The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2015 Edition

by Paula Guran

  “What we didn’t count on was the rolls of film Jerry had shot being almost completely ruined, most likely by some variety of radiation we encountered underground. The couple of photos you could distinguish in any detail showed cave structures that could’ve been anywhere. On top of that, within twelve hours of our return, I developed a rash on my hands that raced up my arms to my chest and head, bringing with it a raging fever and a coma. Camp doctor’d never seen the like, said it was as if I’d had an allergic reaction to some kind of animal bite.”

  “The eggs,” Jim said, “the stuff that was on them. Was it poisonous?”

  “Delivery system,” Grandpa said, “for a virus—several, each hitched to a cartload of information. Imagine if you could infect someone with knowledge, deliver whatever he needed to know directly to the brain. Was what was supposed to happen to the creatures when they hatched. On the way out of their eggs, they’d contract what learning they required to assume their role in their civilization. I assume the process was more benign than what I, the descendant of a different evolutionary branch, went through. Prior to this, had you asked me what I thought a coma was like, I would have predicted a deep sleep. It’s what the word means, right? Not once did it occur to me such a sleep might be filled with dreams—nightmares. Now, I understand what I saw while unconscious as my brain’s effort to reckon with the foreign data being inserted into it. At the time, I felt as if I was losing my mind. Even after I came out of the coma, it was weeks till I could manage a day without some pretty strong medicine, or a night in anything close to peace.”

  “What did you see?” Jim said.

  “Lot of it was in fragments,” Grandpa said, “whether because the viruses had decayed over time, or my brain chemistry was too different, I’m not sure. Maybe both. I saw a city standing on the shore of a long, low sea. Made up of tall, triangular structures that curved to one side or another, like the teeth of a vast, buried beast. Their surfaces were ridged, like the bark of a plane tree, and I understood this was because they hadn’t been built so much as grown. They were of a piece with the forest that surrounded the place. Herds of what looked like a cross between a bird and a lizard, their feet armed with a single, outsized claw, patrolled the forest lanes, chasing off the larger animals that wandered into them from time to time. These bird-lizards had been grown much the same way as the city, what was already there shaped to the ends of the place’s inhabitants. That was what the creatures had raised it did, took what the world around them gave and altered it to fit their purposes. They’d done so for an unimaginable length of years, while the stars rearranged into dozens of sets of constellations. They did it to themselves, steering their biology down certain paths, until they’d split into four . . . you might call them castes, I suppose. They were distinct enough from one another to be almost separate species. Soldier class was at the bottom; next came the farmers, then the scientists, and finally the leaders. They’d fixed it so they developed from infant to adult in about three years.

  “Some kind of disaster brought the whole thing tumbling down. I couldn’t tell exactly what. I glimpsed a wall of fire reaching all the way to the sky, but that was it. There weren’t many of the creatures to begin with. Their civilization had been in decline for tens of thousands of years, pulling back to the location I’d seen, the original city. Had it not been for some of them working underground, the things would’ve been burned away, entirely. As it was, there were only a few thousand survivors, left with a landscape that had been charcoaled, bunched up like a blanket. Overhead, the sky was black clouds. A few of the creatures proposed throwing in the towel, joining their brethren in oblivion, but they were outvoted by the rest of the survivors, who decided to search for a new spot to call home. Dissenters didn’t have much choice in the matter: their leaders had the ability to force their actions with their minds. So the lot of them left on a journey which would consume decades. Everywhere they went, things were the same, the earth and pretty much everything that had lived on it seared to ash. Once, they came to an ocean, and it was choked with carcasses out to the horizon. The air chilled. Clouds churned above, spilling dirty snow by the foot. Half the creatures died over the course of their travels. In the end, the leaders decided their best hope was hibernation. There were places—the sites of cities long-abandoned—where they could find sufficient facilities left to put themselves into a long, deep sleep, from which they might awaken when the planet had recovered itself. They found one such location in the far south, on the other side of what would be called Antarctica. As best they could, they secured the site, and settled down to sleep.

  “And sleep they did, for fifty thousand, a hundred thousand years at a stretch. The world’s wounds scarred over. New plants and trees appeared, spread across the land, were joined by new and strange animals. The creatures had lived during the great age of the dinosaurs—were its crowning achievement. They’d witnessed families of beasts like small mountains ambling across the grasslands; they’d fought feathered monsters with teeth like knives in the forests. Now, when they sent scouts to inspect their surroundings, they heard tales of smaller animals, covered in hair. As they woke from rests that lasted millennia, those animals grew larger, until it was if the wildlife they’d known in their former existence was being recast in other flesh. Nor was the rise of these beasts the only change in their environment. The continents were shifting, sliding towards the positions we know. Antarctica was cooling, ice and snow spreading across it. Never ones to act in haste when they didn’t have to, the creatures chose to wait. Eventually, they did abandon that location. I can’t say when, or why.

  “The rest was even more fractured. They left Antarctica in search of a spot closer to the equator. That might have been what we called Iram, or it might have been another spot before it. For a little while, they did all right. Population increased, to the point a group set out west, to find another of the old sites. The two settlements kept up contact with one another. After more time than you or I could comprehend, it appeared the creatures might be on the rebound.

  “There was one problem for them, one fly doing the backstroke in the ointment: us, humans. They’d been aware of us as we’d risen from four legs to two and started our long climb up the evolutionary staircase, but it was only as another instance of the weird fauna that had overtaken the world. In what must have seemed the blink of an eye, we were on our way to becoming the dominant lifeform on the planet. To make matters worse, we were hostile to them from the get-go, aggressively so. If a human encountered one of them, he fled screaming in the other direction. If a group of humans ran into one of them, they would do their level best to kill it. The creatures had the advantage in terms of firepower. Each of their soldiers had been crafted to be all the weapon it would need against foes much worse than a handful of hairless apes. We had the advantage in terms of numbers—not to mention, we had an ability to make leaps in our reasoning that was completely alien to them. We could surprise the creatures in ways they couldn’t us. So began a war that spanned a good deal of man’s prehistory. By and large, it was fought by small groups from either side, sometimes individual warriors. There was a point when the creatures who’d settled in the west came out in force against the human kingdom that had arisen near them. Fought all the way into its capital city, to have it swept by a mighty wave that drowned both sides alike. Creatures never recovered from that. They ceded more and more of what territory they’d held to humans. In the end, they opted for the only route left open them: another long sleep. As they had before, they fortified their retreat as best they could, and let slumber take them.”

  There was a moment’s pause, Uncle Jim allowing his father to pick up the thread of his narrative. When it was clear that was not about to happen, Jim said, “Then what?”

  “That was it,” Grandpa said. “Wasn’t anything else. Believe you me, what had been stuffed between my ears was more than enough. You know how full your brain feels after you’ve pulled an all-nighter prepping for a big test?
This was like all the cramming you’d ever done for every test you’ve ever taken, present at the same time. After I’d climbed out of the coma, the doctor and nurses thought I was delirious. Wasn’t that. It was a library’s worth of new information trying to squeeze itself into my neurons. Gradually, over a span of weeks, I came to terms with the knowledge I’d gained. By the time I was walking out of that room, though, there was more for me to reckon with. For one thing, after sweating whether anyone would blame him for the sickness that had overwhelmed me, Jerry had gone off in search of Iram, alone. But the entire region had been swept by sandstorms that had reconfigured the landscape beyond his ability to accommodate. For another thing, our team had been moved to a new site, fifty miles east of where we’d been. Fortunately, Jerry had kept my rucksack close and unopened. Absent his photographs and unable to retrace the path to Iram, he doubted anyone would credit him with finding anything but a cache of lizard eggs.

  “They were more than that—much, much more. I’d an idea we might locate a scientist to show the eggs to. Wasn’t sure if we’d be better with a paleontologist, or a zoologist. I also figured a biochemist might be interested in the substance that had coated the eggs, what it contained. Hadn’t paid much mind to the single unhatched egg I’d found; guess I assumed its contents would be useful for purposes of comparison. I certainly was not expecting it to hatch.”

  11. Thanksgiving

  Thanksgiving was the kitchen summer-hot, humid with dishes simmering and steaming on the stove. It was the tomato-smell of the ketchup and soy-sauce glaze her mother had applied to the turkey in the oven; the rough skins of the potatoes Mom had set at one end of the table for Rachel to peel, a tradition that reached back seventeen years, to when her seven-year-old self had insisted on being involved in the preparation of the meal, and her mother had sat her down with a peeler and a handful of potatoes and allowed her to feel her way through removing the tubers’ skins. Mom usually bought potatoes whose surfaces were covered in ridges and bumps, and there had been moments Rachel fancied she could almost pick out letters and parts of words encoded on them. She had advanced well beyond those first four potatoes; now, she was responsible for peeling and chopping all the necessary vegetables. For a brief time in his late teens, Josh had insisted on helping her; mostly, she had thought, to improve his standing with their parents. The last few years, he had abandoned the kitchen in favor of the living room, where their father and grandfather passed the hours prior to dinner watching whatever football games were on the television. Dad wasn’t a big football fan, not in the same way as Grandpa, who took an almost visceral delight in the players’ collisions. But he had grown up with his father’s passion for the sport, and had learned enough about it to discuss the plays onscreen with the old man. It wasn’t something they did that often—the Super Bowl was the only other instance she could think of—but it seemed to fulfill a need both men felt to demonstrate their bond as father and son. Rachel hadn’t been surprised when Josh, despite his almost complete ignorance of anything sports-related, had wanted to join their fraternity. She judged it a demonstration of the event’s ongoing importance to him that he had raised himself from the bed into which he’d collapsed at who-knew-when this morning, and, still reeking of stale cigarette smoke and watery beer, shuffled in to join them, stopping in the kitchen long enough to pour himself a glass of orange juice. Their father had greeted him with typical irony—“Hail! The conquering hero graces us with his presence!”—their grandfather with his typical grunt.

  Afterwards, Rachel would think that she hadn’t been expecting any trouble, today. Then she would correct herself, as she realized that she had been anticipating a disruption of the holiday, and had tied it to Josh. What she had been prepared for was her brother disappearing for ten minutes right as they were about to sit down to eat, and returning reeking of pot. Mom would say, “Josh,” the tone of her voice a reproach not so much of the act—she and Dad had done (and continued to do, Rachel thought) their share of grass—as of his total lack of discretion. Grandpa wouldn’t say anything, but his end of the table would practically crackle with barely-suppressed rage. Dad would hurry to ask Rachel, who would be attempting to recall a sufficiently lengthy and distracting anecdote, how Albany Law was going. Scenarios approximating this one had played out over the last several Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, since Josh had discovered the joys of mood- and mind-altering substances. To the best of her knowledge, his proclivities hadn’t interfered with his studies as an undergraduate or graduate student, which Rachel guessed was the reason their parents hadn’t come down on him with more force than they had. But it angered Grandpa to no end, which, Rachel increasingly believed, constituted a good part of the reason her brother did it.

  But the argument that erupted this day: no way she could have predicted it. It began with something her grandfather said to her father, something that registered as background noise because she was answering her mother’s question about where she was planning on going after she passed the bar. Clear as a bell, Josh’s voice rang out: “Hey, Grandpa, why don’t you give Dad a break, okay?”

  “Josh!” their father said.

  “All I’m saying is, he should take it easy on you,” Josh said.

  “That’s enough,” Dad said. “We’re watching the game.”

  “That were my boy,” Grandpa said, “he’d speak to his elders with a bit more respect.”

  “Dad,” their father said.

  “That were my son,” Josh said, “I wouldn’t treat him like a piece of shit all the time, especially after what I did to his brother.”

  “Josh!” Dad said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Grandpa said nothing.

  “I’m fine,” Josh said. “Not like poor Uncle Jim. Right, Grandpa?”

  “What the hell are you going on about?” Dad said. “Are you high?”

  “No I am not,” Josh said. “If I were, it wouldn’t have any bearing on what we’re talking about, would it, Grandpa?”

  “Stop it,” Dad said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but give it a rest, okay?”

  “What I can’t work out,” Josh said, “is whether it was an accident, or deliberate. Did things slip out of control, or did you turn that thing on your son? And if you did loose it on him, what can he possibly have done to drive you to do so? Oh, and one more thing: how can you stand yourself?”

  “Leave,” Dad said. “Just leave. Get out of here.”

  “Boy,” Grandpa said, “you’ve gone beyond the thin ice to the open water.”

  “Which means what? That I can expect a visit from your friend in the freezer?”

  “Josh,” Dad said, his easy-chair creaking as he sat forward in it, “I’m not kidding. You need to leave.”

  “All right,” Josh said, “I’ll go. If there’s anything you want to show me, Grandpa, you know where to find me.” The couch springs groaned as he stood. Rachel half-expected him to pause in the kitchen on his way to his room, or for her mother to call his name, but neither happened. When his footsteps had finished their tromp along the hall, their father said, “Dad, I am so sorry for that. I don’t know what got into him. Are you all right?”

  “Game’s on,” Grandpa said.

  12. The Second Tape

  The second tape had been damaged, to the extent that the portion of Uncle Jim’s conversation with Grandpa it recorded had been reduced to a stream of garble to whose surface select words and phrases bobbed up. The majority of them (“room,” “go,” “space”) were sufficiently generic to be of little aid in inferring the contents of Grandpa’s speech; although a few (“scared,” “raw meat,” “soldier”) seemed to point in a more specific direction. From the first listen, Josh insisted that their Grandfather had been describing how the creature which crawled out of the egg had been frightened, until he had fed it the uncooked flesh of some animal or another, probably winning its trust. Later on, Grandpa had identified the creature as belonging to the soldier class he�
�d learned about during his coma. While she conceded that Josh’s interpretation was reasonable, Rachel refused to commit to it, which Josh claimed was just her being a pain in the ass. Given what they’d already listened to, what better construction did she have to offer?

  None, she was forced to admit, nor did the three longer passages they found on the tape provide any help. The first came five minutes in; the babble unsnarled and Grandpa was saying, “—like when you come down with the flu. High temperature, head swimming, every square inch of skin like a mob of angry men beat it with sticks. Maybe it would have had the same effect on the creatures, but I doubt it. Has to do with the difference in biology, is my guess. Doesn’t help that the thing fights you. Especially if there’s blood in the air, it’s like trying to wrestle a strong man to the ground and keep him there. Sometimes, there’s no choice but to let it go, a little bit. Why I use the freezer. Long as it’s in there, it’s dormant. After you take it out, if you’re careful and don’t overdo things, there’s no problem keeping it under control almost the entire time. I—” and his words ran together.

  Twenty-four minutes after that passage, long after they had given up hope of encountering another and left the tape playing so they could tell themselves they had listened to all of it, the garble gave way to Grandpa saying, “After that, I received a visit from a couple of fellows whose matching crew cuts, sunglasses, and black suits were as much ID as what they flashed in their wallets. I’d caught sight of such characters before. Every now and again, they would show up at the camp, ask to speak to one of the experts about something. Wasn’t too strange, when you thought about it. Here we were, working in a foreign land, where we might notice a detail about the place or people that would be useful for these boys. Cold War was in full swing, and the lessons of the last big one were fresh in everyone’s mind, especially the strategic advantage of a plentiful supply of fuel. Our work was tied up with national security, so it wasn’t a surprise that the fellows who concerned themselves with it should keep an eye on us. Tell the truth, I was curious to find out what they’d driven all this way to ask me about. Naïve as it sounds, not once did it cross my mind that they might be here to inquire about my other activities. Not that the company would have had any remorse over what they’d had me do to the competition: I just assumed they wouldn’t want me revealing such a valuable secret. Never did learn if someone had blabbed, or if the G-men had sweated it out of them. No matter. These boys cut straight to the point. Said they knew I’d been up to some extra-curricular activities, and were going to provide me the opportunity to put those activities to work for my country. Which was to say—” a paraphrase that was swallowed in a mess of sound.