It had been totally necessary. Dekalb knew it in his bones. He felt guilt burn in him, and it felt like his hunger had returned.
Beyond that, much larger if not so well-defined, he felt loneliness creep into the room like twilight. Dekalb did not sleep, none of the dead did, but he had allowed himself to become so decrepit and dilapidated that his brain could wander for hours at a time, whole days when it chose to, lost not in thought, no, not in anything so conscious and concrete but instead wandering through mist, through grey nothingness. It was a kind of unconsciousness. He shut himself down, then, to get away from the loneliness, the weakness of his body, the guilt. He returned to himself in time, just as he always had before. Days had passed, he thought. The mummies couldn't tell him'their sense of time was numbed by their sense of immortality. Yet it looked like the light had shifted enough for it to have been days. It was time, time to return to himself. Time to figure out what came next.
In his half-sleep his body had tumbled down across the catwalk and the lattice of metal there had cut into his cheek, making an obscene checkerboard of his face. The mummies came forward, two of the strongest, and they re-arranged him, re-positioned him on the floor. They let him look at the skull.
It didn't look as bad as he'd thought before. It didn't look so bad at all, really, though you could see the cracks where the hammer came down. The eyes still pointed in random directions.
Except when one of them swiveled around and focused on Dekalb's face.
Dekalb was well beyond the ability to shriek, or else he would have.
Monster Nation
Acknowledgements
The following is a message from the author to those who have read “Monster Nation” in its entirety. If this is your first visit, please click onchapter one to start from the beginning.
Hello everyone.
This is the part where I bring down the lights, have a seat on my simple wooden stool, and bring the mood down for a moment to talk about something very close to my heart: the book you just read.
This was a very different kind of book from what I'm used to writing. It was much, much more difficult and a little more fun. It was also very therapeutic. I'm coming off the most eventful year of my life as I'm writing this. A lot of great things happened. I got married for one, and had the best day of my life surrounded by our two families. A lot of dark things happened, too, though. I've taken solace in these pages, turning to my writing as a way to get my demons out. I don't know if it shows or not. I think on the whole this was a darker book than “Monster Island”, but I suppose that's up to the readers to decide.
I hope you enjoyed coming along on this tour of my psyche. I definitely enjoyed having you. Normally the acknowledgements page comes at the start of the book--but this is not a normal book. I'd like to thank everyone who read “Monster Nation”, whether you read it on your cell phone, your PDA, your computer, or printouts you clutched in shaking hands as you read under the covers on a moonless night. I especially want to thank those who commented on the chapters. Adrian Padden, of course, was the sexiest cheerleader of all, yet again. Alnjo tried to keep him (and me) honest. The Laura(s), Digbeta, igame3d, Feral Fish (who started a fan site!), Marbo/Marbotty/Marb-something, Don, Donny D, DavidKaye929, Mendoza, Mel, Jacqui, Carlos, Shadowfusion99, Timmy, Baglegod, liam, Saketini and everybody else I'm forgetting, thank you so much. You kept me going, you kept me writing when I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep forever. Your role in this project has been far more dynamic and far more valued than you know.
There were two people who provided information without which I could not have read this book: