Gary helped her up himself with his hands under her armpits. “I heard you. And I believe that maybeyou would take your own life. Others will make their own choices.”
He lead her down a narrow lane between two rows of makeshift brick houses that were still under construction. He showed her the double thickness of the walls and the fiberglass installation stuffed between the two layers. They would be cozy in the winter and cool in the summer, he explained to her. Mostly they would be safe-the perimeter wall would keep the dead out. “How could you not be happy here?” he asked.
“For one thing there’s the smell,” she spat back.
Gary smiled and squatted down on his haunches so he could look her in the face. She still wouldn’t meet his gaze but it didn’t matter. “When I was working at the hospital I watched a lot of people die. Old people whose time was up, young people who barely knew where they were, struck down in accidents. Kids, I saw kids die because they didn’t know any better than to eat Drano or jump out of windows. Just before they went they would always call me over to ask one last favor.”
“Yeah?” she sneered.
“Yes. It was always the same thing. ‘Please, doctor, give me one more hour before I go. Give me one more minute.’ People are easily frightened by death, Marisol, because it is so very long and our lives are so very short. I’m offering your people a chance to have long, full lives. I can’t bring back the world we’ve lost. I can’t give them gourmet dinners or luxury vacations or American Idol. But I can give them a chance to not be afraid all the time. A chance to start over fresh. A chance to have families-big families. That’s a lot more than you offered them in your spider hole.”
“And in exchange for all this? What do you get? My baby? You already ate my fucking husband!” Her hair had fallen across her face and she blew it away, puffing out red cheeks hot with anger.
“Everything has a price. I only need about one meal a month, maybe even less if I’m careful. That’s not a lot to ask.” He thought of Mael and his tribe in Orkney. They had taken turns being human sacrifices. It was something people could accept if you made it a necessity.
“Marisol, I’m going to give you an option right now. It was your pregnancy that inspired all of this generosity I’m feeling so I’ll grant you one wish. You don’t get to pick, though. I can make you the mayor of the last secure human village on earth.”
He bent close and let her smell his fetid breath. “Or I can eat your face off right now. Don’t answer yet, though, there’s more! I’ll make it painless. You won’t feel a thing. I’ll even make sure you don’t come back. You’ll just be dead.” He grabbed the handholds of her wheelchair and spun her around and around. He was enjoying this. “Dead, dead dead forever and ever and ever and ever and your body will rot away on the ground until the flies come and lay their maggot eggs in your cute little cheeks.”
When he stopped she was breathing hard. Her body shook visibly as if she were very cold and he could smell something stale and sharp rising from her pores. Nothing special, really. Just fear.
“So what’ll it be, hmm?” he asked. “Do I get an early lunch today-or should I start referring to you as Ms. Mayor?”
Her eyes were thin lines of hatred. “You bastard. I want the biggest silkiest sash that says MAYOR on it in rhinestones. I want people to know who sold them out.”
Gary smiled real big so she could see his teeth.
David Wellington - Monster Island
Monster Island
Chapter Five
Kreutzer lead us through a tiny development of yellow clapboard houses and down tree-lined avenues-the old officers’ quarters back when Governors Island was a military base. The Coast Guard logo was everywhere, on monuments and plaques and chain link fences, even on the street signs.