Amnesia Moon (2 page)

Chaos was out on the salt flats, digging a hole in the dense, dry sand with his bare hands. There was something important there, underneath. The sky behind him was purple with radiation. He scrabbled at the earth, desperate, compelled.

Too fast, it crumbled under his fingertips, opening to a hollow beneath the desert. The sand caved in towards the opening, and Chaos tried to back away, but it was too late. He was drawn inexorably into the darkness. He fell.

He plunged into cold water and opened his eyes. He was immersed in an underground river, and though his wet, heavy clothes bound his limbs, he felt secure. I'll swim underground, he thought. He trusted his sense of direction. He paddled his arms, righting himself in the water. Maybe he would swim all the way to Cheyenne, underground.

Then a form rose above him, blocking his view of the entrance. Chaos saw, with bitter disappointment, that it was the gigantic body of Kellogg, flapping ridiculously in the water, a giant cigar still clenched in his smiling mouth. He loomed over Chaos like an underwater zeppelin.

Kellogg was transformed, he saw now. Flippers for arms, and legs tapering to a wide paddle tail. He grinned at Chaos, who began to panic. Kellogg was swelling, stretching like a cloud above him, blocking his access to the air. Chaos looked down; the depths extended into darkness.

Shit. He found himself on the couch, bathed in sweat. It was like clockwork, Kellogg's obsessions radiating outward, invading Chaos's dreams.

Now was probably the worst time to sleep, he realized. When Kellogg was so excited about something that he sent Edge out as a town crier. Or maybe it went the other way, maybe Kellogg sent Edge out because he sensed that Chaos hadn't been dreaming.

Chaos thought again about tuning up his car and going for a long drive. How far would he have to go to get a good night's sleep? Would he ever get out of Kellogg's range? He wondered if he was the only one who cared, if the rest of them were all so used to Kellogg's dreams that it didn't bother them anymore.

Someday he had to do it. Find out what was left, if anything was. He was afraid he'd waited too long. He should have done it back—when was it? Years ago. When all the cars worked.

Only Kellogg could do it now; nobody else had the resources to make that long a run. Kellogg had the resources because everyone did whatever he told them to do. When Kellogg went around renaming everything, nobody tried to stop him. That included Chaos, if he was honest with himself.

Now he couldn't even remember what his name had been, before.

He sat slumped on the couch and blotted at his forehead with his sleeve. A shudder of hunger passed through him, and he knew he had to get some food. He had to visit Sister Earskin, no matter how much he disliked it. He hated going out into Hatfork after one of Kellogg's dreams; everything was under Kellogg's spell, even more than usual.

 

Sister Earskin ran the general store for the genetically damaged exiles of Hatfork. The goods, mostly canned food and reusable objects, filtered through Little America, where Kellogg and his Food Rangers coordinated distribution. She operated out of the old Holiday Inn and lived in one of the cabins, out beyond the empty blue swimming pool.

Chaos parked in the driveway and walked up to the main building. Cars littered the grounds, some parked, some abandoned. The clouds had cleared, and the sun beat down now, heating the pavement, making him feel his weakness. He heard voices inside and hurried towards them.

Sitting on the concrete steps between him and the lobby was a girl dressed in rags and covered with fine, silky hair from head to foot. She squinted at Chaos as he approached. He smiled weakly and said, “Excuse me.” He felt dim with hunger.

Inside, sitting in the rotting couches of the hotel lobby, were Sister Earskin and the girl's parents, Gif and Glory Self. They stopped talking when Chaos entered. “Hello, Chaos,” said Sister Earskin cheerily. “I had a feeling we'd be seeing you today.” Her wrinkled face contorted into a wry smile. “You know the Selves, Chaos, don't you? Gifford, Glory.”

“Right,” said Chaos, nodding at the couple. “Listen, what have you got to eat?”

“Well,” said Sister Earskin, “I've got some bottled soup—”

“Cans,” said Chaos. “What's in cans?” He wasn't fond of the old woman's soup: thin, boiled broth with grisly chunks of whatever animal happened to keel over that morning.

“No,” said Sister Earskin vaguely. “No cans . . .”

Gifford Self raised his eyebrows. “That's what we was talkin' about when you came in, Chaos. Kellogg ain't sent nothin' in cans for a week.” He tried to hold Chaos's gaze, but Chaos broke away.

“Did a car drive through here this morning?” asked Sister Earskin. Her voice was full of implication.

“Edge,” said Chaos.

“What—”

“Anyone who goes to sleep knows the news,” said Chaos. “It had to do with dolphins and whales today. Nothing about food in cans.”

Silence.

“We were hoping you could go down to Little America, Chaos, and maybe have a word with Kellogg . . .” Sister Earskin broke off hopelessly. Gifford Self sat stroking his beard.

“You know what happened the last time I went down to Little America?” said Chaos. “Kellogg put me in jail. He said my chart was out of alignment with Mars. Or in alignment. Something like that.” He felt his face flushing red. Maybe he could do without food after all. His veins burned for more drink, though. He cursed himself for leaving the Multiplex.

Gif and Glory sat watching him, waiting.

“Why don't you eat your kid?” he said. “She looks like some kind of animal.”

He stalked out before they could reply, back out into the brutal sunshine. The Self girl was gone from the steps. Then he saw her kneeling at his car, sucking at his gas tank through a plastic tube. He backed into the shade of the porch and watched unseen as, squatting there on her furry haunches, she pulled her mouth away, spat disgustedly, and turned the open end of the tube down into a plastic container.

Finally he jogged out across the lot. She turned, frozen wide-eyed, the gas still trickling into the jar.

He stepped up beside her. “Keep it going, kid. Don't spill the stuff.”

She nodded in fearful silence. Chaos saw her hands trembling. He reached down and pinched the tube in the middle.

“You talk?” he said. He raised the tube above the level of the tank.

She glared up at him. “I talk fine.”

“You remember before?” he said. The meaning was clear.

“No.”

“Your parents tell you about it?”

“Some.”

“Well, little girls didn't used to do this kind of shit,” he said, and then immediately regretted it. Preachy, nostalgic. “Forget it.” He threw the tube. It spiraled, flinging drops of gasoline, and landed on the deck of the empty pool.

He got in the car. The girl stood up and brushed dust from her gray jeans. She cocked her head and stared at Chaos, and he wondered what she saw. A bat. A cave dweller.

“Well,” he said.

“Where you goin'?” she said shyly.

He thought of his last advice to her parents, wondered if they were capable of it. “Get in,” he said on impulse. He reached over and pushed open the passenger door. The girl jumped, and he thought she was running away, but then she appeared on the other side of the car and climbed in beside him.

They didn't speak again until they were on the open highway outside town. He wasn't sure where he was going. The sun was low now, and they drove into it.

“You have a dream?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said brightly. “Kellogg was a whale—he swallowed me and I was in his stomach. There was also a lot of fish-men—”

“Okay,” he interrupted. “Where'd you learn about whales?”

“From a book.”

“You ever meet Kellogg?”

“No.”

“He's an asshole. You want to meet him?”

“Sure, I guess.”

He wondered if she understood that Kellogg was someone she could actually meet. He turned and caught her staring again. “Your parents want me to ask Kellogg for more food.”

She didn't say anything.

“They don't know the first thing about it,” he said.

The girl went back to watching the barren expanse roll by, as though she found something there. He adjusted the rearview mirror so he could watch her. He noticed that she had miniature breasts sprouting under the ragged tee shirt, found himself wondering where the fur stopped. If it did.

He watched her watching the desert. He sometimes thought that the reason Wyoming didn't get hit was that it didn't need it. It already looked bombed-out. Wasted.

This could be my escape run, he thought. I could drive right past Little America, take this highway out. But no; he'd need food. Water. And he wouldn't have the kid in the passenger seat. No, truth was, for better or worse, he was going to visit Kellogg.

 

They cruised Main Street. A mistake. The Little Americans looked hungry today, no better off than the mutants in Hatfork. They tumbled out of their buildings at the sound of Chaos's car, to stare hollowly at his unusual passenger. The pretense of activity seemed to have broken down; the town looked degenerate. A fire had gutted the old hotel since his last visit.

The girl was leaning out of the window, staring back. “Get in the car,” he said, and tugged her down to her seat. “Kellogg cleared you people out,” he explained, not bothering to be delicate about it. “They forget.”

He heard someone shout his name. But they weren't calling to him so much as raising the alarm. In the dreams, Kellogg used him as a scapegoat figure; Chaos was supposed to lead the mutants in rebellion. Or sometimes he already had, and been defeated; it wasn't always clear. There was a famous banishment scene: Kellogg and his deputies walking Chaos to the edge of town. It played over and over, so that Chaos could no longer remember whether or not it had actually occurred.

He rolled up his window and sped through town, towards the park and City Hall. The public square must once have been kept green, but now it was like a patch of the desert transplanted to the middle of the town. A dog trotted along the edge of the park, nose to the ground.

Another car drove out of the sun ahead of them, on the wrong side of the street. Edge. Chaos braked. Edge stopped his car just short of a collision and jumped out, waving his hands. He ran up to Chaos's window.

“Wow,” he breathed. “What are you doing here? Does Kellogg know you're here?”

“Did Kellogg tell you to drive on the left-hand side?”

“Sorry, man. Don't tell him, okay?”

“Sure.” Chaos wrestled his steering wheel to the left and pulled around Edge's car.

Edge skipped alongside. “You going to see Kellogg?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he ain't there. He's with a bunch of people. I just came from there.”

“Where?”

“Out by the reservoir.”

Chaos drove to the reservoir, tailed by Edge. He pulled up at the end of a long line of parked or abandoned cars, and the girl jumped out before he'd even stopped. He ran to catch up with her. A moment later Edge ran up from behind and joined them.

The reservoir was dried up. What remained was a vast, shallow concrete dish lined with steps, like a football stadium that lacked a playing field.

Kellogg had a pit fire dug into the sand at the bottom. He sat beside it in a lawn chair, surrounded by twelve or fifteen people. The sun was setting across the desert. As Chaos, Edge, and the girl made their way down the steps, it sank out of view behind the lip of the reservoir.

“What's your name?” asked Chaos.

“Melinda.”

“Okay, Melinda. We're going to try and talk to Kellogg. Whatever happens, just stick with me, okay? We'll be back in Hatfork tonight.”

Melinda nodded. Edge said, “Why would anyone want to be back in Hatfork?” Chaos ignored him.

The crowd parted to give Kellogg a view of the newcomers. He turned in his chair, smiling broadly, his stomach creasing like a twisted balloon, and plucked the cigar from his mouth. “Well, hello, Kingsford,” he said. “I see you brought some guests.”

“C'mon, Kellogg. Call me Edge.”

“What's the matter with your Christian name? I think it sounds very noble. You descended from royalty?”

“C'mon, Kellogg,” whined Edge. “You know where I'm
descended
from. You made the name up yourself. Call me Edge.”

“Call me Edge,” Kellogg parroted. “Call me Ishmael. Call me anything, but don't call me late for dinner. Or what's that other one? Call me a cab, okay, you're a malted.” He laughed. “What tidings do you bear? Ill, I suppose. Beware, Kingsford, we may kill the messenger, just this once. We're a hungry bunch.”

“Cut it out, Kellogg. I don't bear
tidings.
I just came from here.”

“So I recall. It's your company that's new.” Kellogg furrowed his brow. “Behold,” he said, his tone changed. Now he was playing to the gallery. “Chaos has arrived. Uncalled, uninvited, as usual.”

The crowd stared dully, as if trying to match Chaos's shambling arrival with the drama of the words.

“With him walks a monster,” Kellogg continued. “A mutant, an aberration. Hold, Chaos. Stand your ground, advance no further upon this company. Heh. Bring you a curse on our humble celebration?”

Beside the fire, strapped to a spit, was a reddened carcass, a dog or goat. A few empty cans lay discarded at the fringes of the circle.

“I want to talk to you about food,” said Chaos.

There was a murmur in the crowd of Little Americans.

“Shortly we shall suckle at the fount of nutrition,” said Kellogg. “The bitter sea will at last embrace her suitors.”

“Where are the food trucks?” said Chaos.

Kellogg waved his hand. “Listen, Chaos: if I were on the surface of the ocean, floating, and you were standing on a bridge, with a rope attached to my belt, would you be able to lift me?” He raised an eyebrow to punctuate the riddle.