The front door slammed, shaking the whole house, his eyes in their sockets, his heart in his chest, his brain in his skull. It shocked him back to life, and he sat up. The sofa springs creaked. His breath came in short gasps at first, short bursts he used to whisper her name. But his throat held back the cry. If she stopped, if she turned and came back, what else could he tell her that he hadn’t already tried? What could he say that would work? Would make her stay, make her forgive him?
She had called him, begged him to come home, to help her. Her trembling voice echoed in his ears: “Something’s wrong with Mom. I-I don’t think she’s breathing.”
He could still feel Anne’s fingers clawing at his arms, at his face, see the flashing white of her teeth and the blood oozing from the corners of her eyes. He could still hear Chris’s howling moan as he lurched out of his bedroom, his white T-shirt turned maroon and brown.
He knew what to do, knew what was best, the only option. Even when Penny screamed at the gunshots, caught his arm, tried to pull him away, he hadn’t hesitated. He hadn’t thought about it, and he should have. He should have stopped. Should have controlled himself, or tried harder, anything . . . It was easy to shoot them. What did that say about him?
Clutching his head with his sticky hands, he felt a moan resonating in his chest. It seeped out from between his lips from some dark place within him, and cracked the silence left in the wake of the squeal of tires on asphalt as the last living person he cared about raced away from him into the night.
He awoke in the shadows to the blinking of a warning light. Its red, pulsing bloom beat against his eyelids like a dying heartbeat. Darkness fell away to the sanguine glow, and then descended again, leaving him disoriented.
From somewhere below, he heard a crash. Shepherd’s heart jumped, and he threw back the blankets to scramble from his makeshift bed to the control panel. The warning light was Luke’s.
A gargled moan crept up the hollow cavern of the stairwell. Another crash, and this time, a scream—a girl’s scream—and the blast of a shotgun. It jump-started Shepherd’s feet, and he dove for the door, barreled down the stairs. Another shotgun discharge filled the stairwell with resounding, discordant noise.
The handle of the stairwell door was sticky with blood, and the loosened hinges groaned as he pushed the door partway open before it hit something on the floor and stopped.
It was silent inside. Shepherd slipped through the crack into the darkness and whispered, “Penny?”
A croak came from the far corner where his adjusting eyes located a hunched figure. The croak broke suddenly and became a sob. “Fuck.”
A body lay across the floor, its foot keeping the door from opening all the way. Shepherd tripped over a twisted metal bar connected to a contorted ankle as he stepped over it.
“Fuck,” the girl whispered again, her voice shaking. “Sonofabitch.”
“Are you okay?”
Shepherd climbed over the body and kicked a speaker he hadn’t seen. It bounced off his foot and struck the wall with a hollow thud.
The girl sat pressed into the corner, curled up so tight she almost seemed like a part of the wall. When he knelt in front of her, he saw tears shining on her cheeks.
“Penny—”
“He got me,” she said, and pushed something toward him. It was long, cold—her shotgun. Her eyes were so wide, he could see his shadow in them.
“Where?”
Her lips trembled as she fought back a sudden surge of tremors, and thrust out her injured leg. The ace bandage was torn ragged and soaked with sticky blackness. In the dark, he could only see the deep emptiness beneath the torn fibers where there should have been skin.
Shepherd set the gun on the floor next to what was left of Luke’s skull, his hands cold and shaking as he turned the foot to examine it. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “We’ll bandage it up and see. There’s no saying it’ll be infected. You may be fine.”
“Stop it,” the girl said from somewhere deep in her chest, growling up her throat. “Fuck, Shepherd, I know about survival, okay? I know what this means. So . . . stop it.” With a shaking sigh, she rubbed her face. “You’ve got to shoot me. Do it now before I turn.”
Shepherd shook his head, unable to let go of the slender ankle, even as the blood from her wound dripped into the palm of his hand, trickled down his wrist. Penny jerked her leg back, pulling her knees up to her chest. She choked, and her eyes widened, the whites reflecting the light from the stairwell. There was a thin rim of red around them, red that melted away and ran down her cheeks with her tears.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, Shepherd. You have to do this for me. I’m begging you!”
Shepherd shivered, and his hand fell upon the muzzle of the shotgun. “I-I don’t . . . ”
Penny spasmed, her head cracking back against the wall. The impact and the sob that escaped her throat tightened his grip on the gun. “Please. Please, Shepherd . . . ”
Her voice caught in her throat, choking her again. This time, it took her a moment to swallow. She gagged, clutched at her throat. When the bubble burst, she gasped for air between clenched teeth. Her eyes rolled.
Shepherd stood, the shotgun weighing down his arm. “I don’t kill them,” he whispered. “I don’t. I just . . . I can’t.”
Penny’s gaze rolled up at him, and her breathing rasped, her nostrils flared. With a shudder, she fell back against the wall, eyelids fluttering, blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. Then she went still. Relaxed, calm, she looked just like Penny. Maybe it was Penny. Maybe it had just been too long, and he couldn’t recognize her anymore.
Shepherd bent down beside her, touched her cheek with his rough fingertips. Every second he spent looking at her face, her eyes, her nose, her lips, her chin—everything about her could have belonged to Penny.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, and she opened her blood-rimmed eyes.
As Shepherd stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind him, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: a masked and bloody creature, tiptoeing into the darkness. It made him shiver, made the sticky spots on his hands and cheeks burn. Shaking, he tore off his dirty clothes, his mask, his goggles, and crouched on the tiled floor, his head in his hands. Every inch of him burned like he was lying naked on a bed of coals. There was blood on his hands, blood in his hair, blood on the floor, on his clothes, in his ears, in his nose. He could taste it, smell it, breathe it, feel it everywhere, like a thin film of filth that covered everything and everyone, no matter how many times you scrubbed, no matter how much you cleaned.
He shivered and heard his voice crack in the darkness, a pitiful whimper. His eyes stung and he hung his head, letting the few tears that escaped patter onto the blood-slicked floor. Deep breaths drew up through his nose and escaped through his lips. Once. Twice. The shivering stopped and he could breathe again, and stand.
His hand found the light switch in the dark. The shadows fled, and he stood in the unsteady light, a man naked and vulnerable before an unmerciful mirror. There were no secrets here, no personal barriers, nothing hidden. The Lord could see him here, in his moment of greatest weakness. In this tiny room, with the mirror catching his every move, every blink, every glance, his scars were exposed. They ran up his arms, little lancing crescents of pale and pink tissue, to his shoulders and stopped, though there were a few on his chest and a notch of missing flesh at his hip.
Through the floor he could hear the roamer tied to his workshop table moaning and gnashing her teeth. Even after bolting the motors and metal bars to her, she fought against them, tried to spit out the speaker he’d put in her throat.
Shepherd pressed the palms of his hands to his sweating brow. He could walk away. He could leave. It would be so easy. No one would notice, much less care. His roamers would die eventually. So would he.
The temptation was strong, but it awoke something within him. His hands fell to his sides and he looked into his own eyes in the mirror.
With a sigh, Shepherd took up the lavender gift shop soap and scrubbed himself from head to toe, rinsing with the tub of water he’d carried over from the river. He dug his fingernails into the purple and pink-swirled bar, rubbed his skin raw with it, massaged it against his scalp and hair until his head ached. Refreshed, cleansed, and forgiven, he dressed and returned to the control room.
The Day the Saucers Came
Neil Gaiman
That Day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and
stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find out what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn’t notice because
That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because
On the saucer day, which was zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men’s nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because
On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods
day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true
brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across
the land and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because
That day, the saucer day, the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day, the
day the great winds came
And snows and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling
us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of
the Time Machine day,
You didn’t notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.
Love, Resurrected
Cat Rambo
General Aife Crofadottir was acknowledged the greatest military mind of her generation—perhaps even her century. No wonder then that the sorcerer Balthus recruited her early in her career, setting her to rally armies of Beasts and magically equipped soldiers, planning campaign after campaign, until finally he stood the ruler of a vast expanse of the continent’s northeastern corner. Once fertile lands, once countries, now only uncontested devastated territories.
Three years after her death, she still labored in his service.
Aife stood at the window of Balthus’s tower, looking out over the desolate countryside. Age and blight had stooped the apple trees dominating the view, and sticky webs clustered in the vees of the knobby branches. The dry grass tried to hold onto the dust, but here, as everywhere, drought and ash and the silty remnant of magic choked away all life. The chalky-white stones surrounding the dry well gleamed in the hostile sunlight.
Decades of sorcerous battle had warped the land. It was dead in patches, or so plagued by ghosts that no living soul could walk it and remain sane.
She rested her fingertips on the windowsill and contemplated her hand. The skin was gray and withered but still functioned. Sooner or later, Aife thought, it would rot away, despite Balthus’s preservative spells. What would happen then? Right now she could pass for a living but very ill person, could wrap herself in a cloak and whisper, make some claim to human company. What would happen when her bones began to show through?
Behind her, Balthus said, “You will become a skeleton, but one that walks and talks by magic means. The mere sight of you will strike fear in any heart. What a war leader you will be then, my darling!”
He touched her shoulder, closer than she had thought him. “You will make a beautiful skeleton. All clean-lined ivory. I will commission you a crown, gilt and amber, with the warhawk that shows you general.”
She was weary of him reading her mind.
At the thought, he removed his hand. “Is that what has concerned you lately? But I must know your mind, Aife, must be able to glimpse your plans in order to work to aid them.”
“Every creature in your employ,” she said, words thick. “I know, you must know them all.”
He let the room’s silence gather, then ventured, “Perhaps . . . ”
“Perhaps?”
She turned away from the window to contemplate him. She might be a monster, but he was little more: yellowed skin stretched drum-tight over his bones. His long, wispy hair was tied back with an embroidered ribbon the wrong color for the crimson robes he wore.
Blotches and scars marked his hands, the relics of past experiments. An olive-green patch covered the heel of one hand, an irregular oval resembling old mold or lichen.
He returned the gaze, eyes as glassy as an opium addict’s. What spells had he laid on himself, throughout the years? She wondered if he saw her as she truly was now. Or did he let the memory of her slip over it like a mask, making him see her when the blood still coursed through her veins, instead of the slow seepage it engaged in now, as though begrudging her body its energy?
“I will make you a charm,” he said. His voice was almost pleading. “One that keeps your thoughts hidden. No other man, woman, or Beast in my employ has that privilege. But I will give it to you.”
And with that promise, she gave him her hand, her gray and withered hand, and let him lead her to bed.
But again, she did not know whether he kissed her or the memory of what she had been to him.
He kept his promise. The next day, beside her on the pillow he had left at dawn, a silver chain coiled, holding a dark gem, darker than death or the loss of memory.
She put it around her neck and went to do his business.
Since her transformation, all living things shied away from her. She had become accustomed to that. But the Beasts accepted her more than the humans did. Most of them were creatures Balthus had created, sometimes by putting living things together to make something new, like the swan-winged woman that acted as scout and courier, or the great Catoblepas, blended of ox and wild pig and turtle and something Balthus would not name, whose breath withered whatever it struck. More often he transformed what he was given: stretching, pulling, augmenting, till something was created that the world had never seen before. If it showed promise that he could use it, he left it alive.
She did not seek the Beasts’ company deliberately, but rather, as a cat does, she would sit in a room where they were gathered, not part of the conversation, but letting it swirl around her. There but not there. It reminded her of long-ago barracks chatter, the taunts and gibes and affectionate mockery of fellow soldiers.
This day she sat in the corner near the fire, careful not to get too close, lest a spark singe her without her knowing, because her skin was dead now and only reported a little when pain struck it. Near her was the swan-woman, who they called Lytta, and the Minotaur who guarded the stables, a
nd a man-wolf who had once been one of her finest soldiers. He was the only one who had looked at her when she entered, his eyes glinting sly green in the firelight as he half-nodded. She had not returned the gesture.
“They say the Falcon is making inroads near Barbaruile,” Lytta said to the wolf-man, who had refused any name other than “Wolf.”
That news interested Aife. She had pursued the bandit chief who called himself the Falcon for almost a year now and found him a more than adequate challenge.
“What does he fight for?” the Minotaur demanded, his voice as heavy as a sack of gravel. “He leaves things worse than they are, with no sorcerer to look out over the land.”
“He must have magic of his own,” Lytta said. “Look at how he has escaped capture, again and again.”
“They say it is no magic,” Wolf said, “but rather something that dispels magic.”
Aife had spent much time contemplating the same question. What was the source of the Falcon’s success? Spies sent to gather information never returned. Were never heard from again. Subverted or killed? She hoped, for their sake, that it had been the latter. When Balthus finally captured the Falcon—it was inevitable—he would take him and all his allies and make new things of them, things that they would not enjoy being.
Any more than she enjoyed the life he had given her.
When she had first opened her eyes after her death, all she saw was Balthus’s face, like the full moon in the sky above her. She had shuddered then, not understanding why she continued to breathe.
She remembered dying. She remembered the cannonball slamming into her, the broken knitting needles of her ribs, bright stitches of pain sewing her a garment. Reeling back on unsteady legs—something in her spine was wrong, was numb. Slipping away, like retreating into sleep, defeated but not unhappily by dreams. It had been so restful.
She realized she no longer had to breathe.
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