Am I nothing now?
I am something.
More.
Can you hear what I’m saying? Feel the reverberations of my words broadcasting straight into your brain? Feel their weight and believe what they say. It’s all I have left: this hope that somehow, some way, some one is catching these thought-casts.
Crinkling sounds and tingling feelings fill my body as my being remolds.
COSMOS
Before I fell I hovered in a starless heaven. Long, dark beings made from otherworld flesh lumbered, their giant eyes taking me in. They don’t speak but I hear them inside. They tell me I am the punisher, the bringer of light that brings darkness, the one to deliver the unchosen from their flawed physical husks into this ethosphere, where they will be remade, reshaped, and beta-tested before being uploaded into some new fashion.
Our world failed. Plain and simple. The Gods sent messengers: A box that revealed and took those who weren’t true; a boy who devoured brains, and another who ate the flesh, appeasing his lover. A young man whose left hand pulsed with pain and brought death to naïve masses. No one made the connection, but these were supposed to be a warning. Now it is much too late. The Dark Ones consumed our souls, their bellies pregnant.
Soon we will be born new.
OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN
No one knew how to treat my disease. Not really. They had their chemicals and their diets and their best intentions. It certainly looked like something they’d seen before, but they didn’t realize that what they were dealing with was not from here. Shapeless organic black consumed me. So cruel. It left my eyes, ears, and mouth, but attacked my insides. Food felt impossible. Breathing hurt. Was this payback for the destruction I’d brought? Was the power in the palm of my hand so great it spilled over and infected me, like I’d been poisoned by some galactic nuclear runoff? Was there no cure? Even as the world burned and broke around them, the teams kept to their oaths and tried to save me. If only they knew it was pointless. Maybe it kept them from facing what was happening outside the walls of their hospital. Maybe it kept them from madness.
“Charles?” They’d call my name, expecting me to return, expecting me to respond to yesterday’s title. I am nameless now, as I am shapeless.
The last thing I looked at was my hands. They’d created so much in such a short amount of time. For destruction and death is creating . . . allowing something new to be formed in its place from the broken down parts. Picture a cow in a slaughterhouse, its final moments as it’s brought to the automated knife. Its throat is cut, but the animal is too strong. Blood sprays forth in two jets, however, the wound is not fatal. It is led to a small black staging area, the floor layered in dry spongy gore. The beast cries and protests as a man slices its throat. This time the cow bleeds out, looking at the bottom of the man’s jeans and worn down work boots as it dies. It does not immediately understand why it has been killed, but learns as its consciousness transitions from flesh to spirit. Its beautiful body will be deconstructed with blades, made into countless pieces. The parts will be cooked and ingested, digested, melted inside a vat of stomach acid. It will give life and energy before being expelled, its once gorgeous parts quickly reduced to filth, and then turning into dirt and soil from which new things will grow.
This last step is where I find myself. I’ve been expelled and am being reduced. From the dirt I will become fresh things be born.
Unimaginable pain overcomes every part of me. Numerous sounds and memories race through me. My life rewound and played back at random.
I am nothing.
Then I am everything once more.
Fresh water envelops me. Water? Could it be? Have I returned? I rise. My steps are unsure. Hot sun feels unreal. I reach the shore. My clothes are simple. My hair is long and fair. My left hand hurts and my palm itches. My hands are bigger and longer, as is the rest of me. I am like I was. I am different than I was. Taller. Stronger.
Buildings spread over the dunes. They seem made from sand and driftwood.
My feet touch the ground, but not as heavily as they once had.
I look upward and see a second moon.
As I approach the dunes the tendrils inch from my palm and lick the air for the first time.
I am not home.
I am home.
I know this world.
It will be mine.
FIGHT
Jay Wilburn
Jay Wilburn has published many horror and speculative fiction stories including Time Eaters and his first novel, Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel. Cancer has impacted many important people in his life. Most recently a dear family friend, John Shriver, fought for his final days at the request of his wife and in the service of his God.
Anna went outside without armor in direct defiance of two of her husband’s instructions. If he lived to be angry with her, she would be happy for his outrage and would tolerate his rambling lectures on survival and preparation.
She put her back to the side of the car and looked at the sky. The clouds could sometimes hide their shadows, but she did not see the darkness move and she did not hear the screeching screams for the moment. Anna rose on her watery legs and looked through the shattered windows and torn seats. She ignored the slash marks across the baby car seat that used to hold their first granddaughter. They had never seen the second.
Anna whispered. “I’m too young to have grandchildren.”
It feels like just yesterday that I was changing our daughters’ diapers.
A screech echoed through the trees from a distance. Anna gritted her teeth and ran toward the noise. The ordinary shadows of the forest swallowed her as she looked for the unnatural shadows to try to do the same.
Anna stopped next to the picnic stone. The names of her children and grandchildren stood out in dark, carved letters through the creeping lichens. They would assuredly remain marked there long after her family lay dead and gone.
Anna leaned up over the rock they had not picnicked on in years. “Jon . . . Jon, can you hear me?”
The piercing screech ripped through the trees ahead of her and drew closer before the unearthly sound subsided. Anna dropped down behind the rock and hugged it between her daughters’ names and her granddaughters’ names. She rested her cheek against the cold stone. Anna tried to calm her breathing as she listened to the wind rustle the leaves, like a living shadow brushing the trees above her.
They will snatch me off the ground and Jon will never have his chance to be angry with me.
She held onto the rock and whispered into the side of it. “This hunk of granite is no protection against them. Just get up. Get up, Anna. Gather or screw your courage to whatever you need to and move your damn legs. Move. Move!”
Anna slid along the stone and stepped out around it with her heart thudding in her chest. Her hands shook and her fingers felt slick as she rubbed them against each other while she ran.
One screech passed on the left with the Doppler of a rushing train. The screaming shadow tore up through the trees into the sky. Anna kept her head down, waiting for it to dive back into the forest to tear her away from the Earth, or to rip her apart for being in the open. Another hissed and cried as it weaved along on her right. It approached and paused, then wisped off into the distance.
“If they knew I was here, I would already be dead.”
Anna saw the light glint below her. She looked down and spotted the arm and head piece of a cross under her foot. She lifted her foot back quickly, as if it had been burned. The chain lay broken on both ends through the loop at the top. The cross itself was made of common pewter with leaves and thorns accented over its surface in black shadows.
She bit her lip and reached down for the cross. She pressed her palm over the mat of leaves and the metal. The leaves were wet under her fingers, but the cross still felt warm. Her eyes glistened as she blinked away the moisture.
Is it from his hand or from the friction of a battle?
Anna snatched it up and gripped her husband’s cr
oss in her fist. She ran forward through the vines and undergrowth. The real thorns scraped at her exposed skin. She reached down and felt her own crucifix on her unbroken chain. The metal body of Christ hung bent and frozen between her breasts.
“This rescue won’t work. He isn’t alive to be angry with me for being out here.”
She heard it eating. The shadow sounded wet as it consumed its prize. Anna pushed through the bushes and saw Jon’s body propped between a tree and the collapsed frame of a shed discarded in the woods. His pale skin stood in contrast to the smoky monster that writhed over his chest and torn shirt. The Kevlar hung open revealing clawed ruptures through the vest down to his skin. His head lolled back on his shoulders at a painful angle.
She drove forward as she broke her own cross off its chain. The shadow vibrated and rumbled as the darkness reformed its head and slanted eyes to stare at her. The shadow reached for her with its wavering claws. The face showed as much surprise as it could without features.
Anna stabbed the crosses down into the beast with both fists. She felt the cold through its back as Christ’s feet sunk in up to the waist. The rumbling growl rose into a scream. The monster arched and twisted on itself. The creature clawed for the sky. Anna kept hold of the crosses as the shadow spiraled up through the leaves.
She covered her mouth with the hand holding Jon’s cross as she looked down at her husband. She expected his chest to be open and his organs to be eaten, but she saw his pale skin and his slowly rising chest. Steam rose from him.
Anna knelt and shook him. “Jon, wake up. We don’t have much time.”
Jon’s eyes fluttered open. He focused on her briefly before his eyes rolled up in his head.
“Anna, why are you here?”
She leaned down and kissed him. He groaned and she drew away.
“Get up. It will be back soon and it will bring more.”
Jon moaned and swallowed with a click. “I can’t. It stung me. You need to go. You won’t outrun them with me.”
“Then, I’ll stay here and die with you.”
“You can’t, Anna. Don’t do that to me. Don’t. Just do what I say for once.”
She pushed the destroyed armor off his shoulders along with the tatters of his shirt. “Yeah, your armor really did the trick, honey.”
Jon let his head fall back. “Contact Charlotte and her husband. See if they can help you get out to them so that you have someone.”
She slapped Jon across the face. He moaned, but did not sit up. She pulled him up by his shoulders. His eyes opened and his eyebrows narrowed at her. Anna shrugged. She put her hands on both sides of her husband’s face. He flinched and closed his eyes. She still held both crosses. They were warm between her hands and his cheeks from the creature’s icy back.
“Jon, I want you to fight. Promise me you will fight for me. Fight it for me.”
“Anna, I don’t know if I can. You’ve seen it. You know how . . . ”
“Please, Jon, fight for me. Fight for every second, please. Try to beat it. Fight it with me.”
Jon looked down at his chest as the last of the vapor wisped away. He breathed some of it in and sighed.
“I’ll try, but you will wish I hadn’t by the time this is done. We will both suffer.”
She kissed him gently on the mouth and dropped her hands from his face. “Jon, no second with you will be regretted.”
His cheeks showed purple marks from the crosses. The screeches roared down from the sky. The couple’s expressions dropped. Jon looked up and shook his head. Anna pulled him to his knees.
“Come on, Jon.”
“Fight?”
“No, run.”
He stumbled to his feet and fell into the tree. He rested his cheek against the rough bark and closed his eyes. He turned his face away and shook as he cried.
She pulled at his arm. “You have to come now, Jon.”
“It hurts so much, Anna. I can feel the poison. I won’t make it. I’ll get you killed.”
She hissed behind his ear. “You promised you would fight. Now, Jon, come on.”
He pushed away from the tree and leaned on her. She staggered.
Jon grunted. “Get on the other side. I can’t turn my left foot. That whole side is weak.”
A scream ripped through the trees to their right and trailed out into the forest ahead of them. Anna held onto Jon and pulled him along at an angle to the path the last shadow took through the trees.
I don’t remember which way I came. I’m going to get him killed.
They moved into the needles of the smaller pines.
Jon huffed. “Anna, why are you taking us this way?”
“Just be quiet, Jon. So it is harder for them to find us.”
They emerged on the street farther from their house than where she entered the woods trying to find him. Anna had to look both ways to orient herself. She saw one side of the overgrown field that expanded out behind their house. She could not see their home to know where or how far away they were.
She looked to the left and saw the matchstick black framework on the foundation caked with a sludge of aged ash. Anna recognized the remains of the Costa family’s house. They were over a hundred yards down the deserted street. She knew the bodies of most of that family were buried underneath the remains of the home.
Jon dropped to his knees at the edge of the small trees. He pulled Anna down beside him. He bowed his head and heaved for air.
“Just give me a minute. I can’t get enough air. Are we going around the street or across the field?”
Anna shook her head. “It’s too open. We have to circle back through the woods.”
“I won’t make that. I’m spent.”
Anna’s face screwed up as she looked to the sky at shadows looping just above the distant trees. Her body shuddered as she exhaled. She opened her mouth to breathe and regain her composure.
Jon lifted his face to the sky and closed his eyes.
Anna squeezed his shoulder. “Jon, run with me. We’ll just go for it and make it as far as we can.”
He opened his eyes and nodded. He mouthed “okay” without any sound.
She stood and pulled him upright.
He swallowed hard and whispered. “My left leg isn’t working for me. I’m afraid of turning my ankle and snapping it.”
“Lean harder on me,” Anna offered. “I’m stronger than I look. I’ll carry you for a little while. We’ll be home before we know it.”
Jon nodded. Anna held out her husband’s cross. He took it from her and nodded again. Anna looked up at the clear sky as she hauled her husband out into the street over the curb. She guided him away from the field and down the open road.
It won’t do any good if we both turn our ankles.
Jon groaned as sweat ran down from his temples and into her sleeve. “No matter what happens, Anna, we’ll make it home. This was always temporary. We are forever.”
“Shut up and run, Jon.”
He snorted and stumbled. She pulled him back up before they spilled on the muddy asphalt. The road seemed to curve into infinity as they struggled along toward their house.
If we die, that would be the last two people in the neighborhood. We were due.
She saw the overturned jogging stroller. It still had pretty good, bicycle wheels under the rusty frame. The material was slowly wasting away in the debris washed against it along the curb. Anna believed she remembered which neighbor went with the abandoned stroller. She tried not to think about the baby holding her sippy cup. Anna could still believe they escaped the neighborhood alive since she did not see them die.
Escaped to where? Another neighborhood across the country with the same monsters?
She whispered. “You weren’t fast enough.”
“I’m going as fast as I can. I can’t breathe, Anna.”
The trees rustled and waved as they approached. A scream dropped into a low rumble. The scarred roof of their house appeared at the edge of the field between a coup
le lone trees. Shadows rose out of the limbs and hovered.
They continued forward at a slow enough pace that rendered their effort to escape irrelevant. Anna looked away from the monsters.
Just keep going. One foot in front of the other. There is no other choice. Just keeping going until the end.
A shadow ripped out of the trees and crossed the road at chest level directly in front of them. It soared over the field parting the yellow grasses with its motion. The creature circled around the house out of sight.
Jon heaved. “They know. They are heading us off.”
“Just keep going until the end, Jon, please.”
The other shadows emerged from the darkness in the trees and carried that darkness toward the couple. They passed over the humans’ heads shading out the sun with each smoky trail.
Anna pulled Jon over the curb and through the patches of uncut grass in their side yard.
One of the shadows circled over their porch through the columns. The weathered rocking chairs creaked on the boards. The shadow monster’s form rippled and broke into sections. The darkness screeched and wafted out away from the overhang of the porch. Once the creature reformed away from the power of the house, its eye voids narrowed and it shot back up into the sky to regroup.
Anna and Jon fumbled up the steps. His ankle turned twice and he whimpered in pain. Anna hauled him forward as the creatures screamed behind them. She leaned into the door and knocked it open. They spilled across the tile of the foyer. Jon’s arms went limp and his eyes slid closed as he lay on the floor.
Anna turned around in the open doorway and stared out at three of the shadows glaring back at her over the edge of the porch stairs. They rumbled at her as their smoky tails twisted around one another. She held out her cross in front of her. Their clawed hands formed so they could flex their digits at their sides in response.
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