Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"Is this bad?" Holly said.

"I mean, it was dark," Barry said.

Hardy said, "I remember when I used to like the dark."

"Hearing you say that gives me the creeps," Rinka said.

"Relax! Willis has a chain-sword!" Hooper said. "He can slash his way to freedom!"

Sensing that he was being mocked, Murdick said, "I've got some irons, too. And I know how to use them."

His defiant tone brought a silence to the room, and the others sat there, among the jumbled tubes of food, with a buzzing in their earpieces. That was the terrible thing about the talking masks, Moura thought: everyone could hear you swallowing and gulping and pretending not to be frightened.

"For example, that power failure on the bridges," Murdick said. "I didn't care. I was in a rotor — I'm not saying who it belonged to. We burned over a hundred Roaches that night. They were hanging on the bridges. I could show you a tape of it, if you don't believe me."

Fisher said, "Moura wouldn't let me go out that night."

Murdick grinned at him and said, "I wasn't scared. I had irons. And the whole bottom of my rotor was plated with titanium. I might as well tell you — it was a gunship."

"These horror stories are making me hungry," Hooper said. "I wish we had some real food. Next time let's bring pizzas."

No one was listening to him; no one responded. The attention was on Murdick, who seemed both aggressive and anxious, all his talk of aliens and killing. Why were such stories always told by isolated people huddled in a shadowy room?

"If for some reason we couldn't get our rotors off the ground…" Barry was saying. Then he stopped and looked at the window. He could not see anything beyond the black glass. "I suppose we'd be in pretty rough shape here."

Hardy said, "There's Red Zone Rescue at the perimeter."

"They'd have to find us first."

Murdick said, "What's to prevent us from getting our rotors off the ground?"

"Holes in them," Rinka said. "Some friends of ours took a trip in that bad zone in California outside L.A. — Landslip, where they had the quake. They didn't know there were aliens around, some kind of Troll territory, and the aliens were all having a war or something. They had three rotors— real expensive ones — and every single machine was damaged. Holes punched in them. Seems the Trolls had got hold of some shit-guns. Luckily, these friends of ours were very well-armed, but if they hadn't been, and if they hadn't burned about twenty of those Trolls, they would have been in serious trouble."

Murdick said, "When people stop coming to places like this it'll be the end. This isn't far — it's a mental distance. You're just worrying about the dangers. And there was that stupid campaign a few years ago to completely deactivate O-Zone. Declare it a wilderness area, the cowards said. But what's the point in staying home in a sealed city and turning the rest of the planet over to the animals? Eventually you'll have animals scratching on your front door."

"So you want to activate O-Zone?" Rinka said. Before Murdick could speak, Hooper said, "No, leave it alone. It's probably the only empty place on earth. The last chance!"

"You're just saying that because you can't buy it," Hardy said.

"Tell us your plans for O-Zone," Hooper said, and smiled as Hardy fell silent.

Holly was objecting at the other side of the table. "I wouldn't live in a place like this," she said. "A woman in my tower said she knew someone who got deformed after living on a margin of a waste dump. It was in Europe somewhere. She grew a hump."

When she finished speaking, Fisher began jeering. His noisy pleasureless laugh was a nagging noise in everyone's earpiece.

"What is wrong with this kid?" Holly said. Fisher's ear-scraping mockery stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The boy turned his big mask on Holly and said, "What you just said isn't true. And if a thing isn't true, it's stupid."

Holly tried to dispute this, but Hooper interrupted her, saying, "As usual there is a sort of crude integrity in what our supermoron says. There are too many superstitions about places like O-Zone."

"There's too many laws," Murdick said. "We had to wait years for permission to fly here, even though we've got the right protective gear and all the food. I think we're hampered by regulations."

"I think we should be grateful for what we have," Hardy said. "We're lucky to have safe cities and secure corridors. Who has the money to activate zones like this? They're pretty, but they're uneconomic and probably unsafe. There's contamination — everything would have to be sealed, and food and water would have to be flown in. Water!"

"They shoot water to the moon," Hooper said. "And your company got us under the wire, so they must have some interest in an uneconomic wasteland like this."

Hardy did not reply to Hooper, and yet he kept talking. "Think of the security problems," he said. "It's impossible to travel on the ground, and there are no maps. The high-risk areas haven't been pinpointed. Look at us — we hardly dare leave the building!"

"We don't know what's out there," Holly said.

"There's nothing out there!" Hooper said.

Hardy said, "They've tried to activate places like this before. They've had an easier time on the moon than in some contaminated zones on earth."

"Because imaginary dangers are much worse than real ones," Moura said.

"And there's no Skells on the moon."

Hooper said, "There's no Skells here! We're alone—"

There was a little whimper from Rinka — she was laughing. She said, "This has got to be the strangest New Year's Eve party ever held."

They felt this was true, and that it made them singular, but it left them feeling self-conscious, too. They went silent, still sitting among the blazing lights and the shadows, with their backs to the windows. Yes, it was an accomplishment being here — something they had dreamed of. And yet they knew how timid they were in this huddle, and that they were afraid of the dark windows.

"I remember when this was Missouri."

"Who said that? This bullshuck is boring," Fisher said, "How about showing the tape?"

"We're having a conversation," Murdick said.

"We've got two hours of raw tape!"

Murdick said, "I'll bet you don't remember when this was Missouri."

Fisher crept over to Murdick and put his mask against Murdick's so that the faceplates touched. He said, "Who is that man in there?"

Unzipping a side pocket on his trouser leg, Hooper took out a cylindrical cartridge. "Here it is," he said. "The trip from Coldharbor. I'll play it at three hundred clicks an hour and you tell me when to speed and when to zoom."

Hardy handed over his own video cartridge and then hung the screen on the wall and held it steady while Hooper inserted both video cartridges into the base of the frame. It was a simple self-contained viewing apparatus that was operated by the control pistol that Hooper was fumbling out of a bag.

"Who wants to work the controls?"

"Let me do it," Fisher said.

"The kid'll jam it," Murdick said. "Give it to Hardy."

"Yah, I'll jam it — I'll jam it down your throat so far you'll be showing movies out of your bum," Fisher said, and again he pushed his faceplate against Murdick's.

"You'd better be careful, kid," Murdick said. "Don't make me crazy. I'll hand you your head. I've got irons."

"If I was as stupid as you I'd have irons too."

"You might be smart, but you've got the manners of a Roach."

"You look like a Roach."

"Beautiful irons," Murdick said, trembling as he spoke, and cracking his faceplate against Fizzy's.

"You fuck-wit."

"I've got stunners, I've got beams, I've got flechettes, I've got burp guns and shit-guns." Murdick's faceplate was clouded with steam and spittle.