American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,227

arm is pouring her blood into what appears to be a gallon-size glass tub.

“What the hell are you doing?” she says. “You’re taking my blood? What are you going to do with that?”

The people in the circle do not move or speak. They just stare at her, pale and impassive.

“If you’re going to bleed me to death, at least do me the favor of shooting me first,” says Mona. “Or, hell, cut my throat or something. There are better ways of killing someone than this.”

“I don’t think talking with them will work, dear,” says Mrs. Benjamin’s voice. Mona lolls her head the other way, and sees Mrs. Benjamin slumped in a corner, bloody and ragged. “If I were you, I’d stay quiet.”

“What happened to you?” asks Mona.

But Mrs. Benjamin looks away, as if to avoid more punishment.

Mona turns back to the woman in the panama hat. “You’re the bitch who shut me in the trunk, aren’t you? And the same one I shot in the road… I’m willing to bet you’re behind all this stupid shit, ain’t you? What are you trying to do? What’s the point of all this?”

The woman does not answer. She just watches as more of Mona’s blood pours into the glass tub.

More and more. A lot of blood. Mona strains at her bonds, but she’s growing weak, and when two men come and put their hands on her shoulders to hold her still she can hardly resist. She starts to grow faint. “Hey, now…” she says. “How much… how much are guys going to… take?”

“You’re sure this will work?” asks the doctor.

“Fairly,” says the woman in the panama hat. “Time for them is strictly linear. They don’t see all the alternates. All the way things could have gone, and are still going, moving away from them…”

“We can’t see that, either, now that we’re here,” says one of the aproned women. “We’re limited. Blinkered. Blind.”

“We are,” says the woman in the panama hat. She points toward the lens. “That isn’t.”

“How?”

“Because that was made by Mother.”

They all glance sideways at one another. One of the women wrings her hands in her apron. “Perhaps we should ask First,” she says. “He has always been better with the nature of time… he always saw alternates so much clearer than we.”

“No,” snarls the woman in the panama hat. “I will not have him involved in this. This is not his. This is mine.”

Mona starts breathing hard. Everything begins to feel very woozy, yet the flow of blood continues. “Jesus,” she murmurs. “Jesus Christ, stop.” She knows a little bit about blood loss, from her cop days—more than 40 percent and it’s a Class IV hemorrhage. How much would that be for her? A liter? More? How much is a liter when you actually look at it, anyway?

It’s awful. She starts to feel the blood flowing out of her, all the fuel leaving the necessary systems and running out the now-dark rubber tube and into the glass tub. Her head pounds, and she wants to sleep…

Finally the doctor says, “I think that should be enough.”

“You’re sure?” asks the woman in the panama hat.

“Yes. I’ve read the statistics on children of that age—this should be sufficient for submersion. The tricky part will be getting it out before it drowns.”

“Leave that to me.”

“You’re sure? I believe that for your purposes, the child would have to be most definitely alive.”

“I said, leave it to me.”

Two men reach down and help lift the giant tub of blood and carry it to a small steel table before the lens. If those fuckers drop that thing, thinks Mona, I am going to shit a brick. She wants to say so, but her arms and head and legs are leaden. She cannot even summon the energy to move. Breathing alone is hard.

“If this fails, we can always recreate the pregnancy,” says the woman in the panama hat.

“I doubt it,” says the doctor. “I believe the child would die in the transfer. There are a lot of… systems involved in pregnancy.” He says this with the vagueness of someone who has scanned a lot of literature on the subject. “One would die, and then probably the other.”

The woman in the panama hat pulls a face—Enough of this bullshit. “Fine.”

Once the tub is before the lens, the men back away. All of them, except for Mona and Mrs. Benjamin, of course, form a circle around the blood and the silvery surface before it.

“I can still feel Mother on it,” says