Monster Nation(5)

And.

The memory ended as abruptly as it had begun. She studied it, tried to find details but details were there none. Just that she had been bleeding and she had run here and had trouble breathing. She tried to step down gingerly from the stool, knowing she was going to have to walk through the blood.

Her leg slid out from beneath her, unable to accept her commands, and she clattered down to the floor, her bones bouncing off the bar, the stools, the carpet and she screamed again even though it didn't really hurt, not that much, but she screamed because it seemed like if you were ever going to have a chance to scream that was it, when you were lying collapsed in a pool of your own blood and your hair had fallen down over your eyes. She screamed until there was no more air in her lungs.

The door of the bar swung open and she stopped screaming. She turned wild eyes to the light off the street and saw two kids there, black kids in basketball jerseys. One was taller than the other, maybe older. She couldn't speak, couldn't call out for help. The older kid disappeared but the younger one just stood there, staring at her, his facial features lost in silhouette.

Help me, she thought, please, help me, but he just stood there and stared.





Monster Nation





Chapter Three


THE NEXT MAD COW? Massive Outbreak of Scrapie in the American West Inflames the Fearful, the Fretful, and the Beef Industry Flacks. ['Gourmet' magazine, February 05]

'It's going to be fine. Shh,' the policeman said, squatting next to her. A wood baton, a pair of handcuffs and a gun that looked like a toy dangled from his belt. He reached into a pouch at his back and took out a pair of disposable latex gloves. 'Everything's going to be alright. I just want to help you, okay?'

She nodded eagerly. Her eyes went wide when he touched her shoulder, probing painfully in the wound there. She could see herself in his mirrored sunglasses and she understood some of his reticence. Her tan was gone'just gone, her skin turned the color and consistency of old, mildew-damaged paper. Fine traceries of broken capillaries showed in her eyes and the skin around their sockets, a raccoon mask of dead blood. A prominent artery running from her jaw to beneath her left ear looked as if it had been painted on with eyeliner.

'You've lost a lot of blood,' he told her. His name was EMERSON, according to the nameplate on his uniform, right above his badge, a bas relief of a pair of pistols crossed over a stylized Spanish mission. 'Normally I'd call for an ambulance but I think we'd better just take you in the squad car. Can you walk?'

She didn't know. Not in the same way she didn't know who she was or what city she was in. Those were abstracts, easily defined and pigeonholed in the category of things she did definitively not know. Whether she could stand up was an open question, which was kind of a relief. Something she could find out.

Her body shuddered as she tried to put some weight on her feet, hauling herself upright by holding onto the bar stool. 'Easy now. You're probably feeling a little weak. Maybe a little light-headed too. That's pretty common with this kind of injury.' Okay, enough, officer, she thought, but she kept her mouth closed. She needed it to grimace as she shifted her weight entirely onto her legs. Somehow she managed to stumble toward the door, supported on his arm, even though her knees kept locking up. Her muscles felt stiff in a way she knew they'd never felt before. Not so much a memory as an instinct, that, but it was something, and she was glad for it.

Outside another policeman was directing traffic away from the intersection. She glanced over and saw a pile of something on the street'old clothes, maybe fallen palm fronds or the tread off of a blown car tire or'oh. No. It was a body, a human body with a blue jacket draped over its face and chest. 'Heh,' she gagged. 'He's the''

'Shush now, little girl,' the cop said, trying to turn her away from the scene. There was more to it: chalk circles on the ground around pieces of brass. Spent shell casings. More police everywhere she looked'a severe-looking woman filling out a form on a clipboard. Others, mostly men, looking under cars and benches and potted palms, their hands gloved, tiny plastic bags in their hands. Gathering evidence. One cop sat on the hood of his car, his face in his hands while another rubbed slow circles on his back.

''You only did your duty,' he said, and the one on the car hood took his hands away from his face, showing a look of absolute bleak horror.

Emerson pushed her into the back of a patrol car, pushing down on her head until her neck started to spasm but then she was in. He and another policeman'PANKIEWICZ'got into the front of the car.