When he woke up at 12:54 the next afternoon, he found himself not in the truck, but on it. He had an ax in his hands and was shaking violently.
He climbed cautiously down from the roof of the truck, wondering at the same time where he had gotten the ax. He shrugged it off after searching the rest rooms near where he was parked, which was the only place he could think of where he could have gotten it from.
He climbed back into the truck and drove to the Mobile Lab near the Hunntersen's house. He had to talk to someone. He walked inside and instantly got the attention of Anton, Matt and Lindsay, who were all watching surveillance tapes at the computer deck. After pausing for a second, he walked over to Lindsay and asked to talk to her in the conference room privately for a minute.
Lindsay stepped into the conference room, wondering what this was about. She could tell something must be wrong; Peter looked so downbeat. His shirt was wrinkled and wasn't tucked into his jeans, as it usually was. His tie hung loose and wrinkled around his neck, he had purple marks under his eyes, and he was so pale he was almost transparent.
"Peter, are you okay? What are you doing here? You have the week off," Lindsay asked, concerned about her friend and teammate.
"I can't take it anymore, Lindsay. They won't leave me alone..." Peter told her, in a confused daze.
"What are you talking about? Who won't leave you alone?"
"They're in my head..." Peter dropped down in one of the chairs around the table and ran his dirty hands through his hair.
"Peter, slow down. Start from the beginning."
"For the past two weeks, I haven't been able to concentrate."
"We've noticed."
"I haven't been able to sleep, either. I've been having these horrible nightmares. I wake up, sometimes not in the same place I went to sleep at. It was especially bad last night. I was driving around town, and I stopped at a rest stop to sleep for the night. I went to sleep in the back seat of the truck, and I woke up on the roof with an ax in my hands."
"Are you okay? Why did you have an ax for?" Lindsay asked, taking his hand in hers.
"I don't know... I must have been defending myself from the thing in my dreams..." Peter said, clearly scared.
"What thing in your dreams?"
"There was something coming after me and my family. I was staying with my brother, his wife and their three-year-old daughter, and this bright light came and took them all away." Tears welled in the corner of his eyes, and he blinked unsuccessfully to keep them back. One escaped and rolled down his cheek.
Lindsay let go of his hand and came over to sit beside him. She put her left arm around his shoulder, and he leaned on her. Tears started streaming down his face. "I couldn't save my family," he said between sobs.
Lindsay shushed him and wiped the tears from his face with her right hand. Peter closed his eyes and stopped sobbing, but instead started shaking slightly.
Matt and Anton stood on the other side of the closed sliding glass doors with the OSIR logo emblazoned on them.
"Poor man," Anton said sympathetically, and he and Matt turned and walked away. |
