Paul Theroux: O-Zone

The travelers continued to track across it, bemused by its gloomy beauty.

Straining forward on the straploops of his harness, Fisher said, "Do we have to go so slow here?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Finish the trip at top speed and then watch the raw tape of it in a unit somewhere."

"Kids," someone said.

"This is more fun, Fizzy."

"Fun," Fisher said, making the word sound stupid. "The camera's more efficient. We'll have more data — we'll see more. If it's on tape we can stop."

"Willis and I can see plenty!"

It was mostly intact, but it was hollow — a ghost city. Some of its structures had fallen and soaked into the ground; the land looked saturated with those ruins. The rest had not been destroyed, only deserted and blurred. It was one of many in O-Zone. What was its name?

"That information's classified," Hardy said to Moura, who had asked.

"Isn't it on the map?"

"The map of O-Zone is blank," Hardy said.

"Because of the military installations on the perimeter," Hooper called out.

"Bullshuck," Fisher said. "It's because of Roaches and Trolls and the risk of looters when it's reactivated. Anyway, officially it doesn't exist, so how can you have a map of something that doesn't exist?"

The buildings close-up had a softly bulging and bearded look. Dust that had been whirled against their walls had sprouted grass and weeds, and there were plants and bushes on knobby stalks poking out of odd corners of the brickwork.

"We'll come back sometime and look around."

"What's the point of doing this twice, you dimbo!" Fisher said.

Moura turned and looked at him. She wondered whether he was frightened. He had never been out of New York, and here he was in O-Zone!

There was no energy here, the still city-stain had no light source of its own, and so it was full of natural shadows — they seemed to be in all the wrong places. Moura knew that Fizzy was not used to this; she was hardly used to it, the hiding stripy darkness. There was ferocity in it — it seemed tigerish and threatening, and it tempted her with the pleasure of risk. The thickened foliage looked full of secrets — the black oak and slippery elm — as if a lumpy green blanket had been drawn across half the flattened city.

Hooper had been narrating in bursts over the radio in his friendly bullying way as they had descended. Now he was saying, "Check those roads, check those parks — hey, can you believe those compounds?"

He meant that it was a marvel that the roads were so narrow and unprotected. Even before they had fallen into ruin they could not have been safe — that surprised everyone. No fences, no walls, no barriers, no sign of checkpoints. The parks were densely wooded in a sinister and concealing way, and the yards and gardens of houses were open to the road. It had apparently been a city without walls. It was not tragic, merely a pathetic phenomenon — no lights and too many shadows.

It represented the naive trust of another age, a kind of fatal innocence and incompetence. Surely this would have finished it even if the radiation had never reached it from those caves. The travelers were amazed by sights like these. They had flown today from a secure city of open spaces and high walls and guarded entry points. They were used to wide, walled expressways, fortified against intrusions and ambushes; they were accustomed to busy skies crisscrossed by their own patrols of aerial gunships. It was not that Coldharbor was a garrison area, but that New York was a sealed city — and this nameless stain beneath them was like a city on its back.

The Eubanks could be heard quarreling in their Hornet.

"Not so close, Barry!" Rinka said. "You don't know what's down there!"

"Hooper's down there! I'm following him on autopilot, so will you please let go!"

And Willis Murdick, Who had gone off the air, suddenly broke into their frequency, saying, "Listen, I've got irons."

"You pretend like you know what's down there," Holly Murdick said.

"Whoever's down there don't matter to me. The closer we go, the easier it is to burn them," Willis said.

"You porker, Murdick."

"And I hope they're listening," Willis said.

It excited them to see the empty sprawling place, its tumbled buildings, the stain of its stone and metal spread beneath their rotors. This was the dangerous past! Narrow roads and hedges and embankments — and what was that glimmer? Was it the poisonous twinkle of radiation's foxfire?

"There's nothing down below," Hooper said.

"Even if there is, I've got irons,"

"But there's no one there!"

He spoke with eagerness and hope, and hearing him, Hardy could almost see his brother grinning and flexing his fingers, as if he'd seen a woman he wanted.

"If there's no one there, it's not dangerous, so why don't you—?" And with that shriek the Eubanks broke radio contact.

Patches of the city were intact and the rest had become part of the enormous oak-hickory woods that surrounded it. To Hardy's eyes, the city was not dead but asleep, wrapped up, protected and snug, and waiting for adventurous travelers to awaken and untangle it.

"It's lovely in a wild way," Moura said. "It's like a town in an old story — it just went to sleep."

"It's full of infection." Fizzy was sulking, not even looking at the ground-screen. "It's carcinogenic from one end to the other."

"Shall we land?" Hardy said in a teasing way to the transmitter, hoping for a listener.

Hooper rose to the challenge and said, "All we have to do is find a hard surface for these rotors."

But this was bravado. He could say anything he liked. He knew it was forbidden to land here.

Hardy winked at Moura. He did not speak — Hooper would hear. Hardy didn't want his brother's submission once again to the strict terms of the Access Pass: protective clothing, sealed conditions, no landings in a city-stain or within thirty clicks, no skin contact, all activities and sightings to be logged, all food and water to be brought in. It was forbidden to leave anything behind, and nothing could be removed.

The two-day trip — the New Year's party — had been Hooper's idea; but it was Hardy who had been granted the pass, to carry out what Fisher insisted was a longitudinal field study. An air corridor through O-Zone had not yet been approved, and yet Hardy — to everyone's surprise — received permission to land. These days, access to O-Zone was rarer than a moon landing, and it was the fact that they would be the first — even if they were only party-goers — that roused Fisher and persuaded him to agree to be navigator. No one asked why Hardy, of all people, secured the pass in the first place.

"— probably bursting with fabulous old treasures," Hooper was saying. "Want to follow me down?"

Hardy smiled at the way Hooper's rotor kept unwaveringly on a safe course as he threatened this rashness. And then he was startled by a squawk from the rear seat, where Fisher had stiffened in his harness.

"This is officially a degraded area!" the boy said. "It's a bone-valley, there's been an excursion, it's marbled with plutonium! You can't land here — they'll revoke Hardy's pass, and the Federal—"

"You sound just like your father," Hooper said.

"He's not my father, you fuck-wit!"

"Murdick here," came the gummy voice. "I don't see why my wife and I have to listen to this."

"It's dangerous!" Fisher was still hollering, his big square teeth showing in the faceplate of his mask. "I've studied these places! You could contaminate us — taint the rotors — and they wouldn't have to let us back into New York. We'd be quarantined!"

"See, that's what he's really worried about. He really wants to go home. Why did we bring this little shit?"

"Who said that? I'm navigator! You wouldn't have got here without me!"