by Watts, Peter
Earth had descended into chaos after the change. Murderous fighting in the streets and megacities, leaders accusing other leaders of being behind the change, fear of an AI uprising. He hadn’t paid much attention then—as a newborn he was too busy feeding on his former crewmembers to pay much heed to the news channels—but after his first hibernation trip, there had been no further broadcasts from home.
I’m so sorry, Steve, Linda said, and put a picture on the main screen.
Steve never figured out how Earth could go dark like that. Even with no people left alive, there should be AIs—but there weren’t. No people on the channels, no AIs, no hybrids, no automated signals—nothing.
Watching a picture of Earth on the main screen, clearly taken from the Moon since he could recognize the Frontier Towers in front, Steve felt his last hopes shatter.
Long seconds ticked away while he hung there, floating in midair and trying to grasp what he was seeing.
“It’s…grey?” he said.
There were no features left, just a greyish, smooth surface with no clouds. Had it not been for the Frontier Towers, he would never have guessed it was Earth.
I’m afraid so, Steve.
He felt numb.
“Is it the goo?”
It appears that way. Someone must have utilized a forbidden nanoweapon in the war, releasing self-replicating nanobots on a disassembly routine. By my calculations, the entire planet is covered by several miles of them and they are eating their way through the crust now.
Steve couldn’t answer at first. He just stared at the sterile globe that had once given birth to mankind.
“So that’s it,” he finally whispered. “It’s all over.”
We don’t know that, Steve. There could very well be survivors out there—lots of them.
“Not enough,” he said. “Not without a place to live.”
It had always been his rather foggy plan to gather as many survivors as they could find and head back to Earth, hoping to start anew in some remote area. He had expected humans to be extinct there, but he had never dared wonder if the planet had become uninhabitable.
“My God,” he cried, hiding his face in the palms of his hands.
Linda let him hang there in quiet suffering, not wanting to interrupt.
~
Finally he regained his composure and wiped his eyes, drawing bloody streaks across his face.
“So…options?”
We could head back toward the mysterious AI, but there are a lot of unknowns there. I’m just a shipbound AI—I don’t have the resources of a networked AI, so if he is hostile it could be dangerous for the both of us. Or we could head out and reach a stable orbit around the sun, send out an automated emergency signal and hope someone lived and that they will someday find us.
“You could have just taken off while I was down there, and been free to make your own decisions.”
I know.
“Why didn’t you?”
What would be the point? I could save energy on the hibernation chambers, enter a stabilized orbit around the sun and utilize the solar panels. Bar any accident, I could live for many thousands of years.
“So?”
I would be alone, Steve. I would be all that was left.
Steve fell silent.
“What would you do, Linda?”
The answer came immediately.
I’d slingshot us back toward the Moon, trying to learn anything from the Moonbases—but I would keep my distance. If nothing new was learned, I would aim for a stable solar orbit and switch on the distress signal.
“Then what? Just wait for an eternity?”
Everyone you ever knew is already dead, Steve. It’s not like you would miss out on anything.
He didn’t answer.
~
“You are sure about this?”
Steve had hibernation jitters—his whole body was trembling in anticipation of the coming cryosleep, to the point where he was barely able to stand up inside the chamber. He was naked again.
I’m sure, Steve, Linda replied. Sleep now. I will watch over you.
The cylinder slowly closed, entombing him, and he almost laughed.
It was so ironic. Him, sleeping in a metal coffin with his trusty ghoul standing guard, hoping for someone to reach them in the future.
The hibernation fluid was filling the chamber from the bottom up and he felt numbness crawl into his limbs. This was it.
“I think I love you, Linda,” he said. “Isn’t that crazy?”
No, I love you too, Steve. You are everything I have left.
As emptiness crept into his mind, he smiled a little. It helped. It made it bearable.
Then all thoughts disappeared and there was nothing.
~
Linda gently guided the ship into a slingshot course and turned off the lights in the whole craft while she patiently scanned the frequencies. There was no change in the dark, just the silent hiss from empty channels as the ship began its long voyage through a pitch-black sky.
Award-winning author Michael Kamp was born on a cold night in February in the frozen wasteland of Denmark.
After wrestling a polar bear in the traditional Danish coming-of-age ritual (true story—well, true-ish) he chose the path of the storyteller.
Several novels in his native tongue and a few awards later, the time has come to go beyond and take a shot at the English markets.
He is cofounder of the Danish Horror Society—a society of authors dedicated to promote horror as adult literature.
He works the nightshift, writes out his nightmares and hopes to someday create a story so frightening readers won’t dare to finish it.
He lives with his wife, kids, and a pet troll.
www.fromthefrozennorth.com/
MOUNTAINS OF ICE
Jilly Paddock
I’m taking a late supper when the news breaks. Miri sprawls across the bed, half-tranced, her dark red hair flowing over the pillow, mirroring the pool of blood cupped in the pale hollow of her neck. I lap from it slowly, savouring its salty warmth. I like dining on redheads–I always imagine a hint of spice in their blood, a sizzle and hit of chilli heat.
My phone trills, five bars of a generic popular song. When I answer I hear Hoshi’s little-girl voice. “The Count’s dead.”
“He’s been dead for over seven centuries.”
“This time it’s permanent.”
“Where?”
“Westbourne Mall, in the food court on the south side. We’ve kept the police out of it thus far.”
“I’ll be there.” I end the call.
Miri opens one eye. “An old candy-bar phone? How can you bear to use such an antique? Why don’t you get an implant?”
“They only work in a living brain.”
“You aren’t dead, John–yes, your skin’s cool, but you move, talk and think just like a regular person.”
“It’s a cruel illusion of life, my dear. Any medic would declare me a corpse. No heartbeat, severe hypothermia and a flat-line on brain activity–I’m just chilled and well-preserved dead meat.”
“Are you done feeding?” At my nod, she rises from the bed. “I’ll go clean up.”
I dress, listening to her splashing water in the bathroom. Miri isn’t my only blood source; I keep a string of girls, paying their living expenses in return for food. It may be a straight cash transaction, but that doesn’t stop it being amicable. She comes back in the silk robe I gave her for her birthday, as pale green as a glacier. There’s a Speed-i-heal dressing on her neck.
She leans close to kiss me. “See you next week?”
“Don’t forget to take your iron tablets.”
She laughs. “I have an app for that–it nags me when your greed makes my blood too thin. It’s not a problem, if I don’t eat too much junk.”
“Take care of yourself.” I’m fond of all my girls, but Miri is my favourite.
“Will do.” She has a lovely smile. “And you stay out of the sun, y�
��hear?”
~
Westbourne Mall is a new build, spreading over a reclaimed industrial site to the north-west of the city, a cold, clinical temple to capitalism. It’s a testament to the strength of the recovery; people feel safe enough to return to the city and even have a little money to spend. The robocab drops me at its southern entrance. I walk in, ignored by a trio of anxious security guards. Hoshi meets me just inside. She’s dwarfed by the figure beside her, a man of indeterminate age with unfashionably-long fair hair, another of our kind.
“Do you know Andreas Guttmann?” Hoshi asks.
“By reputation only.” He’s a soldier, almost two centuries dead. There are whispers about the foulness of his temper, his predilection for causing pain.
“John Kenley?” He smiles, doesn’t offer me his hand. “How odd that our paths never crossed before.”
Hoshi watches us edge round each other, baring our fangs like old, scarred tom-cats. Stupid vampire status and power games! Andreas breaks eye contact and backs down first.
“Volkov’s this way,” he says. “Or at least, what’s left of him.”
The food court is deserted at this hour, a wide space ringed by low-end restaurants and fast-food stalls. Chairs and tables cluster in front of each business, themed according to the cuisine. Although Christmas has passed, the place is still decorated with plastic trees, fairy lights and cheap tinsel.
The Count is dead, his body a drift of charcoal across the fossil marble, spilling out of a heap of dark clothing. I recognise his ink-black Homburg, his greatcoat with its sable collar and his monogrammed leather gloves. He’s fallen to ash, as if the sun has caught him, consumed him. There’s no sunlight here, only the artificial daylight of harsh, white, low-energy lamps, and it’s long past midnight. “What happened to him?”
“He burned.” Hoshi shivers, a touch of almost human weakness. “His remains are consistent with solar destruction, however improbable that may seem.”
“Are we sure that this is Yuli Volkov?”
“I took these from his jacket.” Andreas shows me a wallet and the familiar gold hunter watch. “The ID card is issued in one of his known aliases.”
Not that Volkov was the Count’s real name; truth fades over the centuries when all who remember it are dead. He’d taken the nickname ‘Wolf’ long ago. “What was he even doing here?”
“He was hunting.” Andreas puts Volkov’s possessions away and brings out a datapad. “I took this from the security system, time-stamped two hours ago, the record of his final minutes.”
He touches the screen to make the stolen video play. We may have no reflections, but we show up on camera, betrayed by our clothing. The footage is poor quality, its colours faded. Volkov is clear enough, a dark figure with hat pulled down and collar raised to hide the blank where his face should be. There are better disguises–Hoshi uses light-reflecting make-up and I have a subtle mask, one molecule thick and as flexible as skin–but the Count had little affection for high-tech fixes.
All of the food vendors are closed and I think the place is empty, then I see movement to one side. A woman rises from a chair, gathers up her bag and empty coffee cup, turns to leave. Volkov closes with her in a blur of speed that confuses the camera, grabbing her hair and pulling her head back to bare her throat. It’s a killing strike, deep and vicious. I feel a little sympathy for his prey as she struggles to free herself from the Count’s grasp. Then there’s a burst of light as bright as the magnesium flare of flash-powder, so brilliant that even in this dull recording it blinds me for a few seconds. When I can see again, the Count’s on the floor, writhing in agony as his body burns. The woman seems frozen in shock, one hand pressed to the wound on her neck. Volkov turns to ash. She watches and simply walks away.
“That light!” There’s fear in Hoshi’s voice. “What was it?”
“Some kind of weapon?” Andreas replays the video, stopping as the flash of light appears between the figures, giving both of them a hot, yellow halo.
I place the colour. “It’s sunlight.”
“What? Have the cattle invented a defence to ward off our attacks, a ray-gun with the spectrum of the sun?”
“Her hands were empty. She didn’t use any weapon.” I walk around the Count’s shattered head and examine the marble floor in front of him. “She didn’t leave any blood either, which is surprising given the violence of Volkov’s bite.”
Hoshi asks the inevitable question. “Did she kill him?”
“I don’t see how.” I widen my search, finding nothing except the pervasive black dust. “If she did, it was in self-defence.”
“I’ll find the bitch,” Andreas says. It sounds like an oath, forged in hard iron. “My people will hunt her down and bring her to me.”
“The police are here,” Hoshi says. I wonder how she knows, as I hear nothing.
“I’m leaving.” Andreas slips the pad away. “Will you talk to the polente?”
“It would be civil.” I stretch out my hand. “Leave his wallet, unless you want to lay a false trail of a robbery gone wrong.”
I think he’ll argue, then he sighs and gives me the item. He vanishes like smoke, sliding past the approaching police so rapidly that their eyes are blind to him.
There are two uniforms and a black woman in plain clothes. She glances at the Count’s remains, then at us. I see her recognise what we are and try to fathom our relationship. Hoshi looks young–sixteen, seventeen–and it amuses her to dress younger, in a very short skirt, a black halter top and a vintage biker jacket jingling with chains. She wears her midnight-black hair in pigtails, their ends dip-dyed purple this week, and paints her face like a geisha, white skin, cherry-red lips and night-rimmed eyes. She seems too immature to be my partner, yet she’s obviously no relative. The detective purses her lips, disapproving.
“I’m DI India Caldicott.” She flashes a warrant card. “Are you witnesses to this incident?”
“Let’s say we discovered the body.”
“You didn’t call us–mall security did.” She frowns. “Will you show me some ID?”
We present our cards. Mine is in the name of ‘William Strong’, and Hoshi’s apparently called ‘Kasumi Maki’. Both aliases are solid enough to pass scrutiny. Caldicott blinks and I guess that she’s uploaded our details to her case files. She walks around the Count, recording his final portrait. When she’s done, she comes back to us. “Who was he?”
I pass over the wallet and she logs the contents. “Can I hold this as evidence?”
“By all means.”
“Was he a friend of yours?”
“We were never friends, but I have known him for many years.”
“Were you enemies then?”
“Are you asking if I killed him?” That makes me smile. “I did not.”
“Why are you here?”
“To show respect,” Hoshi says. “He was great and influential among our kind, and it’s fitting that we attend this place, witness his departure into eternity.”
“This was the Count?”
“It was.” I’m surprised Caldicott knows of him. The police are aware of vampires, of course, but don’t usually interfere in our affairs, even turning a blind eye to the occasional exsanguinated corpse. The Met lacks the resources it once had, and now struggles to suppress the food riots and petty crime in London’s underclass.
“What killed him? I thought the undead only disintegrated like this in sunlight, and there’s none here. There’s been precious little outside this month, the weather’s been so grey and cold.”
“We are as puzzled at the state of his body as you.”
She looks up into my face with weary, bloodshot eyes. “We’ll investigate, of course, and arrange the clean-up of the scene. I imagine there are no next of kin to inform?”
“His kin died at the hands of the Golden Horde, when the sons of the one-eyed Prince of Suzdal broke their seige of Moscow.” I’d heard that sad tale often, when Yuli was drunk. I’d not hear it
again–those nights were past. “The news of his demise will already be spreading through our community.”
Caldicott bows her head. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’ll contact you if I have any further questions.”
Hoshi takes my hand as we walk away, leaning close to murmur in my ear. “Will she do any more on this case than file her report? Humans have little love for us and a dead vamp is usually a cause for rejoicing.”
“Not all of them are so prejudiced, sweeting.”
There’s a robocab waiting outside, summoned as if by magic. It takes us through the wreckage of a once-great city, past the empty estates and abandoned offices, the boarded-up shops and dark, haunted parks. As we approach the West End there are streetlights again and the semblance of civilisation. Recovery is slow, but humanity is a tough beast. The survivors are rebuilding their world.
The cab comes to a halt in Kensington Square. Seventy years ago it was my fancy to buy a house there, simply because it had once belonged to an artist and I liked his paintings. I keep a parlour and a dining room on the ground floor, and three guest bedrooms upstairs, but I mostly live in the basement. My housekeeper and her boyfriend inhabit the rest of the house, keeping it clean and in good order.
Hoshi winces as a chorus of wolf-whistles from the tavern across the road greet her emergence from the cab. “I don’t know why you stay here, in this broken, shabby dump. Too many rough-sleepers and squatters in the empty buildings–it isn’t safe.”
“It’s safe enough for us. I feel sorry for these people. They’re only trying to survive, and the winter’s been very harsh this year.”
“You’d feed them all, wouldn’t you, every tramp and beggar? You should set up a soup kitchen, John.”
“I donate to one, a small local group that provide hot meals, blankets and medical treatment for the unfortunate.”
She shakes her head. “You’re far too soft-hearted to be a vampire.”
