Oh God. Outside when the drone struck. Kate.
I sink to the floor, seeing again my daughter lying in my arms, her blood flowing over me. I would have given her all of mine if I could have.
She died before help could arrive.
‘We lived off the grid.’
‘Yes.’ Louisa no longer sounds like a young girl. Her voice is changing, into the male voice I didn’t like. Bitter, angry, filled with hate.
I open my eyes, ready to run, but Louisa is gone. The house is gone. Everything is gone. I am sitting in a small white room, the space so tight that there's only about three feet between the walls and the chair I’m strapped into. It's cold, and the room reminds me of a shuttle with its tang of recycled air. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s never your husband that snaps you out of it. Always the girl.’ The man sounds amused—in a way that is not at all nice.
‘Snaps me out of what?’
‘Susanna’s life.’ He laughs, and I try to turn, but I’m held in place by straps. Tubes seem to be shooting things into me, and taking things out. I can’t move my legs.
How long have I been sitting here? ‘What is this?’ It’s a question I don’t think will be answered so I ask, ‘Who are you?’
‘Drew.’
‘Our AI.’
‘The monitor. Here at the prison. We’ve been over this, of course. Many times by now.’
‘What?’ I feel my heart beating faster, and I try to work myself free of the straps, but I can’t get my arms to do much more than quiver.
‘You killed Susanna and took her shuttle, the Pandora. You overflew the spaceport and crashed the Pandora into the headquarters of the Ministry of Defence.’ His voice is oily now, as if he is getting to a part he relishes. ‘You remember, the people who sent the drone that killed your little girl? Thank God, it was only your family out there. A drone so badly off course in a heavily populated area would have been a public relations nightmare for the government.’
‘We wanted to make you pay.’ I am remembering now. Matthew and I, we hatched a plan. Matthew understood how the Ministry ran. I was already a pilot, so the rest was easy. We sent our story to a liberal media station, delayed to arrive after the attack. The whole world would know how our daughter died, and what we’d been willing to do to get the truth out.
‘Matthew?’
‘He died inside the ministry just as you planned. You were supposed to die, too, Claire.’
Claire. Yes. That is my name. Not Susanna. Susanna was the pilot of the shuttle I hijacked. She had done nothing to us except have the bad luck to look so much like me in uniform that no one would notice I had taken her place. But I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t. She had a daughter, too.
‘I didn’t kill Susanna.’
‘You did. There was a snake in the shed you left her tied up in. We think when she was struggling to get away she disturbed it. It bit her, she died slowly and in agony.’
I take a deep, ragged breath. This can’t be right. I didn’t want Louisa to lose her mother. I’d been careful when I’d bound her, knew the house AI would tell her family she’d left with a visitor and never come back—Matthew had chosen the shed because the house AI didn’t extend to that. The family would find her. I would never have done this.
‘Three hundred and fourteen people are dead because of you, Claire. You were very unlucky to have survived.’
‘Why make me live Susanna’s life, then? Why not all of them?’
‘Susanna’s life fits you the best and hurts you the most.’ He says this with such pleasure I feel my insides twist.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Time is irrelevant. Let’s just say a while, okay? But you always wake up. That’s the point, actually. Letting you live in that life, knowing you don’t belong. Finding your way back to yourself—always through Louisa. Then reminding you of the truth.’ He laughs and it is the kind of laugh of a man who does nothing all day but watch people suffer.
‘The family—I’m not really with them?’
‘Do you think we would do that to them? As far as they’re concerned, the person who killed Susanna is dead.’
I start to feel woozy, and I hear his voice, soft and dry like the scales of a snake. ‘Oh and Claire, I lied about Matthew. He’s here, too. He likes the life he’s leading. Has settled into it so well that we have to wake him up manually to remind him why he’s here so he’ll suffer like you are right now. But he’s happy, Claire. With someone new.’
‘I bet you tell him the same thing about me.’
He laughs. ‘You say that every time. You’re wrong every time. Nighty-night, Claire.’
I feel heavy, my eyes close, and I try to get out, ‘He dreams of me,’ but I can’t.
I’m Claire. I’m Claire. I’m Claire. I’m Claire. I say it over and over in my mind, trying to sabotage whatever tech sends me back to Susanna’s world.
I have a feeling I’ve tried this before. Maybe this time it will work.
Again the definition of a crazy person. But it’s all I have.
I’m Claire.
The world goes black. I hear the faintest sound of a monitor, beeping along with my heart.
I open my eyes, see three people hovering around my bed, love and hope clear in their eyes. ‘I’m...’
Who the hell am I? [GdM]
Gerri Leen lives in Northern Virginia and originally hails from Seattle. She has stories and poems published or accepted in such places as: Escape Pod, Weird Tales, Spellbound, Sword and Sorceress XXIII, Spinetinglers, and She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror. She is editing an anthology, A Quiet Shelter There, which will benefit homeless animals and is due out in 2015 from Hadley Rille Books. See more at http://www.gerrileen.com.
The Red Wraith
NICHOLAS WISSEMAN
You notice my smoky hair and wonder if I’m him.
You study my skin, searching for veins that gleam black like I’ve been stretched over a sable spider web, or arteries that glitter white like fracture lines in shattered ice.
But you see no cause for alarm.
You judge my height to be average, at most an inch or two above normal—nothing imposing.
Nothing legendary.
Nothing infamous.
You start to dismiss your fears…until I raise my head to reveal the tell-tale tattoo, the swirling mark branded over my left eye.
Now you know.
You know who I am, what I can do, and what I’ve done.
You know your terror is justified.
You close your eyes and beg and moan and soil yourself.
You relive every wrong moment you never set right: complaining during your mother-in-law’s burial; turning a blind eye to the old man crawling through the weeds; undermining your friend’s last chance.
You think of the loved ones you’ll leave behind, and the ones who’ll love to leave you behind.
You clasp your hands and say your goodbyes, readying yourself for whatever you think comes next.
And when you finally open your eyes and find me gone…are you relieved?
Or disappointed? [GdM]
Nicholas Wisseman recently won an honourable mention from the Writers of the Future contest. He's currently working on a novel-length version of ‘The Red Wraith.’ Earlier pieces of his have appeared in Allegory, Battered Suitcase, and Bewildering Stories.
An Interview With Graham McNeill
GDM
[GDM] You’ve been an integral part of Black Library and the lives of so many 40K, WHFB and 30K fans for a long time. You’ve breathed life into the Ultramarine’s chapter with the series starring Uriel Ventris, got us deep into the Martian priesthood, and have been a stalwart of the Horus Heresy flagship series. Thank you, from all of us, for what you’ve done to shape the genre.
[GdM]: What does ‘Grimdark’ mean to you?
[GM]: It speaks to me of bleak times and the fading of all that was once noble; a time where good is far outweig
hed by evil and there's little hope of it ever ending. Where all but the insane have abandoned hope of the darkness ever being lifted. As 40k's opening crawl says, To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. Fertile ground for drama, eh?
[GdM]: What interests and excites you the most about the genre?
[GM]: Given what I said above, it's the spots of light against that unending darkness that make for the most evocative stories, I think. That there are heroes who stand against the darkness, even when there's little hope of victory, is what makes it interesting. The bleaker the setting, the more the tiny victories matter, the more vital they become in holding back the darkness. Any story that's interesting is a story of contrasts; hero and villain, good and evil, right and wrong, and the grimdark setting, whether 40k or any other nightmare reality, allows you to exaggerate and magnify the horror to better set the protagonists against It makes their struggles all the more rewarding for the reader to spend time with.
[GdM]: If you couldn’t write, which grimdark author would hold your customer loyalty and why?
[GM]: Most of the SF I've read recently has been hard SF and not massively grimdark, though Alistair Reynolds' Revelation Space series has been occupying a lot of space on iBooks recently as it kind of bounces between grimdark and space opera. I steered clear of hard SF for a long time, thinking it would be kind of dull, but having dipped my toe in the waters (with books by the aforementioned Mr Reynolds, Greg Bear, Larry Niven etc.) I've found it as action packed as any pulpy SF romp. The Revelation Space arc has been a brilliant mix of space opera and hard science and plausible speculation, so I've really enjoyed them and attempted to impose a scientific rigour (as far as possible with some of the science in 40k) to my own work, most notably in my Mechanicus trilogy. I even consulted an actual astrophysicist for a section appearing in Lords of Mars (he got a mention for that in the book...).
[GdM]: Short stories are becoming more and more important to fans to get glimpses of their favourite characters without having the wait for the next novel in that character’s line. How important are they to you as an author?
[GM]: I love writing short stories. They're a great way to scratch an itch to tell a particular story or go back to a particular character/setting without the investment in time a novel requires. They're also a great way of reminding the readers of the characters, to whet the appetite for a forthcoming novel or just keep them in the consciousness of the readers until your schedule allows you to get back to a novel for them. You can use them to tease ideas for new novels and deal with interesting nuggets of their story that don't necessarily warrant a whole novel or don't really have a place within long-form work. And where a novel can grow and bloom during the writing, with new characters, sub-plots and directions appearing as you go along, a short story needs a good deal more rigour on the part of the writer. Every word counts, and it's refreshing to get into that mindset, to flex those sets of muscles again where you need to tell the story as evocatively and economically as possible.
[GdM]: You and I have chatted about The Swords of Calth a few times in the past. When is the next instalment of Ultramarines due out and what can we expect from Uriel, Nero, and the 4th?
[GM]: I've teased a few things for the return of the Ultramarines, with the short story, Codex, and the forthcoming Do Eagles Still Circle the Mountain? Uriel and the boys in blue are on my schedule to be written later in the year, so expect to see a new novel out in 2015. As to what's in it, well, after the first trilogy did the whole 'threat arises, we go stomp it' arcs, and the second did the 'voyage home' arc, the third trilogy will deal with what happens when the Ultramarines are on the losing end of things. And after the BIG scale of The Chapter's Due, it's time to scale it way back to build back up again, so it'll literally be Uriel and his command squad (the titular Swords of Calth) on their own against an entirely hostile world with no back up, no support, and little hope of escape.
[GdM]: Horus Heresy. The series has a cult following. I know you guys get hounded on this and have storm shield defence against it, but I thought we'd try anyway. When will we see Horus vs. the Emperor? Are there plans for a post-heresy series? Will we see Russ fly off with the 13th? Will we see Dorn's suicidal attack? What about the Emperor interred in the Golden Throne?
[GM]: Of course you'll get to see the Emperor vs. Horus, it would be a massive kick in the teeth not to after so much investment of time, love and effort on everyone's part not to see it. There's been a lot of discussion in the Horus Heresy meetings about that moment, with lots of seeds for events leading to it already seeded in novels already published (if you know where to look...). And can't you just see the interment of the Emperor as the last scene of the last book? As to the other moments you mention, sure, I reckon there's scope for a post-Heresy series, as a lot of really cool stuff happens after the main fight is over—the Rubric, Russ's departure, the schism on Caliban etc.—so sure, there's been talk of what we might do, but nothing official or more than just writers slinging ideas around the room.
[GdM]: You've hit your straps with the Black Library releases. Any plans to sally forth beyond the Games Workshop battlements and into a new world?
[GM]: I've already ventured into that brave new world into few new pastures. I wrote a novel for Blizzard's Starcraft 2 game, entitled I, Mengsk, which told the story of how Arcturus Mengsk transformed from a young, idealistic man into the cruel Emperor of the Dominion. And my Dark Waters Trilogy (Ghouls of the Miskatonic, Bones of the Yopasi, Dweller in the Deep), three novels of cosmic horror set within the Lovecraftian worlds of Arkham Horror have been published by Fantasy Flight Games. I've written for video games, but my love for the worlds of Warhammer, both 40k and Fantasy keep me coming back for more of that particular vintage of grimdark...
[GdM]: Grimdark was coined based on the Games Workshop 40K IP. That makes authors like you the pioneers of the sub genre—right up there with guys like Glen Cook—do you see yourself that way?
[GM]: I certainly don't think of myself in such terms, no, but after many years of working in Games Workshop's Design Studio, I like to think I've left a small mark on the background with my work on Codexes and Army books. And in the years since I left, I hope I've helped shape the collective worlds of the Imperium and the Old World to some degree, yeah. But, to coin a cliché, it’s a shared universe, and all the writers and readers add to it in their own way. That's what makes it a constantly rewarding experience to work within these worlds. The setting in which I'm writing is being added to all the time by other writers, meaning that if it fits the narrative, I can incorporate what they've added to the tapestry of what I'm creating.
[GdM]: You’ve got a legion of fans. Can you give us all a quick run down of what’s next for you?
[GM]: A Legion, you say? Can we equip them and get them out conquering the galaxy sometime soon then, please? I've just had Gods of Mars back from the printers and have recently finished a couple of short stories – one Horus Heresy, one Ultramarines – and a Horus Heresy novella featuring a certain tricksy primarch and the crew of the Sisypheum, who we last saw in Angel Exterminatus. I'm currently planning out another Ultramarines short story to tie into the things I was mentioning above, then it's onto my next Horus Heresy novel, The Crimson King. And once that's done, it's onto The Swords of Calth. Beyond that, it's all a bit hazy, but there's a good chance it'll involve some heavy dollops of grimdark... [GdM]
Bad Seed
A Broken Empire Story
MARK LAWRENCE
At the age of eight Alann Oak took a rock and smashed it into Darin Reed’s forehead. Two other boys, both around ten years old, had tried to hold him against the fence post while Darin beat him. They got up from the dirt track, first to their hands and knees, one spitting blood, the other dripping crimson from where Alann’s teeth found his ear, then unsteadily to their feet. Darin Reed lay where he had fallen, staring at the blue sky with wide blue eyes.
<
br /> ‘Killer,’ they called the child after that. Some called, ‘kennt’ at his back and the word followed him through the years as some words will hunt a man down across the storm of his days. Kennt, the old name for a man who does murder with his hands. An ancient term in the tongue that lingered in the villages west of the Tranweir, spoken only among the grey heads and like to die out with them leaving only a scatter of words and phrases too well poised to be abandoned.
‘You forgive me, Darin, don’t you?’ Alann asked it of the older boy a year later. They sat at the ford, watching the water, white about the stepping-stones. Alann threw his pebble, clattering it against the most distant of the nine steps. ‘I told Father Abram I repented the sin of anger. They washed me in the blood of the lamb. Father Abram told me I was part of the flock once more.’ Another stone, another hit. He had repented anger, but there hadn’t been anger, just the thrill of it, the red joy in a challenge answered.
Darin stood, still taller than Alann but not by so much. ‘I don’t forgive you, but I wronged you. I was a bully. Now we’re brothers. Brothers don’t need to forgive, only to accept. If I forgave it you might forget me.’
‘Father Abram told me...’ Alann struggled for the words. ‘He said, men don’t stand alone. We’re farmers. We’re of the flock, the herd. God’s own. We follow. Stray, be cast out, and we die alone. Unmourned.’ He threw again, hit again. ‘But... I feel... alone here, right among the herd. I don’t fit. People are scared of me.’
Darin shook his head. ‘You’re not alone. You’ve got me. How many brothers do you need?’
Grimdark Magazine Issue #1 mobi Page 4
