Amnesia Moon (3 page)

“The belt would break?” volunteered Edge. He'd abandoned Chaos and the girl and elbowed his way into the crowd beside Kellogg.

Kellogg ignored Edge's guess. “You wouldn't,” he said. “But if I were at the bottom of the ocean and you were on a boat, would you be able to lift me to the surface?”

“I don't see any of your Food Rangers, Kellogg,” said Chaos. “What's the matter? They take off with your trucks?”

“Buoyancy!” shouted Kellogg. “Man's burden lifted!”

The crowd seemed cheered by Kellogg's confidence. Someone had been sawing the lid off a can of beans, and now this was passed forward into Kellogg's hands. He plunged a finger into the can, lifted it out, and sucked up a glistening mouthful of beans and sauce. Chaos experienced the fantasy that this was literally the last can of food in Wyoming. It followed that it would be consumed by Kellogg, the last fat man anywhere, as far as Chaos knew.

“The ocean calls,” said Kellogg, chewing.

“The ocean's a thousand miles away,” said Chaos. He allowed himself to feel that his stubbornness was courage. Maybe it was.

“Ah,” said Kellogg. “But that's where you're mistaken, Chaos. The planets are in alignment. The continental plates are in motion. The ocean's on its way.” There was a rustle of approval from the crowd. They'd presumably heard this prophecy before. Or dreamed it.

“Alignment
,” repeated Edge reverently.

“All I'm saying is consult the charts,” said Kellogg. “That's the difference between us, Chaos. I follow the stars.”

“Hatfork needs food, Kellogg. I don't care if it comes from the ocean or the stars. We do what you want, we listen to your dreams. Now give us food.”

“No taxation without representation,” said Kellogg. “Very good. I may have to change your name soon.”

“Change his name,” seconded Edge. He helped hoist the meat into position above the fire. The girl scurried out from behind Chaos to watch.

Kellogg furrowed his sunburnt brow. “Your problem, Chaos, is your failure to come to grips with the new order. We're a whole new species now, since the bombs. We've got a whole new agenda.” His tone had grown intimate, and the crowd switched its attention to the roasting.

The only thing Chaos liked less than Kellogg's hamming was when the fat man got sincere.

“Willful evolution is the first task of an intelligent society,” Kellogg lectured. “We've inherited a grand tradition, admittedly, but we can't let that tradition hold us back. We need to transcend the past. For starters, we've ignored the aquatic intelligences of our planet for too long. What's worse, we've shunned our own aquatic origins. Evolution is cyclical. Chaos. Can you see it?”

“What happened to your trucks, Kellogg?” It was more than a brave stand. Chaos's hunger was killing him now. “No more food in Denver?”

“We're gonna repopulate the garden, Chaos. I'm here to show the way. It's got to be done differently this time. The bombs robbed the world of meaning, and it's our job to reinvest. New symbols, new superstitions. That's you, Chaos. You're a new superstition.”

“Not anymore,” said Chaos, surprising himself. “I'm leaving. I don't live around here anymore.”

“Wait a minute,” said Kellogg. “Don't talk crazy. You can't leave here.”

“It can't be any worse somewhere else,” said Chaos. “Radiation fades.”

“I'm not talking about radiation . . .”

The crowd suddenly backed away from the fire, and someone groaned. Edge tapped Kellogg on the shoulder. “Hey, Kellogg,” he said weakly. “Take a look—”

The chest of the animal had split open in the fire, and it was alive with pink-white worms. As they spilled out of the cavity, they sizzled and hissed in the flames, streaking the meat with their juices.

“Shit,” said Kellogg quietly, to himself.

Melinda Self came running back, and curled one finger shyly around Chaos's beltloop. There was muttering in the crowd.

“Well, shit,” said Kellogg, more expansively. He drew in a breath, and the crowd seemed to hang on it. “Hmmm.” His eyes flicked up to Chaos and Melinda, then he lifted his hand and turned to the crowd.

“Grab them.”

Before Chaos could react, his arms were pinned behind him, a knee in his back. Edge pulled the squirming girl away and pushed her down in the sand in front of Kellogg. Chaos kicked at the men behind him, uselessly. Knuckles dug into his back. He struggled more, and was thrown on his face in the sand.

“You want to know what happened to my food trucks? Sabotage, that's what. Five miles out of town, somebody blew them up. Survivor said they got hit from the sky. Some kind of air strike. That have anything to do with you. Chaos?”

“No.”

“Well who do you think it could've been, then?”

“I can't imagine.”

“Well I think it's something you dreamed up, my friend. Fact, I'm sure of it. This morning an old woman picked up a shoe lying by the highway; the shoe had a foot in it. We're gonna make you pay for that, Chaos. We're gonna eat your ladyfriend.”

The crowd responded to this shift in Kellogg like well-trained dogs. Utopian dreams forgotten, they grew vicious, began pulling at the girl's limbs. “Whoa, there,” said Kellogg. “Don't ruin her coat. I want it for my wall. We'll do this right, put together a little marinade.”

Melinda Self began crying, and one of the men put his hand over her mouth and wrenched her head back. Chaos tried to get up, but someone planted a foot on his shoulder.

By the fire, they were prying the charred, rotten meat off the spit.

“Stop this, Kellogg,” said Chaos. “It's too much.”

He felt cheated. This wasn't in the cards. There hadn't been a cannibalism dream, ever.

“Too much, huh? Not enough, I'd say. Maybe we ought to fatten her up first. Let's see, she could eat you . . .”

“Where does it stop?” said Chaos. “You'll run out in the end no matter what you do. When that happens, they'll eat you.” His voice cracked with the strain. “You bastard.”

Kellogg grinned for a long minute, milking the scene. Melinda Self twisted her head free and spat into the sand. The crowd waited. They were in the palm of Kellogg's hand, as ever.

“Hokay, Chaos, you called my bluff. I'm pulling your goddammed leg. You make it too easy, you know? I'm disappointed in you. You don't even spot my references.” He reached up and took Melinda's chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I wouldn't eat a beautiful little child. Are you kidding? You know me better than that, pal.”

“I know you're insane.”

Kellogg flared his sunburnt nostrils and curled a fist, then opened it again slowly, finger by finger. “Don't tempt me,” he said. “Nobody's eating anybody around Little America, Chaos. I don't know what you folks been up to back in Hatfork, but that don't happen
here.
”

“Then let her go.”

Kellogg shook his head. “We need to talk, Chaos. Long overdue. She's my way of making sure you'll listen.” He leaned back in his chair. The desert sunset glowed behind him, an aura. “Take her back to town,” he said. “Edge, you take her. Keep her alive. And here.”

He dug in his pocket and emerged with a key, which he handed to Edge. “My stash. Go ahead and open some cans. Everybody eats. The girl too. Furry or not, we'll show old Chaos here we know how to treat a lady.”

A heel crashed against the side of Chaos's head. He fell. The crowd rushed Melinda Self up the steps of the reservoir, towards the cars. Engines revved. By the time Chaos got to his feet and worked the grit out of his mouth, he and Kellogg were alone. The fat man stood at the edge of the pit, urinating into the fire.

He looked over at Chaos and smiled, then zipped up his pants. “C'mere, Chaos. Step into my office.” He turned and strolled away from the fire, to the first tier of the reservoir.

Chaos shrugged the sand out of his shirt and jogged up after Kellogg. He had an impulse to launch himself onto that broad, smug back, but he wasn't sure he could bring the big fool down. He felt thin and faded as a piece of driftwood.

Kellogg sat on the edge of the concrete. He fumbled in his shirt pocket and brought out a half-smoked cigar, which he put into his mouth unlit. “Why you always need an incentive to come talk to me, Chaos? Don't you like me anymore? We're in this together, pilgrim. You know that, don't you?” He grimaced, the cigar dipping downward. “Sorry if I got a little crazy back there, pal. When you said you were leaving, it just about broke my heart.”

Chaos marveled. Kellogg was trying to make him feel guilty.

Then he remembered the gossip he'd picked up at Sister Earskin's the week before. “Is it true what I heard?”

“What's that?”

“You were nothing but an auto parts salesman, driving around in a pickup full of free-sample spark plugs?”

Kellogg smiled sarcastically, unfazed. “The honest truth, Chaos, is that I don't actually
recall.
But suppose I was. What's it to you?”

Chaos didn't say anything.

“You're way too concerned with
before
, sport. As if anyone cared. I mean, do you remember before?
Really
remember?”

“No,” Chaos admitted.

He hated the question every time it came up.

“Come on, Chaos. What were you before? What were you doing when the bombs fell?”

“I don't know,” said Chaos. “I can't even remember my name. You know that.”

“Okay.” Kellogg stopped to light his cigar. “Easier question. How long ago was it?”

Chaos's head was swimming. “I don't know,” he said again. “But you remember—don't you?”

“Nope.” Kellogg puffed philosophically, the smoke wafting up into the darkening sky. “But I prefer to think of it this way: there isn't anything to remember. Things were always like this. It's just a
feeling
that something else came before, an
endemic
feeling. The whole world has déjà vu.”

Now Chaos was back on firmer ground. Back to Kellogg's bullshit theories. “All this broken-up stuff everywhere, Kellogg. That's not a feeling. Cans of food in old stores. And the way we talk, it's full of words for things that aren't here anymore. I may not know my name, but I know a reservoir is supposed have water in it.”

“Okay, okay. I'm just saying it's not as simple as you think. You go around making
inferences
from all this stuff lying around, you think it's easy to go from point A to point B. But you're not even close.” He took the cigar out of his mouth. “I don't know the answer, Chaos. But I do know more than you, because I'm not afraid to look inside, to look to myself, take on a little
responsibility.
Whereas you—you don't know the half of it.”

He'd fallen for it again. Another baffling, hopeless conversation with Kellogg. His gut ached. “What are you trying to say?”

“Listen, Chaos. You're like me, you know that? We're two of a kind. The only difference is, I know it and you don't.”

Chaos felt tired. “I'm leaving, Kellogg. It doesn't matter what you say. I'm not dreaming your dreams for you anymore.”

“Dreaming my dreams? What?” Kellogg spluttered. “You can't go. You don't understand. You're important around here.”

“Nobody's important around here, except maybe you. Maybe. Besides, I don't want to be important. I want to leave.”

“
Listen
,” said Kellogg seriously, jabbing with his cigar, “I'd hate to see this place without you, partner. I don't know how I'd go on if you left.”

“You're mixing up reality and dreams again, Kellogg. I'm only important in the dreams. You use me as a symbol. The real person isn't necessary for that. You can go on without me; I promise not to sue.”

Kellogg shook his head. “I'm sorry about the dreams. I'll cut it out, I promise. Christ, Chaos, if it's just the dreams, you should've said something. But that's the end of it, anyway, I swear. And listen: from now on it's you and me, equal partners, the way it should've been from the start.”

“What?”

“I can see you're restless in Hatfork. In fact, I predicted this would happen. I've been
counting
on it. It's time for you to step up and assert yourself, claim your share of things, pal, not just
leave.
Not right when you're on the verge of things, big things. I mean, hell, I'm tired anyway. It's a lot of work. I'm ready for you to take over the reins.”

“You're out of your mind, Kellogg.” Chaos turned and walked across the reservoir towards the steps to his car.

Kellogg came pounding through the sand behind him, breathing hard. He grabbed Chaos's shoulder. “You're missing vital information, sport. Geez, slow down. What I've—what we've been doing here, together, it can't just fall apart like this. The dreams are nothing, just an
embellishment.
You could do it too, if you tried, but that doesn't even matter. The dreams aren't the point. You're a player in what happens around here, a player in what happened in the first place. You can't just go. It'll all fall apart without you.”

Chaos stopped and turned. “You're saying this is something that should be kept from falling apart? Something that didn't already fall apart a long time ago? Get to the point, Kellogg. If you have one.”

“Listen.” He poked Chaos's chest. “
The bombs never fell.
That's all bullshit, something you and I cooked up between us to explain this mess. Something else happened, something more complicated. You get that? The bombs never fell.”

It was almost night. The sky still glowed pink in the west, but overhead the stars were appearing. A wind was picking up over the salt flats. Chaos tried to shake off the force of Kellogg's words, to focus on
car
and
water
and
food.
On getting out of there.