Monster (Gone 7)

“You’re one of those Perdido Beach people! The black one. The lesbian! That’s you! Oh, my God, that’s you!”

Dekka Talent shook her head, putting on her tolerant smile, not easy in the face of being identified as “the black one” and “the lesbian.” She tapped the Safeway name tag on her chest and said, “I’m Jean. But, like I said, I get that a lot.”

“I can’t believe you’re working as a cashier! You don’t really look like the actress who played you in the movie.”

“Ma’am, did you find everything you wanted?”

“What? Oh, yes, except for the brand of orange juice my son . . . Wait, can I get a selfie with you?”

“Ma’am, if you’ll just push the green button there on the credit card machine . . .”

It had been a week since the last “recognition moment,” as Dekka Talent thought of it. Progress. If you graphed it out over the last four years since the end of the FAYZ—what most of the world still called the Perdido Beach Anomaly—the number of recognition moments had definitely declined. Declined, but hadn’t stopped entirely.

Dekka’s work shift ended without any selfies. She punched out, changed out of her faded blue smock into motorcycle leathers in the locker room, and exchanged a few pleasantries with other employees either coming on shift or going off. She politely refused an invitation to after-work drinks—she was still just nineteen years old, though people assumed she was older. And she was broke besides—she’d had to buy new tires.

There was a seriousness about Dekka, a metaphorical weight that people could feel, and that, along with her dark skin and dreads and general air of don’t-give-a-damn, left people seeing her as older. Older and tougher because, with some nonmetaphorical weight, with her powerful legs and shoulders, you might pick a fight with Dekka, but only if you were drunk or very stupid.

Dekka walked outside to the artificially bright, slightly chilly parking lot. Dekka’s pride and joy, her candy fire red and black Kawasaki Ninja 1000 waited under its transparent plastic rain cover. Dekka hated her job, but in decent weather the ride from the Strawberry Safeway, up the 101, and across the San Rafael Bridge to the apartment she rented in Pinole was the best part of her day. Unless it was raining, which was seldom in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dekka folded the rain cover and thrust it into one side of the hard plastic saddlebag, and a few groceries she’d picked up into the other side. She settled her helmet over her dreads, relaxed in the reassuring anonymity from the black visor, and was just about to fire up the engine when two very large black SUVs pulled into the mostly empty lot.

The SUVs came to a stop, forming a sort of loose V directly in front of her.

Dekka started the engine, feeling the familiar reassuring throb that vibrated all through her body, glanced left to make sure she could turn away, and the passenger window of the second SUV rolled down to reveal an identity card deliberately illuminated by a cell phone light.

“No, no, no, no,” Dekka said, but in a tone of resignation, not fear. She sighed, killed the engine, and pulled her helmet off. “Really? After an eight-hour shift on my feet?”

Two men and a woman climbed from the second SUV, each showing ID. They were all dressed in Official Civilian Outfits: dark blue or black suits, ties for the men, an open collar for the woman. They might as well have had the word “Government” tattooed on their foreheads.

“Ms. Talent?” the woman asked. “Dekka Jean Talent?” She was middle-aged, stocky, with a wide, flat face that suggested Slavic roots.

“What’s this about?” Dekka asked, guessing at least part of the answer. They weren’t there about the damaged canned goods she may have taken on occasion without exactly getting specific approval. Nor were they there to collect for the speeding ticket she got rocketing down the PCH north of Bodega Bay the week before.

“I’m Natalie Green,” the woman said, producing a brief spasm that might be a type of smile. “I’m with Homeland Security. This is Special Agent Carlson, FBI, and Tom Peaks.”

Dekka did not miss the fact that Tom Peaks was not identified by his affiliation, or that his identity card had been very quickly folded away before she could really see it.

“What?” Dekka asked.

“We would like a few moments of your time.”

“Why?” She was not yet worried—this was not her first encounter with authority. From time to time some branch of government would decide to question her, usually about one of the other Perdido Beach survivors. She had steadfastly refused to give any information at all—there were still those who wanted to prosecute some of the survivors, and Dekka would do nothing to help make that happen.

What happened in Perdido Beach stayed in Perdido Beach.

Well, aside from about two dozen survivor books, a movie, and a TV series “inspired by” what everyone else called the PBA, the Perdido Beach Anomaly, but what Dekka, like all who were there, would

always and forever call the FAYZ.

Natalie Green shrugged, tried out her scary millisecond smile again, and said, “Maybe not out in the open in a parking lot? If you would come with us . . .” She gestured toward the second SUV.

“Really?” Dekka asked again, sounding irritated—which was hardly unusual for her. Patience had never been one of her virtues.

“Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops,” Natalie Green said. “We won’t leave the lot.”

Dekka cursed, not quite inaudibly, and said, “Whatever.”

The driver of the second SUV got out and came around like a well-trained chauffeur to hold a door open for her, and then remained outside as Green and Peaks sandwiched Dekka into the middle of the backseat and Agent Carlson took shotgun.