Rant

victim had been subject to mood swings and aggressive outbursts. In a typical outburst, the deceased had been denied service by a Daytimer after the morning curfew. A key method of curfew enforcement is to levy fines against businesses that serve or sell merchandise to people who prove to be out of their domiciles in violation of their time status. In the case of Wade Morrison, a clerk at a corner grocery asked to see his status card. When Morrison turned out to be a Nighttimer, the daytime clerk refused to sell him cigarettes, and witnesses report Morrison made verbal threats and left the store.
    Irene Casey: While all this went on, Buddy’s squiring that girl with her lopsided face.
    Oh, they had his fingerprints recorded, the government, from when he sent in his application to go be a night person. They knowed every detail they needed to set him up as a patsy. A boy like that, somebody coming from nowhere and nothing, they needed to find themselves a nobody, and that’s what happened.
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Among the protest elements of Nighttime culture, my favorite is the faction that seeks to outlaw the sun. They market clothing and bumper stickers emblazoned with their slogans. For example: “Ban the Sun.” Or “Moonlight Is Enough Light.” Unfortunately, I can see how this might worry the powers that be. The last ordeal this nation needs is a civil war pitting night against day.
    Another common bumper sticker says: “Take Back the Day!”
    One man’s joke can very easily become another’s call to arms. Historians speculate that Mein Kampfwas created as a rather cunning satire, a parody that the general public interpreted far too literally.
    Lynn Coffey: It was Thomas Jefferson who warned us that any nation would always need a frontier as an escape valve or a place to store the perennial tide of lunatics and idiots. That’s not anywhere in the official propaganda, but nighttime is the big trash bin for your mental defectives. Your angry loners. Your cripples. Nighttimers get free health care. It’s part of the incentive program. The clinics are shitty and crowded, but they’re free. The housing is subsidized. The jobs are more likely to be low-skilled, but they offer a wage differential of a couple bucks over the same dead-end job in the daytime. It’s no surprise the misfits of society wash up as Nighttimers.
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: In hindsight, we had no idea of the events taking shape. Naturally, one read about the deaths in the newspaper, but I never gave them a second thought. We were far more concerned about preparing for the next Honeymoon Night, or decorating a Christmas tree for the upcoming Tree Night. An ominous shadow was falling over Rant, and we were debating whether to hang white or multicolor lights on our tree. Pontiac versus Dodge? Pine or spruce?
    Officer Romie Mills: The third victim died in the same manner as the first two. An autopsy turned up encephalitis and myelitis of the brain, including Negri bodies in the pyramidal cells of the hippocampus, and Purkinje cells of the cerebellum. The short and sweet version of that is rabies. All three of the victims died of undiagnosed, untreated rabies.
    Irene Casey: Buster wrote to us, saying he was so in love and courting somebody. His dad and me, we only prayed it was the girl, not the boy.
    Officer Romie Mills: According to the Centers for Disease Control, the most recently diagnosed case of rabies in the area had been a twenty-six-year-old male named Christopher Dunyun.
    It was during our preliminary investigation that the fourth victim collapsed and died of previously undiagnosed rabies-related encephalitis. Our fear was that the disease might be spreading exponentially. We could be looking at a hundred or ten thousand people unaware they’d been infected.
    Shot Dunyun: It could’ve been an earthquake that got Rant Casey. Or a fire. Or a bullshit strain of some killer flu.
    It’s comforting to know, after all the Party Crash accidents I’ve survived, that, the day I finally meet Death, the two of us will be old, long-lost friends.
    Me and Death, separated at birth.
    25–The Patsy
    Irene Casey ( Rant’s Mother): Depends on if you believe that deformed girl or you believe the police, but their first night together was the same night Buddy was supposed to have killed that lady. The one owned the little pet store, that Libby woman.
    Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher): What’s to love most