So what happened?

March 16, 008
Black Rockalypse

Something we already knew: The Not-Suits won’t let the wearer take them off outside the perimeter of the Not-Dome. Only the Bad Kids — the ones who were sent the Not-Suits as a gift in the hyperworld — can put them on and take them off beyond the border. (And the Not-Suits only function on the Black Rock Desert.)

Something we didn’t know, but found out with Dragnet: If the wearer of a Not-Suit is outside the Not-Dome, someone else in a Not-Suit can take the Not-Suit off for them.

Something we still don’t know: What actually happens when someone else in a Not-Suit takes off another’s Not-Suit outside the Not-Dome. For all we know, Dragnet could’ve incinerated “naturally,” internally, before the fake-medic guy brought out that cattle-prod-type thing.

We had no choice. We had to try it. He would’ve died of sepsis anyway.

He looked okay, lying there on the gurney for those three seconds after Rabbi got him undressed. Then one of the medic guys produced that weird stick from the back of his pants and touched it to the gurney, and everyone fried.

Maybe during those three seconds, Dragnet’s brain melted; maybe he was on the way to exploding; maybe he was dead already. Maybe that henchman acting on behalf of those assholes didn’t kill him.

Maybe only one of those medics was a plant. Maybe the other three were real medics. Along with Dragnet dying and Rabbi disappearing, three life-savers dead would be tragedy on top of tragedy.

—————-

Rabbi is still missing.

About 100 people showed up for the event. Rather, they stood fast — they’ve been camping here for ages — and received a few extra visitors. Eight — only eight — TV vans lined the road along with the RVs, too, behind an almost-cosmetic display of riot-geared Blackhawks and their Humvees bordering the 12-mile entrance to the Black Rock Desert off the 447 Highway in Nevada. Who knows how many of the news crews and cameras were fake …

After much planning and huddling, and many tearful hugs and kisses goodbye, Rabbi transported a now-unconscious Dragnet on a gurney to the meeting point beyond the Not-Dome’s border. We all watched from the flatbed inside, holding onto each other as if somehow that would help. To the outside world, the scenario must’ve looked like a ghost-gurney, materializing out of nowhere and shlepping itself along at a 45-degree angle, only to set itself down and have Dragnet appear on it when Rabbi removed his Not-Suit.

It had been a cold, snowy standoff all through the night and into that morning, with neither civilians nor goons budging from their lookouts. We “felt” the life-flight helicopter coming over the mountain before the military had even started to stir and mobilize.

Arwen, whom I’m convinced more and more every day is a true star child, comes down with back shivers every time she feels a disturbance in The Force. Especially when something bad is about to happen. (So do I now, but not nearly as intensely as she does.) As the helicopter appeared above the Calico Mountains, Arwen began twitching and convulsing so violently she fell to the ground and went into epileptic seizure — which she hadn’t done since she was six years old.

Inside the Not-Dome, 13 and C-Load and I held Arwen down and made repeated efforts to get my leather-encased knife in between her teeth before she bit her own tongue off. Outside the invisible barrier between us and Planet Earth, the helicopter landed on the gravel at the 12-mile, blowing tiny rocks and cold wind everywhere. Four medics poured out of the helicopter and ran toward Dragnet.

That’s when others among us noticed one of the medics taking out a cattle prod-type-looking thing from his ass crack … and just as they did the count to lift Dragnet off the ground to huck him inside the helicopter, he touched the stick to Dragnet’s chest.

All four medics — and Dragnet — were killed. Instantly.

I’m sure cattle-prod dude didn’t know THAT was going to happen.

Inside, we were screaming, thronging, all jumping from the flatbed at once, some still holding hands … running futilely toward the perimeter, which boi-oi-oinged us back when we flung ourselves against it, causing us to dogpile, painfully, atop each other in our upset. Some got up to charge our prison walls again, only to be pushed back, only to fall atop the rest of us again. Every set of eyes all glued to the same place. Every set of eyes but C-Load, 13, Arwen, and me.

ow, my heart, for them and for us

——–

Outside, they said, Rabbi turned to run toward the Not-Dome’s barrier. They could see him carrying the other Not-Suit, and … two military goons who sprung from a hidden spot in the back of the helicopter fired these guns with huge nets on them, which spread out on each side of the medics and Dragnet, and then retracted immediately as the helicopter took off. Others in Not-Suits standing watch a few feet away ran to Dragnet’s body, suited it up again, and pulled it back home before the “riot cops” in Humvees on the ground could harvest it along with their fake medics.

They did a cursory autopsy in our makeshift infirmary before we craned Dragnet’s body up to the Tower of Silence the next day. The attack had turned him pitch black, both inside and out. Every cell. All organs and systems intact, just… black.

With all the dust and confusion, we couldn’t see what happened to Rabbi. We don’t know if he was inside that net, or if he got away. Or if they got him, and tried to take his Not-Suit off the desert in the helicopter and couldn’t do it so they threw him out onto the 447. Or if they did get the Not-Suit, and Dragnet’s suit too, and Rabbi … well, we don’t want to think about it. We’re just assuming he’s been abducted, and/or that the Not-Suit saved him somehow, or maybe he’s unconscious outside the perimeter. Maybe he’s crumpled in a heap somewhere in the Calicos and now he’s freezing to death … but we can see people in Not-Suits on the outside, and he’s nowhere to be seen.

So the goons might or might not be in possession of two Not-Suits — if they can figure out how to touch them, even, without dying.

That’s not good.

None of this is good.

And the Not-Us are still nowhere to be found.

This isn’t fun any more.