A Game of Horns: A Red Unicorn Anthology

by Gregory D. Little

  “No, Jeremiah. You shall not.”

  Jeremiah reached out, but his arms had turned into literal sticks of peppermint. He kicked and sidestepped and danced his way through the Peppermint Stick Forest until his legs stuck together. Then he hopped, nudging each striped peppermint candy aside with his head.

  By the time he reached the top, Jeremiah had nearly turned into the fattest peppermint stick ever seen. Except for his eyes, mouth, what little brain he used, and the weak pulse of his fading heart, Jeremiah had become a massive piece of hard, stubborn candy.

  “Cherry!” Jeremiah shouted, half-mad with fatigue and sugar and desperation. “It’s going to taste like cherry. No! Strawberry. It’ll taste like strawberries.”

  Inch after miserable inch he hopped until finally he reached the top. With the last of his energy, Jeremiah leaped for the Red Unicorn Horn. But it was too late. His brain hardened to sugar, his eyes faded into stripes, and his heart gave a final minty beat.

  The gargantuan piece of peppermint that had once been Jeremiah fell into a pool of hot chocolate that bubbled and gurgled at the very top of the mountain. The peppermint stick rolled and tumbled and turned in the hot chocolate, leaving a milky white foam. Since it was too big to roll down the river of hot chocolate, it remained in the pool, bobbing in place, flavoring the chocolate liquid with the sweet taste of peppermint.

  Mr. Thomas shook his head.

  “It happens every time. Their greed is always greater than their common sense.”

  A bright red cherry sucker appeared in the air next to Mr. Thomas. “Yes,” he agreed. “Things will be better around here from now on. Now I shall have to go comfort Mrs. Reed.”

  In the meantime, the Red Unicorn Horn continued its constant vigilance atop Marshmallow Mountain, never ceasing, never stopping.

  About the Author

  Katie Cross is a big fan of cookies and running in the mountains. When she’s not writing stories about girls with swords who don’t need a man to save them, she’s probably hiking with her husband and two vizslas. Find more of her work and her best-selling YA fantasy series, The Network Series, at www.missmabels.com.

  Vengeance for Dinner

  Emily Godhand and J.S. Bennett

  Crawford slammed her coffee mug on the diner counter and set her pistol beside it.

  “Ladies, we’re taking down Guerrero.”

  The chintzy novelty clock above the chalkboard menu chimed six in the evening and summer heat blistered through the picture windows on the far wall. A CLOSED sign hung on one. Beetles the size of penny candy battered the glass, leaving behind yellowish smears.

  August in Rutherford County.

  Three women sat shoulder-to-shoulder at the counter, hunched over coffee and untouched menus.

  A waitress with wrinkles made of smiles refilled Crawford’s mug, a thin crust of sweat lining the collar of her shirt as she eyed the gun. A few droplets of coffee dribbled onto the countertop, and she hastily wiped them away with the corner of her once-white apron, now a study of Pollock in mustard and A1.

  “Ya’ll sure you don’t want nothin’? Sweet tea? We’ve got raspberry. Made fresh.”

  Crawford stared over her sunglasses at the waitress. “My dear lady, sweet tea should be nothing but caffeine and unholy amounts of sugar like the good Lord intended.”

  The old woman puttered back to the register and disappeared into the kitchen for a smoke.

  Crawford faced the wall and tapped her dark fingers on the rim of her mug, a martial rat-a-tat in the silence of the diner. A ceiling fan turned lazily overhead, pushing stale air down around her shoulders. “If Guerrero wants to go into business for herself, we’ll consider her a competitor.” She wiped a cherry-red lipstick smudge from her mug. “Any objections?”

  “Not from me, honeybunch,” said Zelenko, gaunt-faced and resplendent in her eggshell-colored pantsuit and pillbox hat. “I, for one, think this is long overdue.”

  In the high-backed stool to Crawford’s left, Nightingale, swallowed by a camouflage jacket three sizes too large, shrugged and scratched at her neck, where a sizable boil had taken up residence. “Would it change your mind if I said I objected?”

  Zelenko rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath.

  Nightingale turned, lifted a hand to her face, gave two exaggerated sniffs, and sneezed toward Zelenko.

  Crawford rolled her eyes at Zelenko’s undignified squeal and leaned back on her stool. “Well?”

  Nightingale scratched at her shaggy hair. “All I’m sayin’ is maybe we should give the accused a chance to defend herself.”

  Zelenko sneered and crossed her delicate, bony legs at the knee, bumping the underside of the counter. “Oh, don’t be a bleeding heart. She dug her own grave—no pun intended, of course.”

  Crawford raised her brows over the rim of her sunglasses.

  Zelenko looked to her employer and pursed her painted lips, dragging a gloved finger along the scratched Formica countertop.

  “It was only a matter of time. Ever since the Great War, she’s had this notion in her head that she’s some lone cowgirl on a crusade. Nuh-uh, sister. She wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without us, and now she wants to cut us out?” she said with a scoff.

  Crawford set her hand on Zelenko’s bony shoulder.

  “You’re right,” she replied. “Who supplied Guerrero with some of her best weapons, huh?”

  She leaned in and whispered in the woman’s ear, “You.”

  Crawford turned to Nightingale.

  “And you. If they managed to survive Guerrero and Zelenko, who did they meet next? Who birthed Yellow Fever, the Spanish Influenza, and the Black Plague?”

  Crawford slid her hands along the other women’s backs and pulled them close. “Guerrero’s managed to exceed my expectations, sure. But my coffers are getting empty, and frankly, I’m a little annoyed.”

  Nightingale sighed and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “Let’s be realistic. This has been a rough century for everyone but Guerrero. Penicillin, blood transfusions—hell, surgery with friggin’ robots. And don’t get me started on vaccines.”

  Zelenko fluttered a silk kerchief out of her breast pocket and dabbed at the sweat around her neck. “And GMOs, and irrigation systems, and preservatives—just spit it out, dear. You think she’s asking too much of us.”

  Crawford slapped both of them on the back of their heads. Zelenko’s hat slid over her eyes. She pushed it back on her blonde pin curls with an incensed harrumph.

  “Oh, spare me,” said Crawford. “So it’s gotten a little hard. You adapt and overcome like you always have. What about those resistant strains you were working on, Nightingale, eh? Or climate change, Zelenko? Brilliant, ladies. Brilliant.”

  She glanced at both of them, then adjusted her sunglasses and toasted them with her coffee.

  “You all have served me well these past few millennia. We’ve always worked together, and I’m not about to see that fall apart because some humans discovered a little science. It’s just their new mysticism, and we’ve used that against them before.”

  “So, what?” Nightingale said. “What are we gonna do, kill her? It’s not like that’ll up our numbers any.”

  “Oh, come now,” said Crawford, grinning. “Like all of my judgments end in death.”

  Zelenko coughed pointedly into her handkerchief.

  “Besides, we need her. We need each other,” Crawford said. She straightened her coat by the lapels and holstered her pistol. “Let’s go remind her of that.”

  They rose as one from the counter.

  “Hey!” cried the waitress as she caught them at the door. “Ya’ll ready for your check, then?”

  Crawford stopped. “Who handled the check last time?” she asked.

  Zelenko raised her hand, and Crawford sighed. “Fine, I’ll get it.” She gently took the waitress by the elbow. “Your coffee was good. Always worth a few points in my book.”

  The waitress frowned, then staggered bac
k. The left side of her face slowly drooped into a flaccid frown. Her legs gave out from underneath her, and she fell onto Crawford’s chest, her hands first grasping, then clinging, to the woman’s jacket. Her lips sputtered gibberish until her knees gave out, and she collapsed.

  Outside, the first of the evening’s crickets gave a merry chirp.

  “That was nice of you,” Nightingale commented, opening the door for the others, the bell tinkling good-bye.

  Crawford stepped over the corpse. “You’re covering the bill next time,” she said to Nightingale as she exited the diner.

  O O O

  Evening fell heavy and fast, blanketing the sea of wheat that lined the stretch of empty highway. The setting sun lit the horizon on fire, sending a suffocating, smoky darkness over the Southern countryside. Above the occasional pool of standing water from the last summer shower, thick swarms of mosquitoes fogged the air.

  Crawford’s Dodge Magnum, sleek and black, pulled into a driveway flanked by overgrown dogwoods and rhododendrons. Gravel sprayed up from the tires in time to the thwack of limbs against the windows.

  Zelenko covered her nose with her handkerchief.

  “What is that smell?” she snapped.

  Nightingale chewed on a lock of her shaggy, dark hair. “Oink oink.”

  Zelenko narrowed her eyes. “Wh—”

  “Pigs,” Crawford interrupted before Zelenko’s righteous indignation could blossom. She jerked her chin. “Hear that?”

  Zelenko frowned and tilted her head. There it was, the snuffles and keening squeals of hogs. She kept her kerchief at her nose but remained quiet until the Magnum rolled to a stop in front of the old ranch house and barn.

  The house was old but in good shape, painted cornflower blue, ringed by a wraparound porch and flower garden.

  The three women stepped out into the heat, the slam of the doors punctuating the evening’s symphony—croaking frogs in C minor—and waited in silence by the wooden fence enclosing the property. Crawford slipped her hands into the pockets of her trench coat as she circled the house. Her boots kicked up hordes of gnats.

  Under a bay window overlooking the road, a woman in a plaid shirt over a filthy white tank top uprooted earthy bundles of weeds from a patch of butter-yellow petunias.

  “Guerrero!” Crawford called.

  Guerrero, pinch-faced and glistening with sweat, tipped back the brim of her oversized sun hat. Her skin was a palette of blotchy purples and sunburned reds. She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck as she stood to greet them.

  “Ladies!” Guerrero said, mopping her face with her shirt. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” She tugged off her ratty gardening gloves and dropped them over the porch railing.

  Crawford crossed her arms. “Just stopping by to chat, doll. Got some business to discuss.”

  “Ya’ll stayin’ the night? I got a stable for your iron horse there,” she said with a smile.

  Their faces, cold and gaunt, stared back at her with dead eyes.

  Guerrero rubbed her arms.

  “Brrr.” Her grin never wavered. “An ambush? Boss, c’mon now, I invented that.”

  “If I wanted to ambush you, Guerrero, you wouldn’t see me coming,” Crawford replied.

  She moved back, toward the sagging wooden fence, and yanked a sickle out of a slat, where it had likely been collecting rust for decades. She turned it over in one hand and ran her finger down the blade with the other. Dull, but usable.

  Crawford tapped the blade. “I’m wondering where your share is at this decade. You got time to plant poppies—”

  “Petunias,” Guerrero corrected.

  Crawford scowled. “Whatever. You got time to play house but not to get your job done?”

  Guerrero didn’t answer at first. She yanked off her sun hat and dug around in her pocket for a half-empty can of chew, then popped a glob in one cheek and shook the can in Zelenko’s direction. “Want some?”

  “No,” Zelenko said with a sniff. “That’s filthy, you degenerate.”

  Guerrero shrugged and closed the tin. “Look, don’t get me wrong, boss,” she said as she carefully peeled away the strands of hair glued to her forehead by sweat. “I like my job. I’ve been doing it for over fifteen thousand years, so don’t jump on me because it’s been an off few years. I had World War II, all right? Nukes? Vietnam? Agent Orange? Come on, that was good. I’m doing a lot better than these two numbskulls,” she said as she fluttered her dirt-stained fingers at Nightingale and Zelenko.

  “Now, wait just a minute—” Zelenko started to say.

  Guerrero held up a hand to cut her off. “Don’t worry your pretty little head, toots. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself,” she said. She spat her chew out the side of her mouth, rust-brown liquid sluicing down her chin. “Get real. Except for a few old farts kickin’ it from pneumonia and some real bad cases of drought, these two combined have barely been pulling in half of my load.”

  Zelenko’s powdered face pulled into a snarl.

  Nightingale stepped between the two women, her hands raised in a placatory gesture. “Well, you certainly know how to cause strife, honey, no one’s doubtin’ that.”

  Crawford sauntered closer to Guerrero, who stood stock-still and hooked her thumbs into her belt loops. She pointed the sickle at the center of Guerrero’s chest. “You’re very, very wrong about those numbers, kid.”

  With deliberate slowness, she trailed the tip of the blade down Guerrero’s sweaty cheek. Guerrero flinched but didn’t pull away. A fly landed on her shoulder.

  “I meet every last person who comes to me.” Crawford’s tongue dashed across her lips. “I know their life, time of death, and, of course, the cause.”

  The sickle hovered over the cleft of Guerrero’s clavicle. Crawford tugged gently at the collar of her shirt, then pointed the blade toward Nightingale and Zelenko.

  Nightingale thumbed her chest. “Heart disease? Respiratory infection? Hello?”

  “And,” Zelenko interjected hotly, “don’t forget the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward.”

  Crawford chuckled and scratched her chin with the tip of the blade. “See? You’re not even in the top ten, Guerrero. People are more likely to crap themselves to death than ever see you. Now you did good with religion. Great idea, there. But you forget that the only reason you’ve been so successful for millennia are these two right here. And now they tell me you aren’t full of—what do you call it?—esprit de corps anymore. And I’m paying the price for it.”

  Guerrero shooed the fly away, adjusted her shirt, and shrugged. “We were close. But you guys are stuck in the past.” She pointed to Nightingale. “When was the last time you had a proper epidemic, huh? Whatever happened to Ebola?”

  Nightingale sighed. “That was barely an outbreak, moron.”

  Guerrero’s finger swung to Zelenko. “And you! There’s a whole country of fat-asses just begging for a good famine, and you can’t even give them that!”

  Zelenko adjusted her hat and patted at her curls, silent.

  “Young lady, you watch your tone with me,” Crawford said. “You are strictly a human invention. However well you’ve done in the past half-century, you would have never gotten anywhere without the rest of us.”

  Guerrero rolled her eyes and brushed past Crawford. Tiny puffs of dust marked her trail as she walked up the driveway. “Yeah, two hundred years ago, maybe.” She whirled around and gestured to the massive barn behind her. “But me, I’ve got something you’ll really like. Long-term plan, if you will.”

  Crawford looked to her comrades then slammed the sickle back into the wooden fence, sending splinters into the grass. “You didn’t think to let me know about this?”

  Guerrero wrinkled her nose. “What was I supposed to say, boss? Your ‘Suggestion Box’ sits on top of a shredder.”

  Crawford regarded her for a long moment, then raised her arms in defeat. “Fine. Show me.”

  Guerrero grinned and slid open the wooden door.

 
Inside, the barn was a museum of warfare, coated in a thick layer of dust and pig-stench. Spears and swords and battle-axes lined the walls. In the wooden cabinet by the door, hand cannons and derringers and flintlock pistols hung above automatic rifles; a Stinger missile was festively wrapped in Christmas lights. Nailed above bags of feed were tapestries and oil paintings and woodblock prints detailing battles from centuries past. A pinup calendar showed a blonde in fatigues perched atop a V2 ballistic missile.

  But the centerpiece, the only display that was clean and well-used, was a massive red tank in the middle of the barn. The white-washed cannon barrel barely cleared the barn doors.

  Guerrero waved her arm. “Like my warhorse? Much improved, right?” she said.

  “Warhorse?” said Crawford under her breath. “It looks more like a unicorn.”

  Guerrero ignored her and stared up at the tank with her hands on her hips. She tapped its steel hull fondly. “Good old T-90. Got a 125mm smoothbore 2A46.”

  Nightingale and Zelenko exchanged glances. “S’nice,” Nightingale mumbled.

  Guerrero continued on, oblivious. “But that’s not the best part. You see that grain silo over there?” She motioned toward a seemingly harmless metal tower, no different than the dozen other hulking silos that dotted the stretch of farmland. “Twenty-two tons of divine fury. You can take out a whole country in time for breakfast. Ta-da!”

  Nightingale whistled, then ducked her head when Zelenko slapped her arm.

  “That’s your master plan?” Zelenko snapped. “Nuclear warfare? Gee, I don’t know, sweetie, wasn’t there an entire Cold War dedicated to learning how much those things accomplished? What was the number of nukes deployed, again? Oh, was it—was it zero?”

  Guerrero shook her head. “Philistine.”

  Crawford kept her eyes on the tank, inspecting every last detail of what was a truly custom job. She chuckled to herself when she noticed the decal on one side: a fiery-eyed red unicorn rearing up on its hind legs, its several rows of teeth stained with blood. She kept her hand on the metal as she sauntered around the tank, until her fingers trailed across the letters “Death Machine” on the other side. A twitch started at her left eye, then spread to the corners of her mouth.