Michael Cunningham - Specimen Days

“We should take the Winnebago and leave the pod. The Winnebago is better off-road.”

“Right.”

“Make them give you back the engager for the pod so they can’t follow us.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Luke kicked the Jesus’ foot down from the threshold. He raised his hands in the air and hopped outside. Simon glanced at Catareen did she think this was some kind of trap? She flicked her long fingers toward the doorway, that Nadian gesture of impatience.

From outside the Winnebago, he heard Luke say, “For the love of Christ, don’t shoot.”

Catareen flicked her fingers more urgently. All right, then. If this was a mistake, he’d let it be her problem.

Simon jumped out after Luke and trained the stun gun on the frail back. He said, “Move. I will fucking kill you if you don’t do exactly what I say.”

He was good at this, no denying it.

“Just don’t hurt me,” Luke whimpered.

The Virgin and Obi-Wan stood frozen at the doors to the pod, blinking in confusion. It seemed to Simon an unnecessarily elaborate charade, given that its entire audience was a teenage girl and an elderly man in a Halloween costume.

Then his circuits started shutting down. Here was the sudden cooling, as if the temperature had dropped by fifteen degrees. Here was the fizzy light-headedness, the sour, spinning intoxication. It seemed to stem not from the entirely false threat of violence but from the absurdity of the threat, the pathos of tricking these sad people (who had, it must be remembered, murderous capabilities). He was all but overcome by the notion that the world was made of tricks and sorrows, of zealots and shoddiness and brutal authorities and old men in costumes.

He was shutting down. It shouldn’t be happening. He wasn’t harming anyone directly. But here it was.

Catareen had snatched the keys from the Jesus’ hand. Luke took a step forward, saying, “Please, please, I’ll do anything you want.” Simon was able to move, but with increasing difficulty, as if the air itself were thickening around him.

He said, “Inside of dresses and ornaments, behold a secret silent loathing and despair.” His voice was heavy and several notes too low.

Catareen snatched the gun from his hand, leaped forward, and pressed it between Luke’s shoulder blades.

She said to the old man and the Virgin, “Throw me engager.”

“Do it,” Luke commanded.

The old man tossed the engager in Catareen’s direction. It fell on the ground at her feet, and she snatched it up with raptorish speed.

“Move,” she said to Luke.

He moved. Simon followed as best he could.

Catareen got Luke into the cab of the Winnebago. Simon managed to get himself in on the passenger’s side. Catareen put the key into the ignition, started it up. She leaned out the window and shouted at the Virgin and the old man, “If you follow, we kill.”

Then she accelerated, and they were on their way.

“Nice work,” Luke said. He smelled slightly of pine air freshener. His fetish necklace clicked softly against his narrow, bathrobed chest.

Catareen drove. The headlights of the Winnebago lit up the ash-colored road, the tangles of dark grass on either side.

Simon felt himself returning. Motion seemed to help. He said, “What was that about?”

He heard his own voice as if from a certain distance. But he was starting up again, no question.

“That was ‘Sayonara, assholes,’” Luke answered. “Who were those people?”

“Blots on the name of the Lord. Fools in fools’ clothing.”

“Weren’t you one of them?”

“Posing as.”

The Winnebago’s headlights continued showing bright, empty road bordered by black fields. Simon saw that it was equipped with a directional. They could find Denver easily, then.

He said to the boy, “Will they come after us?”

“Probably. They’ll want the Winnebago back more than they’ll want me.”

“Should we be worried?”

“They’re not very smart or well organized. It’ll take Obi-Wan and Kitty an hour to walk to the tabernacle. I’d say go off-road and kill the lights. There’s enough of a moon.”

“The Winnebago is all-terrain?”

“Yep. Modified. Engine’s atomic, and the wheelbase has been hydraulicked. It’s modeled on what they used to call tanks.”

“I know what a tank is,” Simon said.

“Then you know we can go just about anywhere in this thing.”

At that, Catareen turned off the road and extinguished the headlights. The Winnebago’s tires held on the uneven ground. Catareen drove into the grass, which was restless and silvered under the moon.

“So,” Luke said. “Where are you headed?”

“We’re going to Denver.”

“Looking for Emory Lowell?”

“How did you know that?”

“When somebody says he’s going to Denver, the name Lowell naturally arises. I mean, you wouldn’t be going all that way for the rattlesnake festival.”

“You’ve heard of Lowell, then.”

“I’ve met him.”

“You have?”

“Sure. I lived in Denver for a few years, when I was younger. My mother and I traveled a lot.”

“Military?”

“No. Just poor.”

They drove across the grassy flats. Every so often the lights of a compound flickered in the distance. Every so often there was a shooting star.

After they had covered more than a hundred miles, they agreed that they should stop for the rest of the night. Catareen said, “We must to eat.”

“Love to,” Simon answered. “If you happen to see a cafe out here”

“I find,” she said.

“What do you expect to find, exactly?”

“Animals here, yes?”

“Some. Maybe. They say some of the hardier specimens are still around. Rats. Squirrels. Raccoons.”

She said, “I go. I look.”

“You’re telling me you think you can catch something out there?”

“I look.”

“By all means.”

Catareen slipped out of the truck’s cab and seemed to vanish instantly among the trees. Simon and Luke got out, too. They strolled, stretching their limbs. Overhead, among the branches, stars were manifest.

Luke said, “She’s probably a good hunter.”

Simon thought of her talons. He thought of her teeth. “Who knows?”

“I seem to remember,” Luke said, “when I was little, there was a vid on Nadian customs.”

“That must have been an old one.”

“I remember some rodent thing they were fond of.”

“I have vague recollections. A gray hairless thing about the size of a gopher. Long tail. Very long tail.”

“Right. They cooked it with some sort of hairy brown vegetable.”

“Like a pinecone with fur. If you stewed one of those rodents with the hairy vegetable for five or six hours, you could eat it.”

“It was one of their delicacies.”

“Right.”

Luke said, “They do have souls, you know.”

“I’m not all that big on the whole soul concept, frankly.”

“Because you’re biomechanical?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Your eyes. It’s subtle, but I can always spot it.”

“What about my eyes?”

“Hard to explain. There’s nothing technically wrong with them.”

“They’re biological” Simon said.

“I know that. Like I said, it’s subtle. There’s just a certain sense of two camera apertures expanding and contracting. Something lensish. The eyes of biological humans are sort of juicier. Or more skittish or something. It’s not a question of the visual apparatus, more like what’s behind it. Anyway, I can tell.”

“You’re a smart kid, huh? How old are you anyway?”

“I’m around eleven. Maybe twelve. Does it matter? I’ve always had this heightened perception thing.”