Amnesia Moon Read Free Page A

book.”
    â€œYou ever meet Kellogg?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe’s an asshole. You want to meet him?”
    â€œSure, 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.
    â€œThey 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.
    Â 
    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.
    â€œWow,” he breathed. “What are you doing here? Does Kellogg know you’re here?”
    â€œDid Kellogg tell you to drive on the left-hand side?”
    â€œSorry, man. Don’t tell him, okay?”
    â€œSure.” Chaos wrestled his steering wheel to the left and pulled around Edge’s car.
    Edge skipped alongside. “You going to see Kellogg?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, he ain’t there. He’s with a bunch of people. I just came from there.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œOut 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