Warren Murphy: Sweet Dreams

The first student showed up ten minutes later. Donleavy was on his fifty-fifth cigarette. As the room filled up, no one paid him any notice. The young face, cigarettes, steel rims, and Army jacket made him one of them.

Wooley showed up twenty minutes later. He was wearing a short-sleeved yellow shirt, open at the neck, with double knit blue slacks.

As Wooley came through one of the back exit doors the 300 students stood and cheered. None of them knew exactly why, but they had heard that Wooley last night had somehow embarrassed Lee (Woody) Woodward at a conference, and anybody who had done that rated a cheer.

Wooley looked as if the cheers were only his normal due upon entering a classroom. The lecture began, and Donleavy thought that Wooley was a pretty good instructor. Sharp facts peppered with personal observations and experience. Occasionally, a humorous anecdote to illustrate a point. But after fifteen minutes, Donleavy could no longer hear. The chanting had grown too loud. All he could hear was "Kill for us."

He heard the voices. He saw Wooley standing in the front of the room. He felt the weight of the object under his jacket. Sweat appeared on his forehead. The saliva built up in his mouth and he swallowed it. He pulled on a pair of black leather gloves.

"Kill for us;" Donleavy looked at his watch. "Kill for us." It was twenty-five minutes into the lecture. All the other classes in the building would have been started by now. "Kill for us." The hallways would probably be empty. "Kill for us."

Donleavy stood up in his seat. A few heads turned toward him, then looked away, toward one of the side doors. The faint buzz in the room vanished away into silence. Entering through one of the hall's side doors was Lee (Woody) Woodward, director of college affairs. His hair was a white thicket around his reddened face. His clothes were wrinkled and baggy. His pants were stained dark at the crotch.

T.B. Donleavy did not see him. He was walking down the aisle toward Wooley who was now writing on the blackboard. Donleavy heard a sound. He turned as the students yelled, and Lee (Woody) Woodward ran by him. Woodward pulled a pistol from his jacket pocket and shouted, "You bastard. You ruined me. You bastard."

As Wooley turned, Woodward raised his pistol to fire at him.

Donleavy saw the revolver in the man's arm and as the arm raised, Donleavy reached under his Army jacket, pulled out a medieval mace, and smashed it down across Woodward's arm. The revolver dropped harmlessly to the carpeted floor of the lecture hall. The students cheered, but choked on their cheer as Donleavy raised the mace up over his head and smashed it down, deep into Woodward's skull.

The look of gratitude on Wooley's face as Donleavy had saved him from the shooting changed into a look of horror. And then there was no look at all as the metal spikes on Donleavy's mace ripped off Wooley's face.

The first swing was right to left, splattering Wooley's face on the floor and left wall. The second swing was a vicious backhand stroke from left to right, pushing part of Wooley's head into a red spiraling arc, some splattering students in the first two rows.

The quick first swings held the body upright. The third and last swing was up over Donleavy's head and came whistling down to cleave Wooley's head. Bone and brain bubbled up onto the carpeted floor and over the mace which had become a semi-permanent fixture on the neck of the late William Westhead Wooley.

T.B. Donleavy left it there and ran out the nearest exit door. He had things to do now that the chanting had stopped.

He had just finished his third pack and he had to find some more cigarettes. Quick.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Look," Remo said, "we'll protect this guy for you because you're going to buy me a house. But that's all. Just because you want us to. Not because this is important. This Wooley's invented a cartoon gadget is all. How the hell can you think that's important?"

"It's important," Smith said. He sat behind the wheel of his car, his hands clenching and unclenching on the wheel.

"Sure. Earth shattering," Remo said. "Like most of the other nonsense you get us involved in."

"I don't pretend to understand everything about it," Smith said. "But just for openers, it would be invaluable in police interrogations. A good questioner can find out any secret. Imagine its application in intelligence work. Those are for a start. And try this. This Dreamocizer could be the ultimate drug. Somebody takes drugs now, he's leaping off into the unknown. But with this machine, he can go right where he's always wanted to go and do whatever he's always wanted to do. I can see two hundred million people sitting in front of these damn things and never moving. Zombies."

Remo did not answer. He was thinking about what it would be like to live in a big wooden house with big grassy lawns and big brown trees.

Remo pictured himself lying down on his lawn. He was holding something. It was an acorn. Across from him was a squirrel. It looked at Remo quizzically. Then it looked at the acorn. And it was not afraid. It hopped forward then stopped. It was no more than five inches from Remo's hand. In his mind's eye, Remo could see that he could have snatched it up or broken it in half or smashed its head in, but he didn't. Not his squirrel. Not on his lawn. There was no need for violence. There were no secrets, no national security to worry about, no spies or madmen or scientists or assassins. No junkies, Mafia, government. No Smith.

Remo saw himself offering an acorn to the squirrel and the squirrel took it.

He heard a voice call in his imagination.

"Remo."

Remo turned, as the animal ran off with its prize, and saw her there, standing in the doorway of his house.

She was beautiful.

Remo didn't see what she was wearing. He did not see the color of her hair or her eyes.

He just saw her and she was beautiful.

She came down the lawn calling his name.

"Remo. Remo. Remo."

Remo rose to meet her.

"Remo."

She had Smith's face. The thin graying hair. The face that looked as if it were sucking a lemon. She was wearing a gray suit and a white shirt.

Remo shook his head, blinked, and was back on the campus of Edgewood University.

He stared at Smith who was now standing beside him, a worried look on his face.

"Remind me never to invite you to my house when you buy it for me," Remo said.

"Are you all right?" Smith asked.

"Fine. Can anybody use this Dreamocizer?"

"It is evil," Chiun said.

"Keep out of this," Remo said.

"It is evil," Chiun repeated. "Dreams are meant to be only visitors in one's life."

"You're a great one to say that," Remo said. "You and your soap operas."

"My daytime dramas are just that. Stories. Lovely poems. I live in the real world."

"And so do I," Remo said. "Smitty, I want that house. And I'll protect your Professor Wooley and I'll make sure the wrong people don't get his machine and I'll…"

"Hold," Chiun said. "We are co-equal partners. Yet you prattle on about what you will do. What will I do?"

Before Remo could tell Chuin that he would no doubt be busy finding new things to kvetch about, they heard the scream.

They turned toward the sound.

A wail of many voices rose, then passed like a cloud. Then a young coed stumbled through the pine boughs.

Remo caught the girl just as she was falling face first onto the asphalt of the parking lot. She sank into his arms. He gently turned her over so her blank eyes stared upward. She whined softly, piteously.

"What happened?" he asked.

The girl looked through Remo, unable to focus her eyes.

"Blood," she said. "Blood everywhere. I heard the noises. I looked up… hit me in the face… wet, couldn't see. I wiped it off… felt ear, eye… blood… Poor Doctor Wooley."