It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

by Kurtz, Matt; McKenzie, Shane; Strand, Jeff

  “I think it’s a bit late for that,” Bill said.

  The clacking of talons on metal sounded out above the noise of the boosters and an orange head craned around the corner. From the corridor behind them a yellow head appeared. The werechickens puffed up their feathers and flapped their wings, shrieking in fury.

  “Oh shit,” Guthrie said and raised the cutting torch in front of him like a shield.

  The orange chicken stepped into full view, blocking the corridor. Its right eye was white and oozing yellow liquid from where the superheated steam had hit it. The feathers on its right side were stained black from where blisters had burst. It glared at Guthrie with its one good eye and lowered its head to attack.

  Dimitri ran toward the yellow chicken. He launched himself into the air and kicked it in the chest, knocking it backward.

  The monster clucked in pain and outrage.

  Dimitri stepped forward and swung the torque wrench.

  The creature ducked beneath his swing and darted forward, its beak grabbing the terrified man around the throat and lifting him off his feet.

  Dimitri swung at the monster, his blows bouncing off its plumage.

  The werechicken slammed its beak into the floor. There was a wet snap and it dropped Dimitri’s corpse. It turned to Sian.

  Bill stepped in front of her, cleaver raised. “Get away from her, you bitch.”

  Mark Guthrie faced McChicken.

  It stalked toward him, its single eye blazing with recognition and hatred. Its beak flashed out at his face, and Mark ducked to the left. The beak punctured his shoulder, bursting out from his back. It raised its head, lifting Guthrie off his feet.

  Guthrie screamed and brought his foot up between its legs. The creature shrieked and Guthrie fell to the floor.

  “Right in the chicken nuggets,” Guthrie said. He raised the cutting torch and plunged the white hot flame deep into feathers.

  The monster screamed as its plumage ignited. The creature attempted to run, but only made it a few yards. It fell to the floor, its body an inferno.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Sian screamed as the Carol Chicken approached.

  “It’s going to take a while to get clear of the moon’s influence,” Bill said, waving his meat cleaver at the monster.

  “How fucking long?”

  The chicken paused and looked confused. Feathers retreated into flesh and, in moments, a naked woman stood before them. Carol fell to the floor and spat a feather out of her mouth.

  “I’d say, about that long,” Bill said. “Carol? Are you okay?”

  “Why am I naked, and why does my arse hurt? I didn’t get drunk again, did I?”

  Sian and Bill helped Carol and Guthrie out of engineering to what remained of the med bay. Carol was wrapped in a tarpaulin, shivering in silence. Guthrie staggered along, a dressing pressed into his wounded shoulder.

  “So,” he said, “does anyone know how to fly the ship?”

  ***

  It was warm, dark, and quiet in the engineering deck. A noise rang out, almost imperceptible over the hum of the ion drive at first, but gaining power and volume with each second.

  Tap Tap, Tap Tap.

  Under a heat exchanger, in a nest made from insulation, lay a single egg.

  Tap Tap, Tap Tap.

  A crack appeared on its surface.

  White Light and Blue Glow

  by Lesley Conner

  “I just fed you to Fran Friel.”

  Gwen sat with the phone balanced between her shoulder and ear. One arm was stretched out in front of her, moving her mouse to press the feed button on the Zombies application on Facebook.

  “Oops! There you go, down the gullet.” A giggle forced its way through her nose.

  “What are you talking about?” Ali asked, her voice tinny and tired.

  “You know, on Facebook. I send you invites like every day to join my undead army.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Ali said with a hint of irritation. “And I’ve told you I don’t play those stupid games.”

  “Well, whatever. It’s fun.”

  “Sounds like.”

  Silence stretched between the two, punctuated by the screams of kids playing in the background at Ali’s house. They’d known each other since elementary school, stayed close through high school, and even roomed together for a year while at WVU, but when Ali had gotten married and started a family their friendship dwindled to the occasional phone call and Facebook clip.

  “Who’s Fran Friel, anyway?”

  Gwen smiled, knowing Ali would ask, and happy the conversation was changing direction.

  “She’s a writer,” she said. “A really great writer.”

  “Oh,” Ali said, interest rising in her voice.

  “She has a short story collection out. Really gruesome stuff.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment lowered it.

  “Don’t ‘Oh’ me. You should give it a shot. She’s really good.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Gwen knew her friend would never take the time. She screwed her lips into a sour expression, frustrated with the knowledge that a lot of people wouldn’t give some writers a try just because they wrote horror. With a kick, she spun her computer chair to face the main room of her efficiency apartment. Romero, her fat, gray cat, slid along the far wall and scrunched himself under the couch. Gwen leaned back and closed her eyes, settling in for what she knew would be a losing battle of the wills. Just as she opened her mouth to start her rant, a knock shook the room.

  Gwen’s shoulders slumped as her eyes opened.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  The knock came again, rattling the front door in its frame.

  “Someone’s knocking at my door. I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to you later.” Ali’s voice sounded light with relief. “And send me the title of that Anne Rile book. Maybe I’ll pick it up.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Bye.” Gwen rose to her feet. As she crossed the room, she glanced down at her worn tank top and holey sweatpants. A peek into the mirror above her couch/bed revealed short, brown hair sticking out in all directions from her rushed ponytail and dark circles under her eyes. She stuck her tongue out at her reflection and shrugged. She turned the knob and swung the door open.

  Three people stood in the hallway outside Gwen’s door. Well, she guessed they were people, but rotting flesh and tattered clothes made it a little hard to determine. A smile slid up her face. One of the zombies shifted, uncomfortable under her gaze.

  “Braan…” The voice was wet and strangled with phlegm. He coughed to clear his throat. “Brains?”

  Gwen was certain it was supposed to be a demand, but the word came out as a question. She looked at the slight, almost painfully thin form, trying to figure out which one of her friends was under the makeup. He wore a red and black uniform that would have fit in on the set of Star Trek, if it had been clean and didn’t have multiple rips and tears in it. His lips were tight, and crusted with blood and pus. He kept shifting his gaze, never allowing it to stay in one place for too long and coming nowhere near Gwen’s face. After a moment, she decided he didn’t look like anyone she knew. Her eyes flitted to the two figures standing behind the speaker.

  One was a short girl with a taut stomach, complete with jagged gashes revealing pulsing intestines. Her hair was dirty blond, pulled into two, pert pigtails sticking out from the sides of her head. She wore a tattered cheerleader uniform with a smiling devil face straining across her large breasts and a raggedy pompom hanging from one hand. Her feet were bare and dirty.

  The other figure was a large black man. He was dressed like a butcher, though Gwen wasn’t sure how much longer his white apron would survive with his bloated gut pushing against it. One side of his face was mangled to the point of resembling rotten hamburger, and his left foot was twisted until it was nearly facing backwards.

  “Wow!” Gwen said, unable to keep the amazement and glee out of her voice. “You guys look
great. The makeup is fantastic. Who put you up to this?”

  Looks of confusion crossed all of the zombies’ faces. The cheerleader and the butcher stared at the Trekkie as if he’d gotten them lost in the desert. His fingers drummed on his pant leg in his nervousness. He cleared his throat again, preparing to speak.

  “Um,” he started, but Gwen cut him off. She leaned into the hallway, looking intently in both directions.

  “Was it Ali?” she asked. “I was just on the phone with her and she didn’t give anything away.” As she straightened up, a huge smile on her face, Gwen caught a whiff of the rot and decay rolling off of the corpses. Gorge rose in her throat, filling her mouth with the bitter taste of bile and causing her smile to flinch before she could smooth it back into place. “You know, I think maybe you have the wrong apartment. I really wasn’t expecting anyone.” She started to shut the door, but the Trekkie slid his long, narrow foot into the space, bracing it open.

  “No. No, we have the right place,” he said, glancing back at his companions. He jerked when he saw the butcher’s menacing glare and the cheerleader’s indifferent pout. “We have the right place,” he said a second time, as if trying to convince himself. Opening the door wider, he stepped into the apartment with the other two on his heels. Gwen stumbled back, unsure of whether this was a prank or if she’d totally lost her mind.

  The Trekkie straightened himself to his full height. His spine popped and cracked with the motion, sounding to Gwen as if it was screaming with displeasure. He used his hands to smooth the front of his ruined uniform. His lips moved, eyes shut, as he practiced what he would say next.

  “Um…I’m Fran Friel.” His eyebrows knitted together momentarily. Shrugging, he shook his head with a nearly imperceptible nod as if that explained everything and he was coaxing Gwen to understand.

  She didn’t. Confusion muddled her thoughts making it hard for anything to make sense. She’d met Fran Friel at a sci-fi convention the previous year and the zombie standing before her looked nothing like the cheery woman she’d met then.

  The Trekkie seemed frustrated. He stomped one of his feet and his hands wrung together before he flung them to his sides.

  “You know. I’m not ‘Fran Friel’, but…” Gwen almost laughed as he made the quote signs in the air around the writer’s name, but held it in. The zombie was beginning to look desperate. “You know…on Facebook.”

  Realization crept over Gwen.

  “You mean, like, the Zombies game?”

  The Trekkie sighed, his face sagging with relief.

  “Yes, yes. Of course.”

  Gwen took another step back, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “And?” She couldn’t think of anything else to say

  The Trekkie’s jaw flopped open. His tongue was lax and an ugly shade of gray. His teeth hung loosely from his gums. Gwen watched his throat spasm as he tried to form words, but never knew what he was going to say because the butcher pushed his way forward.

  “And we’re hungry.” His voice came out as a deep baritone, slightly garbled by his ruined cheek.

  Gwen noticed a meat cleaver clutched in one of his hands. The blade was tinted a brownish-red that she was beginning to doubt was paint or makeup. The butcher’s chest heaved with anger, and he looked as if he would charge her at any moment and rip her arms from her body.

  The Trekkie put a calming hand on the butcher’s shoulder, more composed than he’d been a moment before. Just as he was beginning to speak, the cheerleader mumbled something behind him.

  “Shut up, Fara. I’m handling this.” He flung the words at her, something thick and gooey flying from between his lips. Gwen tried to tell herself it was spit, because she didn’t think she could handle it if it were something else.

  “Yeah. You’re handling it alright.” The cheerleader, Fara, nodded and rolled her eyes. Her chin jutted forward in fake sincerity. With her arms folded tightly over her chest, Gwen expected her to start tapping her foot at any moment to complete the caricature of a spoiled, prissy teenager. “I can see you’re handling it. And you’d better do it soon, cuz I’m getting real hungry standing around here.”

  The Trekkie turned back to Gwen, his palms up. A smile pulled at his lips in a way Gwen felt sure he thought was open and friendly, but was only grisly and gruesome.

  “Look, Gwen,” he said. Gwen was startled by the use of her first name. “You feed me all the time. Like every day.” It was true she played every day, and she fed her friends whenever she could. “Fara, Clarence, and I were talking, and their friends aren’t nearly as good. They don’t get fed more than once or twice a month. You know, whenever the losers decide to log on. We thought since you were so generous maybe…”

  As his words faded, Gwen’s eyebrows drew together. Her mind was working furiously to try and piece together what Facebook and her obsession with it had to do with the people in her living room. Nothing was coming together. It just didn’t make sense.

  “This is about Facebook?”

  The butcher, who Gwen assumed was Clarence, growled. He smashed his forearm onto the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen, leaving behind a greasy, yellow smear. Gwen felt her stomach flip as she swallowed back the bile rising in her throat.

  The Trekkie’s chin smacked his chest with a crack. He sighed, methodically massaging his temples as he tried to think of another way to explain himself.

  “Alright, let me try again.”

  Gwen backed away, shaking her head. There was no way any of this was happening.

  “I’m dreaming. This isn’t real.” Reaching back, she felt the familiar texture of her worn couch. Her rumpled blankets lay in a heap at one end, her pillow at the other. Allowing her legs to buckle, she flopped down and pulled her knees to her chest.

  Her eyes were wide as she watched the zombies, who in turn watched her. They seemed to be stunned by her disbelief.

  Finally, Clarence broke out of the trance. He threw his head back and screamed his frustration.

  “You said she would feed us,” he said, his arms swinging in wide circles. “You said it. What are we going to do now?”

  Gwen listened to the three zombies argue around her as she squeezed her eyes shut. She desperately tried to make them fade into the dreamscape she’d created them in, but couldn’t seem to manage it. The only time she moved was when the familiar weight of her cat, Romero, joined her on the couch. She wrapped an arm around him, scooting him into her lap.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I’m only a level two,” the Trekkie said.

  Clarence’s heavy boots sounded loud and uneven as he paced the room. Gwen opened her eyes, unable to stand being blind in her fear. Her mouth hung open, drawing in large gasps of air without having to smell the damp, rotting scent filling the small apartment.

  While Clarence paced the floor, banging on the walls and cursing everyone and everything, the Trekkie sat in the computer chair. His head hung toward his knees with his pencil-like arms wrapped around his ears. Fara had hopped onto the kitchen island, her legs crossed at the knees, and seemed to be taking in the scene with bored indifference. She flipped one of her decaying wrists before her face, checking her nails and picking at her peeling cuticles.

  “We could just eat her,” she said, her eyes never leaving her ruined manicure.

  Clarence’s head popped up as he turned near the wall. A smile spread across his face. Gwen grimaced as she watched. His ruined cheek bunched under the pressure and it looked to her like a hamburger patty getting ready to sizzle and squirt on a screaming hot grill.

  “Yes,” he screamed, pounding his fist into the wall for emphasis. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  A framed poster came crashing to the floor, shattering and sending splinters of glass skittering across the hardwood.

  “Great, Clarence.” Fara hopped off of the island and stood in the broken glass. “As if my feet aren’t torn to hell already. You just had to break something, didn’t y
ou?”

  Clarence took a step toward Gwen, not seeming the least bit upset about the ruined poster or Fara’s bare feet. The cheerleader also started moving toward the woman, not seeming to mind the glass even though she’d been complaining only a moment before.

  Gwen felt frozen, watching Clarence and Fara coming for her. Saliva dripped from the corner of Clarence’s large mouth. His hands were slightly raised. Fara looked less menacing, a soft smile playing at the edges of her lips, but Gwen felt certain that her sharp fingernails could rip into tender flesh just as easily as Clarence’s yellowing teeth. Romero stiffened in her arms, a growl low in his throat. With a moan, the Trekkie jumped up from the computer chair, lunging forward with his arms outstretched, rushing to tear and rip alongside the others, just as Fara grabbed Romero.

  The cat dug into Gwen’s arm, desperate to hang on and leaving deep furrows in her skin as he was torn from her grasp. She screamed in pain as her pet hissed in fury. He turned in the cheerleader’s grasp, latching his sharp claws into her face. Gwen watched helplessly as Fara yanked Romero away and flung him behind her. He smashed into the lip of the kitchen island. A loud snap as something broke competed with his yowl of pain. Then, he lay on the floor, unmoving.

  Fara’s face was wrecked. One eyeball hung from its socket, leaking and looking deflated as it smeared its juices on the side of her face. A long fissure had been opened between her upper lip and her cheek, molars peeking through with each huff of anger. Her cheek and forehead were a maze of scratches. The skin puckered angrily, the edges curling and pink, but they didn’t bleed. No matter what the damage to her face or feet, it didn’t deter her as she reached toward Gwen once again, intent on a snack.

  Holding her bleeding arm close to her side, Gwen scurried over the arm of the couch and jumped to the floor. Shards of glass bit into her feet, making her jerk in pain, but she didn’t slow as she attempted to get away. Clarence and Fara moved to block her in, leaving her nowhere to run.

  “Sorry, sweetie,” Clarence said, his voice sounding higher in his excitement, “but I was promised a meal and I’m not leaving without one.”