Black Moon (21 page)

Maybe he’s like me. A sleeper. Why not? We have the same blood, same wiring—if that has anything to do with it.

When Biggs yawned again, he simply rolled onto his side, turning his back on the human explosion it again triggered only a few feet away. He allowed his head to sink into the balled-up clothes that served as his pillow.

Maybe it was only for a few minutes, maybe an hour.

He thought he heard someone say his name.

There was a clinking, the crunch of footsteps on the circuits scattered all over the floor. He sat up on his elbows and turned toward the movement. Maybe, Biggs wondered, I am an insomniac too. The shadowy figures, the voices. That’s what you eventually experience. He watched, surprised, as the figure emerged into view.

It was Carolyn, dressed in black—her studio clothes that hid her in the darkness at the outskirts of the frame, or allowed her to puppeteer some quick on-camera movement while obscured against a black felt backdrop. She would then use a pen tool and tablet to manually erase every pixel of herself from each digital frame of the footage, replacing the hint of her shape in the darkness with a truer emptiness. It was grueling work that she called
cleanup
, this removal of herself from her worlds.

Now time seemed to be held up. Not frozen solid, but quivering in a tight loop. The scene flickered, pulsed, as though the cosmic playhead was jumping between two nearly similar frames. The insomniac’s back seem to shudder violently, flickering along the edges. Biggs wanted to warn Carolyn that the man was dangerous, but his mouth would not open at his mental urging, nor would his throat issue a sound. She glided toward his attacker without pause and stood over him, studying him. It was an expression
of concentration he had seen before, when standing at the door of her studio, well past midnight, to ask her if she was coming to bed. She leaned in, tilting her head, squinting, then reached out. He heard her hands at work—the moist molding of clay, a sudden cracking as she grit her teeth and bore down. There was a burst of light. The man’s form jolted, then settled back into the looping shudder.

Carolyn stood back and studied the figure sitting before her, again squinting, considering. She leaned forward and made some adjustments. Satisfied, she turned and said to Biggs, “What next, dreamer?”

“Next?”

“Everything happens in your head first.”

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“I dropped in,” she said. “From the skylight. No one ever looks up.”

She moved toward the margins of his periphery and seemed to settle there, just out of view, a soft dark edge to his field of vision.

He tried to follow her, turning his head, but the dark area moved with him. Rising to his knees, he shifted focus and scanned the room. There was no sign of Carolyn anywhere, other than a strange dark feathering to the extreme right corner of his eye. He rubbed at it, thinking there was something there—a hair, a mote of dust—but it remained. Had it always been there? Why hadn’t he noticed before? Then the thought that was always there too: Was he finally succumbing?

The insomniac was now still and silent, slumped on the floor, his back pressed against the cage. Biggs stood and nudged the man’s back by kneeing the wire wall. Nothing. He bent over and stuck a knuckle through the mesh, poking the man in the spine. Still no reaction. He yelled and kicked hard against the cage.

When the insomniac remained still, Biggs grabbed the flashlight. He dug in his pocket for the key to the lock. The gate opened with a creak and he stepped out onto the silent warehouse floor. When he came around the cage, he was startled to see the insomniac staring up at him. He raised the flashlight, ready to swing. But the man’s eyes were locked in an empty stare. His mouth was frozen open to an unnatural degree. His jaw was clearly broken, and his chin was still wet with drool. Biggs could see that he was dead, yet he crouched over the body and slowly sent out his hand to touch the man’s cool, lifeless flesh.

He stood and searched the warehouse for signs of Carolyn. She was watching him, he was sure of it. But from where? Like his wedding band, which had reappeared on his finger when he awoke at Delicious, there was physical evidence of her presence. He studied it now, half expecting the ring to be gone. But there it was, as real as the corpse sitting before him.

UPON STEALING THE TRUCK, CHASE
found himself in possession of sheep. He could not tell how many, daring only to glimpse up at the rearview mirror as he negotiated the many curves in the mountain road at an unsafe speed. Maybe four or six or nine, sliding around back there. He could hear the flinty sound of their hooves scuffing against the metal floor of the open bed, their woolly bodies thumping against the sides. The animals complained as they were herded by centripetal force into corners of the careening vehicle. Chase caught flashes of their pale gums and yellow teeth, their wild eyes. His sheep: maybe plural or maybe just one, carouseling past the window. No, at least two. Wow, they were stressed out, braying or barking or baying—whatever kind of sound that was.

He was freaking out too, not knowing if the insomniacs were right on his tail. Here he was driving a truck, naked, fingers and toes shriveled by the icy creek water. Creased soles matted with pine needles, bejeweled with jagged pebbles. Still, he stomped on the worn pedals. The hot seat seared his palest flesh and the steering wheel felt like a red stove burner in his hands.

Yet his erection persisted. It had bobbed out in front of him when he had leapt from the creek and run through the meadow. It was like a tranquilizer dart someone had shot into him, purple as of a few days ago and craning up at the wheel as if trying to see over the dash. Tight and aching, the engorged appendage
was a constant reminder that he had overindulged. A physical, artificially induced formality that had no linkage to desire. As if insomnia wasn’t bad enough, he had this additional, armless cross to bear, a cruel miracle of persistence. Death-defying in its own way, since it had not become gangrenous, as Jordan said it would. What does Jordan know, anyway? He’s a pharmacy cashier, not a doctor.

The creek had helped, sitting in the bitingly cold water as long as his body could endure. But now he had no creek. Nor did he have the other stolen pharmaceuticals—the sleep drugs that they had been using to ward off the inevitable.

No drugs and no pants. What he had was some desperate sheep rancher’s truck, and his sheep. The guy must have joined in the caravan of insomniacs that raided the campsite, hoping for at least one good night. Maybe he’ll get it. Maybe they’ll find some loose pills in the creases of the sleeping bag, or in the dust by the water jug, where surely some fell from Jordan’s trembling hands. If they looked hard enough, they might even find the cooler buried in the brush. They’re going to be pretty pissed when they find out those pills don’t work very well. They’ll work a few times, then the sleeplessness comes back stronger than ever, settling like a ball of sparks in your brain.

Macy! Macy must have sent them!

The road straightened for a stretch and he looked back at his sheep, huddled against the wind, struggling for footing. Some of his sheep were panting. Yes,
his
sheep. He had claimed them, eager to secure possessions, being so suddenly a person with nothing. And there was something else at work—a strange allure of animals, as if the notion of other living creatures was somewhat novel. It was, in a way. After all, he was a kid from the L.A. suburbs who had little experience with livestock. But in his sleep-deprived mind he sensed something marvelous and cosmically
awesome about their animal presence. It was possibly a subtle form of emotional hallucination, or maybe he had pulled on a thread of some great, hitherto invisible truth. He didn’t know. He felt ownership, and with it a vague and complicated sense of transcendent wealth.

He owned beasts.

But that didn’t mean he had no need for pants.

HE
knew as soon as he got behind the wheel—even before he had discovered the sheep—that he was going back to California. Felicia’s birthday was only days away and he intended to be at her parents’ house, where he knew she was sure to return. The epidemic had most certainly altered the timing of things, but if anything, it made her trip home even more likely, he figured. He aimed the stolen truck down the road he and Jordan had taken in weeks earlier, which meant riding the highway back up and over the towering range before dropping into Yellowstone and angling toward Utah.

The truck had some muscle, powering up the switchbacks to the summit, which was a plateau covered with thick tundra-like scruff and a low haze of purple flowers. Small rivulets cut meandering courses through it like long, dark cracks. The road was lined with tall painted sticks, which measured the height of the snow during winter. He could see the craggy blue peaks of the range all the way to the horizon and, tucked in canyons and craters, white bibs of glaciers and lakes shining like chrome. Thunderheads piled up in the distance, threatening to topple and spread like a canopy of loose wool over the pale sky. The wind passing through the cab was suddenly cool, the air thin. It was a relief to the sheep, it seemed. They were no longer panting.

The only sign of civilization at that altitude was a trading post
called Top of the World—a log-and-sod structure with a broad plank porch and a tin roof. Behind it sat a small prairie house, which seemed to serve as merely the foundation for a radio antenna that telegraphed upward several stories like a giant hypodermic needle. Beside the house sat a green swing set, and the ground was littered with brightly colored toys—a surreal sight, given the desolate location.

Pulling to a stop in the parking lot, he shut off the engine and looked around the cab for something—anything—that could pass as clothing. He found a pair of massive mud-caked boots behind the passenger seat and struggled to put them on. Behind the driver’s seat was an open-top toolbox containing a hatchet and a car jack. There was nothing else. Not even a map in the glove box, which he had intended to wear like a towel wrapped around his waist. Given his anxious nature, this was a worst-case scenario. His youthful years were plagued with recurring nightmares of finding himself naked in public. It wasn’t the most persistent articulation of his many fears, but certainly one that came to the forefront of his mind as he exited the truck, hands cupped to conceal his aroused state, thinking, Oh, jesusgod, this is insane.

He stomped toward the storefront in the cool wind, then glanced back at the animals in the truck bed. They peered at him through the racks. There were definitely more than six of them, it seemed. Gaunt, elderly faces—movie villager faces, Chase thought—and black eyes rimmed with gold. So hard to tell how many because they all looked exactly the same and they kept shifting around, changing position, their hooves scuffing at the grit on the floor of the bed. He envied their woolly coats. And what did they think of him? How many times, he wondered, had they seen a totally naked human?

He clomped up the creaky stairs and peered inside the window,
past the Yes-We’re-Open sign and those promoting bait, maps, and supplies. He scanned the store for people but his eyes found no one. To open the door, he quickly allowed one of his hands to abandon its post and turn the knob, then pushed his way in, feeling the cold glass of the door’s window against his shoulder. The interior was dense with clutter. An archaic cash register sat below a massive moose head. The walls bristled with antler wreaths. There were a few short aisles of groceries and camping supplies, plus a wall of souvenirs. A jackalope had been mounted atop some glass cases that held fishing flies and pocket-knives. There was no one else in the store.

Rather than call out, Chase moved quickly to the back of the store, where, among the fishing gear, he caught sight of a mannequin dressed in waders, essentially rubber overalls with built-in boots. He kicked off the massive boots he had worn into the store and started stripping the headless figure, peeling the waders off and discarding the flesh-tone plaster corpse. It hit the hard floor with a clatter, chips of its enamel skin scattering on the tile. Fortunately, the waders were large in size, perhaps even extra large. When he pulled them up around him, cinching the straps down like suspenders at his shoulders, the fit was roomy enough to accommodate his stubborn erection.

He looked around for a shirt. In the souvenir portion of the store there were Top of the World T-shirts. He chose one that said
I’VE BEEN TO THE EDGE
on the front, pulling it over his head.

Now he was suddenly conscious of the fact that, should the storeowner materialize, he might not be able to walk away with the goods. It’s not like he could buy anything. He had no money. The best thing to do was get the hell out of there before anyone showed up. He started for the door but decided to scoop up several boxes of cornflakes. For my sheep, he figured. Probably thirsty too. Near the register, he spotted a bowl of matchbooks.
He might need fire. He grabbed a book and tucked it into the front pocket of the waders. There was a metal tub by the door, filled with what appeared to be hand-carved Christmas tree ornaments. Chase bent and flipped it, emptying the tub. He tossed in the boxes of cereal and carried it out. He could stop anywhere for water now.