Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"At least we know where to find him," Hooper said.

Flying east with Bligh, Hooper had heard the general alarm — the Guthrie transmission: alien alert. He realized then that he was too late to find the boy. The aliens had fled and taken Fizzy with them, and the Godseye gunship — he could hear Sluter roaring on the alien-alert frequency — was on its way to Guthrie. So Hooper had done nothing more than circle the town.

"It looks like a nice place," he said. "They're wearing skirts. God, I love the word 'skirts.' Want one?"

Bligh laughed and put her knees together, and they had flown on, scanning the ground for the fugitives.

Fisher's memory was perfect. He had told Mr. Blue that, yes, unfortunately, he was afraid of the dark — Moura's fault for mashing the lights off once when he was three — but it didn't matter if he went blind, because he could remember clearly everything he had ever seen. What was the point in seeing it over and over again with his eyes when it was printed perfectly on his brain? Experience and memory made eyesight irrelevant, and Fisher had always been bored by repetition. He had never believed that the world outside his room mattered much.

He felt so foolish now. He wasn't afraid of the dark anymore — why had he blurted it out to this alien? And there was the other error — a great deal worse.

Months ago in Firehills, at the New Year's party, he had run the tape of the trip out. The party guests had watched it and they had congratulated themselves on having taken such a dangerous trip to O-Zone. And then Fisher had analyzed it. In his analysis, ruined towns and mobs and beaten people had appeared in the long desolate panning shot from New York to O-Zone. It had all looked like a route through the worst part of America, and shaken-down places like Guthrie and Winslow and Loogootee and Seymour (they had just left Seymour today) had seemed dreadful: hot dangerous horror towns in the dusty midwest.

No — leave it out! He had been wrong. But how could he have been so wrong? Anyway, he knew it now: he was on the ground. The camera had lied, overdramatized the action, darkened the shadows, exaggerated the poverty and ruin.

And the scanner had overreacted. I was frightened, he explained to himself, so it seemed dangerous. But where was the danger here? It was not only bearable, it could be downright pleasant. Those savage-looking towns were a pushover — practically harmless. The patched streets and stained roofs and empty watchtowers of these so-called outposts had misled him. They were simple little places! They had drugstores and bus stations and supermarkets and high schools. The stoplights worked. No one wore helmets, very few wore masks.

Fisher had said beforehand, "You're going to see some dongs and dimbos running around naked, pretending they're Starkies. Guys in horror-masks. Women in aprons, with their bums sticking out and their oinkers joggling. It's the fashion."

He had been thinking of New York. It was all he knew. But in Guthrie the people wore dungarees and overalls and sweaty hats, and some women wore skirts. The children ate ice cream. The wedding was well-attended. White dresses. Flowers, Church bells rang.

"Just because people are poor it doesn't mean they're dangerous," Fisher said soon after they arrived, when he knew he had been wrong. "It doesn't necessarily mean they're dim-bos, either."

"What a wise child you are," Echols said.

"I wouldn't mind staying here awhile," Gumbie said. "Think my name's in their computer?"

"They'll kill us," Mr. Blue said.

"Not me, they won't," Fisher said. "I'm legal. I've got an ID. I'll say I'm Fisher Allbright, and they'll keel over!"

But then they had behaved like outlaws, taking the weapons arid plundering the wedding reception and, as they moved through town, snatching what they needed. Fisher had felt brave and dangerous, and when the terrified woman in the Grange Hall had asked him who he was he had lifted his faceplate and yawned at her and said, "Batfish!"

They had lingered in Guthrie and put themselves into greater and greater danger, until at last they heard the approaching rotor and fled. After scattering, they evaporated, and regrouped in the dark. They seized a van from a pair of lovers, who were too surprised to do anything but surrender the keys when they saw the seven faces pressed against their windows.

"Aliens! Swarm crime!" Fisher cried, liking the game. And then he added, "Front-seat window for me! I'm navigator!"

They piled in and drove slowly all night on Route 50, stopping often — whenever they suspected they were being followed, and usually delaying themselves further by eating the food they had brought from Guthrie. They had sneaked into those other towns — Loogootee and Seymour: crawled down their streets in the van and read the signs, looked in the store windows. Shoe stores, banks, car dealers. Riteway Drugs. Alder's Griptite Tools. Ralph-O-Tronics, Pinsker's Pet Shop.

Fisher said, "It's the past."

"Looks like the future," Valda said.

"No," Fisher said. "The future's familiar. This is a mystery."

"Not to me."

Toward dawn they were rolling past damp fields, and way at the back of those fields the sun appeared in three wide layers of light in a dusty green sky. Caution — Low-Fly ing Aircraft, a sign said. Nearer the airfield, outside Marengo (another old-new town), they ditched the van and burrowed under the perimeter fence, using the tools they'd brought from O-Zone.

"These clunkers actually work," Fisher said, stabbing the sandy dirt with a shovel.

They positioned themselves in the bushes at the end of the runway, where the planes landed and turned before taxiing to the small terminal. "Looks like a shoebox! Traffic controller probably yells out the window!"

But no one was listening to Fisher. They were crouched in the morning heat, the fudgy-looking runway giving off a stink of oil.

"They'll just fly away when they see us waving guns at them," Rooks said.

"We'll command them to let us board," Fisher said, fussing with the radio in his helmet. "If they don't, we'll nuke them."

Just then a fat flapping plane submerged them in its roaring noise.

"Think you can yell loud enough, Fish?"

But Fisher's head was down. He had found the right frequency and was monitoring the approach of another aircraft.

They hid until a ten-seater radioed its landing and touched down, and when it swerved toward them on the runway Fisher broke into the transmission and ordered the pilot to hold. The plane paused, and rocked. The control tower demanded to know who had overridden the instructions. Then seven people surrounded the plane, holding their weapons up.

"Swarm crime!" Fisher said, laughing because it was so easy.

The rest happened quickly: the steps were dropped and the passengers hurried onto the runway, and the seven armed people boarded.

"Aliens!" the pilot was hissing into his microphone as Fisher entered the cockpit and took the seat next to him. He pointed his weapon at the pilot's throat.

"I'm not an alien, you fucking herbert! Look at me!"

He was honking into his helmet.

"Your security here is terrible," Fisher said. "You people don't know the first thing about crime control. Haven't you heard of perimeter beams? You've got these stupid wacky fences that even a shit-wit could get through, if he wanted. I had a shovel — I dug my way in! You herberts deserve to get hijacked."

The pilot meanwhile was trying to answer him.

"Up!" Fisher said, outshouting the pilot. "Get us up! I'm driving the computer! I'm navigating!"

When they were in the air he turned and saw lowered heads. The hesitant plops of their puking disgusted him.

"Haven't you guys ever been in a plane before?" Then he remembered, and laughed in his strange groaning way, and tried to share the joke with the stone-faced pilot. "Hey, it's their first time up!"