ceiling. “Hiding ‘em up there. All messed up in the head. Brains gone. Crazy.”

“You don’t know they’re all messed up,” Jose said a little desperately. “You ain’t seen ‘em. Nobody’s seen ‘em. Maybe they’re not messed up. That’s just a rumor. Nobody knows that.” His gaze grew dreamy, unfocused. “I don’t believe that,” he insisted in a soft voice.

A glare sliced through the darkness, flashlight beams moving across shaven scalps, mouths with missing teeth. Jose yanked the covers over his face.

“Good luck, man,” he hissed.

Cole blinked as a corona of brilliant light stopped in front of his cage.

“Volunteer duty,” a heavyset guard announced.

“I didn’t volunteer,” Cole said in a low voice. In the other bunks prisoners watched through narrowed eyes.

“You causing trouble again?” the guard snarled.

Cole stared at him, then shook his head. “No trouble,” he murmured. “No trouble at all.”

The cage’s tiny door swung open and Cole scrambled out, the guards grabbing his arms and pulling him roughly to the floor. He walked between them, trying not to see the hundreds of eyes fixed on him, cold and bright as steel bearings, trying not to hear the low epithets and guttural curses, the occasional whispered “Good luck, man,” that followed him through the filthy hallway.

Volunteer duty…

They took him to a part of the compound he had never been in before, walking past endless ranks of cages, through endless corridors without windows or doors. The putrid odor of the bunks dissipated, replaced by stale warm air. The halls grew wider. Doors appeared, most of them yawning into utter darkness. After about fifteen minutes, they stopped in front of a metal wall scabbed with rust and myriad bullet holes.

“Here.” The guard who had first spoken punched in an access code. The door opened and the guard pushed him inside. Cole lurched forward, tripping so that he fell to the floor. With a muted shhh the door closed behind him.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, listening to his heartbeat, the sound of the guard’s footsteps echoing into silence. When at last he tried to stand his legs ached, as though unaccustomed to moving. There was a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. He was in a room so dark he could make out only shadows, the angular bulk of machinery and coils of wire, and what looked like pipes hanging from the ceiling.

“Proceed,” a voice commanded. Cole looked around until he found its source, a tiny grate in a wall.

“Proceed what?” he demanded.

“Proceed,” the voice repeated, this time with a hint of menace.

Cole carefully walked across the dim room, trying not to stumble. He had almost reached the far side when he halted, holding his breath.

Against the wall loomed a line of pale figures, ghostlike, their eyes huge and blank. Cole stared at them, then let his breath out in a sigh of relief: they were neither ghosts nor interrogators but suits. Space suits, or contamination suits, each with a helmet and plastic visor. Beneath them were rows of oxygen tanks, boxes containing flashlights, plastic tubes and bottles, heavy industrial gloves, maps.

“Proceed,” the voice from the grate repeated.

He fumbled through the suits until he found one that looked as though it might fit. He shrugged it on, the material pulling snugly across his barrel chest, then struggled with the zipper.