Dark Tomorrows, Second Edition

by Amanda Hocking; Joel Arnold; J. L. Bryan; Michael Crane; S. W. Benefiel; Daniel Pyle; Robert J. Duperre; Vicki Keire

  “Oh, no,” Pippykins said. “I’m still the son of God, so my name is Pippykins Christ.”

  “You’re last name is Christ?” I asked. “Your mother’s last name is also Christ?”

  “Oh, no, of course not,” Pippykins laughed. “My middle name is Christ. I really should’ve emphasized that. My full name is Pippykins Christ Cumberdale the Third.”

  “The Third?” I asked. “That seems quite odd that your family is full of people with Christ as a middle name.”

  “Well, to be quite honest, my mother’s side of the family isn’t quite right,” Pippykins said. “She’s the descendent of my original mother, Mary, and her family has been carrying the name down for centuries and all that. I told Dad I thought she was more fit for a strait jacket than for motherhood, but you know how dads are. They think they know everything, although in my case, I suppose He really does.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” I agreed. “So, you’re the second coming of Christ? Doesn’t that signal the Armageddon or something?”

  “Well, in a way,” Pippykins said. “I’m trying to save as many souls as I possibly can before the end of time. On the subject of which, have you come accept me as your Lord and saviour?”

  “Not exactly.” I felt embarrassed telling Pippykins the truth, even though I thought he was more certifiable than saviour. “I’m kind of an atheist.”

  “You’re talking to the son of God.” Pippykins was aghast. “How can you possibly be atheist?”

  “Well, about that.” I shuffled my feet and looked at the ground. “I don’t really believe you.”

  “Why would I make something like this up?” Pippykins asked, sounding both concerned and reasonable. “How could I possibly benefit?”

  “I don’t know, really,” I admitted. “But I don’t know you, either. My best guess is that you’re insane. Maybe schizophrenic or something. I don’t know. I’m not really big into psychology.”

  “Oh, this is crazy,” Pippykins sighed and shook his head. “I’m not really surprised, but I’m still disappointed. I get this all the time.”

  “Well, I suppose you would,” I said.

  “What about a miracle?” Pippykins asked. “Could I perform a miracle for you? Would that make you believe?”

  “Maybe, I guess,” I shrugged.

  “Alright, I’ve got an amazing one for you.” Pippykins pointed at the sky. “Look up at the clouds.”

  “What? Why?” I asked, but I did as I was told. The clouds rested along the horizon basking in the setting sun, but there seemed to be nothing miraculous about them. “Yeah. So?”

  “Can’t you see they’re pink?” Pippykins exclaimed.

  “Of course they’re pink,” I said. “The sun is setting.”

  “But my Father made the sunset!” Pippykins gestured wildly to them when I refused to be impressed.

  “Even if I believe that, then your Dad made the clouds pink, not you,” I said.

  “Well, I can’t actually perform miracles.” Pippykins bristled a little. “Dad just works through me.”

  “So you’re just a puppet, then?” I asked.

  “No, no,” Pippykins said. “I’m just…carrying on the family business.”

  “If you say so,” I said. Pippykins looked like he was about to protest, but I interrupted him before he had a chance. “I’m sorry, Pippykins. It’s been really great talking to you, but I have a dinner date that I’ll be late for if I don’t get going.”

  “Yes, of course,” Pippykins nodded. “Go in peace, my child.”

  “Um, yeah, you too, I guess,” I said, brushing past Pippykins.

  “Oh wait!” Pippykins called after me as I hurried down the street.

  “Yeah?” I said, glancing back over my shoulder at him.

  “Beware of the fly!” Pippykins said.

  “I don’t remember reading that in the Bible, but okay,” I said.

  “The Bible?” Pippykins said. “That’s mostly rubbish anyway. Luke wrote most of it when he was stoned out of his mind on opium. However, Mathew and Peter were pretty on the level.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” I said. I shook my head and continued on my way.

  I made it to the restaurant several minutes late, but no worse for wear. My dinner companion, a musician named Brandon that smoked too many cigarettes and wore heavy eyeliner, was already seated and eating his salad. I hurried over to him and immediately plunged into the strange story of the pasty young Brit claiming to have a bloodline to God.

  “So, did you believe him?” Brandon asked after I had ordered my meal.

  “Of course not,” I said. “It doesn’t even make sense. Pippykins Christ Cumberdale, III? Plus, he said his mom was wacky. She’s probably been feeding him that line his entire life. What else would you expect?”

  “Do you think he’s a major threat to society?” Brandon asked. “He’ll form a cult and make them all drink poisoned grape Kool-Aid?”

  “Oh, I really doubt it,” I shook my head. “Pippykins seemed misguided but innocent enough.”

  “It sounds like you had quite the adventure, though,” Brandon said as my soup arrived.

  “I guess. I’m just sorry I’m late.” I picked up my spoon, preparing to dig into my cheesy broccoli soup when Brandon put his hand on my spoon.

  “Oh, no, don’t eat that,” Brandon said, stopping me. “There’s a fly in your soup. You’ll need another bowl.” I stared down at my bowl, slack jawed, looking at the dead fly floating in my soup. “Oh, calm down. It’s only a fly.”

  “No, it’s not that.” I looked up at him.

  “Then what is it?” Brandon asked. “Is the broccoli too green?”

  “No, it’s something Pippykins said to me,” I said. “He told me to ‘Beware of the fly.’”

  “So, you’re telling me you think the son of God foresaw that you were going to have a fly in your soup?” Brandon asked. “As if he’s not too busy worrying about world peace and AIDS and famine and all that.”

  “No, I’m not saying that,” I muttered.

  “Then what are you saying?” Brandon asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe there’s more to Pippykins than it seems.”

  “Pippykins loves you, this I know,” Brandon laughed. I sighed and shook my head. “Oh, lighten up and order another bowl of soup. It’s on me.”

  I looked out the window at the clouds that were now more of a dark purple than pink now. I wondered if Pippykins had anything to do with the color of the sky or the fly in my soup. Or if I was just as crazy as him for believing that maybe… the second coming of Christ was the first coming of Pippykins Christ Cumderdale, III.

  Of Shoes and Doom

  by Amanda Hocking

  Not that the day had been going great as it was, but having my left shoe suddenly start telling me the world was going to end in approximately 25 minutes 42 seconds really put a damper on the whole thing.

  I was wearing the same pair of ratty black Converse I had worn every day for the past two years, and until today, they had never bothered to mention anything, not a comment on the weather or “Hey, watch out for that mud puddle!”

  And now suddenly, as I’m walking out to my car preparing myself to go to work, they went all Nostradamus on me.

  “The world is going to end in 25 minutes and 41 seconds,” my left shoe repeated.

  I’m sure it was trying to sound ominous, but it had a surprisingly squeaky, craggy voice, like a midget with emphysema. If it hadn’t been my shoe talking, I would’ve laughed. As it was, I was pretty tempted to laugh anyway, but I figured that I would look like the crazy person I apparently was.

  At first I looked around, hoping to see some chain-smoking dwarf hiding off in the bushes attempting a practical joke, but it was obvious to me that my shoe was in fact talking. It was wiggling to the syllables of the words and tongue was flapping, as clichéd as that may sound.

  Oddly enough, the thing that caught me as the strangest was the fact that my feet didn’t ti
ckle or feel weird or anything. I mean, my foot was still in my shoe when it began to talk, and my feet didn’t have any change in sensation whatsoever.

  “The world is ending in 25 minutes 32 seconds,” my shoe continued to announce, like the tolling of a grandfather clock.

  It really began to get on my nerves, so I decided it was time that I addressed the situation instead of just standing there slack jawed staring at my footwear.

  “Um, okay,” I said, hitting the problem head on. “That’s neat.”

  “Neat?” Shoe said incredulously. “Neat? I just told you the world is ending and your response, after standing around like an idiot for 15 seconds, is to say it’s neat? What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m assuming a severe mental disorder of some kind,” I said. “Considering I am talking to my shoe and everything.”

  “Well, fine,” Shoe said, getting somewhat haughty for a Converse, I thought. “If that’s how you’re going be, blaming me on psychosis and all that, then I won’t even bother to tell you how it’s going to end. You can just go about your ordinary stupid little life, but when you die, don’t come crying to me.”

  "I’ll be dead,” I said. “I won’t be able to come crying to anyone.”

  “Semantics,” Shoe scoffed. “The point is, that I went to all the trouble to come to life and warn you of your impending doom because I like you. Your feet don’t smell, and you take good care of me. But if you’re going to be flippant about the whole thing, then I’ll just stop right now. I’m really beginning to regret ever talking to you in the first place.”

  “Why are you talking to me?” I asked. “I mean, why now? I only have 25 minutes-”

  “Twenty-four minutes and 37 seconds,” Shoe interjected.

  “Well, whatever,” I said. “The point is, I have less than a half hour to live. What good is this information going to do me now? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “I’m a shoe,” Shoe said. “I’m not really on top of the food chain. I told you as soon as I got the information. Really I’m lucky I got it at all. You humans don’t even know yet. So please, cut me a little slack.”

  “Okay. Sorry, I guess.”

  “You should be,” Shoe said.

  “I can’t believe I just apologized to my shoe,” I sighed, really surprised by the turn my day had suddenly taken.

  “So now you’re condescending?” Shoe asked. “Thanks, thanks a lot. Never mind. I’m calling this whole thing off. Pretend I never said anything at all.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be condescending. This is just a big adjustment for me. I’m not used to talking to my shoes, or any inanimate object for that matter.”

  Shoe made no response. Not a sigh, not a movement, not a scoff. He just sat there, as if he had never spoken in the first place.

  “Shoe?” I asked. “I said I was sorry. You can talk again if you want. I’d really like that.”

  Still, Shoe said nothing.

  I continued talking to my shoes for several more minutes until an old woman came by glaring at me, and I began to wonder why I was still talking to my shoes. I was clearly having some sort of nervous breakdown and continuing to indulge my insanity wouldn’t help anyone.

  I got in my car and proceeded to drive to work as if nothing had happened because that seemed like the best way to deal with things.

  I had just parked my car and gotten out of it 19 minutes and 21 seconds later, when I looked up and realized there was a massive flaming ball hurling towards the earth. I stared up the sky, wondering how I could possibly miss a ball of doom rushing towards the earth up until now, when I heard a voice grumble below me.

  "I told you so,” Shoe muttered.

  I looked down at my shoes just then, which is just as well because nobody wants to see their life coming to an end anyway.

  THE FUTURE

  S.O.L.

  A drabble by Michael Crane

  The two teenagers looked on as a gang of zombies were feasting upon Mr. Richards. He screamed for help as loud as he could, but that didn’t stop the zombies from feeding. Blood gushed out of his stomach, arms and legs.

  “Wow,” Jake said. “They got Mr. Richards.”

  “Yep,” Kyle agreed.

  “Do you think we should do something?”

  One of the zombies was now munching on the top of Mr. Richards’ skull. Parts of his brain began leaking out and he screamed some more.

  Kyle looked to his left and spat. “Nah. Guy gave me an F yesterday. Fuck him.”

  The Fixer

  by JL Bryan

  Norton picked up the fixer at the company’s private airfield north of the city. The airfield didn’t directly belong to Norton’s specific employer, Dynamatx International, but rather to the parent conglomerate HHK.

  Norton had imagined the fixer as a giant of a man, the type who could crush your skull like a Dixie cup in one fist, but the man was instead thin, pale, and even a little shorter than Norton. Norton felt big and clumsy next to him. The fixer reclined in Norton's passenger seat and kept his face neutral behind solid black data glasses.

  As Norton drove away from the airfield, he glanced with some guilt at the wad of cellophane bunched up in the cupholder of his Buick. The coffee cake had left a smudge of white icing on the cellophane. He imagined himself through the fixer’s eyes—fat and soft, his stomach bulging visibly beneath his tie, glasses so thick they magnified his eyes to cartoony size.

  Norton wondered if the fixer, or his boss, knew about the accounts in China. And what would happen to Norton if they did.

  “How many?” the fixer asked. He set his brushed titanium briefcase on the floor between his Armani loafers.

  “Excuse me?” Norton said.

  “Targets. I was told eight. Is that correct?”

  "Yes, sir,” Norton said. “I mean, yeah, eight, far as I can tell. Look, this is not really, I mean I don’t work in security. I’m in the accounting department. I don’t have experience with this kind of thing, is what I’m saying.”

  “They told me you could finger the targets.” The fixer spoke in a soft, low voice.

  “Targets?”

  “Those with their hands in the cookie jar.”

  “Right,” Norton said. “Well, I did uncover the cash flow anomalies, and I did the initial forensics on the missing money. So I’ve been in the middle of the investigation. I’m just not clear exactly what your role is going to be here.”

  “You drive me to the targets. I deal with them.”

  “That’s what I’m fuzzy about.”

  The fixer cocked his head. For a moment, Norton thought he looked like some kind of bird, the kind that sweeps down in the night to snatch prey in its talons. The fixer said nothing.

  They drove down the interstate toward the city. Someone had strung the streetlamps with plastic wreaths and garlands. Norton flipped through the radio stations, finding mostly Christmas carols. Snow the color of dark ash littered the road.

  “Have you visited Detroit before?” Norton asked.

  “No reason to.”

  “That’s what everyone says.”

  “Mind if I smoke?” the fixer asked.

  Norton did. He minded very much. Even the smell of a cigarette across the room irritated his asthma. “Go ahead,” he said.

  The fixer lit up a Marlboro, then cracked the window half an inch, maybe less. Norton’s stomach heaved.

  “How much did these guys take?” the fixer asked.

  “I can verify sixty-two million dollars,” Norton said. “They’ve run a pretty complex operation. The tech guys said they found a tangle of unauthorized programs in our transaction software.”

  “I heard eighty million,” the fixer said.

  “Could be more,” Norton said. “A lot more. We're still unraveling things.”

  “You’d think somebody would notice sooner.”

  “Dynamatx handles trillions of dollars in transactions per year,” Norton said. “All they need is som
ebody inside the company to cover it up. One or two key people.”

  “If there are, you might have made enemies blowing the whistle,” the fixer said. “Ever think of that?”

  Norton hadn’t, and the thought disturbed him. He suddenly wished he had another of the coffee cakes. And a coffee, too, with plenty of sugar. It was almost midnight, and Norton was no night owl. “I was just doing my job," he said.

  “Dangerous job.”

  “But it isn’t! I just strap into my interface chair all day. Nobody talks to me. Now it's all conference rooms where everybody's whispering, then asking me questions, then whispering.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “I just want it to be over,” Norton said. “It’s Christmas Eve, for God’s sake. I should be at home with my—with my tree, watching the Grinch or something.”

  The fixer grunted and looked out the window.

  The thieves had penetrated Dynamatx from an office in a rundown, half-empty professional park, in a district cluttered with empty warehouses. The professional park turned out to be two rows of cinderblock buildings facing each other across a parking lot, their narrow lawns crawling with weeds, the whole facility encircled by barbed chainlink. The front gate hung open, and the fixer instructed Norton to drive on through.

  “Where?” the fixer asked.

  “Suite 130.”

  “Park across from that.”

  Norton did, pulling into a space in front of a black glass door. The letters stenciled on the door in fading, chipped gold paint read: “An ie Mel urne, Tr v l Ag nt.”

  The fixer opened his steel briefcase. He withdrew a small black box and lifted the lid, revealing what looked to Norton like three darts resting on black velvet.

  The fixer opened a palmtop in his briefcase and tapped at the keys. The three darts unfolded little paperclip mechanical legs and trundled in a perfect circle around the black velvet. Waxy wings unfurled from their backs, and the bugs lifted into the air.

  They flew out of the passenger window and spiraled toward the building's air conditioning intake.