12 Monkeys

3

The next morning, Marilou Martin waited outside of Kathryn Railly’s apartment building, huddling in her down parka and periodically swiping her eyes with a Kleenex. She gave an involuntary cry as a police car pulled up.

“Oh God, thank you for coming—”

The policemen nodded, tight-lipped, as Marilou followed them into the building. The super met them, a gray-faced man who opened Kathryn’s apartment and then scurried back downstairs without a word. Marilou hurried into the room, bending to sweep a mewling cat into her arms.

“Oh, Carla,” she murmured. “You poor thing.”

The cat cried plaintively as Marilou crossed the room to Kathryn’s answering machine. The police followed, eyeing the living room warily. The cat leapt from Marilou’s arms and padded into the kitchen, making hungry cries. Marilou punched the answering machine and stared at it grim-faced as a single message played.

“Dr. Railly, this is Wikke from Psych Admitting. There was a guy here this afternoon looking for you. He seemed very agitated. We tried to keep him, but he refused, ‘n’ I kept thinking, I know this guy. Then, just a few minutes ago, it came to me — It’s Cole! James Cole. Remember him? The paranoid who pulled the Houdini back in ninety. Well, he’s back and he’s cuckoo and he’s looking for you. I thought you oughta know.”

Click. The police officers exchanged a look. Marilou turned to them, white-faced.

“It’s like I told you,” she said, her voice cracking. “My husband and I went to the restaurant, but she never showed. She would never just not show — not without calling, or—”

One of the cops broke in. “Do you happen to know the make of her car?” he asked, pulling out his notebook.

“Umm — a Cherokee. Ninety-one — no, 1992 Cherokee. Silver.” Her eyes fell on the cat, piteously kneading at its empty food dish. “And that cat’s starving! She would never neglect her cat—”

The policemen nodded. One took her arm and turned toward the door. “Would you mind coming down with us to the station for a few minutes? I’d like to get a statement.”

Marilou stared at him, dazed, then nodded. “Let me call my husband first,” she said, choking on her tears, and reached for the telephone.

In front of the boy, the airport concourse is empty now, except for the staggering figure of the blond man. One hand is splayed across the front of his gaudy Hawaiian shirt; blood seeps between his fingers, sends a few bright drops floating like petals onto the floor. As the boy stares, the blond woman suddenly races across the room, her mouth open as she reaches for the man. The boy shakes his head, confused, but also aroused as he knows he should not be.

Because she looks like someone, except for the honey-colored hair and briskly rouged mouth — but still he knows her, he has seen her somewhere. Her mouth is open and he can hear her now; he recognizes her voice as she races past him toward the bleeding man.

“My time machine is all ready for the experiment. All I need is somebody — is somebody—”

He woke, gasping as he sat upright. He was on a large bed, still sloppily made-up with a worn chenille spread emblazoned with a tired logo HIGHWAYS & BYWAYS MOTEL. In front of him a snow-riddled television screen showed a wizened man with bald head and white mustache, pointing at a hole labeled TIME TUNNEL.

“—somebody — Ah, the woodpecker!”

Cole stared engrossed as Woody Woodpecker strolled across the screen.

“Yoo hoo! Woodpecker!”

“Please untie me.”

Cole watched for another moment, finally turned.

“Please,” Kathryn Railly repeated, exhausted.

Her jacket had been pulled backwards over her arms, the sleeves ties behind her. Her pale eyes were deeply shadowed, her hair knotted and loose to her shoulders. She looked as though she had been crying. “I’m very uncomfortable.”

Cole gazed at her. He felt a slight prickling between his shoulder blades and shivered. After a moment he said, “You were in my dream just now. Your hair—”

She flinched as he reached for her face, but he only brushed back a tangled lock from her forehead. “It was different. But I’m sure it was you.”

Railly nodded, once, then sighed. “We dream about what’s important in our lives. And I seem to have become pretty important in yours.”

Cole’s hand lingered upon her brow. For a moment she thought he was going to free her, but instead he turned and stood, wincing, and limped into the bathroom, stepping between empty fast-food cartons.

Kathryn fought back a wave of despair. “What was the dream about?” she called after him.

In the door to the bathroom he stopped and looked back at her. Once more she was riveted by his eyes, that same guileless, childlike stare. “About an airport,” he said. He lifted his hand and moved it slowly in front of him, like a plane. “Before everything happened. It’s the same dream I always have. I’m a little kid in it.”

Kathryn nodded, angling so that she could push her bound body higher onto the bed. “And I was in it?” she asked, trying to keep an unprofessional note of real curiosity from creeping into her tone. “What did I do?”

Cole stared musingly at the ceiling. “You were very upset.” For a moment his gaze met hers. “You’re always very upset in the dream, but I never knew it was you before.”

Kathryn gave an exasperated moan. “It wasn’t me before, James! It’s become me now, because of — what’s happened. Please untie me,” she pleaded.

Cole shook his head. “No,” he said vaguely, stepping into the bathroom but leaving the door open. “I think it was always you. It’s very strange.”

“You’re flushed,” Kathryn called after him — the psychiatrist taking over for the bound and fearful woman, noting the unhealthy color of Cole’s bruised face, how unnaturally brilliant his eyes were. “Your leg is hurt. And you were moaning. I think you’re running a fever.”

Cole reappeared, rubbing his face with a towel. Without a glance in Kathryn’s direction he tossed the towel on the floor, then retrieved her wallet from where it lay on a nightstand.

“What are you doing?” demanded Kathryn. Cole pulled out several bills, dropped the wallet, and headed for the door.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

“No! Don’t leave me here like this?” Kathryn thrashed helplessly on the bed as the door closed behind him. Tears spilled from her eyes as the lunchtime news came on, an anchorman gazing at her from the screen with detached concern.

“…and in Fresno, California, news crews continue to attempt to rescue nine-year-old Ricky Neuman…”

“God damn it,” Kathryn moaned, lifting herself only to fall back again.

“…playing ball with four other children when he literally disappeared off the face of the earth. Closer to home, in Baltimore, Kathryn Railly, prominent psychiatrist and the author of a newly released book on insanity, disappeared mysteriously last night after a lecture at the university.”

Kathryn froze. Staring at her from the screen was a mug shot of James Cole from six years ago. The camera had trapped him with his eyes wide and vacant, mouth slightly parted to show a curve of white. Kathryn felt herself go cold, trying to think where she had seen an expression like that before — in a book, once, something she had read in college.

“A former mental patient, James Cole, is wanted for questioning regarding Dr. Railly’s disappearance.”

It came to her suddenly, a shaft of ice thrust down her spine: Helter Skelter. A courtroom photo of Charles Manson, with the same piercingly intense yet empty eyes, the mouth’s same subtle curve that might have been a grimace or a sneer — or worse, a smile.

“…authorities warn that Cole has a history of violence.”

A small sound made her cry aloud. She looked up to see Cole framed in the doorway, his arms filled with bags of potato chips and cans of soda.

“Well,” he said softly, staring at the haunted face filling the TV screen, “I guess it’s time to check out.”

The dusty roads and fields of rural Maryland rolled past as the Cherokee jounced along one back road after another. In the driver’s seat Kathryn sat, stone-faced, fighting exhaustion and hoping that Cole wouldn’t notice. She swatted a lank strand of hair from her eyes and glanced at him in the seat beside her. “Just because we’re on back roads you think the police won’t find us?”

Cole didn’t look up. His finger traced a blue line on the frayed map. “We have to find, uh, Route 121A,” he said absently.

Kathryn grimaced as a stone flew up and pinged the windshield. “Just because you don’t see so many police cars patrolling doesn’t mean they won’t catch us. Sooner or later—”

Cole looked up, a shaft of morning light setting his eyes ablaze. “You still don’t get it, do you?” he said softly. “There isn’t any later.”

He reached for the radio and switched it on. Jangling guitar notes filled the car. “I love music.” His expression was reverent as he set aside the map and reached down beside the seat, pulling out a stack of tattered papers.

Kathryn cast a quick look at the wadded mess. “What are all those?”

“My notes. Observations. Clues.”

“Clues? What kind of clues?”

Cole smoothed out a piece of newsprint covered with scrawled inscriptions. “A secret army,” he said. “The Army of the Twelve Monkeys. I’ve told you about them. They spread the virus. I have to find them. It’s my assignment.”

Right, thought Kathryn, easing the car across a rutted ditch. And I’m Mother Theresa. “What will you do,” she asked cautiously, “when you find this — secret army?”

Cole’s face twisted with frustration. In his hands the worn newspaper tore along one of its many creases. “Nothing! I can’t do anything. I just have to locate them, because they have the virus in its pure state, before it mutates.” His voice took on the grandiose tones of a schoolkid reciting a memorized speech he’s learned to love. “When I locate the virus, they’ll send a scientist back here. The scientist will study the virus, and when he goes back to the present, him and all the other scientists will make a cure. Then all of us in the present, who survived, we’ll be able to go back to the surface of the earth.”

Somewhat breathlessly, Cole looked over at Kathryn, his eyes shining. She stared grimly out the window, her face stony with disbelief. All that pumped-up hope drained from Cole’s eyes. Angrily he turned and glared out the side window, just in time to see a station wagon come barreling out from a long drive beside them. Dad driving, Mom beside him, her face bright with Sunday lipstick. In the backseat, three children in matching flannel jackets scooted over to wave at Cole. He waved back glumly, then turned to Kathryn.

“You won’t think I’m crazy next month. People are going to start dying. At first the people will say it’s some weird fever. Then they’ll begin to catch on. They’ll get it, all right.”

He sat back in his seat, scowling at the radio. His expression froze as the ringing guitar chords died into the sudden hush that presaged an emergency announcement.

“We interrupt this program with a special bulletin. At least fifty police officers from three jurisdictions, apparently including special tactical unit personnel, have been mobilized to control a growing crowd of more than seven hundred onlookers in Fresno, California, where rescue operations for nine-year-old Ricky Neuman continue.”

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?”

“James — please, I want to help you—”

Suddenly he spun wildly, grabbed her by the wrist. Kathryn tried to pull back, but he yanked her to him, close enough that she could see his bloodshot eyes, wide now and too bright, like a meth freak coming off a three-day run.

“Don’t — don’t run away. Don’t do anything crazy,” he stammered. “I’ll — I’ll hurt somebody.”

Kathryn spoke with deliberate calm, glad he couldn’t feel her heart racing. “I’m not going to do anything crazy, James. But none of this is what you think it is—”

From behind them came a small rustle. “You can’t hide from them, Bob,” rasped a deep voice.

Cole whirled, dropping Kathryn’s hand.

“No sir, Old Bob — don’t even try!”

A derelict stood there, clad in a khaki trench coat stained almost black with mold and filth. Cole stared at him in horror.

That voice! The voice from his cell, croaking in the same conspiratorial tone as the ragged man pointed a warning finger at him.

“They hear everything,” the derelict whispered. His rheumy eyes glittered malevolently. “They got that tracking device on you. They can find you anywhere. Anytime. Ha!” He cackled, his laughter tripping into a fit of coughing. Cole watched, stunned, as this urban apparition leaned closer.

The coughing died away as the derelict tapped his back jaw. “In the tooth, Bob, right?” He grinned triumphantly. “But I fooled ‘em, old buddy…”

He opened his mouth wide, an ulcerated hole. “No teeth!”

With a final leer, the derelict turned and shambled off. Cole and Kathryn stared after him. Suddenly, Cole grabbed Kathryn and pulled her into an adjoining alley.

“What are you doing?” protested Kathryn, her purse bouncing against her side.

“They’re keeping an eye on me,” Cole said in a low voice. She looked at him: he was obviously shaken by the encounter with the street person.

“Who do you think is keeping an eye on you, James?”

He yanked her closer to him, the two of them foundering through a sea of plastic bags, broken glass, desiccated paper.

“The man with the voice!” Cole hissed. “Them! People from the present. What for?” he added in a hurt tone. “I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. They don’t have to spy on me. They—”

He stopped short. Kathryn pitched forward, catching herself before she fell onto a heap of smashed beer bottles. Her purse landed in front of her. She picked it up and when she straightened, saw Cole staring rigidly at the brick wall. Across it was drawn another red graffiti: the stenciled image of a circle inset with twelve dancing monkeys.

“They’re here!” Cole’s voice was jubilant. He pulled Kathryn after him and ran further down the alley, scanning the walls. She had no choice but to follow, crying out once when a twisted bit of metal slashed at her leg and watching as Cole anxiously scanned the walls for graffiti. There was plenty of that — mostly obscenities, a few wan attempts at consciousness-raising. FREE N’BERO MAM! YES ON SARAJEVO! Kathryn looked nervously over her shoulder. The alley entrance looked very far away, a tiny bright mouth in the fetid darkness. She let out a small cry as Cole abruptly tugged her after him, into a dark and forbidding doorway. Just inside, two oblivious women leaned against the rotting sill, sucking at crack pipes.

“James, no.” With all her strength Kathryn pulled herself upright, resisting him. “We shouldn’t be here—”

Ignoring her he pulled her through the door. Something scuttled into the shadows. Beneath her feet the ground was spongy, heaped with decaying clothing. She almost gagged on the overwhelming smell of putrid water and the burning reek of crack. Cole barged on like a man possessed, finally stopping in the gloomy hallway. In front of them broken drywall held another stencil of the twelve dancing monkeys, this one apparently painted with a brush. Red paint had dried in long oozing lines beneath the circle and splotched onto the floor, forming a trail. Kathryn looked at the floor, then slowly raised her head. Her eyes widened.

“James,” she whispered hoarsely.

Scarcely ten feet away, two shadowy figures kicked at a third figure hunched over on the floor. At the sound of Kathryn’s voice one looked up and without a word nudged his partner. The two men took in first Kathryn, then Cole. They exchanged a glance, and soundlessly started toward them.

“James!” Kathryn repeated frantically. “We have to go back. Those men—”

Too late. “Hey, buddy,” the taller man said. Startled, Cole blinked stupidly at him, as the other man lunged for Kathryn’s purse and grabbed it from her.

“No!” she screamed.

With a grunt Cole tried to grab it back, but—

Whack! Something smashed against his cheek. Kathryn cried out again, more desperately this time. Dazed, Cole drew a hand across his face, stared at the blood staining his fingers. Before he could react something cold and hard ground into his other cheek. Looking out of the corner of his eyes, Cole saw a tin-bright pistol, so shiny and cheap looking it was like a kid’s toy.

Biting back a cry, Kathryn turned to run. She took only two steps before the second man knocked her roughly to the ground.

“Stick around, bitch,” he said, smiling. Looming above her he began to unzip his fly. Kathryn looked around wildly, saw Cole drop to his knees.

“Please!” he whimpered, clutching pathetically at handfuls of moldering paper. “Please don’t hurt me!”

The man stared down at him. He stepped closer to Cole and kicked him contemptuously. He drew his foot back for a second kick when Cole suddenly lunged upward, wrapping his arms around the man’s calves. In one fluid motion he lifted the man from the ground.

The pistol fired, its echo nearly drowning Cole’s enraged roar. He staggered forward and rammed the man into the brick wall. There was a crack like stone hitting stone as the man’s head smashed against brick, then lolled onto his breast. The man fell into a heap, the pistol dropping from his limp hand.

“Uh, later, lady.” The second man hastily zipped his fly. Before he could run Cole was on top of him, fists crushing into him again and again, savagely. The man staggered backward, bloody and dazed. Kathryn watched dumbfounded. Cole’s fist crashed into the man’s jaw one last time. Cole turned back to his first assailant, saw him reaching weakly for the pistol.

Without a word Cole kicked him viciously in the jaw. Kathryn covered her mouth as the man’s head whipped back.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. She heard a small pop, as though a dry stick had been stepped on. The man collapsed against the wall. She glanced furtively behind her and saw the second man running haphazardly down the hallway, one arm flapping uselessly at his side. When she looked up, Cole was standing there above her in the blue-tinged darkness. He no longer looked merely insane, or even dangerous. With his bloody face, eyes staring grimly at her, and the cheap pistol gripped in his immense hand, he looked positively lethal.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, shoving the gun into a pocket. He sounded as though it pained him to talk.

Kathryn stumbled to her feet. “Uh, no. Yes—” She glanced down quickly at her torn skirt, blood threading the cuffs of her blouse. “I mean, just some scrapes—”

He wasn’t listening. Instead, Cole was bent over the motionless body, quickly going through the man’s pockets. He held up a wallet, then a handful of bullets; he tossed aside a set of keys and shoved the other items into his own pocket.

“Is he — alive?” breathed Kathryn.

Cole looked at her with cold eyes. “Come on.” He stood, yanked her roughly after him. Kathryn glanced back and for the first time saw the other man’s eyes, wide open and glazed with a fine spray of dirt.

“Oh, Jesus, James! You killed him—

Cole’s icy gaze never left her. “I did him a favor. Now come on.”

He pulled her down the hall, past another lurid crimson circle with its crude grinning monkeys. Ahead of them a faint glimmer of light showed through the murk, giving a sanguine glow to the trail of spattered red paint that stretched before them.

“You didn’t have a gun before, did you?” Kathryn asked, her voice dead.

“I’ve got one now,” Cole replied, and dragged her toward the light.

Outside the winter sun shone thin and bright onto another desolate city block. Cole kept a tight hold of Kathryn’s hand; she ran panting after him, his head bent as he followed scattered drops of red paint. The block’s few denizens ignored them, street people and a hollow-eyed woman who shouted curses as she banged her head against a lamppost. Cole loped on and Kathryn struggled to keep up with him, until finally they turned a corner and were both brought up short at the sight of the same ranting evangelist, standing now on a pile of broken cinderblocks and shouting hoarsely at the pale sky.

“‘And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came—’ You! You!”

With an inhuman shriek the man stiffened, then pointed wildly at Cole. “YOU’RE ONE OF US!”

Kathryn shuddered, but Cole only focused on the obscure paint trail, almost hidden now beneath the heavy patina of grime and trash that covered the sidewalk. It was still there, faint but perceptible, and Cole walked quickly, head bent, his free hand slapping distractedly at his side.

All of a sudden he halted. Kathryn drew up beside him, exhausted.

“Now what—”

They were in front of what had once been a butcher shop, a wooden storefront with loose clapboards and cracked windows now covered with lurid animal rights posters. Atop the building a faded sign still bore the legend:

A newer sign, hand-painted in the same garish crimson as the now-faded paint trail, read FREEDOM FOR ANIMALS ASSOCIATION. The front door was heavy plate glass, broken and clumsily repaired with duct tape. Inside, three people sat in folding chairs in a cluttered, dingy room. Their voices filtered through the broken glass, arguing as they collated papers from a heap on the floor.

“You know, Fale, this would’ve been, like, a whole lot easier if we just had Kinko’s do it,” a young woman whined. She had long, stringy hair, dyed black, a ring through her nose, and purplish lipstick. “‘Cause then—”

Beside her a deathly pale boy rolled his eyes. “Like, right, Bee,” he said, aping her nasal voice. “But we like don’t have any money.” In the chair next to his, a tall, muscular young man with a shaved head and a lizard tattoo nodded earnestly.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “And not only that—”

Keeping his grip on Kathryn’s wrist, Cole shoved the door open and stepped inside. The sound of pouring rain surrounded him. On the cracked tile walls hung posters showing the bloodied forms of cats and chimpanzees, their eyes wide and glazed with fear. The floor was covered with flyers and brochures depicting more atrocities. As Cole and Kathryn stepped over cartons and books, the three activists looked up in surprise. On the wall behind them hung a huge poster proclaiming ANIMALS HAVE SOULS, TOO. Cole looked around, frowning, as the sound of rain grew louder; then started when a tremendous thunderclap shook the small room. A jungle bird screamed. Cole pulled Kathryn closer to him, glancing uneasily over his shoulder.

“Uh, can we help you?” Fale blinked rapidly, like a creature unaccustomed to daylight.

Cole hesitated, confused. The sound of rain abated, replaced by the sudden trumpeting roar of an elephant.

“It’s all right, James,” Kathryn murmured. “It’s just a tape.” She pointed to a tape deck under a sign advertising THE TRUE MUSIC OF THE WORLD.

Cole nodded, swallowing nervously, and turned his attention back to the three activists. “I, uh, I’m looking for the, uh, the Army of the Twelve Monkeys.”

Fale glanced at Bee, then at the skinhead, giving them pointed looks. “Um, Teddy?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Monkeys started chattering on the tape as the skinhead stood. He was huge, taller than Cole, his powerful arms flexing in his sleeveless T-shirt. “We don’t know anything about any ‘Army of the Twelve Monkeys,’ so why don’t you and your friend disappear, okay?” He smiled menacingly, gesturing at the door.

A lion roared as Cole backed away, pulling Kathryn after him. “I just need some information.”

Teddy shook his head, a little plastic gorilla dangling from one ear. “Didn’t you hear me? We’re not—”

He froze as Cole pointed the pistol at him. Kathryn shook her head and cried, “James, No! Don’t hurt them—”

She turned to the activists, Cole’s hand still gripping her tightly. “Please, I’m a psychiatrist. Just do whatever he tells you to do,” she begged. “He’s — upset. Disturbed. Please! He’s dangerous — just cooperate.”

A tiger snarled, monkeys chattered wildly as Teddy backed away. Behind him Fale dug furiously in his jeans pocket.

“What do you want — money? We only have a few bucks—”

Cole shook his head, suddenly confident again. “I told you what I want.” He let go of Kathryn’s hand and waved the pistol at her threateningly. “Lock the door!”

Kathryn took a breath. “James, why don’t we—”

“Lock it now!”

She hurried to the door. On the floor, the girl Bee turned to Fale and whimpered, “I told you that fuckhead Goines would get us into something like this.”

Fale looked like he was going to slap her. “Shut up!”

“Goines?” Cole stared at them.

“Jeffrey Goines?” repeated Kathryn in amazement.

Cole pointed the gun first at Teddy, then the other activists. “Okay,” he said a little breathlessly. “We have some stuff to talk about. Go—” He gestured at a door in the back of the room. “Let’s go.”

The door led to an abandoned meat locker. Cole poked among the boxes and trash cans until he found some stereo wire, then ordered Kathryn to hog-tie the three of them in the middle of the floor.

“All right,” Cole announced, keeping the gun trained on Teddy. “Now tell me about the Twelve Monkeys.”

They told him, the three of them interrupting each other, momentarily falling silent when Cole asked them to repeat something.

“…then, Jeffrey becomes like this — big star…” Fale explained eagerly. “The media latch onto him because he’s picketing his own father, this famous Nobel prize-winning virologist. You musta seen all that on TV.”

Without looking up Cole said, “No. I don’t watch TV.” He continued rummaging through a stack of papers near the door while Kathryn watched helplessly. Suddenly he frowned, picking up a photograph and staring at it intently. The image was of a distinguished-looking man being escorted through a mob of raging activists by a phalanx of riot police. The caption read, “Dr. Leland Goines.”

“The slide,” he murmured. Then, turning to Fale, “Is this him? Dr. Goines?”

Fale nodded. “That’s him.”

On the floor beside him, Bee wriggled despondently. “What are you going to do with us?”

Cole ignored her, scrutinizing the photo. “Tell me more about Jeffrey,” he said in a low voice.

Fale glances at his cohorts and shrugged hopelessly. “Jeffrey started getting bored with the shit we do — picketing, leafleting, letter-writing stuff. He said we were—” Fale paused as Teddy watched him grimly “—ineffectual jerkoffs. He wanted to do guerrilla actions to ‘educate’ the public.”

Slowly Cole set down the photo of Leland Goines, picked up a magazine clipping showing horrified senators standing on their desks as rattlesnakes slithered along the Senate floor. He held it up questioningly to Fale.

“Yeah.” Fale nodded, grinning faintly. “That’s when he let a hundred snakes loose in the Senate.”

“But we weren’t into that kind of stuff,” Teddy blurted. “It’s counterproductive, we told him.”

Fale nodded. “So he and eleven others split off and became this underground… ‘army’.”

“The Army of the Twelve Monkeys,” said Cole.

For the first time Bee piped in. “They started planning a ‘Human Hunt’.”

“They bought stun guns and nets and bear traps,” Teddy went on. “They were gonna go to Wall Street and trap lawyers and bankers.”

“But they didn’t do it,” said Bee. “They didn’t do any of it.”

Teddy shook his head. “Yeah. Just like always, Mr. Big Shot sold his friends out!”

Cole fixed his burning gaze on Fale. “What’s that mean?”

“He goes on TV,” Fale explained quickly, “gives a news conference, tells the whole world he just realized his daddy’s experiments are vital for humanity and that the use of animals is absolutely necessary and that he, Jeffrey Goines, from now on, is going to personally supervise the labs to make sure all the little animals aren’t going to suffer.” Fale finished and stared up at Cole, his pale face paper-white. “Can we — do you think you could let us go now?”

Cole turned away, bent back over a cardboard box, and started throwing papers out of it. After a moment he held up a Rolodex. “What’s this?”

The three activists exchanged worried looks. “Uh, that’s a Rolodex,” said Teddy. “You know, for phone numbers?”

Cole flipped through the little index cards, stopped and peered at one. “Jeffrey Goines,” he read aloud. He stood and crossed to the hog-tied activists. “Which one of you has a car?”

Silence.

“I said, which one of—”

“Me!” broke in Fale. He wriggled sideways, ducking his head to indicate his jeans pocket. “Keys in there — an old Jag—”

Cole took the keys. Without a backward glance he strode to where Kathryn crouched in a corner and grabbed her. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?” wailed Bee. “You can’t just leave us…”

Kathryn shot her one last pitying look. Oh yes he can, she thought, and followed Cole outside.

They found Fale’s car, a battered Jaguar covered with bumper stickers and painted slogans — I BRAKE FOR ANIMALS, FREE THE ANIMALS! WOULD YOU LET A MINK WEAR YOUR SKIN? Cole shoved Kathryn inside, then got into the seat beside her. She slid the key into the ignition. There was a grinding noise, and the car lurched forward.

She drove through midday traffic, staring grimly out the windshield. The radio played moody country and western music, a few mournful ballads. Finally, in a tight voice she said “Dr. Goines isn’t going to be someone you can just barge in on, James. He’s very well known; he’s been the target of animal rights protesters; he’s going to have security guards, gates, alarms. It’s — this is insane!”

Cole said nothing, just looked at the map in his lap, moving his head in time to the music. His face was feverish, beaded with sweat. Beside the map, the Rolodex flapped open to a much-worn card: JEFFREY GOINES C/O DR. LELAND GOINES, 27 OUTERBRIDGE ROAD.

“And those kids,” Kathryn went on, gaining steam. “They could die in that locker!”

Cole glanced out the window at passing cars: families returning home from church, truckers, two boys on a motorcycle, a van full of laughing children.

“All I see are dead people,” he said, his eyes dull. “Everywhere. What’s three more?”

Kathryn fought the urge to shout at him, instead tightened her hands on the steering wheel. Get it together, Railly, she thought. She stopped at a red light, watched a young girl push a baby across the street in a stroller. When the light changed the Jag lunged forward again. She decided to take a different tack.

“You know his son, Jeffrey, don’t you?” she asked. “When you were at County Hospital six years ago. Jeffrey Goines was a patient there for a couple of weeks.”

Cole continued to peruse the map. “The guy was a — a total fruitcake.”

“And he told you his father was a famous virologist.”

Cole’s finger traced a black line with the words OUTERBRIDGE ROAD. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “He told me his father was God.”

Abruptly, the twanging of a banjo gave way to a news bulletin.

“This just in. Police confirm that prominent psychiatrist and author Dr. Kathryn Railly has been abducted by a dangerous mental patient, James—”

Silently Cole switched the station. Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he checked the road map against the road signs flashing past. Kathryn saw him wince with pain as he shifted his leg. For the first time she noticed a dark stain beneath the knee.

“What’s the matter with your leg?”

Cole shrugged. “I got shot.”

“Shot!” She looked aside at him, took in how flushed he was, the sheen of sweat on his face, his arms, his neck. “Who shot you?”

“It was some kind of war.” For a moment she thought he was going to elaborate, but instead he said, “Never mind. You wouldn’t believe me — hey! What’re you doing?”

The car swung into the right lane as she put on the turn signal. Just ahead on the highway was a gas station, flanked by a convenience store. “We don’t need gas!” Cole snapped, leaning over to check the gas gauge.

“I thought you didn’t know how to drive.”

“I said I was too young to drive,” Cole said warningly. He put his hand on the wheel. “I didn’t say I was stupid.”

Kathryn’s foot tapped at the brake as they approached the Sundry Store by the gas station. “Look, James. This can’t go on. You’re not well. You’re burning with fever. And I’m a doctor — I need supplies.”

The Jag idled and she turned to look at him, her eyes pleading with him to trust her. “Please, James?” she whispered.

He gazed back at her: those pale eyes that hadn’t seen sleep in two days now, her hair falling limply across her smooth forehead. Slowly he let go of the wheel and leaned back in his seat.

“All right,” he murmured, closing his eyes for a moment. “All right.”

Late afternoon found them in the woods some forty miles north. Pale sunlight filtered through the bare limbs of oak trees. The air smelled sweetly of fallen leaves, crushed acorns, the faint clean scent of running water. Overhead, a skein of wild geese made their way southward, their cries hanging in the air long after they were out of sight.

Beside the car, Cole leaned against a granite boulder, staring at the sky. He wore only his frayed flannel shirt and boxer shorts; his trousers hung on the Jag’s open door beside a plastic bag of gauze and surgical tape. Kathryn stooped in front of him, adjusting a bandage on his thigh. Her touch was sure but gentle; he remembered that she had said she was a doctor, a real doctor.

“There. You shouldn’t put your weight on it.” Kathryn straightened. She held up the bullet for his inspection, then wrapped it in gauze and stuck it in her pocket. Cole glanced at her, then looked back up at the sky.

“I love seeing the sun.” He blinked, relishing the wan warmth that touched his cheeks despite the afternoon’s chill. Then with a sigh he leaned forward. He tugged his pants from the car door, struggling to get into them, and almost fell.

“Wait — let me help you.”

Kathryn put an arm around him, pulling him to her as she tugged the pants over his legs. Cole leaned closer to her, closing his eyes.

“You smell so good,” he murmured.

She paused and looked into his face. His eyes opened and she found herself staring into them, seeing the reflection of branches, sky, a tiny sun, her own face. Her mouth went dry and she felt herself flush as he reached his hand out and touched her cheek, stroking a tendril of dark hair.

“You — you have to give yourself up, you know,” she said, her voice breaking.

Cole blinked. His eyes grew hard, all the reflected wonder fading from them as he grit his teeth.

“James, please,” she went on pleadingly. “If you would just—”

She broke off, shocked, as his hand closed around her wrist so tightly that she gasped.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. His voice was utterly devoid of warmth as he turned and pushed her back into the car. “But I have to do this. I have a mission.”

Moments later the Jag coughed back to life once more and edged out of the clearing, back onto the road.

It was night when they found Outerbridge Road. They drove past diary farms and fallow cornfields, a few farmhouses with lights burning yellow in the early winter evening. Finally they reached a high stone wall whose gates read NUMBER 27. Well back from the road, a brightly lit Craftsman-style mansion sat amidst rolling lawns and bare maple trees. The driveway and the road were lined with luxury cars. Cole could see several uniformed security guards strolling down the drive, holding walkie-talkies and waving to guests.

“Keep going,” he said tightly, and the Jag moved on.

They drove another half mile or so. Then, “Here,” Cole commanded. “Go left.”

Kathryn shook her head. “Left? There’s nothing but—”

“Turn.”

At the side of the road was a small clearing that extended a good ways into the wood. A faint glimmer of moonlight touched the slender shadows of aspen and sumac. With a groan, the Jag rolled off the blacktop and onto pitted ground, crawled along until Cole said, “Stop. Right here.”

Kathryn turned off the ignition. “You know, you really can’t—”

But he was already outside, limping as he raced to the driver’s door. He yanked it open and pulled Kathryn out, palming the Jag’s keys.

“What are you doing?!”

Silently he dragged her to the back of the Jag and pulled the trunk open.

“No — James, no!”

Still silent, he grabbed her and pushed her in, slamming the trunk closed. Her muffled cries followed him as he began limping out of the clearing.

“James!”

He halted, panting, and looked back; then, his fists clenching and unclenching, he slowly and purposefully returned to the car.