Unknown (23 page)

//

the time has come the walruse....heim

iejlai fuch maw haw

Am I still standing? I must be. I can’t feel anything. For a second there is jasmine in my nose and the cry of a seagull so very far away. Salt. There are bodies, five I think.

//

this is not for you

Black

blue

black

white

black

gray

white

green

black

oh im goingto puke, there it goes, my spine, if i bend over again my head is oging to fall off, oh jesus what is that drilling, there is liquid running out of me, wheere is it coming from, it hurst ot bend oh god what have i done

strwaberr fields forever

the white daisies float in the breeze and i can hear mom calling fro mthe back of the farmhouse

the factory belches filth into the sky and the third shift is coming home now

and she’s upset aobut somethinme but it waasn’t me it wasnt my fault it was an accidnet, i told him to stop it, that if he kep on doing that ot me that i was going to come fafter him one day and that day was today

i raise the gun and put it into my mouth biting down hard on the metal, one last sensation, flesh burning

6. ASSIGNED

//

reboot

maintaini^ng override

systm failure

imm*ediate thresta illeiminated

check mate exodus

sysfem failure

24

23

22

21

power d^rain low running lowe

assset= failing fm#jst find new

dea, nodeal...listen mr., deal...

20

19

18

17

16

dam nit

must find new host

visual search for ilfe c@ommencing ian

.....................insectlief too

small.......................................

............................................

............................................

............

............................................

......SEAGul, lDISTANCE 500 ’too

far.........................................

............................................

........

............................................

............................................

...................!..nothi ng

15

14

13

12

11

in my haste to

..........................................al

ert

lifesource located

possibly big enough mobdy mass

tmporary prpocess must

must msut summon

coming, hurry you fucker mve it fastr

10

9

8

7

system failrue, shutting downin

6

5

4

contact

3

2

1

////

///

//

/

end

7. ROLAND

My chest hurts, but I was told it would be like this. Lying on my side I open one eye and watch Gordon as he lurches around the grass yard, body failing him, waiting for that moment, the one second of hope that X has spoon fed us for 24 hours.

“Wait for it,” his voice drifts to me. “Nobody move,” X

whispers.

Finally Gordon stands still, his body trembling. He raises the gun and shoves it into his mouth. I can see him bite down on the barrel, his eyes wide, and for a moment, one fraction of a second he sees us, five pairs of eyes watching his every move. Ten slits of white his final act of vigilance. Five chests that rise and fall with the tiniest of movement, the most shallow of breaths. And the corners of his mouth raise up.

One tiny little pop and it’s over. It could have been a plastic bag, or a chewing gum bubble. One quick pull of the trigger and the back of his head flies off. Bits of metal and cable splinter into the blue sky. He slumps to his knees, a cloud of gray billowing out of his head and then he’s tipping over face first into the grass. A blur of brown skitters into the forest.

“Okay, up get up,” X shouts, flying to his feet.

I ease to a sitting position, the dull ache of my chest making it hard to breath. Mom moans and shoves her hand inside her shirt, under the vest.

“Oh man that hurt. Damn, my left boob will never be the same,” she smirks. She unbuttons her blouse and drops it on the ground, dripping with blood. The velcro tears through the silence and she peels the bulletproof vest off, and drops it on the tile with a dull thud.

X is already across the lawn, his shirt off, the vest peeled off like tin foil, six dents in the shell, his massive chest riddled with swollen circles and red splotches. Jimmy and Madison are moving as slow as we are, quick flashes of hesitant grins coming up for air now and then. Their vests join ours on the ground as we stand and start to walk towards X. Jacob hasn’t moved.

“Mom, wait. Jacob.”

I glance up towards X who is over Gordon’s body. His hands are on Gordon’s chest, at his neck, leaning over checking for life.

Mom is over Jacob, moving the chairs out of the way. He still isn’t moving.

“X, get over here,” she screams. She looks up, her face a ghost. “It got through, his neck,” she yells, ripping off Jacob’s shirt, and peeling the vest off. “Goddamnit, it got through,” her hands at his neck, blood still surging out in waves. “We’re too late, I can’t save him,” she sputters, as we gather around her, our shadows casting long silence over her hands. A dull yellow pulses from her fingers as her eyes shift to almonds and her face goes pale.

I can see X running across the yard, but I can’t hear him speaking. I can’t hear anything. In my head I hear a clock running, a countdown. Mom holds her hands to Jacob’s neck, his eyes open wide, staring off into the sky. They focus on nothing but eternity, and I am surprised to see my mother weeping, tears coursing down her face. Yellow tears. Her eyes start to go opaque, a sheen of plastic covering it all, as the last of the captured medicine seeps out into the sieve that is Jacob.

As I pass out and feel the world shift sideways, his hands are on me, gently guiding me to the ground.

“Stop, Marcy...STOP!” he screams.

EPILOGUE

ROLAND

You’ve heard the story of Achilles, right? It was the first thing that X told us when we gathered in the house the night before Gordon was to arrive. He was a Greek hero in the Trojan war. His greatest weakness was pride, we were told. He thought that he could not be defeated, that he had in fact no weaknesses. He was killed in battle by an arrow to the heel, the one spot that he was vulnerable. As a child, the story goes, his mother dipped his body in the river Styx, and held onto him by his heel, the one spot that would later be his demise.

Gordon, or Assigned I should say, had an Achilles heel too. It was centered around his pride as well. Once he left the observation post of his mainframe, he lost most of his ability to monitor us. To monitor everyone. The world, some say. X won’t tell us everything. He says it isn’t important what or who Assigned was, only that he was a vengeful spirit, hell bent on emptying this planet of its people.

I don’t know where X got the vests, but he had them. He and Gordon went way back, beyond the meeting where we all first met them. They started out at as recruits at the same academy. But somewhere along the way their paths split. Exodus pursued the spiritual, while Gordon chased after the pleasures of the flesh. We sent Gordon out to sea on a Viking funeral pyre. Whatever he was in the real world, and whatever he’d become after his life fell apart, in the end he saved our lives by ridding Assigned of its host. He wasn’t always a bad seed, X said. He’d become that with the gentle nudging of bad men with an eye on world domination and a need to eliminate anything that wasn’t them.

Mom is pregnant, and it looks like I’ll have a little sister soon enough. It worries me, but I’m also glad to have a kindred spirit of my own flesh and blood. Times I feel like I’m much older than I am, my nineteen years of life, with a deeper history that I don’t quite understand.

Jimmy and Madison are okay too, and are going to have a son. The newborns will have each other to play with, and a part of us wonders if they’ll become the new beginning we all hope for, a modern day Adam and Eve here in our garden of Eden at the end of the world. Doing God’s work.

Jacob is another story. When X pulled mom off of him she was fading fast. Whatever she’d built up over the years, things that they alluded to, but never explained, she was about empty. She collapsed, her body surrounded in a halo of golden light that both frightened and comforted me. She came around fast enough, but not before Jacob sat up, sputtering and coughing, his eyelids fluttering. The blood flowing from his neck finally stopped. For awhile we didn’t say anything.

Most days when we’re doing things around the house, he’s fine. There are a lot of projects involving water and wind. Things that can help us to survive. I don’t understand it all, but I can dig a hole and carry wood as good as the next guy. Now and then I catch Jacob staring at mom. And once they took a walk and were gone for a long time. They came back in his Mustang and didn’t say much.

X says he isn’t going to do any more traveling. That’s what got us in trouble the first time, he says. He made six trips to the mainland. Something about radio stations. The portal at the cave is the only one that is still open. X closed the rest, destroyed them. If they are going to come, that is how they’ll get here, he tells me. One way in, one way out. Not that we want out.

Most days it’s pretty nice here. I can’t complain.

• • • • •

At the edge of the jungle, Raymond hides. He is afraid of them now, and hesitant to approach. After everything that happened, he doesn’t feel the same. The caves, the portals. So he watches them build and he waits. He watches them grow crops and he waits. He watches the women grow big with child, and he waits. Every once in a while a surge ripples through him and he often wakes up in strange places. Now and then a message crawls across the inside of his eyelids, green text on a black screen:

//

Richard Thomas

Richard was the winner of the ChiZine Publications 2009

“Enter the World of 
Filaria
” contest. His short story "Maker of Flight" was chosen by
Filaria
 author Brent Hayward and Bram Stoker AwardWinning editor Brett Alexander Savory. Some of his publishing credits include Cemetery Dance ( 
Shivers VI
, early 2010), Living Dead Press ( 
Eternal Night: A Vampire Anthology
), 
3:AM Magazine, Word Riot,
 
Dogmatika, The Oddville Press, Colored Chalk, Cause & Effect, Gold
 
Dust, Vain, Nefarious Muse, Troubadour 21, Cherry Bleeds 
and

Opium
.

In his spare time he edits and designs for 
Colored Chalk
 and 
Sideshow Fables
 and is a workshop moderator at The Cult (chuckpalahniuk.net).

He is currently writing his second novel, a neo-noir, transgressive thriller entitled
Disintegration
. Richard is also a member of the Horror Writers Association.

Richard lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago where he has worked as an art director for the past 14 years. He was born in St. Louis, MO, attended Webster Groves High School, and did his undergraduate studies at Bradley University in Peoria, IL. He is currently pursuing an MFA at Murray State University in Murray, KY.

Also from Otherworld Publications

in 2010

COMING JULY 2010

Remember by Laura Griffith

After a freak car accident, Professor Robert Madigan begins to suffer impairment of his short-term memory. Suddenly, moments that have just occurred are impossible for him to recall. His family and friends struggle to help him, but, as time goes by, it starts to appear to be more than a temporary condition. His job, his marriage, and his life begin to suffer, but nothing he tries to do works.

On his way home from work one evening, Robert finds himself standing over a battered, dead body. His hands are covered in blood. He has no recollection of what transpired before that very moment. The police arrive on the scene and take the professor in for questioning as their lead suspect.

As the police investigate the murder and sort out the details, Robert and his family begin to question the professor's lost memory. Had he been under enough stress to have snapped? Or did he witness a crime that he cannot remember the details of? And if he were a witness, what would a murderer do to keep his only witness quiet?

To uncover the truth, Robert must work with the detectives to piece together what happened that evening, no matter what the cost. But will he remember anything, and will it be too late?

COMING SEPTEMBER 2010

The Price of Life by Greg McCarthy

Eight-year-old Jennifer Haller’s brain tumor is killing her. A timely CT

scan would likely have saved her, and a new surgery offers hope for a cure, but Julie Haller is crushed when their insurance company refuses to pay for her daughter’s operation.

Shortly after Jennifer’s diagnosis, Marine Captain Ed Haller loses his leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq. He comes home to rehabilitate while Jennifer wages her own losing battle with cancer and its treatment. Jennifer’s death leads the family to Fort Worth lawyer Grant Mercer, whom they hire to sue Jennifer’s neurologist.