Flashback (10 page)

“Dana, will you tell me what you think you are doing?” she repeated, grabbing a hold of her daughter’s arm.

Dana threw it off violently. “I crashed!” she shouted impatiently. “I crashed before I could get to them! They’re going to die if we don’t get them to a MASH unit soon! Get the hell out of my way!” She had to try to make it to the unit with these supplies. It wasn’t much, but it could make the difference between life and death for some of them. She ran into the kitchen and swept like a fury through the cupboard, grabbing cans of food at random and throwing them down with the medical supplies. Then she pelted for the study, yanking open drawers as she searched, leaving a wreck behind her as they fell out to the floor when she pulled too hard.

“Oh, my God!” Denise, ashen-faced, breathed. She jumped forward, throwing out both hands. “No, Dana! Don’t—don’t do that…Oh, dear God…” Intent as she was, horror-stricken at what Dana had found, Denise didn’t hear David crash into the house until he was right behind her, pushing roughly past and heading like an arrow for Dana only to be brought up short as she slowly turned around and stared at him with dilated eyes, her skin stretched tight.

She was holding a black and deadly revolver in one small hand, and she pushed the wheel back home.

She stared at David, a look of wild desperation in her eyes, and her hands trembled on the small, heavy gun. He was standing absolutely still, absolutely white, his eyes leaping with emotion. He just looked at her and there was something sick in his eyes. “Dana,” he said gently and quietly, making no move. “Dana, sweetheart, please listen to me. It’s all right. You can relax and put the gun down now. Please, can you manage to give me the gun?” He advanced one step.

She just stared at him, eyes wide.
It was hot, so hot. ’Nam was just pure murder in the summertime, getting unbearably humid and scorching. It was pure murder in the winter, too, with the rainy season and the monsoons, and water and mosquitoes everywhere. In fact, ’Nam was just plain murder, no matter how you looked at it. Kids murdering kids, and nobody was stopping it. Crazy, the whole world’s gone crazy.
She took a deep, shaking breath and mopped her forehead. Her hand came away wet. “I forgot the salt tablets,” she whimpered, looking at the wetness on her hand.

David, eyes intent, heart leaping, took another step. She was across the desk, so far away. God, she looked so small and fragile and innocent, and she had that gun held so precariously in her hands. “I’ve got some salt tablets, sweetheart,” he muttered, and he held out his hand. “I have some at home. I’ll give them to you, only you have to put the gun down to go with me. Please, Dana, put it down.” Oh, please.

Denise, terrified and frozen, could only watch David as he took another step. Dana’s eyes suddenly sharpened on him fiercely, and she backed so sharply up against the bookcase that she cracked her sore shoulder against a protruding shelf and cried out in pain. Denise made a sound and covered her mouth with both shaking hands. David had frozen again.

The nozzle of the gun turned slowly to point right at David. Dana just shivered and shook, backed up against the wall in a classic example of sheer animalistic fear, her face near to crumpling into tears, lips trembling and eyes full of sickness.

“Mrs. Haslow,” David said quietly, never moving, “is it possible that the gun is loaded, or do you know for a certainty that it’s safe?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “It could be loaded. There were bullets in the cabinet and she had her back to me and was doing something to the gun. But I don’t see how she would know to load it—she’s never handled a gun in her life—she wouldn’t know how to use it if she wanted to. What’s wrong with her? She looks half dead from fright!”

“I think I’m afraid to find out,” he said reluctantly. He tentatively put out another foot and eased forward. Dana’s eyes, like a cat’s, never left him, unblinkingly. He asked her gently, “Dana, what’s happened? Why do you need the gun?”

“I—I crashed,” she whispered dully. “I crashed the helicopter. They shot me down. I can’t get to those poor kids, they—they’re dying. I know they are.”

David looked and felt like he’d been hit unexpectedly in the stomach. He moaned something under his breath, queerly. Then he took a deep breath, the passage in his throat sounded ragged in the tense filled room. “Oh, Dana, Dana—the kids are all right. I know, I’ve just come from there. I’ve seen them. You don’t have to worry. The fighting’s all over with.
Please
put down the gun. You’re scaring your mother, see?”

“You’re lying!” Dana screamed, and Denise screamed too. Only David was as still as a statue. Furiously, Dana continued, “You’re lying to me, damn you! I know they aren’t all right! I was the only pilot free to answer their radio signals!
They’re dying!
Those kids…” Her eyes, after misting over with such anguish that both Denise and David caught their breath at it, sharpened into such a look of fury and hate that her whole face was altered. She spat out, “Get the hell out of my way! Move back from the door! Both of you, go on! Get over to that side of the room!”

Slowly both David and Denise complied. Dana’s mother’s face was so grey and full of fear that something in Dana’s face flickered for a moment as a sliver of reality wedged into her nightmare. But it was gone again in a split second, and her face was full of desperation and futile determination.

Dana edged from behind the desk, opposite to the two watching her, and she slowly inched out of the door, never taking her eyes from them. Then she whirled and ran as fast as she could, forsaking her little bundle of supplies and breaking out of the door fast, hitting one of the many paths that converged to their lawn at a dead run. She had to find those kids and help them, she had to.

Back at the house, David took a deep, steady breath and then turned his attention to Denise, who looked suddenly older and completely colourless. He was alarmed at what he saw, and he took her gently by the arm and forced her to sit down. She stared up at him fearfully. “What happened to her?” she asked. “She’s never been this way before, never! Oh, God, what if she hurts someone? David, we’ve got to stop her!”

“No—no, Mrs. Haslow,” he said, making her sit still in the chair with both hands. “Just take a few minutes and try to calm down a bit. Will you do that? Will you try to keep as calm as you can about this? I’ll go and look for her. I promise, I’ll find her, and everything will be all right.”

Denise stared at him and she saw the emotion that darkened his eyes, the expression of something horrifying that clung to him like a black clawed thing, how he was so utterly white. He was labouring under some terrific stress. “What was Dana talking about when she said she crashed?” she asked him slowly, staring. He swallowed and her eyes sharpened. “You know, don’t you? This has something to do with you, doesn’t it?” He didn’t answer, and she said, seemingly to change the subject, “I tried to call you when she left the house earlier. She was acting so strangely then, too, and I—I thought that maybe you could see her safely to the store and back, to make sure she was all right. But you weren’t home.”

A muscle jerked in his jaw. His hands tightened on hers, tightened spasmodically and then, as he became aware of her stare, and his tight grip on her, he let go and stood back. “I was coming over here,” he said flatly. Her eyes widened.

“Why? You surely didn’t knock on the front door, did you? Did you change your mind? David—”

“I went to the store instead,” he said interrupting her harshly, and his face creased with some kind of pain. He saw her expression and continued angrily, “Don’t look at me like that! Of course I didn’t know that your daughter was going to the store—how could I? I just went to the store and—and…” As Denise watched, he turned away from her and raked his hair, rumpling the dark glossy mass agitatedly. He said again, in low tones, “How could I know? I couldn’t.” He stopped and shook his head as if it hurt.

Denise was one of the few people in the world who had good cause not to scoff or disbelieve anything that might happen to her daughter, or be connected to Dana in any way. She asked him urgently, “For God’s sake, what happened? Did you see Dana? Did something happen to upset or frighten her in any way? How did you know to come back here?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted, and something violent seethed inside him briefly, frighteningly and then was bottled up again and contained. He repeated, “I just don’t know. All I knew was that I had to come here. I—yes, something happened in town and it did upset Dana, but I don’t really understand how—Mrs. Haslow,” and he looked at her with a stunned expression overlaying the stress and emotion, “your daughter wasn’t in the store or anywhere else that I would know to look for her. But I walked around to the back of the store and found her anyway. I knew where she was. I knew she was in trouble.”

Denise stood quickly and walked over to him, tears filling her eyes. She touched him on the arm. “Then do you think you could possibly find her and coax her out of whatever’s got a hold of her?” she whispered. “God, I’m so afraid of what might happen to her. Maybe we should both go out looking—maybe I should—should call somebody for help, oh, I don’t know what to do!” And she broke into tears, wringing her hands futilely.

“No!” he said sharply, grabbing her by the shoulders. “No, don’t call anybody. I’ll go out looking—she can’t have gone far. I’ll find her and bring her back safe. Just stay here, all right? It’ll be…” and he hesitated before continuing, “…better if you’re here calm and waiting for her. Look, are you okay? I really should leave.”

Reassured because she wanted to be reassured, Denise smiled and stepped back. It was a pitiful attempt at a smile, but it seemed to steady her. “I’m fine, really. It’s just—please, David, bring her back safe.”

He started to say something but stopped and just looked at her for a moment. Then, with another shake of his head as if to clear his mind, he left.

Sunlight glinting peacefully through deep green pines, making her half blind from the light. Dana blinked, and heard a far off, raucous call from a blue jay. Another bird answered. She smelled her own sweat, a faintly tangy scent, along with the fresh, aromatic smell of tree sap, along with rich earth. She was breathing hard as if she’d been in a race, panting.

Her eyes, drawn by the heavy weight of something in her hand, dropped, and shock coursed through every fibre of her being, along with the utter terror of not knowing how the gun got to be in her hand. A revolver! How did she get a hold of a revolver? What in Heaven’s name was she doing with it? How had she got here, in the forest?

What, in God’s name, was going on?

“Oh, no, no, no…” she whimpered, body shaking, mouth dry, muscles aching, as she thought back frantically, furiously over the immediate past. It was a smooth blank. What had she been doing? There was something that had upset her terribly, had got her so furious that she’d been shaking. What had happened?

Her eyes narrowed as memory clicked. Mick and the young girl. The nasty, sordid little scene behind the grocery store. Rage, fear, being threatened, and then…nothing. She couldn’t remember, for the life of her, how she’d got the gun. How she’d got from there to here. What had happened to her. What she had done.

A total blank. She had blacked out and yet had apparently acted. She’d left her reality as she knew it and had travelled through something else. She’d fallen into the pit. She’d lost control. God knows where or how she’d acquired the gun, and what she’d done with it. She’d got the gun and then had run away. She was on the run and trying to escape and—
Dear God, What had she done?

A moan of horror tumbled from her lips as she stared at the gun in her hands, and yes, her hands, too, as if it were all poison. Violence and then the gun, and she couldn’t remember. It was really true then. She really was going crazy. It was sunlit and the world was normal, but she was never going to be normal, had never been normal in her life. And now she was in that black pit and she was never going to get out again. She was absolutely mad. It echoed in her mind, over and over, and she wanted to scream at it to stop, but the slam of reality was too immediate, too shocking, too much to be ignored.

She’d wondered if she would be dangerous, if she were ever to go crazy. The black gun in her right hand blurred over as the sudden tears swam in her eyes.

She knew.

Suddenly she did scream, and a bird shot right up into the air in a panic as her scream rolled over the forest. She thought of that angry young man named Mick; she thought of the terrified girl; she thought of her mother; she thought of Mrs. Simms, the grocer’s wife, of David, of Mrs. Cessler. She thought of everyone she loved, and she looked at that gun, sobbing, so desperately afraid, and she slowly brought it up, pointing it right at the pine tree’s trunk. Shaking, crying, and so sick at herself, she shot it until all six bullet spaces had clicked. One empty click, flinch, two, three, four… Two shots, in rapid succession, echoed through the forest, in the silence after her scream. Two bullets, four empty spaces. Two bullets and four unremembered shots.

The self-disgust, the sweating fear, the panic and rage at herself, the self-hate became too much. She’d go home—no, she couldn’t!
Oh, Mama, I don’t want to hurt you! I’m sick, I’m sick—

Dana’s head jerked up as she heard a far-off shout. David. He was coming her way, his deep voice filled with desperation and sharp concern. He was calling her, had heard the shots. He couldn’t find her. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t face anyone or anything else. Her head jerked back again as she looked at the gun and moaned again, flinging it at the tree in front of her. It landed with a dull thud. She suddenly wished she’d saved one of the bullets for herself.