He started to grumble again but Shar sat up straight in her seat and looked right at him. It kept him from growling, anyway. The girl put a hand on his arm and stroked it gently. 'They'll split us up. They'll find out I'm underage.'
He lowered his head and refused to look away from the road. Nilla didn't have time to argue anymore. 'There's a road'route 14. We can turn off at a town called Mojave.' It wasn't a great solution'it would take them along the edge ofChinaLake 'but it would get them out of immediate danger.
Charles still refused to respond and she had to content herself with staring at the back of his head and imagining what would happen if the Army found her. They wouldn't fall for her trick again, would they? Even if they did there was no way Charles and Shar would let her stay in their car once they knew her secret.
Come on, Charles, she thought. Come on.
The big green signs for the exits at Mojave came up on the side of the road and Nilla had never wanted anything so much in her life. At least as far as she could remember.
Monster Nation
Chapter Five
It is recommended that travelers arrive at the airport four hours in advance of departure time to complete the required medical examinations before boarding. [FlyDenver.com 'Tips for Travelers' page, updated 3/31/05]
A star had fallen to earth and gotten lodged there, still burning bright.
Its silver radiance illuminated the ridge, sending out long streamers of brilliance that made shadows on the facing slopes, shadows like the clouds made during the day, impossibly big, always moving. Like ocean waves of light and darkness washing across the spine of rocks and trees at the top of the world.
He headed toward it, drawn'physically pulled in. Death had not been kind to his eyes but he could make out more details as he got closer. There were buildings on the ridge, low concrete blocks. There were other shapes there as well, like titanic lizards eroded by rain and wind until their shapes were soft and smooth. They occluded the light, their silhouettes thrown across him, over him.
Others'other dead people'had gathered in the scree below the ridge. They stood apart from one another on ground crawling with lichens and dwarf pine trees that throbbed with energy but they weren't trying to devour that life. They stood motionless, their faces tilted upwards to catch the sleeting luminosity of the fallen star. As he came among them they made no sign of noticing him. They were too busy studying the endlessly changing glow. Feeding on it. One of its beams touched Dick and though he was mentally incapable of surprise anymore his body could still feel the shock. It felt like something had been torn from him, burnt out of him perhaps. The hunger. When that light reached him it drove the hunger away. It fed him a constant, steady stream of energy, the energy he needed to continue his existence. More than enough.
It was like the glow of the woman in the car, like the golden aura of human life. Except' no. Better to say that the human aura was like the light of the fallen star. The radiation that shot through him was altogether more pure and more real. It nurtured him, warmed him. He wanted to run up the slope and jump inside of that light. Surrender to it'become one with it.
As he got closer though the warmth he felt turned to heat. Real heat. He could feel it singing him, scorching every cell in his body. He took a step closer and tasted smoke at the back of his throat. He could see dark shapes ahead of him. Charred, burnt-out corpses, lumps of blackened meat in tattered remnants of clothing. He understood, in a wordless, primal way. The very thing that nourished him could consume him if he got too close. He was in a gray zone, a realm between comfort and instant annihilation and staying there meant pain.