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

by Various

“Bastard!” Henry screamed, and Donnie didn’t wait to see what damage the second shot did. He turned, running as fast as he could with Joan slung over his shoulder. There was a whipcrack, something buzzing past his ear, so hot it felt like ice, thudding into the trunk of a pine. He wove between the trees, hearing Kreuz loose another three shots.

  Donnie crashed into cover, letting Joan slide to the ground. Idiot! he screamed at himself. He should have seen it coming, he should have listened to the others. Idiot idiot idiot! They couldn’t be dead, not Mike, not Henry, not after everything they’d been through.

  “Come out and play, ami,” Kreuz called. There was a roar as he fired the MG 42, branches and leaves disintegrating. Pieces of bark flew from the tree that Donnie was hiding behind, embedding themselves in his skin. He reached for his rifle before remembering he’d left it behind, going instead for Joan’s Webley, trying not to notice how cool her skin was. Kreuz’s feet scuffed the ground as he stalked, his voice high and musical and full of malice. “Come out and play, meine Freunde. I’m waiting.”

  Donnie edged out for an instant, the machine gun spraying out rounds, forcing him back.

  “You can’t hide from me,” said Kreuz.

  “I let you free,” Donnie said, even though he knew there could be no reasoning with him, no bargaining, no chance of mercy. “I gave you a gun.”

  “No, you didn’t,” he replied. “I overpowered you, stole your weapon, killed your entire squad and the Nazi traitors who sided with you.” He giggled. “At least that is what I will tell my superiors. That is what the world will think happened. And you…I think you will beg for your life, offer up secrets, betray your nation. I think you will beg like Schwein in story I tell.”

  Kreuz fired again, and a ricochet slammed into Donnie’s shin. He grunted, the pain like a white-hot needle beneath the bone.

  “And your Hure,” the boy said. “Oh, the tales I will tell about her. When I have finished she will be disowned by everybody who ever ca—”

  Kreuz fell silent. Donnie cocked his head, trying to hear past the hurricane of his pulse. There was a thump, something falling to the ground, then the sound of the boy being violently sick.

  Donnie was about to risk peeking out from the tree again when he felt it too—like a punch to the gut. He doubled up, feeling as though somebody had their hands inside him, dirty fingers that pushed between his organs, moving up his throat into the flesh of his brain. His whole body tensed, rigor mortis hard, as though trying to force a poison from his system.

  He curled into himself, knowing that whatever was coming now was infinitely worse than the night children. He dropped the gun, taking Joan’s cold hand, just wanting to feel someone there beside him. He could almost feel it getting closer, every footstep stamping on his chest, so much stronger than his own flimsy, panicked heartbeat. Somewhere a tree fell, as though there were tanks moving this way. But there were no engines, no squealing caterpillar tracks. Aside from Kreuz’s pitiful sobs the forest was once again as quiet as the dead, as if even it was afraid of what approached.

  “Nein,” Kreuz said. “Nein nein nein.”

  The voice that answered the boy was vast and ageless, loud enough to crush Donnie’s thoughts to crumbs.

  Who are you to murder my children?

  It rang between Donnie’s ears, making blood gush from his nose; the words at once a scream and a shout and a sigh. He couldn’t even be sure that they had been spoken, the voice seeming to come from the deepest part of his own mind. He wrapped his arms around his head, would have put the Webley to his own temple and pulled the trigger rather than face whatever crunched its way through the trees, whatever spoke in that world-ending whisper—only nothing in him seemed to work anymore. He just gripped Joan’s hand as hard as he was able.

  It was Kázán, he understood, remembering Gyorgy’s story. It was Furnace, the man who drank from demons.

  Who are you to murder my children? it asked again, and this time the words brought images with them, flashes of broken bone and rent flesh, gas masks over toothless maws, syringes full of liquid darkness and those same broken babies with inkwells for eyes. They cut into him like scalpels, those pictures, never long enough to make sense of but each one taking a little piece of him away with it.

  Then they stopped, and Donnie realized the entity—it was the only word he had for this—had stopped, too, on the edge of the clearing. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, just as he knew it was casting out its dark touch, scouring the forest for life. He hunkered into himself, ordering his mind to stay blank, stay quiet, but unable to mute the words that screamed don’t see me don’t see me don’t see me in time with his jackhammering pulse.

  I see you, it replied. Did you do this?

  “Nein,” said Kreuz. “Nein, bitte, please.”

  Come to me.

  Donnie could hear Kreuz’s boots scuffing the ground as he got up, footsteps crossing the clearing toward whatever lay on the other side of it. He could feel something tug inside him, a hook in his skull, and he was standing, too, before he even realized it. He grabbed the tree with his free hand, hugging it with every ounce of strength he possessed, fighting the irresistible urge to follow the voice.

  You killed my children, yes?

  “Ja,” he heard Kreuz say. Yes. Did he hear the voice in German?

  You killed these other men?

  “Ja.” A broken record.

  You did this alone?

  Donnie waited for it, for Kreuz to give up his position. That pressure still felt its way around his thoughts, softer now, unsure, and his heart leapt as he thought, It doesn’t know I’m here, not for sure. He gripped the tree even tighter, not even daring to pray in silence in case it heard him.

  “Ja,” said Kreuz.

  How old are you, boy?

  “Siebzehn,” said Kreuz. Seventeen.

  And can you keep your house in order?

  “Ja,” There was something else in Kreuz’s voice now, alongside the fear. Awe, maybe, or rapture.

  What is your name?

  “Kreuz,” he answered. And how apt it was, Donnie thought, that his name meant Cross.

  Will you accept my gift? the voice asked, and Kreuz laughed, a shrill giggle full of madness.

  “Ja,” he said.

  The entity smiled. Donnie knew because once again his head was full of rot, of ruin, of rancid glee. He pushed his face against the bark, holding back a scream that threatened to burst free of his throat.

  Come with me, the voice said, and there was a splintering of trees as something huge shifted its bulk, moving away. Come with me, Kreuz, and share my gift.

  That request—no, that command—was so powerful that Donnie stepped from behind the tree. He could not stop himself, could not even close his eyes; he stumbled out and gazed across the clearing into the darkness of the trees beyond and saw it there, a gaping abyss in the sanity and reality of the universe. It turned away, its flickering darkness tearing a hole in everything it touched, like burning celluloid, as if it was erasing the world around it.

  It doesn’t see me, Donnie thought, but it doesn’t matter because I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it and it’s taken away the most important part of me, it will leave me empty.

  Come with me, it said again. Kreuz was following the darkness, and Donnie took a step, too. Then he felt something pull him back, a cold, stiff hand around his own. He looked down to where Joan lay, dead, and that was enough. He collapsed to his knees beside her, feeling the pain leave his head, sliding free from his thoughts like a snake tail as the entity and its new child vanished between the trees.

  They lay together, like Hansel and Gretel. They lay together, the living and the dead, in the cold, silent morning. We’ll lie here together forever, thought Donnie, because how could he ever find the will to move again? But it was okay, at least he wouldn’t be alone. She was here with him, and maybe she’d be waiting, too, maybe when winter finally took him—and it would not be long—they could move on arm
in arm to whatever lay beyond the forest. They lay together as the snow began to fall, doing its best to cover up the evidence of what had happened. They lay together as the light began to fade and the night started to crowd in.

  He didn’t know how he felt it, but he did, something sharp digging into his leg. It took him an age to acknowledge it, and another to work up the energy to slide a hand into his pocket. When he pulled it free again he saw it held a letter, Joan’s letter, To my darling William.

  “I promised,” he said to Joan, and her beautiful, white, porcelain face said, Yes, you did.

  So he pushed himself to his feet, leaning against the tree to stop himself falling. He couldn’t take her with him, not this time, but he didn’t think she’d mind so long as he made it back with her letter.

  He set off, uneasy at first but finding strength with every step. He counted them, smiling after the first hundred, laughing after the first thousand, and by the time he lost track he was running through the forest, howling like a wolf as the trees began to thin, as the darkening sky opened up, until suddenly he was running through a meadow. He tripped, fell, his legs and his stomach cramping. He didn’t care, the grass like silk against his face, the snow falling in gentle flakes.

  I’ll take your letter home, he told Joan. Then I’ll find Betty, my Sweet Betty Marmalade, and this time I’ll be brave. This time I’ll tell her.

  He struggled up, looking once at the forest, which sat like a dark scar across the horizon. And he thought, for a moment, that he saw faces there, in the swirling drifts between the trees—Mike and Henry and Eddie and Joan and so many more, all watching him. He waved to them, smiling sadly; then he turned in the other direction and once more began to run.

  To: Colonel Robert F. Sink, 506th

  From: Captain Daniel Reynosa

  Subject: Corporal Donald M. Brixton

  Corporal Dixon was found three miles north of Bertogne[CE2] on 20 December, alone, wounded and severely dehydrated. He was brought back to operations, treated for his wounds, and thoroughly debriefed. His report, which is included in this letter, detailed that he discovered Sergeant Bill Cudden and his squad deep inside the forest, their exact position unknown. The men had been killed and mutilated. Corporal Brixton insists that those responsible for the attack were “monsters,” or “night children,” commanded by a man by the name of Kázán, or Furnace. He also names a German officer called Kreuz, or Cross, who may now be involved. His account is inconsistent and delusional. Our medic believes that Corporal Brixton is suffering from severe shock, and needs to be immediately removed from frontline action for medical treatment. Brixton, who exhibits periods of manic behavior and paranoia, has requested transport back to England to fulfill a personal matter, then shipment to Indiana, where he is to undergo full psychiatric screening. I hereby recommend that he be given an honorable discharge in light of his courage in the line of duty, and a Purple Heart for his injuries.

  We currently have no resources to search for Sergeant Cudden’s and Corporal Brixton’s squads, and regretfully must assume that all men have been killed in action. The events behind their disappearance remain unknown.

  Copyright (C) 2011 by Alexander Gordon Smith

  Art copyright (C) 2011 by Steve Argyle

  The Escape from Furnace Series

  by Alexander Gordon Smith

  Published by the Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

  LOCKDOWN

  SOLITARY

  DEATH SENTENCE

  FUGITIVES (March 2012)

  EXECUTION (October 2012)

  BURIED ALIVE

  I’M BETTING YOU’VE ALL seen some prison films, or watched cop shows where the bad guys get sent to jail. You know what they look like: miles of fences topped with razor wire so sharp it hurts just to look at it; sprawling grounds watched over at all times by million-watt spotlights and towers with guns; lifeless buildings that rise up from the ground like great gray tombstones; tiny windows from which ghostly faces stare at an outside world they can no longer know.

  Not Furnace.

  Our prison bus took us straight there. Me, the kid who’d been stunned, and two other teenage guys, all as pale as church candles and cowering back into our seats as if somehow we could avoid arriving at our inevitable destination. All the while the police guards shook their shotguns at us and jeered, asking us if we’d seen Furnace on the newscasts, if we knew what it looked like, if we had any idea of the horrors that lay ahead.

  I knew. I’d seen Furnace on TV like everybody else. After that summer when so many kids had turned to murder, they made sure that everyone in the country got a good look at the prison. They thought it would make us too scared to break the law, too scared to carry knives and to cut people up for just looking at them the wrong way, too scared to take a human life. Looking around, I guessed they hadn’t been too successful.

  There had been protesters, of course, the human rights supporters who claimed that locking a child away for life was wrong. But you can only argue with the truth for so long, and that summer when the gangs ran wild and the streets ran red everything changed. Even in the eyes of the liberals we weren’t kids anymore, we were killers. All of us.

  I used to always think that the waiting was the worst part, but when we rounded a corner and Furnace finally came into sight, I knew I’d rather have stayed on that bus for an eternity than get any closer to the monstrosity ahead.

  It was just like on the news: a towering sculpture of dark stone, bent and scarred like it had been burned into existence. The Black Fort, the way in. The windowless building stretched upward, its body merging with a crooked spire that resembled a finger beckoning us forward. Smoke rose from a chimney hidden behind the building, a cloud of poisoned breath waiting to engulf us. All in all it looked more like something from Mordor than a modern prison.

  As we neared I could make out some of the details that the news crews had left out. Carved into the cold stone were vast sculptures designed to inspire fear into anybody who saw them— tortured statues, each five meters tall, showing prisoners on the gibbets, hanging from ropes, on guillotines, pleading to executioners, being dragged from loved ones, and, worst of all, a giant head on each corner impaled on a spike. The dead faces watched us, and if I didn’t know better I could have sworn their expressions were of pity, their sorrowful eyes wet from the gentle rain that fell.

  “Doesn’t look so bad,” said one of the other boys, his quivering voice betraying his true feelings.

  “Well, that ain’t the half of it, boyo,” replied one of the guards, tapping his shotgun on the window. “That there is Furnace’s better side. You know where you’re going.” He lowered his weapon so it was pointing at the floor. “Down.”

  He was right, of course. The building ahead was only the entrance, the gateway to the fiery pits below, the mouth that led to the sprawling guts of Furnace, which lay hundreds of meters beneath the ground. I remember when they started building it— I must have been six or seven, a different person—how they’d found a crevice in the rock that seemed to go on forever. They had built the prison inside the hole and plugged the only way out with a fortress. Anyone wanting to dig himself out of this mess only had a couple of miles of solid rock to get through before he was free.

  I guess that’s when it finally sank in. The thought of being down there, underground, for the rest of my life suddenly hit me like a hammer in the face. I couldn’t breathe, my head started to swim, the bile rose in my throat. I sat forward in my seat and stared at the floor, desperately trying to think about something else, something good. But all I could see now were the stains of a hundred other prisoners who had thrown their guts up on confronting the reality of their fate.

  I couldn’t hold it back. I puked, the mess hitting the seat in front and causing the guard to leap away. I retched a couple more times, then looked up through blurry eyes, expecting a furious reaction. But they were laughing.

  “Looks like you win again,” said one, reaching into his poc
ket and pulling out a ten-quid note. “How do you always guess which one is gonna hurl first?”

  “When you’ve been on the job as long as I have,” came the reply, “you just know.”

  There was more, but I couldn’t hear it over the sound of the retching and sobbing that echoed back at me from the stained upholstery.

  WHEN THE BUS eventually stopped we were herded out like sheep. I felt like I’d thrown up a couple of vital organs as well as the contents of my stomach, and my legs were so wobbly that I thought I was going to collapse when I stood. But as soon as we were outside, the sensation of rain on my face perked me up a little. Well, it did until I remembered that this might be the last time I would ever stand in the rain.

  We were right outside the main gate, in a giant cage that gave off a sinister hum and made my head throb whenever I got too close to the bars. I didn’t have to know much about physics to guess that it took a hell of an electrical charge to have that effect. The entrance to Furnace was suitably terrifying—two enormous black gates topped with a plinth marked with the word GUILTY. As soon as we were lined up, the gates swung open with a sound not unlike fingernails running down a blackboard, revealing a gray room with nothing in it except two men dressed in black leaning casually against the walls and a nasty-looking gun mounted on the ceiling.

  The men grinned at us and stepped forward. I felt my legs going weak again just at the sight of them, and I wasn’t alone. The three other boys shuffled away in fear, and even the armed guards moved back toward the bus.

  “They’re all yours,” said one of the guards, his voice little more than a whisper. He pulled a palmtop from his jacket and held it out with a shaking hand. “If you could just print here.”

  One of the giants in suits strode forward and snatched the device, pressing his thumb against the screen until it bleeped loudly. He watched the armed guards scramble into the bus, then turned his attention to us. I studied his face. With their glinting eyes and their menacing smiles the men in black all looked the same, but I recognized this one—the mole on his chin letting me know it was the man who had shot Toby.