Monster Nation(73)

Shame pushed up out of Clark's collar and spread across his cheeks. He should have been more flexible, more open to other possibilities. Countless people had died because he had assumed the Epidemic had to be a disease.

'Then some very smart people thought to actually put the data into a spreadsheet and see what came out. What we see now is that this isn't an infectious disease at all. Whatever it may be instead is spreading in a radial pattern, something no biological agent ever does. Instead it propagates like sound waves or radio waves, only far, far slower.' He pointed at some blotches on the map, places separated by hundreds of miles but which had been overrun by the infected on the same day, the same hour. 'It's emanating from somewhere here in the Rocky Mountains and spreading outward in every direction like a ripple on a pond. Nothing stops it, nothing can protect against it. Wherever the leading edge of this wave arrives, the dead come back to life and attack the living.'

'The dead?' the Civilian asked, glee lighting up his face.

'The dead.' Time to face facts. Desiree Sanchez had finally proved her point to Clark, and all it cost her was everything she had. Enough! Guilt wasn't going to get him what he needed. 'I don't know what's here.' He stuck his finger on the spot in the mountains that had to be the epicenter of the apocalypse. 'But I know it's causing this' disaster to happen. And I believe that given the right opportunity,' he stiffened his spine and stared into the middle distance. 'Well. If something can be turned on, perhaps it can be switched off.'

'You think you can stop the Epidemic? You want to stop it?' Purslane Dunnstreet asked, sounding dismayed.

'Stop it altogether? The dead just fall down and don't get up again, nobody else rises from the grave, we get around to the long and painful process of rebuilding?' the Civilian asked, looking greedy.

Clark folded his arms behind his back and nodded, just once. This was it. The last best chance for humanity and it could be done in his back yard with a handful of men.

'So you're saying,' Dunnstreet said, very, very slowly, 'that you don't want to participate in the Defense of the Potomac.' She went to her charts. 'I had a company picked out for you, especially, Captain. A company all your own.'

Clark's face fell. After decades of keeping his feelings to himself, this was too much.

'Purslane, I think perhaps we've covered enough for today,' the Civilian said, rising from his chair.

'Captain,' Dunnstreet said, ignoring him. 'I can understand if my battle orders frighten you. I can, truly, I know what it is like to quaver before a grand duty. I hope you will reconsider. Before you leave, though, will you do one thing for me? Will you pray with me for our nation?'

Without taking her eyes off of him she sank to her knees on the floor. She wove her fingers together into a tight, bony ball and looked deep into him with dewy, innocent eyes that sat in that porcelain face like raw oysters on a dish.

'Well, you two?' she asked. The Civilian grumbled and got down on his knees.

FULL UP'NO REFUGEES

No food, no water, no drugs, no money,

NO TRESPASSING NO SOLICITATION

Sorry, we're closed!

[Painted on the front entrance of a DiscountDen superstore in Springfield, MO, 4/11/05]

As she wriggled through the gap below a chainlink fence on the edge of a golf course a sharp point of steel stuck into Nilla's back. She felt her shirt tear, then her flesh. She grimaced'there was little pain, but she knew the wound would look terrible and she needed to pass for human. At the very least she would need a new shirt.

Nothing for it. She squirmed in the dirt and crawled through, onto immaculate bluegrass. She kept low and moved quickly across the green, knowing that if she was caught she would be slaughtered on sight. She was halfway to the clubhouse when a barking dog made her jump in her skin.

'Shut up!' someone yelled. 'Shut up already! What the f*ck's the matter with you?' The voice came from just over a low rise in the course. Nilla dropped to the grass on her stomach and stopped breathing. The dog appeared on top of the rise, ears flicked back, nose sniffing at the air. A German shepherd, straining on its leash. She quieted herself as Mael had taught her and banked the fuming darkness of her energy. It was getting so much easier, and she could hold the darkness down for longer and longer periods of time. There. She was invisible. The dog pawed at the ground and whimpered for a moment, then kept right on barking.

Damn. It could smell her. She imagined sinking her teeth into the dog's neck. How good it would feel. The animal's golden life glared in the darkness and she wondered if it was thinking exactly the same thing.