Monster Nation(57)

The Civilian had ordered him to get to a hardened location and wait. Clark had chosen Florence'the best fortified site he knew'and he would get there eventually. But not before he'd rescued every civilian he found between Denver and the supermax prison.





Monster Nation





Chapter Four


US slouches toward Martial Law, Conspiracy Nuts Everywhere Cream their Jeans

The Att-Gen asking for extra powers, well, what else is new. But with the Army pretty much owning half of the Western US already and security inside the Beltway making every trip to Starbucks into a fun-filled lightning round of 'name that gun' this is starting to look like the real deal. Brr.

[blog entry, wonkette.com, 4/9/05]

Nilla perched on the edge of a hand-made wicker chair, her hands on the table. The bald man twisted the can opener a final time and put a tin of potted meat down between them. It looked like cat food.

'I'm, uh, I'm Jason Singletary.' He showed her an expanse of brown and ugly teeth. She supposed it was a smile or something.

'Nilla,' she said.

'I know.' He stepped back from the table and moved his hands in front of him, touching his fingers together as if he was counting. 'I know a lot of things about you. I know what your purpose is, I think. There's a lot to discuss.'

Nilla frowned at him. This was nonsense. How could he know her name? She'd never seen him before in her death. If he'd known her during her life he still wouldn't know the name she'd chosen for herself. He was lying.

He could see her when she was invisible, of course, which meant that maybe he had sources of information that weren't readily available to her.

She ran a fingertip across the puce surface of the potted meat and touched it to her tongue. She couldn't deny it was tasty. It had been flesh once, after all. She dug in with a much-dented spoon he provided and started eating. 'Why do you live'' she began, intending to ask him why he lived in such a lonely place, but he reacted as if she were shouting right in his ear, wincing away from her words, clutching at his head with both hands. He dashed into the tiny house's kitchenette and grabbed a roll of tin foil, which he wrapped around and around his head until it formed a tight, shiny skullcap.

'Sorry, what was that?' he asked.

'I' was going' to ask,' Nilla said, trying to keep her words soft and slow, 'why you lived all the way out here. In the middle of the desert.'

He nodded happily. 'Nevada has the lowest population of any of the fifty states,' he told her, reciting something he'd read in a book in school by the sound of it. 'There's a lot less chatter. I call it chatter, like the background transmissions they pick up on their radios, radio operators, they call that chatter.'

He stepped backward, colliding with the wooden wall of his shack.

'I'm, well, psychic,' he told her.

'No, really,' Nilla said, digging with her finger for the last shreds of meat in the bottom of the tin. She couldn't remember eating it, frankly, it had gone so quickly and'

Yes, really,she thought, interrupting her own train of thought. Which should have been impossible, she pondered'after all, nobody could think of two things at once, and therefore, I really am psychic. This is me you're hearing. It just sounds like your own inner voice.

Nilla stared up at him, trying not to think of anything. That's impossible, I'm afraid. You're always thinking about something, no matter how abstract or banal. The mind can't just stand still. It has to keep moving or it dies. Like a shark. Sharks suffocate if they stop swimming.

'Don't do that again,' she told him. 'It's very disconcerting.'

'Imagine how I feel,' he said out loud. 'I have that'all of that, that noise in my head, except, it's all the time, it's, it's, it's' it's very difficult having you here. I'm sorry but it has to be said. I thought, well, with your memory condition maybe, maybe just maybe you'd be less, oh God, less noisy, but but but but you're just full. Full of questions. I've been living here a very long time. I get everything I need through the mail. You're the first visitor I've had in twenty years.' As he spoke he kept scratching the skin around his eyes and the top of his nose as if something in his head was trying to get out. Nilla stared at his hands and he dropped them to his sides.

She looked around the one-room shack for the first time, really, actually studying how Singletary lived. She saw his bed in one corner, a utilitarian cot covered in old, tattered magazines and a box of tissues. She saw his stove, a rusted white box that sat well away from any of the walls, and the shelves above it filled with tin cans. She saw the orange bottles that pills come in everywhere, scattered underfoot, lined up neatly on the edge of the table, interspersed with the stored food. She picked one up and studied its label.