Monster Nation(65)

'Christ! I'm not some kind of evil undead warrior! I don't want to hurt anyone!'

'Except Jason Singletary.' Mael place a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. The touch felt good'it had been a long time since anyone had touched her'but she shrugged it away. 'I've seen through you, Nilla. You would have shaken him till his teeth rattled in his mouth if it would have gotten you a name. And what about those children? You lead them right to their deaths, even after I warned you to stay apart from them.'

She took a swing at Mael, her hard fist tight as a muscle cramp, but the blow met no resistance. She felt a clamminess in the air but there was no connection. She reached out and grabbed for his throat but her fingers just disappeared into his flesh as if she had stuck her hand into a column of smoke.

Nilla threw her hands up in disgust and turned around, heading back the way she'd come.

'His life has been one of torture. He's been in pain since he was a child. Your heart didn't go out to him, though. You were willing to use his pain. You wanted to make him hurt more.'

'And that's a good thing?' she demanded. She was not surprised when she found him standing in front of her again. She tried walking right through him but he grabbed her shoulders and stopped her dead in her tracks. 'You want me to do that, to hurt him?'

'Lass, you haven't been listening. I want to stop his pain.' Mael glanced down into the canyon, toward the weathered shack. 'I want to take it all away.'

Nilla looked too and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. A dead man stood on the doorstep of Singletary's little home. The dead man with no arms. With his head the corpse butted open the door and stepped inside.

She nearly broke her neck racing down the side of the rock.





Monster Nation





Chapter Eight


Virgin desperately seeking help before world ends, T/Th 5:00, tap foot [Graffiti in a bathroom stall, O'Hare International Airport, 4/18/05]

Dick stumbled through the door into cool air and just swayed there for a moment, glad to be out of the punishing sun, glad to have a soft wooden floor under his bare foot. For a moment, just a moment he felt the comfort of being in a place with square corners again. There were no memories in his head to be awakened, no thoughts of any kind but this perfectly simple, perfectly harmless pleasure. He was allowed to revel in it for just a handful of moments.

There were rules that had to be followed. This was a game. Dick's universe had become a sort of game. It had rules.

'No'no, not now,' someone said from below him and it was over. The hunger raced up his spine and into his brain and he swung his head around, sniffing out whatever had made that noise. He stumbled against a table and metal crashed to the floor, bright sounds banging and crashing in staccato rhythm, turned and spun, the silvery grain of the wooden walls captivated him but no, he stepped forward and nearly trod on the very thing he sought.

Rule One: Dick will eat what Dick finds.

In a heap on the floor a nearly-naked man lay curled around one leg of the table, his head in his hands. 'I didn't hear you come in,' he said, a sad, gentle smile in his voice.

Dick didn't understand the words'words as a whole were lost to him. That was less of a rule than a condition of play. It was a relief more than anything. When people spoke to him he knew that they were trying to get his attention, that they were trying to communicate. He felt no frustration when he failed to get the point. There were rules in this world, but no decisions.

Dick sank to his knees. The food in front of him whimpered quietly but didn't try to get away. Dick felt no pangs of conscience. Sometimes food ran and you had to chase it all day, the hunger dogging every footstep, every moment that passed an agony of want. When the food just laid there perfectly still, that was best.

He bent lower, bringing his mouth down toward the glowing energy of the food. It looked a little thready, a little dulled as if this food was already wounded but that made no difference. Dick bared his teeth and aimed for the food's throat.

Stop now. Wait for my command.

The voice did not startle Dick, even though he understood it perfectly. The message was not made of words at all but of pure neural voltage. It slotted into his nervous system like a computer program loading from a disk.

Dick could more easily have stopped a moving bulldozer with his face than he could disobey that command.

Rule Two: Dick obeys the Voice. The Voice is the Voice of the Source. No further explanation is required.