Free Rant by Chuck Palahniuk Page A

“depopulate” means?
    Jayne Merris: Under the I-SEE-U Act, the antiexclusion laws guaranteed equal access to all public places for people of day or night status; but if you ask me, people got so paranoid about sweat on gym equipment, things like that, spit on apples, that the nicer placesbars, restaurants, salons—they just closed up at night.
    The two cultures shared the same city, but they kept drifting farther and farther apart.
    Neddy Nelson: How do you explain this—the first explosion of AIDS infections in Africa started in missionary hospitals where Christian volunteers reused the same needles to vaccinate local kids against smallpox and diphtheria? Does that sound familiar? Could be millions of kids. Doesn’t this explain how, between 1976 and 1980, the infection curve rose from 0.7 percent to 40 percent in some parts of West Africa?
    Does that scenario make you want to rush out to any public clinic and stand in line for a free vaccination of anything?
    Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: Any vaccination carries a small risk of post-treatment encephalitis, so it was inevitable that a few individuals immunized with a pre-exposure prophylactic did develop mild rabies symptoms and required additional treatment. The sheer numbers of people vaccinated made patient tracking impossible, and, yes, at least two persons died as a likely result of their immunization.
    Shot Dunyun: Another morning, I’d wake up and the pillow next to mine was soaked in spit, my dog’s drooled that much in her sleep. Pugs slobber a shitload, so I didn’t give it another thought. Talk about denial.
    Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: Rumors within the target community exaggerated and misinterpreted the vaccination-related deaths, and this dampened their enthusiasm to fully participate in further treatment programs, virtually guaranteeing a constant, significant reservoir of the virus within the nighttime population.
    Shot Dunyun: Rant Casey used to say, “No matter what happens, it’s always now…” Talk about cryptic.
    I think what Rant meant was, we live in the present moment of reality, and no matter what’s come before, no matter how much we loved a person or a dog, when it attacks us we’ll react to that moment of danger.
    Neddy Nelson: Doesn’t it seem weird that a government report recommends depopulating Africa, and by the end of the twentieth century entire generations were dying? Isn’t it suspicious how former European colonies with rich natural resources, stuff like gold and diamonds, countries like Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, were most hard hit by the AIDS epidemic?
    Shot Dunyun: A great dog like I had, and I let her drink my spit. Sometimes I’m light-years beyond stupid. That’s for sure.
    One evening, I woke up to the ten-minute curfew siren, and Sandy was standing on my chest with her pug face dripping spit on my neck. Her black lips curl back to show every tooth down to the yellow root. Her breathing feels hot on my face, and the same way she jumps to fetch a tennis ball, I watch Sandy crouch, ready to lunge at my throat. The minute she springs, I throw the sheets and blankets over her, and I bundle her up so she can’t get out. Sandy’s never weighed more than a sixteen-pound bowling ball, so I pick her up in that sack of blankets, only she’s gone all werewolf, snarling and clawing inside, and my blankets are so old they’re nothing but lint. One of her little pug paws, it claws through so I can see her black toenails. The blankets are wet with her drool, so it’s like holding a little wolverine inside a bag of wet tissue paper. One more claw and she’ll be out and biting me. Just to stun her, maybe knock her out, I swing the bundle so it hits the wall. Sandy’s still snarling and thrashing inside, so I swing the bundle against the wall a second time. She keeps fighting, so I keeping hitting her against the wall, until my neighbor on the other side is pounding back. The one-minute curfew siren goes off, then the