I look at the bulging wall of bones, and my nerve fails: I cut the Teflon shield free, cover my face, and launch myself as fast as I can through the floating charred bodies that fill the corridor, desperate to escape.
Which brings us to the present, Lamashtu, sister-mine.
I’ve got your soul—half of it—loaded in the back of my head. I’ve been dreaming of you, dreaming within you, for days now.
In an hour’s time I am going to take my toolkit and go outside, onto the hull of the Lansford Hastings, under the slowly moving stars.
I’m going to go into your maze and follow the trail of pipes and coolant ducts home to the Number Six reactor, and I’m going to force my way into the reactor containment firewall and through the neutron shield. And I’m going to strip away every piece of heavily shielded metal I can get my hands on, and carry it back to you. When you’re better, when you’re back to yourself and more than a hungry bag of rawhead reflexes, you can join me. It’ll go faster then. We can help the others—
I’m running out of wall to scribble on; anyway, this is taking too long and besides, I’m feeling a little hungry myself.
Goodbye, sister. Sleep tight. Don’t let any strangers in.
About the Authors
Joanne Anderton lives in Sydney with her husband and too many pets. By day she is a mild-mannered marketing coordinator for an Australian book distributor; by night she writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her short story collection, The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories, won the Aurealis Award for Best Collection, and the Australian Shadows Award for Best Collected Work. She has published The Veiled Worlds Trilogy: Debris, Suited, and Guardian. She has been shortlisted for multiple Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and won the 2012 Ditmar for Best New Talent. You can find her online at joanneanderton.com.
Michael A. Arnzen’s latest experiments in horror include a treasury of micropoetry (The Gorelets Omnibus), a set of horror-oriented refrigerator magnets (The Fridge of the Damned), and a web app for writers on the dark side (diaboliquestrategies.com). He is the recipient of four Bram Stoker Awards for his fiction, and is currently serving as Division Chair of Humanities at Seton Hill University, home of the MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. Visit him at gorelets.com.
Marie Brennan is the author of nine novels, including the series Memoirs of Lady Trent: A Natural History of Dragons, The Tropic of Serpents, and the upcoming Voyage of the Basilisk, as well as more than forty short stories. More information can be found at swantower.com.
Mike Carey is the author of the Felix Castor novels, The Girl With All the Gifts, and (along with Linda and Louise Carey) The Steel Seraglio. He has also written extensively for comics publishers DC and Marvel, including long runs on X-Men, Hellblazer, and Ultimate Fantastic Four. He wrote the comic book Lucifer for its entire run and is the co-creator and writer of the ongoing Vertigo series The Unwritten.
Jacques L. Condor (Maka Tai Meh, his given First Nations tribal name) is a French-Canadian Native American of the Abenaki-Mesquaki tribes. He has lived in major cities, small towns, and bush villages in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest for fifty-plus years. He taught at schools, colleges, museums, and on reserves about the culture, history, and arts of his tribes for twenty years as part of the federal government’s Indian education programs. Now eighty-five, Condor writes short stories and novellas based on the legends and tales of both Natives and the “oldtime” sourdoughs and pioneers. He has published five books on Alaska. Recently, his work appeared in five anthologies: Icefloes, Northwest Passages, A Cascadian Odyssey, Queer Dimensions, Queer Gothic Tales, and Dead North.
Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books for readers of all ages, including the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and Make Good Art, the text of a commencement speech he delivered at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts. His most recent book for younger readers is Fortunately, the Milk. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, his most recent novel for adults, was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. He is the recipient of numerous literary honors, including the Locus and Hugo Awards and the Newbery and Carnegie Medals.
Roxane Gay’s writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Salon, The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy culture blog, and many others. She is the co-editor of PANK and essays editor for The Rumpus. She teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University. Her novel, An Untamed State, was recently published (Grove Atlantic) as was her essay collection, Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial).
Ron Goulart has been a professional author for several decades and has over one hundred-eighty books to his credit, including more than fifty science fiction novels and twenty-some mystery novels. He is considered a leading authority on comic books, comic strips, and pulp fiction—subjects about which he has written extensively. Goulart’s After Things Fell Apart (1970) is the only science-fiction novel to ever win an Edgar Award.
Eric Gregory lives in Carrboro, North Carolina. His stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction, and elsewhere. Find him online at ericmg.comor and on Twitter at @ericgregory.
William Jablonsky’s first collection of short fiction, The Indestructible Man: Stories, was published by Livingston Press in April 2005. His second book, the novel The Clockwork Man, was released by Medallion Press in September 2010, and republished by Grey Oak (India) in the summer of 2012. His short stories have appeared in many literary journals and magazines, including Asimov’s, Shimmer, Phoebe, and The Florida Review. He teaches at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.
Shaun Jeffrey was brought up in a house in a cemetery, so it was only natural for his prose to stray towards the dark side when he started writing. Among his writing credits are stories published in Surreal Magazine, Dark Discoveries, Shadowed Realms, and Cemetery Dance. He has had two collections published, The Mutilation Machination and Voyeurs of Death, as well as five novels: The Kult, Killers, Deadfall, Fangtooth, and Evilution. The Kult has been filmed by Gharial Productions. When not spending time with his family or writing, he works out at the gym, jogs, does Krav Maga, and is a Taekwondo black belt.
Matthew Johnson lives with his wife and two sons in Ottawa, where he works as Director of Education for MediaSmarts, Canada’s center for digital and media literacy. Irregular Verbs and Other Stories, a collection of his short fiction, was published in 2014 by ChiZine Publications. You can follow his work at irregularverbs.ca or on Twitter at @irregularverbal.
Stephen Graham Jones is the author of twenty novels, five story collections, and over two hundred short stories. His most recent novels are Not for Nothing and The Gospel of Z; his latest collections are: After the People Lights Have Gone Off and Zombie Sharks With Metal Teeth. Jones has been a Stoker finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, an NEA fellow, and won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for fiction. He teaches in the MFA program at CU Boulder and UCR-Palm Desert.
Joy Kennedy-O’Neill teaches English at Brazosport College on the Texas coast. Her works have appeared in Strange Horizons, The New Orleans Review, and anthologies such as What Wildness is This: Women Write the Southwest.
The New York Times recently hailed Caitlín R. Kiernan as “one of our essential writers of dark fiction.” Her novels include The Red Tree (nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards) and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the Bram Stoker Award, nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Jackson, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Mythopoeic awards). To date, her short fiction has been collected in thirteen volumes, most recently Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One), and The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories. A fourteenth, Benea
th An Oil-Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume Two) is forthcoming. Currently, she’s writing the graphic novel series Alabaster for Dark Horse Comics and has just finished her next novel, Cherry Bomb.
Nicole Kornher-Stace lives in New Paltz, NY. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Best American Fantasy, Clockwork Phoenix 3 and 4, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, Apex, and Fantasy Magazine. She is the author of Desideria, Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties, and The Winter Triptych. Her latest novel, Archivist Wasp, is forthcoming from Big Mouth House, Small Beer Press’s YA imprint, in late 2014. She can be found online at nicolekornherstace.com.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His novella, Bubba Ho-tep, was made into an award-winning film, as was Incident On and Off a Mountain Road. His mystery classic Cold in July inspired the recent major motion picture of the same name starring Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, and Don Johnson. Novel The Bottoms will soon be filmed, directed by Bill Paxton. His works have received numerous recognitions, including the Edgar, eight Bram Stoker awards, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, American Mystery Award, International Horror Guild Award, British Fantasy Award, and many others. His most recent novel for adults, The Thicket, was published last fall.
Shira Lipkin’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Stone Telling, Clockwork Phoenix 4, and other wonderful magazines and anthologies; two of her stories have been recognized as Million Writers Award Notable Stories, and she has won the Rhysling Award for best short poem. She lives in Boston and, in her spare time, fights crime with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. Her cat is bigger than her dog.
David Liss is the author of eight novels, most recently The Day of Atonement. His previous bestselling books include The Coffee Trader and The Ethical Assassin, both of which are being developed as films, and A Conspiracy of Paper, which is now being developed for television. Liss has written for numerous comics series including Mystery Men, Sherlock Holmes: Moriarty Lives, and Angelica Tomorrow. His website is davidliss.com.
Jonathan Maberry is a Bram Stoker Award-winning author, writing teacher, and motivational speaker. Among his novels are Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man’s Song, Bad Moon Rising, and Patient Zero. Fire & Ash, fourth in the Benny Imura series, was published last year; Fall of Night, sequel to Dead of Night, was has just been released. His seventh Joe Ledger novel, Predator One, will be out spring 2015. He is co-editor of the anthology Redneck Zombies From Outer Space and editor of the forthcoming dark fantasy anthology, Out of Tune. His has written comics and non-fiction works as well.
Alex Dally MacFarlane is a writer, editor, and historian. When not researching narrative maps in the legendary traditions of Alexander III of Macedon, she writes stories that can be found in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Phantasm Japan, Solaris Rising 3, Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014, and other publications. Poetry can be found in Stone Telling, The Moment of Change, and Here, We Cross. She is the editor of Aliens: Recent Encounters (2013), and The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (2014).
Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York City; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles. She is the author of two collections, Mothers & Other Monsters (a Story Prize finalist) and After the Apocalypse: Stories (a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Best of the Year) as well as four novels, including China Mountain Zhang (winner of the Tiptree Award) and Nekropolis (a New York Times Editor’s Choice). She received a Hugo Award for her short story “The Lincoln Train.” McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.
Joe McKinney has been a patrol officer for the San Antonio Police Department, a homicide detective, a disaster mitigation specialist, a patrol commander, and a successful novelist. His books include the four-part Dead World series, as well as Quarantined, Inheritance, Lost Girl of the Lake, The Savage Dead, Crooked House, and Dodging Bullets. His short fiction has been collected in The Red Empire and Other Stories and Dating in Dead World. His latest works include the werewolf thriller, Dog Days, set in the summer of 1983 in the little Texas town of Clear Lake, where the author grew up, and Plague of the Undead (Book One in the Deadlands Saga). In 2011, McKinney received the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. For more information: joemckinney.wordpress.com.
Lisa Mannetti’s debut novel, The Gentling Box, garnered a Bram Stoker Award and she has since been nominated three times for the award in both the short and long fiction categories. Her story, “Everybody Wins,” was made into a short film released under the title Bye-Bye Sally. Her novella, “Dissolution,” is currently being adapted for the screen as a feature-length movie by writer/director, Paul Leyden. She has also authored The New Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn; two companion novellas in Deathwatch; a macabre gag book, 51 Fiendish Ways to Leave Your Lover; as well as nonfiction books and numerous nonfiction articles. Mannetti lives in New York. Visit her website lisamannetti.com and virtual haunted house: thechanceryhouse.com.
Tamsyn Muir is based in Auckland, New Zealand, where she divides her time between writing, teaching, and dogs. A graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop 2010, her work has previously appeared in Fantasy, Nightmare, and Weird Tales, as well as in anthologies such as Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year (Volume 5) and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s The Time Traveler’s Almanac. She was a 2012 finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Fiction.
Holly Newstein’s short fiction has appeared in Cemetery Dance and the anthologies Borderlands 5, The New Dead, In Laymon’s Terms, Epitaphs: The Journal of the New England Horror Writers Association, and Evil Jester Digest, Volume 2. Her collaboration with Rick Hautala, “Trapper Boy” appeared in anthology Dark Duets, edited by Christopher Golden (Harper Voyager, 2014). Her story “Eight Minutes” was part of Anthology II (The Four Horsemen Press, 2013). She was the featured author in the June 2014 edition of LampLight Magazine, with her story “Shadows and Light.” She is also the coauthor of the novels Ashes and The Epicure with Ralph W. Bieber, published originally under the pen name H. R. Howland. She lives in Maine with her dogs, Keira and Remy.
Cat Rambo may be anywhere at a given time. Her two hundred-plus fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and Tor.com. Her short story, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012. For more about Rambo, as well as links to her fiction, see kittywumpus.net.
Carrie Ryan is the New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Forest of Hands and Teeth series, which has been translated into over eighteen languages and is in development as a major motion picture. She is also the editor of the anthology Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction, as well as author of Infinity Ring: Divide and Conquer, the second book in Scholastic’s new multi-author/multi-platform series for middle grade readers. Her most recent book—co-written with her husband, JP Davis—is The Map to Everywhere, the first of a new middle grade series. Ryan is a graduate of Williams College and Duke University School of Law. A former litigator, she now writes full time. She lives with her writer/lawyer husband, two fat cats, and one large rescue mutt in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can find her online at carrieryan.com or @CarrieRyan.
Marge Simon’s works appear in publications such as Strange Horizons, Niteblade, DailySF Magazine, Pedestal, and Dreams & Nightmares. She edits a column for the HWA newsletter, “Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side,” and serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees. She won the Strange Horizons Readers Choice Award 2010, and the SFPA’s Dwarf Stars Award 2012. In addition to her poetry, she has published two prose collections: Christina’s World (Sam’s Dot, 2008) and Like Bi
rds in the Rain (Sam’s Dot, 2007). She won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Work in Poetry for Vectors: A Week in the Death of a Planet (Dark Regions Press, 2008) and again in 2013 for Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls (Elektrik Milk Bath Press).
Maggie Slater hails from the snow-crusted woods of New England where she lives with her husband and son. Her fiction has appeared in Fantastical Visions IV, Dark Futures: Tales of SF Dystopia, and Leading Edge Magazine, among others. She currently moonlights as an assistant editor for Apex Magazine, and formats books for Apex Publications. For more information about her and her current projects, visit her blog at maggiedot.wordpress.com.
Simon Strantzas is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections Beneath the Surface (2008), Cold to the Touch (2009), Nightingale Songs (2011), and Burnt Black Suns—published in 2014 by Hippocampus Press. His fiction has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award, and has appeared in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, the Black Wings series, Nightmare, Postscripts, Cemetery Dance, and elsewhere. He was born in the cold darkness of the Canadian winter and has resided in Toronto, Canada ever since.
Charles Stross is a British SF writer, born in Leeds, England, and living in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has worked as a tech writer, a programmer, a journalist, and a pharmacist; he holds degrees in Pharmacy and in Computer Science. He has won two Hugo Awards for his short fiction. Among Stross’s more recent novels are The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens (in his Merchant Princes series), The Apocalypse Codex (part of the Laundry series of novels and stories), Rule 34, The Rapture of the Nerds (with Cory Doctorow), and, published earlier this year, The Rhesus Chart.
Zombies-More Recent Dead Page 59
