“Our organization is known as NON. Non-natural Organism Neutralization.”
“Well, either way, one thing is always the same—you people never manage to improve the situation.”
“Would you prefer we left it to amateurs like you? Your dossier says you were once seen punting a severed head across your yard, while naked.”
“That was an isolated incident.”
“You understand that scenarios like these cannot be left to play out on their own? Innocent children, taken in the night. The people are frightened. Understandably so. Panic is a self-sustaining chain reaction. Order must be restored.”
“Hey, you want to fix this, go for it. I hereby defer to your judgment.”
“Word around town is that you had something to do with it.”
“The only word around this town is ‘meth’.”
“Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your history.”
“You just told me you have a dossier, you probably know more about me than I do. I was drunk for so much of it.”
“I want you to tell it.”
Another man came shambling by, in filthy rags that might once have been white. I realized to my horror that he was a doctor. He looked like he’d died of exhaustion a week ago and his body just hadn’t gotten the message. He didn’t even glance at us as he passed. The man on the cot rolled his eyes toward him and rasped, “… water…” but the doctor ignored him.
I said, “My history? Going back how far? To my birth?”
“To the start of your career, in this field.”
“I, uh, lived a normal life until high school. Got into some trouble, maimed a kid in a fight. You know, the usual stuff. Went to a party, there was a drug going around there. Everybody who took it had weird shit happen to them. All of them died but me and John. Now we can see monsters and it’s awful.”
“And now you have gained some prominence, due to that. It is, as they say, your claim to fame. Now, eliminate that element—all of your supposed paranormal abilities and self-reported heroism—and just tell me about your life, as a man.”
“Not much to tell.”
“I know. Tell it anyway.”
“Well … I worked in a video store for a while, out of college. Place went out of business, I’ve been in and out of work ever since.”
“Amy supports you. Financially, I mean.”
“We get by.”
“Because Amy supports you.”
“We help each other. What does this have to do with anything?”
“She has no family.”
“Is that a question?”
“Her parents were killed in a car accident.”
“Yes. When she was thirteen or fourteen, around there.”
“You’re certain.”
“I wasn’t there. Why would she lie?”
“Who’s saying she is?”
The guy at my feet asked for water again. I turned away from him, and looked instead at the victim in the next row. He was moaning, and one hand was absently scratching at his belly. He had been at it for a while, it seemed, because he had scratched all the way through the skin, then through the fat, and then through the muscle, creating a ragged hole next to his navel. A loop of small intestine had flopped out, like a pale worm. Flies were swarming over it.
I quickly turned away, focusing my gaze into the empty bleachers. My stomach was roiling from the stench, I swore it was seeping into my pores.
Agent Tasker said, “That’s the same car accident in which she lost her hand.”
“Yep. Can we please leave?”
“Her older brother acted as her guardian after that.” She paused, but I said nothing, because it wasn’t a question. From somewhere a few cots away, a child started screeching. “And what became of him?”
“You know what.”
“Do I?”
“He died under mysterious circumstances.”
“But not mysterious to you. You were there.”
“Oh, trust me. I’m just as confused as anyone. Is there a point to all this or are you just trying to piss me off?”
“My point is, now all Amy has is you. The man who she believes protects her from the monsters.”
“I don’t know what she believes, you’ll have to ask her.”
“I am, as we speak. If I were to go back and have her tell the whole tale from her perspective, would she speak of the same monsters? How much of it did she actually witness? How much of what she saw was seen in moments of panic in the darkness? How much were her memories augmented by the detailed stories written down by her beloved David, the only one she has in the world? The man she believes protects her from the very monsters he describes in such vivid detail?”
“Why are you obsessed with our relationship? How does that possibly matter, in this situation?”
“It all matters. The universe is a series of fulcrums, upon which fate tilts this way and that. A random application for an art school is rejected, and a young Adolf Hitler changes careers.”
“Are you saying Amy is the new Hitler, or I am? If it’s me, it just, you know, seems like a lot of work…”
“Would you say her life was better before she met you, or after?”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Look past your defensiveness and try to grasp the context in which I am asking this. Imagine you were looking at this case from the outside, observing how the situation in Undisclosed has degraded over the last decade. If you could go back and pick one single person to eliminate from the equation in order to alleviate the maximum amount of suffering, who would it be?”
“Are you going to kill me, Agent Tasker? Is that all this is, you did the math and decided that I’m the problem? Well, shit, who am I to argue?”
“Even if that was my intention, I do not have the authority to do that.”
“Okay, do you need me to sign something or do you have to get your supervisor…”
“What I am saying is that the anomalous entity that exists in the Undisclosed coal mine is our concern, not yours. We will see to it that it is dealt with. If you want to slay the monster that stalks your town, well, there are numerous painless and quick methods. I have run the scenarios; I assure you that the outcomes are superior for virtually everyone involved. Especially Amy.”
“Jesus Christ, lady. Did you just tell me to kill myself? It’s like if the guardian angel in It’s a Wonderful Life went up to George Bailey on that bridge and was like, ‘Do it, you pussy.’”
“George Bailey is portrayed as the hero because he wanted to give cheap home loans to citizens who couldn’t afford them—the very practice that just caused a worldwide financial crisis in real life. We’d have been better off if he and everyone like him were, in fact, drowned in a river.”
“Well, I think you and your organization would be better off if you all drowned on my balls. Fuck you, you want me dead, man up and do it yourself.”
She glanced at her watch. “All right, we’re done here. Please step this way.”
“We are? You didn’t even ask me about the case. Hey!”
Amy
“Hello,” said a stern-looking woman in a perfectly pressed navy pantsuit, striding across the parking lot next to an even more stern-looking man with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. “My name is Agent Emily Wyatt, my partner is Agent York Morgan. To prevent you from coordinating, we are going to interview you separately, and simultaneously.”
The man opened the door to the device that to Amy looked like a big, black refrigerator from the future. The woman gestured to Amy and said, “Ms. Sullivan, please step through the door, I will be right behind you.”
Amy did as asked and when she saw what lay beyond the door, she clapped her hand over her mouth and just stood there, in shock. Rows and rows of dying people, on stretchers, covered in rags.