Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Murdick had made matters worse by hinting that the boy might be unreliable, and not just ungrateful, but hostile.

The Godseye troopers were strangers here. They were New Yorkers, and like all the Godseye people they were part-timers, volunteer vigilantes. "I've got a couple of drug companies," Meesle had said, and Hardy knew that Murdick manufactured elevator equipment. This was a part of America they flew over at an altitude of forty thousand clicks. It was farmland, open fields, simple wooden houses, silos, and straight roads — some of it looked deserted, but most of it was in fairly good shape. Surprisingly, there were few checkpoints. Who lived here? Very few of the settlements looked fortified. It was fenced-in farming, but the land was poor or else underused. Perhaps it was too near O-Zone?

"Ground vehicle," Murdick said.

It was an old blue pickup truck, with six people sitting in the back and dust flying. The passengers were men and women, and the Godseye scanner did not find any weapons in the vehicle. But the troopers were not reassured. Those people in the truck were strangers; all strangers were dangerous.

"I'd like to nuke that vehicle," Meesle said. "Just take it out. I'd feel better."

But he did not shoot. They watched the vehicle head into Winslow.

"I don't like the looks of this," they kept saying, worrying themselves into a mood of aggression.

Winslow was a wide place in the road surrounded by watchtowers. There were farms and fenced-in fields nearby. Wind pumps had been stabbed into the landscape: they looked as simple and pointless as children's toys, their blades turning high above the still fields. Must be oil, Murdick said. Hardy did not bother to correct him — giving information to a stupid person only made the person stupider and more annoying. They were pumping water, of course. This region had been drying out for years, but Hardy did not want to give them rain. He craved an empty place — one that would not be taken away from him after his rain began to fall.

"This area could be crawling with geechees," Murdick said. "There are whole towns out here that have been taken over by Trolls."

That was the talk: Hardy had heard it — everyone knew it. But it was city talk. There was very little hard evidence to suggest that anything had changed out here. In fact, just before he had left New York Hardy had watched a television program about how Easter was celebrated somewhere out here — Easter had just passed. But why tell the Godseye troopers that he had seen people, like those down below probably, eating ham, wearing new clothes and fancy bats, and going to church?

"Another ground vehicle," Meesle said,

"With a woman behind the wheel." Hardy had enlarged the image. She wore sunglasses and gloves. She steered around the holes in the road.

"Don't shoot yet," Meesle said. He rested his handgun on the dome of his belly.

"What do you mean yet?"

"I mean I don't like the looks of this."

They were flying high over the main street of Winslow, and what surprised them, when they enhanced the image on the ground-screen, was that none of the buildings was taller than five stories, and many stood alone, and some were unfenced. Their roofs were tarpaper and shingles and tin sheets — old stuff, with square patches showing. The watchtowers were empty.

"Look. Iron fire escapes. Haven't seen those for years, "

"No security," Meesle said. "Must have a hell of a crime rate. Just kick your way into most of those buildings. Go through the roof."

"Maybe they don't need security," Hardy said. "Maybe it's peaceful."

Meesle found this very funny, and when his belly shook, so did his handgun, where it rested.

"Going closer," Sluter called from the cockpit.

He flew slowly and without banking, in order to keep the armor-plated underside of the gunship facing down. That was their protection. They dipped near a checkpoint at the edge of town, but there was no one near it — the gate was open, vehicles came and went. Meesle said he didn't like the look of that. There were stores on the main street, selling hardware and clothes and food and electrical equipment and farm implements. One of the largest buildings in town was a brick structure which bore the sign "Farmers' Market."

"After O-Zone was declared a Prohibited Area, these nearby places just got sick," Murdick said, "The people are vegetables and simple-lifers. Scratching a living and saying prayers. Hell of a lot of Rocketmen in those towns." He smacked his lips and said, "It's all fucking terminal down there."

"Probably not an Owner or a taxpayer among them," Meesle said. "Probably all geechees, like Willis says."

"Why don't we go down and find out," Hardy said.

"I wouldn't go down there without a lot of firepower," Meesle said.

"We don't have to," Sluter called out. "The kid's coordinates are west of here."

Sluter had marked the spot on the ground-screen, but instead of flying directly to it he made a dogleg around a settlement on the outskirts of Winslow as a precaution.

"Missiles have come blasting out of pretty places like that!" Sluter said. He had shouted, Hardy thought, to cover his nervousness.

Some of these places looked idyllic to Hardy, with the sunshine on them and the roofs brown with rust and the pumps spinning and the wet ditches cut into the fields. It seemed amazing that these people had found a way to survive on the ground here, and in the twilight such places took on an almost nightmarish appearance. They were unknown, unseen; only talked about. They seemed to represent the confusion that Hardy always felt when he was away from New York: everywhere else was the past and paradoxical, the simple life that looked romantic one minute and savage the next.

"I'm not going down until we scan those buildings for lurkers," Sluter said. "And then we wait until dark."

"Just don't shoot," Hardy said. "I want that kid back alive."

Hovering over the cluster of dry wooden buildings, they were low enough to be drawing dust off the ground in their updraft.

From the cockpit Sluter called out that he was reading the scanner. He then said, "I'm not getting diddly."

No people — that frightened them. It made them imagine filthy creatures in underground burrows; dug in and swallowing and waiting. Sluter landed the gunship a hundred meters from the farm and kept the scanner on it. They expected to see heads rising from the ground — hairy faces, crazy eyes. But there was nothing. The scanner did not register either movement or sound. Yet each of the troopers said he heard human noises and could see shadows and licks of light— antlers of flames striking through the darkness.

Dawn came and showed them nothing more. There was no furniture in the main house, though there were some torn curtains in the empty rooms. The ceilings had fallen, and the floors were littered: animals had come and gone. Some power lines still stood, and there was a dish in the yard.

"Probably got raided by Starkies or Trolls," Meesle said.

"Those people we saw in town looked pretty legal to me," Hardy said. "Just hard-pressed, as far as I could see."

Meesle paid no attention to Hardy. He was still looking at the empty farmhouse. "Probably snuck in and burned the people and butchered the animals."

"Maybe the people just picked up and went away," Hardy said. "Maybe they went into Winslow."

He could see that these buildings were a skeleton of the past: frail and hollow and dried-out, without any flesh, too far from town. But its death and distance made it a safe place to hide in.

Murdick said, "No sign of the kid."

"But this has got to be the place," Hardy said. "He could have bounced his message off that dish in the yard,"

They considered this, and Hardy knew that they hated the possibility of the boy being able to manage that. They stood in the farmyard in their helmets and flying suits — looking, as always, like Astronauts. There was no sound now-not the wind, nor the creak of the timbers, nor the complaint of joists; the wooden buildings had stopped going ouch-ouch. It was so still it seemed eerie and unnatural, as if some killer— Meesle said — were holding his breath and hiding, and someone else lay dead nearby. It was that quiet.