Book of the Dead (34 page)

He makes room for her and points to the ruler-straight desert road, but he really doesn’t need to. Marly can see the car heading for them. It’s only three or four miles away.

“Should’ve baked a cake,” she says, but inside she feels a pang, something tightening.

Bill joins them, holding a double-barreled shotgun. Her heart slams, and for a moment she is certain Bill is going to kill them all. This is it; she knew it would happen someday—

Deke steps forward and takes the shotgun from Bill’s hands. Bill is so surprised by this… this
usurpation
, that he allows him to.

Deke breaks the shotgun and removes the corrugated red plastic shells. He returns shells and broken shotgun to Bill, shakes his head in contempt, and steps back.

“They’ll probably pull into the parking lot,” says Bill. “I’m going out on the roof, in case they try anything.” From a back pocket he pulls out a slim walkie-talkie. He hands it to Dieter. “I’ll call you if I need you,” he says. He turns to Leonard. “Talk to them over the P.A. in the monitor room,” he orders. “Find out what they want and get them out of here. Ladies—”

“We’ll make coffee,” suggests Marly.

“I want you to keep out of sight.”

“I want a gun.”

Bill shakes his head. He turns away and heads for the human habitat, where the airlock is. They follow him, since the monitor room is at the north end of the human habitat anyway. Marly catches up to Bill. “Then give me the key to the armory,” she persists. “You’re not taking it out of here so you can get your ass shot off on the roof.”

He frowns, but cannot fault her logic. He draws a many-keyed holder from a retractable line attached to his belt and selects a key. He gives it not to Marly but to Deke, then turns and trots ahead of them.

Marly glances back toward the apple trees. The car is perhaps two miles away.

Inside the habitat Bill veers right at a T intersection; the others veer left and climb a flight of stairs. They enter the monitor room—all but Deke, who grins at Haiffa, tosses the armory key, catches it, and hurries down the hall.

Camera One already stares unblinkingly at the asphalt parking lot. Leonard activates Camera Two and sends it panning. The others cluster at his chair.

“Check, check,” says the walkie-talkie in Dieter’s hand. “Do you read me? Over.”

“Loud ‘n’ clear, man,” replies Dieter. He rolls his eyes.

“I’m on the roof, making my way toward the agricultural wing where the cover’s better. Over.”

“Right. I mean, yeah… over?”

Leonard turns from the control panel. “I’m guh-guh-
going
to test the puh-puh-P.A. Ask him if he c-c-can
hear
it.”

Dieter relays the message, and Leonard says “T-testing wuh-wuh-one t-two three,” into the microphone.

“Loud and clear,” says Bill. “Listen, if there’s any—here they are. Over and out.”

The car is a dusty black El Camino. They watch on Monitor One as it pulls into the asphalt lot, slows, and parks beside the Land Rover. The driver waits for the dust to clear. Over the speakers they can hear the engine idle, can hear it knocking after it is switched off.

The driver opens the door and steps out holding a pump shotgun. He turns, says something to a passenger (there isn’t room for more than two in the El Camino), and straightens. He shuts the door and approaches the Ecosphere.

He is the first live human being they have seen in over a year.

“Hello?” he calls. Squeak of feedback, and Marly winces. Leonard adjusts the gain. “Hello, is anybody there?”

Leonard pushes a button and Camera Two zooms in.

He is young—early twenties. His hair is dark, straight, shiny, tied in a pony tail, to his waist. Faded gray jeans with white-threaded holes in the knees below a long, unbuttoned, black-and-white-checked shirt with rolled sleeves. Earring dangling from right earlobe.

“Hello?” he calls again.

Leonard thumbs the mike switch. He clears his throat self-consciously and the man steps back. The shotgun comes up.

“Wuh-wuh-we
hear
you,” Leonard says.

The man looks around for the source of the voice.

Leonard glances at the others. “Wuh-wuh-
what
do you want?” he says into the mike.

The shotgun dips, lowers. “Food. Just—food. Me and my wife are… we haven’t eaten in a while—”

Deke arrives carrying an armload of rifles and ammunition. Silently he gives one to each of the other six, continually glancing at the monitor.

“—and our baby is pretty sick. We just want some food; we’ll leave you alone, after.”

Bonnie refuses a rifle. Deke shrugs. “Your funeral,” he says.

“If we give them food now they’ll only come back for more later,” says Grace.

“Prob’ly with friends,” adds Deke, handing Marly a rifle.

Leonard fiddles with the monitor controls. Camera Two pans left, centers on the El Camino, and zooms. Leonard adjusts the focus. There is a young woman in the car, holding a bundle that might be a baby.

Leonard looks at Dieter, who shrugs.

On Camera One the man waits.

Leonard frowns and thumbs the mike again. “How did you nuh-nuh-
know
we w-were here?”

A breeze billows the tail of the young man’s shirt. “There was an article in the paper,” he says. “In the Tucson library. I thought maybe you were still here.” He looks around and wipes his brow. “Hot out here,” he says.

“Suffer, bud,” says Deke. Marly glares at him.

Dieter goes to stand beside Leonard. “Maybe we should, like, tell him to get his wife out of the car,” he says.

Leonard glances up. “W-w-what if he won’t?”

“What if
she
won’t?” adds Bonnie.

“Hey, beggars can’t be choosers,” Dieter replies. “They’ll do it.”

Leonard turns back to the mike. “Tell your w-w-
wife
to step out of the cuh, car,” he says.

“You didn’t say please,” murmurs Marly.

“She—our baby’s pretty sick,” says the man. “I don’t…” He seems indecisive, then turns toward the car and walks from Monitor One to Monitor Two. He opens the passenger door and leans in. He glances back once or twice as he speaks.

Leonard fiddles with the gain knobs.

“—ust do it. No one’s going to hurt you… I don’t care what the little fucker feels like, just do it. And keep your cakehole shut.”

The passenger door opens and a girl gets out. She wears khaki pants, sandals, and a dirty white T-shirt. She is perhaps seventeen years old. She wears a lot of make-up and bright red lipstick. The breeze tugs her tangled hair.

She holds a bundle before her. A little hand protrudes from it, grabs air, finds her breast, clasps.

“All right,” says the man. “Now, please—can you spare us some food?” Leonard pulls back Camera One until he’s in view again. They watch him gesture expansively. “You have a lot; we just want enough for a few days. Just enough for us to drive across the desert. We’re trying to get to California.”

Again Leonard glances at the others. “Cuh, Cuh, California? What’s there?”

“My brother.”

“I’ll just bet he is,” mutters Grace.

“Hold on a m-m-minute,” says Leonard, and kills the mike. He swivels in his chair with a questioning look.

“I don’t like it, man,” says Dieter.

“Not one bit,” says Deke.

“Maybe just some apples, or something…” says Bonnie.

Marly pulls back the bolt of her carbine and begins feeding little missile shapes to the breech.

“Sure,” says Deke. “You wanna take it out to ’em?”

“Belling the cat,” muses Grace.

“Dieter? Dieter, do you read me?” Bill’s voice, a loud whisper.

Dieter lifts the walkie-talkie. “Roger… Bill.”

At the console, Leonard suppresses a giggle. Behind him on the monitors, the man, the girl, and the baby await their reply.

“Keep it down; I don’t want them to hear me up here. Don’t tell them we’ll give them any food. Over.”

“We were just voting on it,” says Dieter.

“It’s not a voting issue. They don’t get any.”

Marly finishes loading her rifle and slaps the bolt in place.

“Just a couple of apples?” asks Bonnie.

Marly glares at her, hating her every milquetoast fiber.

“We have to remember the Ecosphere,” continues Bill’s tinny voice. “We can’t upset the balance. We can’t introduce anything new or take anything away. We can’t breach the integrity of the station.”

Marly shoulders her rifle and leaves the room.

“Hey, listen, Bill—” begins Dieter, but Bill is still transmitting.

“—ink of what this station represents: we’re a
self-contained
unit. We grew that food ourselves. We live on a day-to-day basis.”

“They’re not asking for very much,” mutters Bonnie. She sits in a chair and stares sullenly at the television monitor.

Dieter thumbs the “send” button. “We think it’s a bad idea for other reasons,” he says. “Grace feels that if we feed them, they’ll just, like, come back for more. Probably they’ll tell others, y’know? Uh… over.”

“Exactly! And
they’ll
tell others, and we’ll be barraged. We’ll be like a… a free McDonald’s out here.”

“Golden arches,” says Haiffa solemnly, and steeples her hands. Deke pinches her butt.

“We’ve got a consensus, then?” asks Dieter.

“Tell them no,” says the walkie-talkie.

“They don’t look too hungry to me,” says Deke. “Get ’em outta here.”

“Still,” mutters Bonnie, “it seems such a shame…” She watches the monitor and does nothing.

“Hello? Hey, hello?”

Leonard activates the mike. “Wuh-wuh-we’re still here,” he says. He seems much more confident now that a decision has been made for him. “Listen, we… we’ve taken stock of our, um,
situation
here, and we’ve talked it over, and examined the, uh,
parameters
of our food-intake quotients. You have to understand: we’re rationed out ourselves. A meal for you means a meal less for someone here.” His tone has become warm, congenial. “I’m sure you understand.”

“You’re saying no?” The beggar seems incredulous.

“I’m saying I’m sorry, but we’ve analyzed your situation with regard to ours, and we simply can’t…
accommodate
you at this time.”

“I don’t fucking believe—you won’t give us three days’ food?” He keeps glancing around, as if persuasive arguments lie around the asphalt parking lot. “What about my wife?” he asks. “What about our
baby
?”

“I’m very sorry,” says Leonard. He does not sound very sorry. He sounds, in fact, glad to be in a position to refuse something to someone, for a change. Like a hotel manager effusively sympathetic because there’s no room at his inn. “But you come here asking a favor,” he continues stutterlessly, “and you don’t have any right to blame us for declining to grant it.”

“Favor?” The man raises the gun. “You want a
favor
, you god—”

“Hold it
right there
, son.” Bill’s voice, over the speakers.

The young man hesitates.

“Don’t do it. I don’t want to shoot, but I will.” Bill doesn’t sound reluctant to shoot. He sounds very excited. “Now, you’ve asked for help and we can’t give it. We would if we could. My advice to you is for you and your wife to get back in your car and head out of here. Don’t head for California; head for Phoenix. There’s bound to be food there, and it’s only a few hours’ drive.”

“But we just
came
from—”

“Then head south. But you can’t stay here. You got that? We don’t have anything for you.”

“We’ll
work
for it!”

“There’s no work for you here. This is a highly sophisticated station, and it takes a highly trained staff to operate it. There are a lot of us, and we’re all armed. We need everything we have, and there isn’t enough to go around. I’m sorry, son, but that’s life in the big city. I—”

Bill breaks off. The young man and his wife look at something off camera.

“Get back inside!” yells Bill. “Back inside, now! That’s an
order
!”

Leonard pans Camera One as close as it can come to the airlock entrance, which is below it and to the right. He shakes his head and gives a low whistle.

“Well,” says Dieter. “Fuck me.”

[5]

The rifle is braced on its strap on her shoulder. Her finger is on the trigger. In the other hand she holds a wicker basket. She’s not nervous as she heads toward them—in fact, she’s surprised how calm she is. Behind and above her, Billtheasshole yells for her to get back inside. She ignores him, but she feels a curious itching between her shoulder blades—probably because Bill is more likely to shoot her than they are.

They don’t look as good off camera. A scar splits his eyebrow; another runs the length of his upper arm, bisecting a blue-gray anchor tattooed on his muscular biceps. He’s not thin, but he looks undernourished. Vitamin deficiencies.

And the girl looks… well,
worn
is the only word Marly can think of. Used up. Her eyes are dull and unresponsive.

The hand gropes again from the bundle the girl carries. She presses it protectively to her, and Marly glimpses mottled flesh when the baby tries to suck the girl’s nipple through the cotton of her T-shirt.

Marly stops ten feet from the man and sets down the basket. The girl glances down and holds the baby farther from her body.

The man and Marly stare at each other for a moment.

“What’s it like?” asks Marly. She inclines her head to indicate the Arizona desert. “Out there.”

“Pretty rough,” he says.

She nods a few times. “Well…” She indicates the basket and steps back from it. “I’m sorry I can’t do more. There’s fruit, some vegetables, a little meat. A can of milk for the baby—what’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, none of us is a medical doctor,” she says. “But you might want to try a pharmacy whatever town you go through next. Or a doctor’s office. If it’s an infection, try ampicillin. If it’s some kind of disease… well, antibiotics shouldn’t hurt anyway. But keep her—him?” They don’t say; Marly raises an eyebrow and continues. “…on liquids, and get her out of this heat.”