Monster Nation(25)

They didn't find her.

Dogs howled for her as she lay motionless and coiled. A helicopter buzzed overhead, its searchlight spearing the scrub grass right outside the mouth of her pipe, bleaching it of color. Men ran past with their guns jangling, excited for the kill, lusting for her blood. Hunger grew inside of her'it was the only way to measure the passage of time. She wanted to crawl out and away, to go look for some food but she didn't dare. Instead she chewed on her fingernails, which just made her hungrier. She lost track of the seconds, the minutes, the hours. The night flew away from her on bat's wings.

Dawn came, a hallucinatory vibrant blue on the grass that slowly turned to gray. There was silence around her. There had been for hours. She'd been waiting for something, some signal that it was safe to come out.

Nothing presented itself. Still. She couldn't stay in the pipe forever. She had to get out. She had to get away. She harbored no illusion that the men had given up. They would still be looking for her. She was a monster. Something that had to be hunted down. She had to run as far and as fast as she could to avoid them. Definitely she had to get out of town. Where could she go, though? She might have family somewhere, people who would hide her, but she had no recollection of anyone. She didn't know where she lived herself.

Stiff with cold and moisture she unraveled herself in the pipe and climbed out on all fours, every inch costing her jolts of pain up and down her spine. Once she was fully out of the pipe she stood up with infinite care and caution. The motion made her head buzz. Exhaustion and the ever-growing hunger made everything around her jittery and sharp. She rubbed at her eyes with her knuckles and something dark flared in her mind's eye.

She gulped and choked on a shriek, keeping it inside of her but just barely. There'up on a hill above the hospital. Just a silhouette, a man-shaped darkness framed against the first orange smudge of the rising sun. She squinted hard and saw a naked man, his skin covered in blue curlicues and arabesques. Tattoos. He didn't look like one of the dead. He looked perfectly healthy. He had a thick bushy beard and his hair was pulled back in a tight pony-tail. He wore nothing but a piece of rope around his neck and a band of fur around one bicep.

The man looked right into her head and she knew he was not just aware of her but psychically inside of her. He was probing her, studying her. She sensed some things about him, reciprocity for what he was taking from her. Not words, nothing so complex'just buzzing, distorted sensations, feelings, images. He was old, very old, and very much undead like herself, he let her know. He was a friend.

He turned away from her and pointed at the sun. She understood.

In a moment all of it was gone. He was gone. She was standing on wet grass, alone, defenseless. Hunted. She had something, though. There was somebody else'somebody like herself out there. She had no idea if she could trust him or not but what did it matter?

She had a direction. East. Go east, the naked man had been telling her. She had to go somewhere. Go east. Okay, she thought.

Okay.

END OF PART ONE





Monster Nation





Chapter One


DIESEL FUEL RESERVED FOR AUTHORIZED USERS ONLY! Please forgive the inconvenience. [Sign posted at aPetaluma,CA , gas station 3/23/05]

Dick woke up different. Simplified.

Silvery moonlight lit up the world. It dripped from the branches of the trees and played on the surface of the snow. Dick was a shadow in the lee of that light. There were other shadows surrounding him. One huddled near him, her long white hair dyed with blood. She curled tight around a treasure that glowed dimly like a dying ember. It had a knob of bone protruding from one end. It had fingers on the other. It was a human arm, but Dick was beyond concerns of taste or decorum. He tried to grab it away from her only to find that he had no hands anymore. His shoulders ended in gore-caked nubs. The female shadow's prize was part of Dick's body. His arm.

The sheep had the other one. They were working hard at grinding it down to paste so they could swallow it. It would take them hours to finish it.

This was immaterial to Dick. There was light and there were shadows and he was one of the latter. He was no longer capable of feeling loss or regret.

Only hunger.

The Homeland Security Advisory System today raised the level of threat awareness toOrange , or High for the following areas:Anaheim ,Glendale , andOakland . The level of threat awareness has been raised to red, or Severe, for the following areas of the Southland:Atwater , Brentwood,CenturyCity , Granada Hills, Los Feliz' [DHS bulletin for the media, issued 3/26/05]