Vikram switched to a second image. A complex of buildings near Clear Creek Summit. An abandoned but functional ski resort, judging by the constantly moving chair lift. 'This looks like a hardened facility,' he told Clark. Look, here, these doors on the main building. They've been reinforced with welded steel. Over here, this looks to me to be a machine gun nest, what do you think?'
'I think you're right. They have power so we can assume there are people inside. Of course right now there's no reason to think they're bad guys. Anybody sane would reinforce their doors right now and a machine gun for perimeter security is one of the better home improvements I can think of. This definitely belongs on our short list, though. What's this?' he asked, pointing at a minimized window near the bottom of the screen. The third candidate for the site of the Epicenter.
Vikram opened it without comment. When he saw the image Clark sat down carefully and folded his hands in his lap.
'This one gets my vote,' Vikram said, and Clark had to agree.
'The dead are just standing there. They look like they are waiting for something,“ Vikram said, blowing up one corner of the image until the screen showed nothing but corpses, standing in a perfect semicircle, looking, well, contented. He zoomed back to check another feature of the image, rotating it through three dimensions. ”What are those? Dinosaurs?'
Monster Nation
Chapter Four
Sheldrake is a crackpot, of course. Canalized pathways? Morphic resonance? It's all chemical! I don't know why I waste my time with this nonsense. Cell differentiation stimulated by a biological field that can't be directly detected? Come on! [Lab Notes, 4/9/03]
Up through Nevada, deep into denied territory. Nilla traveled farther in one night in the Space Van than she had since her re-awakening. Hundreds of miles. There was no traffic.
'Things were good in Vegas, we had an operation,' Mike told Mellowman once. Nilla had nothing to do but listen to the two of them bicker, that and stare out the back of the van at stars and night. 'We had some protection. This road leads to' I don't know, hell. Hell on earth.'
'Here be dragons,' Mellowman agreed. 'And some people like dragons. Some people will pay anything for just one quick gander at a dragon's left butt cheek.' He shifted in the back of the van, duck-walking across Nilla's field of vision. His eyes were bright red, almost glowing, which wasn't surprising considering the ratio of pot smoke to oxygen in the van.
'Where are you taking me?' Nilla creaked.
Mellowman seemed to have found a new method for coping with her refusal to die, it seemed, and that was simply to ignore her. 'Besides,' he said, but not to her. 'Vegas is on the way out.'
'What are you talking about? The Chamber is keeping people safe!'
'The Chamber,' he told Mike, his tone growing imperial, 'is made up of assholes like me and I know I'm running out of ideas. More people getting sick every day'more of these things getting loose. No. Vegas is on its last legs. If we want to make something happen, something real, the east coast is where we need to be. Maybe we even need to go further. I bet they'll just love our act in London. You ever been to Paris? It's the City of Lights. I can take you there if you'll just shut up and do what I tell you.'
'You think it'll stop here? You don't think we'll take it to Europe with us?'
'I'm doing what feels right. I'm going on instinct. That's what I've got, which is what has taken me this far and let me survive, and even build something, in a world that wants to kill me every time I turn around. And you know what, Mike? Lately my instinct is talking to me about heading east, and how I can do that. Lately it's been telling me I got to travel light. That I gotta trim the dead wood. How do you like that? I will include you in my plans because you know how to brew up the shit. Assuming you stop arguing with me.'