12 Monkeys

1

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.

“All openings must be closed,” the voice said. Cole tugged at the zipper, wincing as the metal teeth bit at his chest. “If the integrity of the suit is compromised in any way, if the fabric is torn or a zipper not closed, readmittance will be denied.” More zippers, a series of metal clasps. Then he stood there, breathing hard, already sweating in his heavy fabric shell.

“Proceed,” the voice commanded.

He looked around and saw another, smaller, door in the wall behind him. He started for it, stopped. He flipped the plastic helmet over his head, adjusting the visor, then bent and lifted one of the oxygen tanks. “Jesus,” he muttered, grunting as he slung it onto his back. He pulled the tubing from its casing and threaded it through his helmet. Then he stooped before the box at his feet, taking out first one object and then another, staring at them and frowning. As though in a dream he held up a bottle, squinting to see if it had a label, then replaced it and grabbed a larger one. The bitter taste in his throat grew more pronounced and he yawned, covering his mouth with a gloved hand. Bottles, vials, a map. Last of all he dug out a flashlight, testing it to make sure it worked.

“Proceed.”

Cole crossed the room, slowly and awkwardly in the heavy suit, his heart pounding with exertion and what he refused to recognize as fear. When he reached the door it slid open, revealing a tiny chamber, a kind of air lock. He stepped inside. The door boomed shut behind him. His breath came more quickly as he sucked oxygen from the air tanks on his back. On the opposite wall of the chamber was another door with a huge wheel lock. He turned the wheel, groaning at its weight, then slowly pushed the door open and stepped through. Immediately he lost his balance, catching himself before he hit the floor.

“Son of a bitch.”

The entire room shuddered. There was a grinding sound, a series of deafening clanks: he was inside an ascending elevator. For several minutes he leaned against the wall, trying to calm himself. Then the elevator jolted to a stop. Cole stepped hesitantly back to the door. A minute passed; neither elevator nor door moved. His own breath thundered in his ears. Finally he braced himself and slowly pulled the door open.

Outside, unbroken darkness streamed. He could hear the soft plink plink of water dripping, muffled by his helmet. His flashlight showed black water moving sluggishly through a wide underground channel. A sewer. Cole felt a twinge of gratitude for his oxygen tank. A few yards away a rusted ladder straddled a crumbling concrete wall. Cole fumbled at his belt until he found his map, unfolding it awkwardly with his gloved hands. He looked back at the ladder, with a sigh refolded the map, and sloshed out into the channel.

The ladder shuddered beneath him as he climbed, trying to shift his weight evenly so that the whole ramshackle construction didn’t send him crashing into the black water below. Once he almost lost the flashlight. When at last he reached the top step his head bumped against the ceiling, the cracked concrete slimed with black, trailing streamers of mold. Cole grimaced, peering up until he found what he was looking for. He clutched at the ladder with one hand, with the other pushed against the ceiling until it trembled. With a sudden sharp crack the manhole cover gave way. A circle of bluish light opened above him as he shoved it aside. He clambered out.

Night!

But not the artificial night he had known for so long, with its stench of caged men and decaying vegetable protein. Instead, above him loomed buildings, townhouses and skyscrapers and brick tenements, their broken windows like silver teeth glowing in the moonlight. Silver fell through the air as well; he held out one gloved hand and watched in amazement as it was dusted with crystal.

Snow. Snow!

“Sweet Jesus,” he murmured.

Real cold. Real snow.

He straightened, turning so that his flashlight swept across the landscape. He was in a square surrounded by dead buildings, immense trees whose limbs crowded empty storefronts, the crumpled spines of telephone poles. Vine-covered humps of metal that he knew must be automobiles. He couldn’t recall when he had last seen an automobile, but at sight of the vines he frowned, remembering something. Another dream: this one of a room filled with light, a circle of white faces and a monotonous voice reciting as images flickered across a screen.

“Pueraria lobata, common kudzu. A noxious plant that serves as host to a variety of insects…”

He groped at his belt until he found a bottle, then cautiously approached the cars. With one hand he dug among the vines, until with a cry of triumph he captured a tiny wood beetle. Clumsily he popped the top of the collection tube and was dropping the beetle inside when something rustled behind him. Balancing the tube against his chest, he turned.

“What the—!”

In the flashlight’s glare an enormous creature reared, snarling. Cole stumbled backward; the creature remained poised before him, clawing at the drifting snow, its mouth open to show rows of white teeth.’

“Jesus!”

A bear. The snarl became a roar. For a moment Cole thought it was going to lunge at him. Instead it abruptly sank onto all fours, turned, and without a backward glance padded down the street. Cole watched it go, his heart thundering. When it was out of sight he walked slowly into the square.

The moonlight made a frozen circus of store windows adrift with snow and dead leaves. In one, a toy train set lay in pieces. Blank-eyed mannequins wore rags and bits of tinsel, their rigid hands pointing at stuffed toys oozing shredded foam and sawdust. Beneath a tipsy metal Christmas tree lay a fallen angel, her face pocked with dirt. Carefully Cole stepped through the broken window and walked up and down the aisles, his flashlight playing across crumpled metal racks filled with rotting clothes. He stopped when the light struck a mannequin wearing a Hawaiian shirt, grinning maniacally beneath a sign that proclaimed: START THE NEW YEAR IN THE KEYS!!! Between the mannequin’s outstretched hands an elaborate spiderweb glimmered in the flashlight’s gleam.

“Okay.” Cole breathed, reaching for another collection bottle. As his gloved hand reached and plucked at the spider, the web collapsed. With a sound like a sigh, the mannequin shivered. The Hawaiian shirt turned to dust as pigeons fluttered overhead, roosting in the shadows.

He went back outside, broken glass crunching beneath his feet. Snow blew in soft eddies against the sides of empty buildings. In the distance he heard a faint howling: wolves. At the end of the square there was a movie theatre. On the sidewalk beneath the marquee stray letters lay beneath a dusting of snow. Overhead the marquee read:

He barely registered the marquee, instead moved slowly and purposefully toward the crumbling brick wall that stretched beside it. Amidst obscene graffiti and tattered posters there was a stenciled image: twelve monkeys dancing in a closed circle. Beside it were the words: WE DID IT!

Cole stared at the stencil. When he swallowed his mouth tasted sour, with a bitter aftertaste. He turned from the wall and continued out of the square, passing a vast deserted train station. He did not see the crouching figures in the station’s yawning entrance — six wolves, their green eyes glowing balefully in the moonlight. But there were other, solitary footprints there, very large, with pronounced claws at the tips of each toe pad. He followed these, until he saw at his feet a small brown mound steaming in the cold. Cole bent and scooped some of the feces into another collection tube. Behind him the wolves slipped silently away, disappearing behind an abandoned baby carriage. Cole replaced the top of the collection tube and continued to follow the animal’s tracks.

Further on he came to a beautiful old beaux arts building extravagantly overgrown with ivy, its broken steps littered with bones and broken glass. The footprints led here, up the steps and inside a darkened archway. High up on the building’s rococo exterior an owl perched, its round, yellow gaze fixed upon the man below. Pale streamers of light washed across the entryway, the owl blinked at the rind of sunlight showing above the horizon. Then it spread its wings and lifted high into the air above the deserted city.

The footsteps led through a huge lobby overgrown with trees. From a broken skylight high above pale sun trickled. There were drifts of leaves everywhere, and an animal odor so pungent that Cole could smell it even through his visor. He passed massive columns entwined with vines, wide marble steps slick with ice and rotting vegetation. He climbed the stairs, panting a little now, until he reached the very top of the building. Wide doorways led out onto a viewing deck. Broken slates and glass were everywhere. Warily he followed the footsteps out there, trudging through the debris. There was a small coughing sound, like someone clearing his throat. Cole whirled.

On the wall behind him a circle was stenciled in red paint. Within it twelve monkeys danced and grinned above the same triumphant legend.

WE DID IT!!!

The coughing sound came again, louder this time. Cole lifted his head and saw up on the roof of the ornate building a silhouette, black against the sudden glory of sunrise. A lion, its mane a brilliant corona of gold as it threw its head back and roared until the air rang with the sound — sole ruler of a kingdom abandoned by men.