Nilla rose from her bench and stepped into the sodium vapor glow of the parking lot's lights. In the line of waiting people her appearance made soft explosions of whispering panic but nobody fled. It was the brown cap. It masked her dark energy wonderfully. People saw it and they knew why her very presence seemed wrong and frightening. She was one of the jackbooted thugs who ruled Las Vegas with an iron fist.
'Do not be alarmed, folks, everything is under my personal control.' The barker placed an enormous hand across his chest. In the orange light his flesh looked like cured ham. Nilla's presence was a signal and he was receiving it calmly but with all due attention. She could see his shoulders come in slightly, his stance changed to one of wary readiness. It felt like she was walking to the gunfight at the OK Corral. 'I will not rest,' the barker continued, 'until each and every one of you is satisfied.'
The people in the line stared at her with open faces. Various fears chased each other through the furrows of their foreheads, the way they kept their hands shoved resolutely in their pockets. They looked like they were hunkering down against a dank and chill wind though the night air of Las Vegas was dry as a bone and late-Spring warm.
'I'm from the Chamber,' Nilla announced, to back up her one weapon in this showdown'the brown cap. 'Who the hell are you?'
The big man placed a hand across his belt buckle and bent slowly toward her in a graceful bow. 'I am he whose name was writ in water. I am the very model of a modern Major General. Some call me the space cowboy, while others refer to me as the gangster of love.'
Nilla squinted her eyes. 'Fuck this. I can shut you down with one phone call, jerk. In fact I might just do it on principle.'
'Then call me Mellowman, the stoned superhero. I'm here to bring a little peace of mind to these benighted people. May I ask who you are, young filly?'
Nilla shook her head. 'I'm from the Chamber. That's all you need to know. You people, get out of here now. Don't you know there's a curfew?' She leered at the scared people in the line and they scattered like pigeons. 'Now. I want to see your operation here. I want to know just what the hell you think you're doing.' The bravado act she was putting on made Nilla's nerves sing. She was no longer capable of getting an adrenaline rush but something ice cold and lethal blossomed inside of her and she liked it. Sure. For the first time in her death she actually had some power.
'Right this way, miss.' Mellowman or whatever the hell his name was gestured for her to follow him. 'Welcome to the Space Van, my home that gets up and goes when the home I got is done and gone.'
'You're selling vaccine, right? Does it actually work?' Nilla stepped around to the open back of the van to look inside. Bright red plush interior, crammed full of boxes and jars and rolled-up blankets.
'How about a free sample? Find out for yourself?' Mellowman picked up a box and slung it under his arm. Revealed below sat a jar full of the sparkling red capsules she'd seen handed out.
'Hey, dude, come on, let's not do this,' one of his associates said, the thin and twitchy one. Nilla speared him with a glance. When she turned back Mellowman had one of the capsules in the expansive palm of his left hand.
Nilla wondered what would happen if she took it. Would it kill the virus or microbe or whatever it was that had reanimated her? Would she collapse in a lifeless heap? Probably it would do nothing. She picked up the jar and shook it. The capsules inside rattled with a satisfying noise. 'Is this all you have?'
'Until we make some more. My aide de medecin over here, we call him Morphine Mike, he's the man with the magic recipe.'
Wow, Nilla thought. This was going to be so easy. Trash the pills, kill the guy who made them. Mael would be satisfied. Maybe he would even let her go. She put the jar back inside the van and turned to announce that she was going to arrest them all.
She found herself looking into the twin barrels of a sawn-off shotgun. It must have been in the box Mellowman had grabbed. The blackOO looked like the symbol for infinity.