Monster Nation(6)

Pankiewicz looked at her through the grille between the front and back of the car. She could barely see his face through the mesh. 'How are you doing, Miss? You need any water or anything before we get going?'

She shook her head. 'Hungry,' she croaked out. That was about what she could manage vocally. The word was disconnected from what was happening in her head but strangely not from her body. Her nausea had passed and her stomach growled audibly.

Pankiewicz grunted and turned this way and that as if looking for food. He opened the patrol car's glove box and took something out. He had to get out of the car and come around to the back to give it to her'a snack-sized box of cookies. She took it gratefully. Once he was back inside Emerson got the car going and they headed out onto a highway, the flashers on but not the siren.

She shoved a cookie into her mouth with numbed fingers and crunched down on it. She couldn't really taste it but a feeling of warmth and health swept through her with each swallow. So good. She thrust her hand into the box to get another, ripping the cardboard.

'Do you have insurance, Miss?' Pankiewicz asked her, picking up a radio handset. 'We need to know which hospital to take you to.'

'Doesn't matter,' she mumbled, the words distorted by the three cookies she'd stacked up between her teeth.

'I'm afraid that until we get a democrat in the White House it does,' Emerson said, darkly.

'Jesus, would you stop it?' Pankiewicz said. 'Now's not the time.' He turned to glance at her again, appraising her. Looking for something. 'Am I right, Miss? Not when things are still so f*cked up inIraq . You don't switch horses in mid-war. We need a strong leader more than ever.'

'I agree,' Emerson snickered. 'Too bad we don't have one right now. So, Miss. What's your name, anyway?'

Her hands went automatically to a purse or a wallet but there was nothing in her pockets, nothing that could help her answer that question. Something told her to lie. Not a voice in her head so much as a rising tide of panic that came out of nowhere. Unfortunately she had no idea what to say.

While they had been bantering she had devoured the entire box of cookies. She looked down at the empty package which she had reduced to bits of shredded cardboard and wax paper. She'd even sucked out all the crumbs.

'Nilla,' she said. Nil. Nothing. She had nothing of herself left, after all. She would have to create something new and the box of cookies, the first purely good thing she'd found, made the perfect inspiration.

She wished she had some more. Not cookies necessarily. More food, real food.

Five minutes later they reached the hospital only to find the emergency room entrance blocked by two ambulances that had collided with each other. Nilla could see into one of them through its open rear doors. Nobody was inside but the interior lights were on. Blood dripped from the rear bumper.

'There must be something bad going down. This place looks swamped,' Pankiewicz said. He popped open his door before the patrol car had even come to a stop. He opened her door and helped her out. She leaned on him as they made their way around the ambulances and into the emergency room.





Monster Nation





Chapter Four


'LARGEST EVER' MANHUNT IN NEVADA DESERT TURNS UP GRUESOME RESULT: Partial Body Found, Feared to be Shawna, Awaits Identification [CNN.com breaking story alert, 3/17/05]

One look at the blood on Nilla's shirt and they put her in an examination room right away'really just a cubicle, hemmed in by mobile partitions, barely big enough for her narrow bed. Outside the moans of the injured and the sick never stopped. Shadows crossed the fabric of the partition, the acoustic ceiling tiles above her head. A nurse in a jacket decorated with panda bears came in and attached a plastic clip to her finger but didn't have time to turn on the attached machine before she was called away. The back of her jacket showed a bloody hand print.

She heard screaming a minute later and what had to be a gunshot. An orderly in a white uniform opened her partition and stormed inside. 'I'm really sorry about this, Ma'am,' he said. He spoke with a West Indian accent, syncopated and musical. He had a shaved head and he looked exhausted. Draped across his arm were countless thick loops of thick black nylon. He tore one open by its Velcro closure and started feeding it through the tubular frame of her bed.

'That's not necessary,' she insisted as he fastened the loop around her left wrist. A rivulet of icy cold ran down her back and her body twitched. Her head was pounding.