Nilla.
Mael's voice in her head sounded distorted, fuzzy on the low end. It irritated her, itched in one corner of her brain, the left side high up. She felt the buzz in her teeth.
Nilla, Dick's on the road to you but I doubt he'll arrive in time. There's something else I can try, but no guarantees, lass. Do you understand? It may be as I can't get you out of this one.
She understood. She was grateful he was with her there at the end.
Mike and the other one, the twitchy guy, lowered her into the grave, a hole maybe three feet deep in the sand. The half of a sandwich she'd eaten had given her a little strength back, enough to sit up anyway.
Mellowman broke open his shotgun and loaded in a pair of shells. When he sighted down the barrels at her his free eye was wide with excitement. He was going to enjoy this, she saw, and she was certain by the way he looked at her, that and no other evidence, that of all the people he had killed and buried in shallow graves before none of them had been women. And that this simple fact made all the world of difference to him.
This was a man who had always counted on himself first. Who had never believed that other people were worth the time it took to learn their names, not when you could make up new ones for them and they just took it and smiled like they liked it. This was the kind of man for whom the end of the world meant the beginning of all possibilities. Breaking the law was a game. Selling drugs was a great way to make money because people wanted drugs and what was good or bad for them meant nothing whatsoever. The kind of man who could kill just to see what it felt like.
It was funny how being so close to death concentrated her perceptions. She felt like she could look right into the souls of the men around her. How much of it was her reading their energy, their auras, and how much was just pure imagination she didn't know. Mellowman placed the end of the shotgun against her forehead and braced himself against the recoil. Nilla had been in that position before. Men seemed to like her in that position. Go invisible, she told herself, but she couldn't. The sandwich hadn't been enough, it hadn't bolstered her energy enough to let her do that.
Mellowman put his finger through the trigger guard of the shot gun. He started to squeeze.
Then he stopped.
Muffled, deepened as it came wending its way through the fabric of his jeans jacket, music floated up out of Mellowman's chest. Skynyrd. Freebird.
'Aw, fuck no, aw, not now,' he whined. 'Nah, not that ring''
He lowered the shotgun and took a red-white-and-blue cell phone out of his inner jacket pocket. He stared at it as if he were holding a coprolite in his hand. Something exotic and bizarre and loathsome all at the same time.
He flipped it open and started to talk.
Monster Nation
Chapter Three
Bad result from the nephrectomy but codeine was made for nights like these and the swish of the dialysis machine is perfect white noise. She's sleeping peacefully, now. Wish I could say the same. [Lab Notes, 11/1/02]
Vikram tapped in a password on his keyboard and a window opened up on the main monitor. Satellite imagery of the Rockies, received in real time from the OSR's newest and most sophisticated birds. The current view showed a composite image with the false color data from an infra-red Landsat run through a codec that matched it up with the standard footprint imaging of a Keyhole-class spybird.
'Amazing'you're telling me these pictures are how old?'