Monster Nation(109)

Dinosaurs. Statues of dinosaurs. A tyrranosaur loomed over the site, while human-sized velociraptors leered out from around corners. In the middle of it all stood a dilapidated building with a sign posted next to its door.

DINOSAUR EXPERIENCE -HALL OF FOSSILS-PROPRIETOR DR. E. VRONSKI OPENING SUMMER 2006

The door opened and a man stepped out. A living man. He was mostly bald, with tiny blue eyes, intensely blue eyes. Nilla walked over to him and took the hand he extended. He had no trouble seeing her, even though she was invisible. She must be invisible'if she let her energy show, even for a moment, she would have been incinerated.

'I always imagined one of you would come. Please. We should go inside.' He lead her into a dark building full of glass display cases. Some of them were empty and collecting dust. Others held dark fossils half-buried in matrices of brown or red stone. Educational plaques hung on the walls.

'Are you Dr. Vronski?' Nilla asked.

'I was,' he told her. 'I mean' I was a paleontologist, before all this, well, you know, started. I'm the one, by the way. I'm the moron who killed off the human race.'

Nilla didn't know how to reply to that. Then she thought of something. “How can you see me? I'm invisible.”

He burbled pleasantly, as if something had tickled him. 'After a while I learned how to see it. The singularity. It's like living next to an invisible star for months and months, eventually you start wondering where all the light is coming from. You're like a shadow against that light. You know, like on a dark night, you can see a tree because its silhouette blots out the stars behind it. Come on, please, this way. You're going to kill me, right? Kill me and eat me? It's far less than what I deserve. Here.' He lead her to the top of a stairwell. 'Maybe you'd like to see it first, though. The singularity. Or maybe' something to eat.'

Nilla looked down the stairs. There was someone else down there'or maybe two people, standing very close together. They moved into the light and her mouth fell open in true horror.

'This is my wife, Charlotte.' He looked at her eyes and whispered, 'please don't say anything about her appearance. She's very sensitive.'





Monster Nation





Chapter Fifteen


Unexpected side effects, all over the news I' I did this? I can't believe it spread so far' I did this? I did it for her, only for her' forgive me' [Lab Notes, 4/2/05]

'I'm sorry that it's dead. I know you would prefer it alive.'

Vronski put down a plate in front of Nilla. A dead rat lay on its side there, one glazed eye pointed in her direction. She ate it without thinking too much about it. She was too busy trying not to look at Charlotte.

The paleontologist had prepared a Lean Cuisine for himself. Apparently Charlotte didn't eat any more, so instead he had placed a vase full of cut flowers where her plate should go. As Nilla tried not to watch Charlotte slowly and methodically tore the petals off the flowers and crumpled them between her fingers.

Charlotte was still alive. Vronski had assured Nilla of that fact at least three times. It was hard to believe him. Boils and eruptions covered the skin of her one remaining arm, which emerged from under a pendulous roll of ill-defined flesh. When she moved Nilla could almost make out the shape of a human being in the mass.

The paleontologist's wife had been a lawyer, once, he had told her. Now she was an abomination. Pancreatic cancer had blossomed inside of her, spreading to every part of her body. It should have killed her. Vronski had kept her alive at the cost of apocalypse, but in the process he had kept the cancer alive as well. Apparently there had been no choice.

The cancer outweighed what was left of Charlotte, probably by a factor of three to one. Its abstract tissue draped over her back and down her sides. It dragged on the floor behind her. It obscured her breasts and hips and it completely hid her face. It mostly looked like fat tissue covered in thin, translucent skin, but in places it had tried to form itself into pieces of a human being. A row of perfectly-formed teeth emerged from the smooth expanse where Charlotte's shoulder must be. Patches of hair had broken out here and there on her back and there were fingernails growing in places that weren't fingers. A single closed eyelid could be seen on her stomach.

A thick bundle of black cables drooped from under the roll of flesh and snaked its way out of the room. It connected Charlotte's nervous system directly to the Source. Without those cables, Vronski explained, she would die instantly. The human parts of her were incapable of supporting the cancerous parts without direct stimulation.