Monster Nation

by David Wellington

  Clark spent nearly an hour among them, listening to their stories. It was bad, bad all over and the only way to survive seemed to be to get out, to get east. Since that was turning out not to be such a great idea (the dead were already in New York and Atlanta was overrun, he learned), the last resort seemed to be Florence-ADX.

  When he was done he retired to the prison. The gates closed again and the Civilian came up beside him. “Feels pretty good, doesn’t it? Being the hero of Denver and all.”

  “I… suppose it does,” Clark admitted.

  “Yeah, so you better not fuck up and get all of these good people killed.”

  Clark blinked in shock. Something to keep in mind, he told himself.

  END OF PART THREE OF MONSTER NATION

  PART FOUR

  Chapter One

  The new study in angiogenesis holds some promise… stem cell therapy could be the key. I palpated the neoplasm today and it was the size of a robin’s egg. Mood: Cheerful, though she refused to eat. [Lab Notes, 9/12/02]

  “Jesus! What's that smell?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, but we have to get out of here.”

  “It’s like month-old pizza or something. Cat piss sealed in Tupperware and left to mellow.”

  “They’re going to get in here. I don’t think you understand. They’re at the gates right now and we didn’t have time to lock them. They are going to come out onto this runway and then we won’t be able to take off.”

  “Huh. Alright, alright. French cheese left sitting on a radiator? Help me get this door closed.”

  Darkness slid across Dick’s hidden form. He wriggled deeper into the packing material inside his crate. He hungered, oh, how he hungered, and there was food just inches away but the Voice had made it clear. There was still work to do.

  His whole body vibrated as the military cargo plane jumped into the sky.

  I won’t accept this! No hope, they say. Keep her comfortable, they tell me. Enjoy the time you have left. No! I am a scientist and I believe all problems can be solved given adequate study and application. I am a scientist and I refuse to accept the inevitable. [Lab Notes, 9/20/02]

  Outside, beyond the fence, construction crews were working non-stop installing plumbing and streetlights in the shanty-town. Bannerman Clark watched a backhoe sinking its teeth into the yielding earth for a while and then turned back to the one-way mirror behind him.

  “We had barricades across the roads but they just came up through the sewer. They came up out of the storm drain—covered in shit, um, pardon my French. Covered in sewage and they didn’t care. You could see their eyes but it was like… God, do you know what I mean? Those aren’t eyes anymore. They aren’t people.”

  If he couldn’t allow the survivors inside the prison walls Clark intended to do what he could for them. He could give them a healthy environment—Vikram had loved the idea of building infrastructure out there, it gave the soldiers something to do other than contemplating their own mortality. An Engineer to the end, the Sikh Major had thrown himself into the hard, back-breaking work as if he were going off to a round of golf.

  “My sister-in-law told us to keep the car running, that she would be out as soon as she found her passport. We waited and waited and waited… we burned through a quarter tank of gas before Chuck decided we had to get moving. I cried, I cried but I didn’t try to stop him.”

  Inside the prison Clark oversaw another program. Each survivor was brought in to be registered—name and vital statistics entered in a proper database, lot number in the shantytown recorded, a cursory physical exam performed. Those who wished it could stay and tell their stories. Almost all of them wished it.

  “Six days in my office, and then the water stopped flowing. I was so hungry and I knew I couldn’t make it without water. They were all over the parking lot, touching the cars, just, just touching them like they were trying to remember what they were for. I knew I had to make a break for it.”

  A row of narrow interrogation rooms lined the space beyond the one-way mirror. In each room a survivor sat with a uniformed interviewer and spoke into a microphone. The chairs were uncomfortable, the rooms cramped and dreary. None of them seemed to mind. The experiences they’d been through were so traumatic and so huge compared to the banal routine of their previous lives that they needed to get them out, needed to purge themselves of what they’d seen and not a single one of them complained or ended an interview early.

  “I was out at a fishing cabin on Lake Mohave, me and three other guys and they… they wanted to leave, to get home to their families. I couldn’t say no, even if I knew we were safer there. We loaded up the truck, we had about sixty pounds of Stripers on ice in the back, figured we could eat those if we didn’t find anything else. It just didn’t matter. I was in the desert two days before this Immigration Services truck picked me up.”

  Clark was thrilled. The more information he could get about what was happening in the world outside the prison, the better. At first that was all it meant—information gathering, intelligence in its most human form. As he listened in on the interviews, though, from his hidden roost in the administration wing, he found he couldn’t turn away. He needed to hear the stories, as much as they needed to tell them.

  He needed to know it was possible to survive. He needed to know that people who weren’t soldiers still had a chance.

  “So we got to this one town, and Charles was in pretty bad shape, and I stopped and there were no people but there were dogs everywhere. I mean whole bunches, um, packs of them, you know? I guess when the people left they couldn’t take their dogs with them. They were everywhere just smiling and wagging their tails, I was worried at first but. Anyway. They were hungry, you could tell. I tried feeding them but there were so many. I found some dog food in this grocery store. It was pitch black in there but I figured it was safe. If the dogs were just running around and okay then there couldn’t be any dead people. I found the dog food and I was looking for a can opener when I heard this noise. It wasn’t a scream, and it wasn’t dogs barking. Okay, I mean, all the dogs were barking, they were always barking. That was kind of a nice sound, they sounded happy. This was different though. The dogs were going crazy. Somebody was really in trouble.”

  Clark pulled up a wooden chair and leaned his elbows on the railing before the mirror. The girl in the interview room had long dark hair stained with blood—how on Earth had that happened, and why hadn’t someone let her into the shower room? Perhaps she had refused the offer. He’d seen stranger behavior from the survivors. Many of them slept sitting in chairs, or in their cars, too accustomed to constantly moving to ever lie down again. Some of them wouldn’t use the facilities without someone else standing guard outside. Hell had come to them and they had learned to live in hell.

  “I came around the corner and the dogs were everywhere, and they were jumping up and down, biting at the air. Really upset. I tried shushing them but there were so many. Then I looked and I saw they were all over the car. The back door was open and Charles… I don’t know what he was thinking. I guess they don’t, you know. Think much. They just get hungry and wander off. Charles had tried to get out of the car but he got snagged in his seat belt. The dogs. The dogs.”

  “Go on,” the interviewer told the girl. A female soldier, maybe five years older than the girl across the table. She poured a glass of water and handed it to her subject.

  The girl had her arms curled tightly around her stomach as if she were feeling nauseous. She didn’t even look at the water. “The dogs tore Charles apart, I guess. To, to pieces. I tried fighting them but they didn’t care about me, they just ignored me. They could tell, somehow. They could tell Charles was dead and they hated him. I used to like dogs, you know?”

  The girl wasn’t crying but she wiped at her face anyway. Maybe it was hot in the interrogation room and she was sweating. “I wish I didn’t make Nilla get out of the car,” the girl said. “She could of helped me, maybe.”

  “Nilla?” The int
erviewer asked. “Who’s Nilla?”

  The girl’s face hardened into concrete and she stared at the interviewer with blazing eyes.

  For some reason—a hunch, perhaps, a stab of intuition—Clark leaned closer to the glass.

  Chapter Two

  Chemo isn’t helping. Laetrile, interferon, gene therapy, mega-antioxidants: nothing. Soon I’ll be down to dried tiger pizzles and psychic surgery. [Lab Notes, 10/30/02]

  She never actually lost consciousness. She couldn’t even faint.

  The pain squeezed her down to a narrow field of view, like peering through the slats of a set of Venetian blinds. Solid black filled the rest of her vision. When she closed her eyes energy buzzed and crackled and spat all around her.

  Mael, she thought. Mael, I didn’t betray you. I tried to do what you asked.

  nilla, he replied, but she could barely hear him. nilla, what’s happened to you?

  Her body felt like a torn-up rag. Ridges and threads of pain dug through her midsection, flesh and bone torn away from each other, organs punctured and deflated. Her stomach muscles hung slack and useless. She could not have stood up even with assistance.

  Under her head the constant burr and rattle of the Space Van’s wheels on pavement hurt her teeth, turned her eyes to bruised jelly. Even her brain hurt. She couldn’t breathe—not that she needed to, but it would have felt infinitesimally better to be able to exhale a long and lugubrious moan.

  “You cut her to pieces. There’s no pulse, Rick. No breathing. She’s dead!”

  “If she was one of them she would be up and at our throats. Just keep her alive long enough that we can get her out of Nevada. I’m not taking the heat if it turns out she really was from the Chamber.” Mellowman stepped into her field of view. Looking down at her his face turned bunched-up and porcine. “Listen, my little Muffin. If you die in my van I will shoot your corpse,” he said.

  “Get back, alright? It’s hard enough doing this while we’re moving. Jesus—could we slow down a little?” Something sharp slid into the flesh of Nilla’s bicep. A hypodermic needle. Of all the pointless things… She tried smiling a little and found to her surprise that she still had a little control over her facial muscles.

  “Dead my ass, look at that.” Mellowman stared deep into her eyes. “She likes it, she likes whatever you just put in her arm.”

  “Just a reflex, Rick. Don’t get excited.”

  Mellowman shook his head. “Who are you working for, lady? Who sent you? Playing dead isn’t going to save you from a beating. Talk to me, fucker!” He leaned very close until she could smell the stink of garlic and sausages on his breath. “I know you can hear me, you stupid cow!” When she failed to respond he pursed his lips and let a dollop of drool dangle out of his mouth. It wobbled back and forth, yellowish and full of bubbles. It filled up her vision and instinctively she tossed her head to the side to avoid it.

  He sucked it hurriedly back into his mouth. “I got you!” he screamed, and then he started kicking her.

  She went limp, as best her savaged muscles would let her.

  Eventually he stopped.

  Nilla—it’s hard for me to find you, where are you, lass?

  She could hear Mael calling her but through the pain his voice was a little light floating far out on an ocean of darkness. She lacked the resources to answer.

  Nilla! I can barely sense you out there, talk to me!

  Later, but still long before the dawn. Darkness outside of the window in the van’s rear door. Occasional arpeggios of light as they passed under streetlamps, pizzicato flashes of red as they passed a car going the other way, few and far between. Mike, the one with the needles, had his arms around her, moving her back and forth. Maybe trying to wake her up. He pulled a blanket around her as the van slowed, pulled away from the lights. The back door fell open and she was pushed and dragged out, onto loose dirt. She could feel the van’s exhaust farting against her leg, hot and dry.

  The desert at night: close and comforting, the very opposite of the expansive emptiness of day time. The darkness, near total, pushed in close looking to share your warmth. The few sounds were mournful and polite.

  “Welcome to Arizona, Muffin. Home of fuck-all and plenty of it,” Mellowman bellowed at her, his face very close to her ear. She couldn’t stand on her own. If Mike let go of her she knew she would fall. “I’m going to shoot you again. In the head this time. If that still doesn’t kill you we’re going to bury you in a shallow grave. If you dig yourself out of the grave then I will come back and shoot you again, until it works.”

  Just… just go invisible, Nilla thought. But that was beyond her, way beyond her. She lacked the energy for it.

  Mike set her down, leaning up against the side of the van. The third guy, the fidgety one—had be been driving the van? He must have been driving the van—leaped out of the back holding a shovel. “Alright, Termite, you get to it,” Mellowman told him. He moved rapidly out of Nilla’s field of vision but she could hear him digging, quite close by.

  Mellowman knelt down near her and took one of the film canisters from his bandolier. He popped it open with one thumb and a complex, earthy, skunky smell came out. A vegetable smell. He dug out a finger’s length of leafy green material and rolled it into a cigarette. He lit it and blew smoke in her face. “Not much longer now. You feel like talking?”

  She let her eyes go lax in their sockets. No point in looking at anything. There was nothing in this little tableau that could save her.

  “I don’t expect you do. Some people like to talk when they get to this point, is all, they like to confess to things, like I was a priest or somewhat. I’ve been out this way before, you see. I’ve had problems like you before. Not so much it’s become a habit. You want a puff on this? Or maybe some water? Maybe, Muffin, you want to know what it’s like to be with a man. You know, one last time.”

  She focused her vision on him again and was surprised by what she found in his face. He looked genuinely interested. This was real to him, all of it, much more real than the people in Las Vegas lined up at the van or the danger she might have posed to his operation. No, this was a man whose life was measured in the number of times he was able to go out into the desert and do someone harm.

  She could plead for her life but that was beyond pointless—he wanted her to suffer, to beg, and the more she cried the more he would want. She could ask for what she really wanted and just maybe she would get it. “Huh, huh,” she snuffled. “Hungry.” It came out on a long exhalation.

  Mellowman shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. Then I guess a blow job is out of the question.” It was a joke, whether or not she found it funny. Apparently he had been serious about granting her last request, though, or perhaps he just didn’t care. Mike went into the van—she felt it rocking against her back as she moved around inside there—and emerged with half of a sandwich. Roast beef and mustard, by the smell. He held it near her mouth but she couldn’t use her hands, couldn’t even lift her arms. He had to feed it to her, disassembling the components. His motions around her were respectful, almost gentle. When she was done eating though Mellowman ordered Mike to pick her up and carry her and his hands grabbed her forcefully under her armpits.

  Nilla.

  Mael’s voice in her head sounded distorted, fuzzy on the low end. It irritated her, itched in one corner of her brain, the left side high up. She felt the buzz in her teeth.

  Nilla, Dick’s on the road to you but I doubt he’ll arrive in time. There’s something else I can try, but no guarantees, lass. Do you understand? It may be as I can’t get you out of this one.

  She understood. She was grateful he was with her there at the end.

  Mike and the other one, the twitchy guy, lowered her into the grave, a hole maybe three feet deep in the sand. The half of a sandwich she’d eaten had given her a little strength back, enough to sit up anyway.

  Mellowman broke open his shotgun and loaded in a pair of shells. When he sighted down the barrels at her his free eye
was wide with excitement. He was going to enjoy this, she saw, and she was certain by the way he looked at her, that and no other evidence, that of all the people he had killed and buried in shallow graves before none of them had been women. And that this simple fact made all the world of difference to him.

  This was a man who had always counted on himself first. Who had never believed that other people were worth the time it took to learn their names, not when you could make up new ones for them and they just took it and smiled like they liked it. This was the kind of man for whom the end of the world meant the beginning of all possibilities. Breaking the law was a game. Selling drugs was a great way to make money because people wanted drugs and what was good or bad for them meant nothing whatsoever. The kind of man who could kill just to see what it felt like.

  It was funny how being so close to death concentrated her perceptions. She felt like she could look right into the souls of the men around her. How much of it was her reading their energy, their auras, and how much was just pure imagination she didn’t know. Mellowman placed the end of the shotgun against her forehead and braced himself against the recoil. Nilla had been in that position before. Men seemed to like her in that position. Go invisible, she told herself, but she couldn’t. The sandwich hadn’t been enough, it hadn’t bolstered her energy enough to let her do that.

  Mellowman put his finger through the trigger guard of the shot gun. He started to squeeze.

  Then he stopped.

  Muffled, deepened as it came wending its way through the fabric of his jeans jacket, music floated up out of Mellowman’s chest. Skynyrd. Freebird.

  “Aw, fuck no, aw, not now,” he whined. “Nah, not that ring…”

  He lowered the shotgun and took a red-white-and-blue cell phone out of his inner jacket pocket. He stared at it as if he were holding a coprolite in his hand. Something exotic and bizarre and loathsome all at the same time.