Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Sluter was seated at the judge's high bench, Meesle and Murdick on either side, all of them in their Godseye uniforms, with the Snake-Eaters insignia; high-tech helmets with the faceplates down; and they spoke through the amplifiers in the grillwork of the throatpiece — it made a piercing sound.

Their flying suits were black, with blacked-out masks, and their antenna-coils shining silver. They had put on this battle gear when the alarm came from the station at Guthrie.

Nothing had ever seemed so incongruous to Hardy as the sight of these three vigilantes — they were wearing gloves, too! — in the wood-paneled courtroom. The Guthrie people said they would agree to testify only if they could remain anonymous — no names, no IDs, no numbers. And no cameras or recording devices in the courtroom. They were anonymous — anonymity made them talkative. Hardy had already heard an hour of this.

"After the church service, some of us went next door to make sure everything was ready. And that's when we saw them. Must have been ten of them."

"They looked like wolves, with food in their hands and food all over their faces," a woman said. To justify her interruption she glanced around, showing an insulted expression, as though she had been wronged. "They just stood in the hall — didn't even run."

"They were all in old shoes, except for him."

Sluter said, "Why didn't you burn them down right there, knowing they were aliens?"

"They were armed," a young man complained. "They had our weapons! We weren't allowed to take our irons into the church for the wedding. We left them here with the food, assuming they'd be safe. That's the last time we make that mistake. They were the ugliest goddamn people I've ever seen."

"'Don't move," they said—"

Witnesses were leaping to their feet all over the courtroom.

"'Don't do nothing. If you follow us, you burn.' The one with the helmet, he was the worst one. 'We'll nuke you. We'll lay the land open and drop you into the crack.' Stuffing sandwiches into his face mask the whole time."

"They would have killed someone, if we hadn't agreed."

Now Hardy spoke up for the first time. He was sitting under the American flag, on the steps of the aisle. He had taken his helmet off. He had become worried by the anger of the townspeople, and especially by the effect it was having on the Snake-Eaters.

"They didn't kill that truck driver," Hardy said. "They just threw him out of his cab."

"They hijacked the vehicle," Meesle said, leaning over to look at Hardy. "That's grounds for hot pursuit. The shoot-on-sight rule applies."

"No one was hurt here in Guthrie," Hardy said.

"They terrorized us," the old man said. "Anyone who doesn't call that a crime is as bad as they are."

Hardy knew he was losing. For the past two days the Godseye troopers had talked of nothing but killing the aliens. "Or else we don't have the right to call ourselves Snake-Eaters." It had been bad enough receiving explicit encouragement from the commandos at the Red Zone Perimeter; but the discovery of Hooper and that girl at the farm outside Winslow had maddened them much more.

"This mission is classified," Sluter had said to Hooper. "I could have killed you and your pup!"

Hooper had been shaken by the surprise visit from Godseye; and he had appealed to Hardy: "Let me help you look for the kid."

"We're looking for outlaws," Sluter said. "They outsmarted you — you lost the kid. You gave that kid away!"

"Please don't follow us," Hardy said, for what good had Hooper been so far? He had lied, he had stalled, he had been ineffectual, he seemed to care only for this young girl. "We can handle it. We'll find him."

And so Hooper Allbright had been left behind, but that conversation between him and the Snake-Eaters had seemed to whip up their blood. They were furious when they left him, and Hardy feared that in their anger they might kill Fizzy too. Now, in Guthrie, they seemed to make no distinction between Fizzy and the aliens — it was as though Fizzy had become an outlaw himself. And then he began to wonder whether the boy was still among them.

"Wasn't there a young boy there?" he asked in the Guthrie courtroom.

"They were all old and dirty," a man said.

"The one in the suit and helmet?"

"Old and dirty."

"I've never seen clothes like that," the red-faced woman said in a disgusted way. "Even Roaches and Trolls, the pictures I've seen of them, don't look that bad. We never had the real thing here, I guess we've been lucky — Guthrie's a quiet place. It's terrible to think there's creatures like that around."

"We'll find them," Meesle said. "We know what to do with them."

Hardy said, "I think they might have ditched Fizzy."

"He's with them. 'Batfish.' The one in the helmet. Snatching food. The worst one. That's got to be him."

"He's fifteen years old!"

"He seems to be able to look after himself," Meesle said.

Hardy hoped that was so — hoped Fizzy was alive and not in a ditch, where the aliens had thrown him after taking his suit and helmet. Hardy hated this talk of pursuit and pouncing, and though he was sorry he had started them on this chase, he was glad he was still with them: he still believed he might be able to restrain them. But Fizzy might not even be alive, and if he were, Hardy wondered whether he would be able to rescue the boy from their onslaught.

"I want to take down the testimony of everyone in this town who saw these aliens," Sluter said from the judge's bench. "I don't care about your names and addresses. But I need a complete list of missing articles and a description of the creatures."

Hardy listened very carefully to the statements. And he was impressed by the gentle, outdoor faces of the townspeople— their bewilderment-seemed like kindliness. They were surprised and insulted that Guthrie had been invaded. They said they knew such things happened near Chicago and St. Louis, and all over the east — and no one was safe in Florida. But Guthrie was poor, remote, and self-sufficient. It was full of woodburners and simple-lifers. They had two gas stations. They made bread here, they raised chickens, they went to school, they got married. No one ever moved here and in the past few years they had hardly bothered to operate the checkpoints except when they received a raid alert, which was not even twice a year.

And that was why they had been so scared when they saw those aliens chewing their food and taking their weapons in the Grange Hall. This was the nightmare they had always been warned about by the Federal marshals. They saw how easily they had been invaded and now they would have to go back to the old time-wasting ID system, and all the checks: scanners, roadblocks, watchtowers, and aerial patrols.

"We can't afford that," they said.

"Want to know the price you pay for not securing yourselves?" Sluter asked them. And then he told them the price, in the Godseye formula: aliens, blacks, prostitutes, polygamists. .

The aliens had come straight up the interstate, I-92, and had turned off at Exit 29, the main road into Guthrie. They had driven their ten-wheeler down Main Street without anyone stopping them. No one had even noticed that aliens had come to town!

They had abandoned the truck on Curtis Street, behind the bowling alley, and as it was a Saturday afternoon (this witness pronounced the word Sarradee) — and a wedding day— all the stores were closed and no one was in the center of town. That was a big mistake. The aliens had broken in Warwick's and taken six pairs of trousers, a box of assorted sweatshirts, five blankets, and some haversacks. They must have stashed them, because they were not wearing any of those clothes when they were next seen.

"Only six pairs of trousers," Hardy said, so that they would remember.