Monster Nation(82)

'My sister-in-law told us to keep the car running, that she would be out as soon as she found her passport. We waited and waited and waited' we burned through a quarter tank of gas before Chuck decided we had to get moving. I cried, I cried but I didn't try to stop him.'

Inside the prison Clark oversaw another program. Each survivor was brought in to be registered'name and vital statistics entered in a proper database, lot number in the shantytown recorded, a cursory physical exam performed. Those who wished it could stay and tell their stories. Almost all of them wished it.

'Six days in my office, and then the water stopped flowing. I was so hungry and I knew I couldn't make it without water. They were all over the parking lot, touching the cars, just, just touching them like they were trying to remember what they were for. I knew I had to make a break for it.'

A row of narrow interrogation rooms lined the space beyond the one-way mirror. In each room a survivor sat with a uniformed interviewer and spoke into a microphone. The chairs were uncomfortable, the rooms cramped and dreary. None of them seemed to mind. The experiences they'd been through were so traumatic and so huge compared to the banal routine of their previous lives that they needed to get them out, needed to purge themselves of what they'd seen and not a single one of them complained or ended an interview early.

'I was out at a fishing cabin on Lake Mohave, me and three other guys and they' they wanted to leave, to get home to their families. I couldn't say no, even if I knew we were safer there. We loaded up the truck, we had about sixty pounds of Stripers on ice in the back, figured we could eat those if we didn't find anything else. It just didn't matter. I was in the desert two days before this Immigration Services truck picked me up.'

Clark was thrilled. The more information he could get about what was happening in the world outside the prison, the better. At first that was all it meant'information gathering, intelligence in its most human form. As he listened in on the interviews, though, from his hidden roost in the administration wing, he found he couldn't turn away. He needed to hear the stories, as much as they needed to tell them.

He needed to know it was possible to survive. He needed to know that people who weren't soldiers still had a chance.

'So we got to this one town, and Charles was in pretty bad shape, and I stopped and there were no people but there were dogs everywhere. I mean whole bunches, um, packs of them, you know? I guess when the people left they couldn't take their dogs with them. They were everywhere just smiling and wagging their tails, I was worried at first but. Anyway. They were hungry, you could tell. I tried feeding them but there were so many. I found some dog food in this grocery store. It was pitch black in there but I figured it was safe. If the dogs were just running around and okay then there couldn't be any dead people. I found the dog food and I was looking for a can opener when I heard this noise. It wasn't a scream, and it wasn't dogs barking. Okay, I mean, all the dogs were barking, they were always barking. That was kind of a nice sound, they sounded happy. This was different though. The dogs were going crazy. Somebody was really in trouble.'

Clark pulled up a wooden chair and leaned his elbows on the railing before the mirror. The girl in the interview room had long dark hair stained with blood'how on Earth had that happened, and why hadn't someone let her into the shower room? Perhaps she had refused the offer. He'd seen stranger behavior from the survivors. Many of them slept sitting in chairs, or in their cars, too accustomed to constantly moving to ever lie down again. Some of them wouldn't use the facilities without someone else standing guard outside. Hell had come to them and they had learned to live in hell.

'I came around the corner and the dogs were everywhere, and they were jumping up and down, biting at the air. Really upset. I tried shushing them but there were so many. Then I looked and I saw they were all over the car. The back door was open and Charles' I don't know what he was thinking. I guess they don't, you know. Think much. They just get hungry and wander off. Charles had tried to get out of the car but he got snagged in his seat belt. The dogs. The dogs.'

'Go on,' the interviewer told the girl. A female soldier, maybe five years older than the girl across the table. She poured a glass of water and handed it to her subject.

The girl had her arms curled tightly around her stomach as if she were feeling nauseous. She didn't even look at the water. 'The dogs tore Charles apart, I guess. To, to pieces. I tried fighting them but they didn't care about me, they just ignored me. They could tell, somehow. They could tell Charles was dead and they hated him. I used to like dogs, you know?'