Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"I don't like the looks of this," Murdick said.

"We should maybe search for a body," Meesle said.

"Sometimes they eat them," Murdick said.

They searched, they dug, they scanned, they used thermal imaging and metal detectors. But there was no body. The only bones they found were those of a cow, yellow and soft with age. There was radiation still in them.

"Oh, sure, they took casualties," Meesle said. "O-Zone's just across the river."

"Let's get off the ground!" Sluter called out. "I hate it here!"

* * *

That failure their first day had made them impatient — and suspicious and sulky. They were not methodical or calculating men, Hardy decided — more reasons for him to miss Fizzy. Only since the boy had been absent had Hardy really begun to appreciate his uniqueness. And how often had he and Moura muttered about Fizzy being handicapped! But these Godseye vigilantes — these so-called troopers — were the opposite of Fizzy. They were frustrated, hurried and rather clumsy; they were quick to assign blame; and this fearful restlessness — their cowardice — had made them into killers.

Hardy was sorry he had asked Godseye to help him find the boy; and now there was no going back. They were always telling stories of how they had joined the squad!

"I'm in Chicago on business," Meesle said. "This was years ago. They used to hijack cars and trucks in Chicago. You'd slow down on an exit ramp and they'd be on top of you. Anyway, I'm driving down a ramp and I see three Roaches squeezing through a fence. I gave them time to get near the road and then I pulled off and ran them over — bump, bump, bump. A week later I got the call. Someone had seen me and reported me. Do I want to join Godseye?"

"Mine was the same kind of impulse thing," Murdick said. "I had just bought a really neat iron and was taking a walk in Upper West, where we used to have a condo. I saw a Skell— incredibly old and ugly. I knew he was going to mug me, even though he was about a block away. I could feel it. And after he mugged me they'd put him away or burn him or whatever — but what good would that do me? I'd have scars for life! Maybe brain damage! Might lose an eye! So I lined him up and gave him a bead and stiffed him before he could lay a hand on me. He had money — he was a snatcher, no question of it. You've got to get the jump on them. Burn them before they commit crimes, because what good is it afterward? That's how I got the call. They liked my attitude."

"Memory lane," Hardy said, and turned his back on them to show that he had heard enough.

"You're as bad as your brother," Meesle said.

"I've burned so much trash I can't remember the first time," Sluter said.

They were still flying east of Winslow on the main line, looking for the boy — or was it a kidnap gang, or half an army?

"Some of these aliens are so hungry," Murdick said. He spoke in fear and admiration.

The Godseye troopers were well-armed and yet they were reluctant to touch down, except at night to sleep. Hardy felt that they might have preferred flying blind in the darkness to risking the ground. It was almost as if they were afraid because they knew what fury they could unleash — afraid of their own firepower. They said they wanted to save time. They zigzagged and filmed; they radioed down to checkpoints, giving Fizzy's ID number.

They mocked the small towns, and yet they lingered over them, taking pictures. The places looked hard-up, with old cars and bad roads and acres of patched solar panels. Yet apparently they still worked. They had schools and stores and police, and most had checkpoints. They all flew the Stars and Stripes.

None of the people out here wore helmets and not many wore suits. It was rare to see a mask, and even then it was a nosebag, nothing fancy. Some of them had radios clamped to their heads. Their clothes were flapping and faded, the women wore trousers or skirts, and even though they might not be Owners they certainly were not aliens. They were working people and in some places there were fifty or more in a field, all together, hoeing weeds.

When Murdick said, "This reminds me of Africa," Hardy thought Bullshit, but he knew what Murdick meant. It was the contrast with New York — not nakedness and starvation, but another time zone. He was talking about the past.

"More irons," Meesle said again and again, in a kind of nagging notation. But it was true. Nearly all the adults out here, east of Winslow, wore weapons — real irons, pistols mostly, and the troopers were fascinated by them. These old irons were slow and inaccurate, they said, but it was touching and romantic nevertheless to see men and women carrying weapons in leather holsters strapped to their waists.

"Weapons with moving parts!" Sluter said, mocking and marveling.

"You couldn't carry them in New York," Murdick said.

"Why would you want to?"

"Allbright's probably one of these people that thinks the city's safe," Meesle said.

Hardy looked the fat man up and down, and sighed, audibly flunking him. This bug was too small for an argument, but Meesle got the message: Look at yourself.

"No city is safe," Meesle said, angered by Hardy's wordless scrutiny.

It is only a matter of time before he kills someone, Hardy thought. Of the three — Flatty had not been able to join the mission — Meesle was the most impatient to use his weapons, and it seemed as though his only motive was his impatience.

The days were full of silences, and the racket of the gunship was like another kind of smothering silence. They spent hours looking for fuel depots — like wanderers in a desert looking for oases. And because all the depots were fortified and some actually enclosed in garrisons, they lingered in these places, spending a whole morning or afternoon enjoying that safety at ground level. Then they ventured into what they thought of as the unknown: the pattern of towns in the midwest. They stayed away from the cities, believing that was what Fizzy would have done. Anyway, most of these cities were so hard to enter or leave. Cincinnati, for example: they were kept holding over the river for almost an hour.

"Checking credentials!" Sluter complained, and when the control tower asked for more information the others cried, "Snake-Eaters!" and "This mission is classified!" They flew off without entering the city.

Thereafter they kept to the small towns and the in-between stretches of farmland. When they took the trouble to look closely, they were impressed by the way some of the people in these towns lived so close to the ground — eating real food, drinking their own water, running factories and ingeniously irrigating their land. Many of them did not even bother to erect fences. From the air, their gardens looked like multicolored rugs. There was large-scale fanning, too — fields of winter wheat and newly sprouted corn.

Occasionally, from the air, they saw a white farmhouse and a barn and a paddock and a silo and a chicken coop and an old truck parked in front. And they knew there was a family in the house that had not been changed by either time or events. The family was at the table, eating supper in their overalls, their heads bowed toward the mashed potatoes and gravy and broccoli and the gleaming chicken — probably praying, and probably not even thinking of it as real food, but just food.

Yet some of those same families might be buying space in a rocket and paying a subscription to the Pilgrims and talking about leasing units and stations and orbits. They might be saying, "Let's sell up and get off the planet" — the poor deluded fools. Hardy felt they would be better off in Maine or Idaho. But they all worried; even those people praying over their mashed potatoes feared Diggers and Starkies and Roaches and all the aliens that sneaked into the States from the world, or were thrown out of the cities; and they braced themselves against the swarms that hit here and cleaned them out.