The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  It was as empty as he’d left it, hole in the back wall and all. He locked the door and slumped to the floor. He couldn’t believe the lights had thrown him so much. He had mapped out better defenses against zombies than anyone else on the planet, but it didn’t matter anymore.

  The rotter had bitten him.

  On the upper part of his arm, a few inches above the elbow. If only he’d worn one of his leather jackets, or if the other zombie hadn’t ripped off his sleeve. If only…but it had been so warm this morning. Global warming: the zombie’s stealth ally.

  He traced the bite mark with his fingers. It wasn’t much. Skin barely broken. And these were Scenario VII Zombies. Maybe they didn’t transmit through biting. Maybe….

  But his whole arm was going numb, and despite his terror, his heart was beating far too slowly. No, this was clearly Scenario VIIC: Sorcery or Demonic Influence Transferred by Bodily Fluids. It was only a matter of time.

  Ronald was realistic enough not to mope. It might be possible to decapitate himself with something in the supply room, but–some side effect of the infection?–he couldn’t bring himself to try. There had to be something. Something to show the survivors that he hadn’t been caught unprepared. That, despite his misfortune, he was a man who knew his zombies.

  He searched for a bit, found a small tool box in the supply room, and finally knew what to do. Not as dramatic as decapitation, but the survivors might see him, recognize him as a man with foresight and planning. A far worthier immortality than being undead.

  * * *

  It was getting harder to concentrate, but once he set up his grip, they’d wiggle out without much effort. He pulled another and another, until only his top molar was left. He yanked, crushing the enamel somewhat, but still getting it out, root and all.

  He flipped the last tooth and the pliers into the sink. His vision was beginning to cloud over, but his gums were empty. He gave himself a bloody grin in the mirror. Hell may be full and the dead walking the earth, but he refused to be part of the problem. He had more foresight than that, and they’d all be grateful when they saw his walking, toothless corpse.

  Whoever found him would know that, even if Ronald T. Turner had been unlucky as hell, he had damn well–damn well–been prepared.

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  Contents

  Begin Reading

  By Pat Murphy

  I’m on my way to the train station when I find a mirror leaning against a chain link fence. People often abandon stuff on this street, figuring that someone who wants it will take it away. And someone usually does. San Francisco has many scavengers.

  The mirror, a circle of glass about the size of a dinner plate, is framed with pale wood. The wood is weathered, soft against my hand as I pick up it and peer into the glass. My reflection is silvery gray in the morning light.

  My car is parked just a few feet away. My bedroom, high in the attic of my father’s house, needs a mirror. I figure it’s serendipity that I have found this one. I put the mirror in the trunk of my car and hurry toward the station.

  The first time I went looking for the train station at 22nd Street and Pennsylvania I passed it three times before I finally found it. I think of it as a secret train station. There’s just a small sign by the bridge on 22nd Street. Beside the sign is long flight of steps leading down, down, down to train tracks that run along a narrow ravine squeezed between Iowa Street and Pennsylvania Street. A concrete platform beside the tracks, a couple of benches, and a ticket machine—that’s the station.

  As always, I stop on the 22nd street bridge and look down at the tracks. They’re about twenty feet below the bridge—a big enough drop to break your leg, I’d guess. Probably not enough to kill you, unless you dove over the edge and landed on your head.

  As I walk down the steps, I look up. Far above me, the freeway crosses over 22nd Street and the train tracks—a soaring concrete arc supported by massive gray columns on either side of the tracks. Morning sunlight slips through the gap between the bottom of the freeway and Indiana Street to shine on a patch of graffiti that decorates the base of one column. The great swirls of color are letters, I think, but I can’t read what they say. Whatever the message, it’s not for me.

  As I wait for my train, I watch swallows flying to and fro, carrying food to their chicks. The birds have built nests on the underside of the freeway. They don’t seem to care that semis and SUVs are thundering over them at 70 miles per hour.

  When I return in the evening, I’ll hear frogs chirping in the stream that runs in a gully just behind the benches. Beside the stream is a tiny marsh where rushes grow.

  I like this forgotten bit of wild land, hidden away beneath the city streets.

  * * *

  My name is Jennifer. I am on my way to a toy company in Redwood City to have a meeting about fairies.

  I met the company’s founder at an art opening and he said he liked the way I think. I was a double major in art and anthropology, and we had had a long conversation (fueled by cheap white wine) about the dark side of children’s stories. As I recall, I talked a lot about Tinkerbell, who tried to murder Wendy more than once. (My still-unfinished PhD dissertation is a cross-cultural analysis of the role of wicked women in children’s literature, and I count Tinkerbell is right up there among the wicked.)

  Anyway, he hired me to be part of his company’s product development department. He told me he liked to toss people into the mix to see what happened.

  After he hired me, I found out that he had a habit of hiring people for no clearly defined job, then firing them when they didn’t do their job. He hired me, then left for a month’s vacation. He is still gone. I wasn’t sure what my job was when I reported to work three weeks ago. I still don’t know. But this is the first steady paycheck I’ve had in a couple of years and I’m determined to make sure that something positive happens.

  Today, I’m going to a meeting about fairies.

  Tiffany is the project manager. We met by the coffee maker on my first day. While we were waited for the coffee to brew, I found out what she was working on and chatted with her about it. She invited me to come to a few team meetings to “provide input.”

  The company is creating a line of Twinkle Fairy Dolls. Among three to six year-old girls, fairies of the gossamer-wing variety are a very hot topic. That’s what the marketing guy said, anyway. He was at the first meeting I attended, but he hasn’t been back since.

  Each Twinkle Fairy doll will come with a unique Internet code that lets the owner enter the on-line fairyland that Tiffany’s team is developing. In that world, the doll’s owner will have her own fairy home that she can furnish with fairy furniture. She will have a fairy avatar that she can dress with fairy clothes.

  It’s a rather consumer-oriented fairyland. Players purchase their furniture and clothes with fairy dollars – or would that be fairy gold? And if it’s fairy gold, will it wither into dead leaves in the light of day?

  These are questions I do not ask at the meeting.

  Today the question that Tiffany wants to address is: what sort of world do the fairies live in? Is it a forest world where they frolic in leafy groves and shelter from the misty rain under mushroom caps? Or is it a fairy village with cobblestone streets and thatched huts, maybe surrounding a fairy castle? Or is it some mixture of the two?

  “Why don’t we just ask marketing what they want?” says Rocky, the web developer. The temperature is supposed to
top 100 today, but Rocky is wearing black jeans, black boots, and a black t-shirt from a robot wars competition. He strolled into the meeting late without apology, his eyebrows (right one pierced in three places) lowered in a scowl. He wants to look surly, but his face is sweet and soft and boyish and he can’t quite pull it off.

  I suspect Rocky is not happy to be on the fairy project. Tiffany mentioned that another team is working on a line of remote control monster trucks. I think Rocky would rather be developing an online Monster Truck World.

  Tiffany shakes her head. Her hair is very short and very blonde and very messy. She’s in her late 20s and tends to wear designer jeans, baby-doll tops, and mary janes. “We want to be authentic,” she says.

  Jane, the project’s art director, stares at her. “Authentic? We’re talking about fairies here. In case you didn’t know, there aren’t any fairies.” Jane can be a little cranky.

  I step in to help Tiffany. She’s kind of a ditz, but I like her and she seems to be in charge of some important projects. A useful person to befriend. “I think Tiffany means that we want our fairies to match the child’s concept of fairies. We want them to feel authentic.”

  “Sherlock Holmes believed in fairies,” says Tiffany. “Isn’t that what you told me the other day?”

  Did I say “kind of a ditz”? Make that “entirely a ditz.” “Not quite,” I correct her, trying to be gentle. “Arthur Conan Doyle, the author who wrote Sherlock Holmes, believed in fairies. Back in 1917, two little girls took pictures of fairies in their garden, and Doyle was certain that the photos were real.”

  “What were they?” asks Jane. “Swamp gas?”

  “Much simpler than that,” I say. “About 60 years later, one of the girls – in her 80s by that time—admitted that she had cut the drawings of fairies out of a book, posed the cutouts in the garden with her friend, and taken the photos.”

  “Arthur Conan Doyle was fooled by paper cutouts?” Jane is intrigued.

  “People believe what they want to believe,” I say.

  “I’m thinking of something like Neverland in Peter Pan,” Tiffany says. She has moved on. A ditz, but a ditz with a goal. “Somewhere with lots of hidden, secret places.” In Tiffany’s world, secrets are wonderful and fun. “And it’s filled with beautiful, sweet fairies with gossamer wings. Like Tinkerbell.”

  Rocky snorts. “Sweet?” he says. “Tinkerbell was never sweet.”

  Surprised, I stare at him. He’s right. In the book, Peter Pan, Tinkerbell was a jealous little pixie who swore like a sailor and did her best to get Wendy killed more than once. I didn’t think Rocky would know that.

  * * *

  After the meeting, I go to the balcony for a smoke. The balcony—a narrow walkway just outside the windows of the cafeteria—is the smokers’ corner. In California, smoking has been banished from restaurants, offices, and bars. You can smoke in your own home, but just barely. Filthy habit, people say. Bad for your health. And second-hand smoke is dangerous for others, too.

  I smoke three, maybe four, cigarettes a day. Not so much. I figure you have to die sometime. I take a drag, feeling the buzz.

  At the edge of the balcony there’s a brick wall topped by a waist-high rail, an inadequate barrier between me and the sheer drop to the street. I lean on the rail and look down. Five floors down.

  I hear the door open behind me. “Those things will kill you,” Rocky says. He is tapping a cigarette from a pack. He leans against the railing beside me, looking down. “Just far enough to be fatal,” he says.

  He’s not quite right. You can survive a fall from five stories if you hit a parked car. The car gives just enough to cushion your fall. I know. I’ve done research.

  “I was impressed at how well you know Peter Pan,” I tell him. “Most people only know the Disney version.”

  He almost smiles. “The Disney version has no balls,” he says.

  I laugh.

  Rocky’s scowl returns. “What’s so funny?”

  “Hey, it’s a long tradition,” I say. “Starting with the play where Mary Martin played Peter. Peter Pan doesn’t have any balls.”

  He doesn’t smile. I’m sorry about that. For a moment there, I kind of liked him.

  * * *

  Late that night, I sit on my bed, re-reading Peter Pan. When I was ten, the year after my mother died, a friend of my father gave me a copy. The woman who gave it to me, one of a series of unsuitable women Dad dated, was under the mistaken impression that it was a children’s book. I read it with horrified fascination.

  Disney made Peter Pan into a jolly movie with just enough adventures to be cheerfully scary. The book is not like that. Neverland is not all sunshine and frolic. Beneath every adventure lurks a deep and frightening darkness. Peter Pan was fascinating and terrifying. He was indifferent to human life. “There’s a pirate asleep in the pampas just below us,” he says. “If you like, we’ll go down and kill him.” Death is an adventure, Peter Pan says, and nothing is better than that.

  One of my cats makes a sound and I look up from the book to see what’s bothering him. The mirror that I found near the train station is leaning against the far wall. My cat, Flash, stares in the direction of the mirror, his ears forward, his tail twitching.

  Everyone knows that there are things that only cats can see. In my house, Flash is the cat that watches those invisible things. He frequently gives his full attention to a patch of empty air for hours at a time.

  Godzilla, the other cat, usually can’t be bothered with such nonsense. But tonight Godzilla has taken up a post beside Flash, staring at the same emptiness.

  “What’s up, guys?” I ask them. But they just keep staring in the direction of the mirror that I found on my way to the train station. They are vigilant, concerned. They don’t trust this mirror.

  I pick the mirror up and set it on top of the bureau. Flash jumps on top of the bureau where he continues to watch the mirror with great suspicion.

  The phone rings.

  It’s Johnny, the owner of the board-and-care home where my father has lived for the past six months. Whenever I stop by to visit, Johnny tells me how Dad has been doing and fills me in on details that I don’t particularly want to know. I have learned about the need for stool softeners and socks with no-skid soles. I have discussed the merits of different varieties of walkers (one called, without irony, the “Merry Walker”).

  My father was once an archeologist. My father was once a member of Mensa. My father was once a very smart, very sarcastic, somewhat hostile man. Of all those attributes, only the sarcasm and hostility remain.

  A few weeks ago, when I was visiting Dad, Johnny told me that my father had threatened to kick one of the other residents in the balls.

  “He gets very angry,” Johnny told me. “It’s the Alzheimer’s.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t really the Alzheimer’s. Dad had never suffered fools gladly. He considered most people to be fools. And he was always threatening to kick some fool in the balls.

  I think Dad became an archeologist because dead people didn’t talk back. Living people were far too troublesome.

  Johnny prefers to blame my father’s idiosyncrasies on Alzheimer’s. Johnny is a sweet guy who chooses to believe that people are inherently nice. But tonight, Johnny is facing a challenge. “Your father won’t stop talking,” he says.

  I can hear my father’s voice in the background, but I can’t make out the words.

  “He’s been at it for two hours. I’ve told him that it’s time for bed, but he won’t stop.” Johnny sounds very tired.

  “Let me talk to him,” I tell Johnny.

  I hear my father as Johnny approaches him. He is delivering a lecture on burial customs. “A barrow is a home for the dead,” he is saying. “In its chamber or chambers the tenant is surrounded with possessions from his life.”

  “Your daughter needs to talk to you,” Johnny says.

  Dad doesn’t even pause. “A shaman would be buried with his scrying mirror; a warrior wi
th his weapons,” he continues. “A fence or trench separates the barrow from the surrounding world.”

  “It’s important,” Johnny says. “She really needs to talk to you.”

  “Yes?” my father growls into the phone. His tone is that of a busy man, needlessly interrupted. “I’m teaching just now.”

  “This is Jennifer, your daughter. I called to tell you that it’s late. Class is over.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is your daughter. You’re running late. It’s time for class to be over.”

  “I was just wrapping up.”

  “You’d better let the students go.” Wrapping up could take hours. “They have to study for finals.”

  “They’d better study.” His voice is that of a demanding instructor. Then a pause.

  “I have to get ready myself,” he says, as if suddenly remembering something.

  “Get ready? For what?”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  Several times over the last few months, my father has mentioned that he is going on a trip. Sometimes he’s going to an important excavation. Sometimes he’s leaving because the conference he was attending is over. Sometimes he’s not sure where he’s going. I’ve learned not to ask.

  “You can pack in the morning,” I say. “You’ll have time then.”

  “All right,” he says. “In the morning.”

  In the morning, he will remember none of this.

  * * *

  While I’m waiting for the train at the 22nd Street Station, I walk along the tiny stream that’s just a few steps away from the concrete platform. It’s a muddy trickle, enclosed in a culvert for part of its length, then widening to shallow puddles that support clumps of wild iris surrounded by pigweed.