Bludlust was eventually caught by the metanormals. He was executed by us normals. No trial, no appeals. He was put to death. It was his fault. His fault, and maybe Pharos's fault. If he hadn't fought Bludlust, if he had just let us pay the ransom…
Maybe, we got to thinking, it was all their fault the metanormals, good and bad. Running around like demigods in their rainbow wear. Who asked them to fight for us? Who asked them to save us? Who needed them?
The president, the Executive Order: Any person or persons who displays, uses or is known to possess abilities that are metanormal or supernormal shall be rendered immediately persona non grata without rights or expectations of rights until deemed by a court of law to be entitled to such rights as provided by the Constitution of the United States.
Political mumbo jumbo.
Kill freaks is what it said.
Most of the muties took their thirty-day grace and went off to Europe to live. Europeans didn't care what happened in San Francisco. They were glad to have the freaks around to save the day.
Fucking Europeans.
But a lot of the freaks stayed, went" underground," living among us like they were" us." They stayed because they were afraid they'd be killed trying to get out of the country, stayed to make a statement. Stayed because they thought they had a right to live wherever they wanted.
Sorry, freaks. The EO says you've got no rights.
After San Francisco—that's all anyone ever had to say,"after San Francisco." It had become a new obelisk on the time line of humanity— after they had destroyed the city, when police started forming the MTacs, I followed them, read about them in the papers and on the Net. Read about them getting killed off going against pyrokinetics, telekinetics, energy conductors, levitators, invulnerables and, especially, telepaths. After following
their exploits for a couple of years there were two things I was sure of: I wanted to join an MTac, and I didn't particularly want to die. So I studied freaks; studied their psychology, their physiology. How they think and how they functioned. And I studied technology. After I'd done all that, I made myself a gun.
Michelle ate.
Vaughn watched, pained. Emotional not physical.
Michelle bit into her chili cheeseburger. With her tongue she lapped up a half-torn pickle that hung from the edge of the bun. She managed to curl it up into her mouth, smiling at her accomplishment. Smiling about being outdoors and among people too. That's what caused Vaughn the pain: Michelle's smile. She should be smiling, but she should be smiling in Asia de Cuba or Orso or some other overpriced faker of trend, not sitting in a plastic chair half hidden out back of Pink's.
Aubrey sat next to her, not eating, just rubbing a spoon with his thumb. Habit.
At a table nearby was a family. A little girl, maybe about six, held a balloon by its string. Her brother, just a little older, found a safety pin on the ground.
Michelle wiped chili from where her lips joined her cheek.
Chili? Slop. She ought to be eating roast duck, Vaughn thought. Grilled turbot. Mahimahi flown in from the Hawaiian Islands. Fresh.
Maybe that was exaggeration.
Michelle deserved all that, yeah, but at the very least they should be at El Coyote, Barney's Beanery… They should be seated at a table, waited on in public like any other group of nice, normal—
Vaughn kicked out a little laugh.
Where they should be is at home, in the dark, in the quiet, listening and fearful of every sound, every shadow.
The little boy opened the pin, snuck up on his sister to pop her balloon; give her a good scare and make her cry. It was little-boy fun.
Michelle had begged, as she did every couple of weeks, for Vaughn to take her out somewhere. Anywhere. Anyplace there were people and relatively fresh LA air. Anyplace she could see bright eyes and hear laughter, and if she could eat food that wasn't out of a can, that'd be good too.
Michelle was not to be refused. Vaughn could deny her nothing, couldn't/wouldn't even try to coax her from her desires. He seriously doubted if coaxing, as he called it, would have any effect on Michelle in the first place.
So there Vaughn was behind Pink's—as unassuming a public place he could think to be—with Michelle and Aubrey, who stayed with them because Aubrey thought there was safety in numbers. That wasn't particularly true. But Aubrey was fairly helpless alone, and Michelle wouldn't send him off on his own into an environment where day and night he would be potential victim to habits; a kid who couldn't remember that sucking his thumb was punishable by death. And that's how Vaughn looked at it, the obligation he felt: an adult taking care of a child. Someone who knew better taking care of someone who knew nothing at all.
Vaughn, when he was honest with himself, dug the feeling. He couldn't say why, for sure, but being a protector? He dug that.
The table behind them: the little boy jabbed his sister's balloon with the pin. It didn't pop. He jabbed it again, then one more time. Nothing. Then he got yelled at by his mother for picking up a dirty pin off the ground and for trying to make his sister cry. And it was the boy who did the crying.
The little girl looked to Michelle.
Michelle smiled.
With a napkin Vaughn dabbed at the sweat beading Michelle's forehead. It was the overcoat she wore, she had to wear, never mind the heat.
"We oughta go," Vaughn said.
Michelle looked sad.
Vaughn didn't press the issue.
Michelle got her smile back, went back to the incredibly joyful act of devouring her food in the open air.
A table over and down one: a couple of older women. One of them—one of the breed, their own business too boring, who have to get nosy with other people's—gave a long look with passive intensity at Aubrey, Michelle and Vaughn. A" what's wrong with this picture" gaze at the pudgy, balding man with plenty of forehead whose hands, like a child's, couldn't keep from touching metal spoons. At the beautiful young woman, pale skin in a too-heavy overcoat, and the young gaunt man—one step removed from emaciation—who sat nearly still but who seemed to be everywhere at once.
Vaughn glanced at the older woman.
Real quick she looked away, and with the same quickness thought of ponies. Green meadows—it was clovers that gave the landscape its green. This she knew from the vividness of the image—filled with young horses playing, and neighing, and biting, and fornicating pressed all other thoughts from her mind.
Liquid warmth above her lip. The woman noticed her nose bled slightly.
Vaughn, again: "We need to go."
Michelle displayed faux-pouty, truly sexy disappointment.
They wouldn't be going anywhere until she was ready.
So Vaughn sat, watched Michelle eat and one more time took the spoon from Aubrey's nervous hand.
On the street, from Melrose, rubber screamed against asphalt. A pair of horns blared at each other, blending into the noise of metal twisting with metal in violent copulation.
Michelle, Vaughn, Aubrey: none of them raised their heads to look to the sound. None reacted particularly this way or that to the crash, to the people who chased the noise to the street and the few wild screams that followed. The only thing that occurred among
Michelle and Vaughn and Aubrey was for Vaughn to say, to mean without wavering: " 'Kay, that's it. We gotta go."
Michelle responded with another bite of her burger.
Out on the street people gawked and commented at the accident. Detached. A crowd watching a television program, not a vicious collision of vehicles. The event was happening but not happening, because it was happening to someone else. It was terrible, yeah, but not as terrible as it would have been if it had happened to them. It was a tragedy, but not so much of a tragedy they didn't press closer for a better view.
From the gawkers came updates of the program in progress: A Gelsons delivery truck and a compact Nissan had disagreed at the intersection of Melrose and La Brea, with the truck, literally, coming out on top as trucks do when they get it on with little Japanese cars. Three people… four the update went. Four people were in the Nissan when it was crushed under the big rig. A couple and their two small children. The truck had rolled completely over the car, compressed it to near flatness under fifteen of its eighteen wheels. The Nissan left barely recognizable as much more than twisted, lacerated metal. And yet, and here was the big news flash, no one in the car—not the couple, not their two kids, none of them—was injured. They were without so much as a bruise, scrape or scratch.