Monster Planet(45)

Darkness clanged shut across her vision like shutters closing with a sound of ringing, a tinnitus ring.

The sound squealed up to a howling, an echoing scream that might have come from her own throat except except except

time didn't just turn on her it turned a wheel it turned like a wheel

(For a moment she was outside her own body, looking down, pointing at herself. Blood raced through tubes running down her throat, up her ass. A machine like a bagpipe bellowed up and down and breathed for her. There was a man next to her, a very hairy naked white man with blue tattoos curlicuing all over his body. He had a rope around his neck like a punk rock neck tie, or like a noose cut way too short. 'That's me,' she said, 'they're killing me,' and he smiled the way you might smile at a baby who suddenly, as its first words, announced it had filled its diaper. 'I know you, don't I?' she asked.)

a nurse came through the tent, and passed right through him, as if he were a ghost

(Yes,the man told her, without opening his mouth. Her vision went away and instead she saw a brain in a glass jar.I'll be in touch, he told her, and then she was back in her body, in the dark, with that noise.)

the noise stopped

everything

stopped

.

She opened her eyes with a scream.

Ayaan sat up in bed, naked under silk sheets. She was in a small bedroom with a fireplace. A cheerful little blaze danced away at the corner of her vision. Her head felt as if it had been cracked open and stuffed full of scrap metal. She touched her face, felt a cold, rubbery mask there.

She wasn't breathing. She sucked in a deep breath of air and felt no real need to exhale it again. She touched her wrist with two fingers and couldn't find a pulse. She did find a black vein running underneath her grayish brown skin. It was as hard as a length of wire. The blood inside that vein wasn't going anywhere.

She screamed and screamed, shouted and cursed and her throat never got sore. She sobbed, big wracking hard heaves but no tears came.

Nausea surged upward inside of her and she jumped out of the bed, looked around frantically for something to throw up into. Nothing presented itself so she clutched her hands over her mouth and just held on, held on until the need, the desire to vomit went away. It left her feeling drained, depleted and sore.

And then hungry. She could really use a snack, she told herself. She was going to need to keep up her energy reserves for what came next.

What came next? She couldn't remember.

She stood up again. Looked around the room. A faded newspaper clipping was pasted to one wall, a picture of a building by a boardwalk, its windows broken, its paint faded or missing altogether. A place that died even before the world came to an end, according to the text.

She found a closet and inside the closet one single set of clothes. A black leather catsuit with lots of straps. A pair of black leather boots that came up to the middle of her calves. A black leather jacket stenciled all over in white spray paint with a motif of simplified skulls. She put the clothes on with fumbling fingers that felt twice as thick as they looked. The clothes fit her perfectly.

At the back of the closet she found a sliver of broken mirror. She picked it up and stared at her reflection. Ayaan had never been vain in life and she wasn't about to become so now. Something leapt out at her, though, and required extensive examination. She had a tattoo on her throat and neck, running all the way around, bright silver ink inscribing cursive Russian characters. Like a choker she could never remove. She'd seen that kind of writing before, she thought. She'd seen it inscribed on a glass jar with a brain inside.

Don't speak,she thought. Except it wasn't her own thought. Someone had spoken into her head, his voice sounding just like her own inner monologue, but braying and too loud. It made her headache worse.Don't react at all. Whatever they say to you, just nod and smile.

A knock came on the bedroom's door.





Monster Planet





Chapter Five


By the light of an oil lamp Marisol examined a handful of yellow stalks. 'Winter wheat,' she explained, but that meant nothing to Sarah. The Mayor of Governors Island dropped the stalks on the table and examined her fingers. A thin, soft black powder coated them and resisted being easily brushed off. Marisol sniffed her fingers and frowned. 'It's a fungus of some kind. That's new for us, and I don't like it.'

In the corner of the room Osman sat with one hand on his head. The other held a bottle of milky liquid. Judging by the way he kept blinking in slow motion and slumping forward to nearly fall out of his chair, Sarah decided he must be drunk. She looked at Marisol.