by Tim Marquitz
“Neither do I; not really. We didn’t produce another Einstein in time; maybe he could have explained this, eventually. The nature of time and space have changed, or are changing. I think things that simply couldn’t happen before, now can. Maybe the speed of light is going up, or down. We can’t know. Anyone who could have told us is probably dead by now.”
“Your friends and colleagues, they knew about this, too?”
“Some of them. Most didn’t want to believe it and found ways to ignore it. Some killed themselves, others just changed their focus. I thought I could run to my poor man’s bunker and wait it out. I want to think that some of them are in their mountaintop and desert labs, watching everything play out, witnessing it for the rest of us.”
She was silent for a long time.
“I told you it wasn’t a dust cloud, didn’t I?”
My stomach knotted. “You did.”
“The news never got out. The panic started and everything just went to Hell all at once. Not that the truth was any comfort, at all.”
“What is it?”
She was silent for so long I didn’t think she heard me. Beyond the glass, the snow had stopped for a time and I could barely make out the trees to either side of us swaying gently in the wind.
“The old manuscripts referred to a time before and to come, when the stars were right. No more sense than that, really. They didn’t have the words to even approximate what really happened. They didn’t understand quantum foam or underlying layers of reality or colliding branes or how spatial density can fluctuate. They just knew something changed, and that it brought terror and death.
I think … I think we’ve drifted into a region of space that has a lower spatial density. It’s … thin, here. Time and light flow faster. So, it’s used by higher order beings like a highway.”
“Aliens, then?”
“Not little gray men, no,” she sighed. “No flying saucers lit up like Christmas trees. No, I’m sorry; highway has too many modern connotations. It’s more like … a migratory route.”
“Sweet Jesus.”
Gran smiled and turned away from the glass, her smile wistful. “Things that can move in space. Live there, wandering from star to star. Did I ever tell you about the passenger pigeons?”
Most other people would have blinked at what they would have assumed was a non sequitur. It made me weak in the knees, and I staggered back to fall into a chair. She had told me about the passenger pigeons, something her great-grandmother had written about. Birds, now extinct, that were so numerous their flocks darkened the sky. Blotted out the sun.
“We saw them coming months ago and carefully kept the major telescopes turned away from that section of the sky. No need to stretch out the panic longer than needed, we thought. Trillions of them, trillions of trillions, more numerous than any amount of dust. We’d found life, at last, but it wasn’t life that was going to cure cancer or lift us up to the stars. We were the mouse caught by a tide of army ants. I think they move from sun to sun, just like elephants move from waterhole to waterhole.”
I listened to her, my head in my hands, but when I looked up something was different.
I could see the ocean clearly, the soft swells blossoming with dim color—grays and greens.
There was light.
Soft, pearly, like it was filtered through silk. Dim, yes, but still light.
Light.
I fell from the chair and crawled to the window. I pounded my head against the thick tempered glass, sobbing hysterically. “They’ve left, oh Gran, they’ve left,” I sobbed. “We might … we might … ”
Gran grasped my shaking shoulder and sank down beside me, held me like Mama used to.
“Oh, sweetie, they haven’t gone anywhere. They’ve just finally noticed us, is all. I’m guessing they need to feed on more than hard radiation at some point.”
She tilted my head up, to see the titanic things now briefly visible; some were still streaming water from their dip in the sea where they’d been grazing on volatile matter. Hundreds of times bigger than any blue whale, and cigar-shaped, they did not merely float or fly—they defied gravity, serenely uncaring. Ragged manipulators twined and writhed at their lower end. Delicate-looking membranes waved at their sides, meant to propel them from star to star. Sunlight all too briefly blazed on their multicolored ripples before the press of the herd headed for our blue and green pastures and once again blotted out the light, this time forever.
I blinked back tears. “They do look like angels,” I said softly.
Der Teufel Sie Wissen
(The Devil You Know)
TSP Sweeney
“My little brothers, your moment has come.”
Andreas gave a start at Herr Volkard’s whispered words, apprehension worming its way through his gut.
The veteran soldier crouched amongst the half-dozen attentive youths who surrounded him, the perfection of his tall, muscular frame emphasized by his black uniform and heavy leather greatcoat. The Scharführer’s battle-scarred face turned briefly toward Andreas, his calm, knowing gaze causing feelings of equal amounts admiration and intimidation in the teenager.
“My men have a suitable target: an officer, wandering behind the lines in perceived safety.” The Scharführer smiled, pale blue eyes flashing like sunlight off winter ice. “Your mission is simple: Kill him and bring me his possessions—”
A soft whistle cut Volkard off. The sentry, hidden behind the chimney of the abandoned bookstore across the street, stepped into view. He held up a single finger before pointing downward.
“Go, prove yourselves in the name of the Führer!” said Volkard.
Lukas, his freckled face lit by a fierce grin, punched Andreas in the shoulder. Andreas smiled back queasily.
He moved to look over the edge of the shattered roof, eyes scanning the ruins of the street below, trying to pierce the perpetual gray haze, which coated the outer suburbs of Berlin since the arrival of the Red Army. It felt like a lifetime since he had seen blue sky, coated as it was in a thick pall of artillery smoke and billowing clouds of smog from burning buildings.
The flickering shadows cast by the smoke-shrouded moon made it impossible for Andreas to make out much detail, but he could see a figure loping steadily along the detritus-strewn street.
The target was thrown into stark relief as he walked past the fire flickering in the doorway of the old bakery, the windows boarded up, massive ovens long since appropriated by the army. Andreas realized the figure was huge, as large a man as he had ever seen. The light cast by the flames showed glimpses of the uniform of a Soviet officer, shrouded beneath a hooded cloak, face hidden behind a gasmask.
Andreas stalked along the rooftops with the other five youths of his squad. Lukas had moved ahead, superior stealth-craft making him the perfect vanguard. Lanky Oswald was next, skin covered in crude camouflage paint, flanked closely by squat, square-faced Dolf. Their old shotguns were grasped in white-knuckled grips, hard against their chests. Andreas was perversely pleased to see that he was not the only nervous one.
Fabian and Gregor moved on either side of Andreas, the former almost eighteen, tall and raw-boned. He walked with a pronounced limp, the result of a fall at the munitions factory where he had worked since the start of the war, and the sole reason he had not already been conscripted into the Wehrmacht.
They formed a staggered line with Andreas, as their instructors in the Hitler Youth had trained them. Each scanned a different direction as they moved. Andreas held his rifle—a battered K98 looted from one of their own dead—in a loose, one-handed grip away from the body, his other hand needed to pick his way over the artillery-shattered rooftops.
With an unexpected suddenness, the target turned into a wide laneway, pace quickening. Andreas froze as Lukas signaled for a halt, fist clenched. Their victim hurried toward a factory at the end of a rundown avenue, abandoned well before the rise of the Third Reich. Perhaps he was not here to inflict greater misery upon the citizens of B
erlin. Perhaps, instead, he was here to meet with a traitor? It would make sense, and would explain why Herr Volkard wanted the Russian’s possessions.
Andreas stared at the brown-brick building. It brooded at the end of the street, crouched amongst the surrounding buildings like a spider. It remained untouched by the Soviet shelling, and yet was still as dark and decrepit as any war-time ruin.
It was quiet and difficult to approach from the street without being detected; perfect for a clandestine meeting.
It was also perfect for murder.
Lukas came to a halt and turned back to the rest of the squad, a thumbs-up accompanying his familiar grin as their target effectively isolated himself from any chance of rescue.
Andreas’ return smile was more of a grimace. Nothing was ever this easy.
The squad dropped as silently as possible to street level, running across and moving into the alley behind the old barber shop, which had belonged to Gregor’s father.
Andreas allowed the other boy a moment to stare wistfully at the ruins of his inheritance before gently dragging him away. Gregor shook off his melancholy and pushed the ladder into place, allowing Lukas to lead the way to the rooftops.
They hurried silently to the factory wall, leaping the small gaps between the tightly packed houses. Andreas watched as Lukas forced one of the second-story windows, the glass making an almost imperceptible squeal. With great care, the red-headed teenager slipped through the narrow opening and onto a mesh catwalk, making not a sound.
Where? Oswald signaled once they were all clustered together inside.
Andreas’ eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness inside the factory that it was no longer a pitch-black void. Instead, it was filled with the deeper shadows of chemical vats and assembly lines, punctuated by hulking presses and other cluttered machinery.
The victim was nowhere to be seen.
Spread, pairs, Lukas signed, completely serious now that they neared their target.
Andreas partnered up with Dolf and moved carefully along the ancient, rail-less catwalk toward the eastern wall of the building, trying not to think about what it would mean to fall.
The old vats clustered on that side of the factory would make a perfect ambush point if the target realized he was being followed, and Andreas was in no mood to take risks. He watched as Oswald and Fabian headed toward the offices along the north wall. Lukas and Gregor slid down the nearest ladder, moving to investigate the scattered hiding places on the floor.
Andreas felt pride at the competent efficiency with which his squad worked, effortlessly moving to cover the whole facility without any further instruction. They had truly come a long way under the tutelage of the Scharführer.
He smiled at Dolf, the stocky youth giving him a toothy grin in return. Andreas had no doubt similar thoughts were going through his friend’s head.
Andreas crept further toward the chemical vats. He had taken only a few steps when he sensed he now moved alone.
Dolf stood perfectly still, grin splitting his face. His gun was clutched tightly in his hands, held against his body. Andreas frowned as he noticed his friend was shaking, almost vibrating. The stock of his shotgun rattled against the buttons of his coat.
What is it? Signaled Andreas, furious at his friend for breaking stealth. Was he panicking?
The smile grew wider.
“Dolf,” Andreas risked a whisper, shaking him by the shoulder.
Dolf’s smile grew wider still, stretching grotesquely. Andreas could only stare as the other boy’s lips began to crack, tiny drops of blood appearing.
“Mein Gott.” Andreas’ eyes grew wide.
The flesh around Dolf’s mouth split, teeth bulging outwards and piercing through skin. They glistened wetly as they fell from his mouth, plunging through the mesh of the catwalk to clatter to the floor below.
Skin and muscle sloughed off Dolf’s face in long, narrow arcs, meat flensed from the bone by an invisible butcher’s knife.
In a heartbeat, patches of gore-coated skull were visible, swelling unnaturally.
Dolf still seemed to be smiling when his head exploded.
The decapitated corpse, massing almost half again as much as Andreas’s slim frame, smashed into him, blood fountaining from the ragged stump of a neck. Andreas was thrown backwards, the heel of his boot catching on the raised metal lip of the catwalk, hands instinctively grasping for a railing that was not there.
He seemed to hang in the air for an eternal moment before hitting the factory floor.
Andreas’ eyes snapped open as gunfire rang out, the sound of rifle shots echoing weirdly. The muzzle flashes lighted the building in brief strobes before the darkness returned, only to be snatched away again as more bullets flew.
He sat up groggily, fingers grasping at the deep cut that decorated his forehead. Dolf’s killer was nowhere to be seen.
He watched Lukas and Gregor firing from halfway across the room, accomplishing nothing beyond giving their positions away. He opened his mouth to call out, to tell them to cease fire.
Even as the thought occurred to him, Andreas watched in horror as Gregor suddenly stopped shooting. Time seemed to slow as the boy’s body expanded grotesquely, like a glove filled to bursting. With a wet roar, Gregor’s torso disappeared. A bloody mist hung in the air, for an instant, as he was torn apart by an internal explosion. Andreas stared, wide-eyed, as a viscera-streaked arm smashed into the wall beside him with the sickening crunch of breaking bone.
Still in slow motion, Lukas turned toward his companion, mouth agape as he saw the shredded remains of Gregor.
Andreas had the briefest glimpse of a shadowy figure, cloak streaming behind as it moved impossibly fast, before Lukas disappeared, lifted from the ground and propelled behind a jutting piece of machinery. Lukas’s pistol and combat knife clattered to the floor.
The squad leader’s surprised shout became a strangled gurgle, and then all became silent.
It had all happened so fast. One deadly moment.
Andreas climbed to his feet, bringing his rifle to his shoulder and hammering the location where Lukas had disappeared. He knew his squad leader was already dead, murdered with the same ruthless efficiency that had claimed Gregor and Dolf.
Oswald and Fabian opened fire from the window of the upstairs office they had been investigating. One of them was screaming at the top of his lungs.
Andreas’ magazine ran dry. He breathed hard, chest rising and falling rapidly, heart hammering in his chest. He pushed the stripper clip into the battered rifle and reloaded, discipline slowly returning, when something thumped, wet and heavy, at his feet.
It was Lukas’ head.
Andreas stumbled backwards, teeth grinding together as he desperately tried not to scream.
A noise echoed from the darkness. It took Andreas a moment to recognize the guttural sound for what it was.
Laughter.
“Poor children, you really had no idea what you were getting into, did you?”
The words were an inhuman rumble, spoken in German of flawless inflection, and deeply amused in tone. Even without the baffling effect of the detritus scattered around the building, Andreas suspected the sheer power of that voice would be so overwhelming as to make determining its origins impossible.
“Six little boys trying to make a name for themselves.” The Russian, or whatever the hell he was, took a deep breath, as though tasting the bitter air of the factory. “On a mission to gain acceptance as real soldiers, no?” Another inhuman laugh. “Perhaps wishing to join that pathetic group, in their pretty black uniforms, who masquerade as the lightning-wielders of old?”
Andreas shifted, shocked at the man’s dismissal of the most feared fighters of the Third Reich.
“Only three of you left, now.” Andreas could hear the smile in the enemy’s voice. “Not including your friends outside, of course. I can hear them whimpering in the dark, deciding whether to investigate or to simply run away. After all, there are always more ch
ildren.”
Andreas perked up at this. If the enemy was telling the truth then that must mean Volkard was outside. All he had to do was keep this bastard talking and they would have experienced soldiers on their side. Then they’d see who would be laughing.
“How do you know that?” Andreas called out, face reddening at the fearful squeak that crept into his words. He stalked toward the center of the room, circling in an attempt to disguise his position as he spoke, the way he had been taught. Either he would keep their tormentor occupied long enough for reinforcements to arrive, or he would find and kill the bastard himself.
“The same way I knew you were following me. I could hear you whispering, so safe up on your rooftop. A huddled mass of children and murderous thugs playing soldier.”
Though he could still not tell where the voice came from, Andreas sensed his enemy was also moving.
“You heard us talking?” he asked, trying to keep that ghastly voice speaking.
“My skin also tingled with the feel of your eyes upon my back, stalking me as though I were some beast, prey to be hunted.”
The last was said in that same amused tone, but tinged with a faint anger. Though it was impossible to tell for sure, Andreas sensed he was getting closer.
“But most importantly,” the voice said. The words were no longer an ethereal shout echoing from the walls, but a whisper from behind. He felt hot breath then, on the back of his neck; the breath of a predator toying with prey.
“I could smell your fear.”
Andreas spun, trying to raise his rifle, but impossibly strong fingers closed around his arms, the gun torn instantly from his hands and tossed aside with the ease of a child ripping the wings off an insect.
He tried to shout, but a giant hand snapped to his throat with superhuman speed, lifting him from the ground as though he weighed nothing. He was held against a support column, feet thrashing the air uselessly. He stared into the dark hood of his erstwhile victim, seeing a hint of pale skin where the gasmask had been removed.
